How would your life be different if you never had any toys? Or what if you went to school for only two hours a day, had to use berries to make drawings and had no shoes?
It might be hard to imagine a life like that, but that’s what a group of Washington fourth- and fifth-graders saw on a trip to Nicaragua to help expand a school in a poor mountain village.
The Latin American Montessori Bilingual (LAMB) School in the District, which teaches in English and Spanish, started a letter-writing exchange with a school in Nicaragua two years ago. This year, the school arranged for nine kids and six adults from LAMB to visit the Central American country and offer some hands-on help. It was an eye-opening experience for everyone.
Sharing time and toys
The Nicaraguan children could not take their eyes off the D.C. kids, because most of them had never seen an American before.
“I think they might have thought everyone in the world was the same,” said Maya Woods-Arthur, 9, a LAMB fourth-grader. The U.S. kids were taller than the Nicaraguans because of better nutrition. The LAMB students also brought books and games, which many of the local children had never seen before. The school’s main education tool is a chalkboard.
“For them to have toys is basically living in a paradise,” said Connor Suarez-Allen, 10, who just finished fourth grade at LAMB. But the village kids had a hard time sharing because everyone wanted to play with the new things at once!
Hard work for all
The group made its travel arrangements through a program called Seeds of Learning, which organizes volunteers’ trips aimed at improving educational opportunities for children in Nicaragua and El Salvador. For a week, the kids and adults from LAMB helped lay bricks, spread wet concrete, break concrete slabs into rubble, fill water jugs at the local well and haul materials around the site by hand or with a wheelbarrow. They worked on adding a new room to the school building, so more than 50 students can meet in two rooms rather than squeezing into one.
Many of the Nicaraguan children must walk for an hour to get to class. After their two-hour school day, they walk home to help their families “with the chores, feed the chickens, help with the animals, if they had any,” Maya said. “It sounds like a hard life.”
A trip to remember
LAMB is planning another trip to Nicaragua next year. “The experience was life-changing, and I would like to do that again,” Maya said. Connor said it made him feel lucky to have a house, a comfortable bed, two dogs and a good family. But he’d like to go back, too.
The Nicaraguan kids, meanwhile, have more than a new school by which to remember their American friends. The LAMB students brought a digital camera and a small printer, so the Nicaraguan children got something else many of them had never seen: photographs of themselves.
— Margaret Webb Pressler
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