The schoolhouse of Santa Maria de San Sabastion de Yali was completed on October 22nd after a month of construction, with the celebration of this accomplishment taking place on the 23rd of October. It was an unforgettable experience working in the village for five weeks, understanding the dynamics and culture of the community, and seeing the impact that this new monumental structure will have on the people there.
The photos that accompany this post will give a better sense of how the physical structure of the school developed, but what can’t entirely be told by the images is the history of struggle for the village and the prospects and hope the new school gives to the community. Our final two weeks were filled more with collaboration with village and municipal leaders to see through the school’s completion and truly understand from the people’s perspective the results of having this new structure in town.
The history of the village comes from the memory of Guillermo, the appointed village leader of nearly 20 years. Guillermo moved to the village in 1975, when there were only five families. In 1980, the Contra War escalated and began to heavily effect the Northern Highlands where Santa Maria quietly rests. However, Santa Maria was a sanctuary from the heavy fighting in the area, and families were urged to move to the area, which at the time had vast, untapped land for farming. During this time, a wood framed, one room school was built, which after almost thirty years of use was by now almost totally run down. Guillermo returned in 1990 after eight years fighting with the Sandinista Army to find a significantly transformed town that had doubled in size. But the village was highly unorganized, and its people generally opted to do things on their own rather than to gather the efforts of the whole village. US programs to teach health care and agricultural practices during the 1990s and early 2000s encouraged the organization of the village, and led to the formation of a community owned company to farm the coffee, corn, beans, and bananas grown on the surrounding farmland. This formalized organization led to significant advances in health care and prosperity from farming, although from our experience it is clear that the community has a long way to go in terms of organizational efficiency. There is no clear, rigid structure for the community to work together to provide better public services.
This is where the first, but less obvious benefit to the school’s construction comes in. The buildOn model requires the leader of the village to organize six deputies in charge of respective days of the week for construction. These leaders then organize their other eleven workers for each day and motivate them. Although sometimes these levels of motivation lagged, we made sure to stay on the leaders, ensuring they fulfilled their end of the covenant. The completion of the school in record time by the community was clearly a matter of pride to the village, and empowers them by demonstrating that they can achieve great things in improving their lives, when they effectively work together.
Besides the church, there are no significant structures in Santa Maria. The school is in the center of the main road, and will be the predominant and aesthetically dominant building in the village. The school is a symbol of progress in the town center, and further exemplifies the profound significance of education. With one of the nicest schools in the area, the parents will be proud to send their children to school and stress to a greater extent the importance of getting a good education. Before, with the ragged school falling down after 25 years of use, it gave the impression to naïve students and parents alike that school took a back seat to other issues. Parents often took their kids out of school because it was inadequate. Those that had to go to another town for school often could not make it due to severe and prolonged flooding of the river. The new school stands as a monument to the high value placed on education in the village.
Finally, the construction of the school has inspired confidence in the local government of Yali and its mayor, Victor, who does what he can through limited means to improve the situation of his municipality, the poorest in the most impoverished country in Central America. A stable government is a key to economic development, and this deeper foundation of trust of the small villages in their local governments brings a greater belief in the power of organized governmental structure.
So it is clear to us that the completion of this school in Santa Maria will have limitless, long lasting effects the most evident of which are higher attendance and greater graduation rates, more developed organization in the community, and a stronger local government.
We left the village shortly after the closing (well closing for us, opening for them) ceremony. The ceremony included dancing, words of thanks and a call to duty by the village’s leaders in regards to their new school, and the expression by us of our hopes of the impact the school will have on the community. We followed the ceremony with a massive feast of beef, rice, beans, and local vegetables that some of the women of the village arduously worked on for an entire day to feed hundreds in the village. We are comforted to know that the durable structure of the school will last for 50 years. Barriers of language and culture had been transcended after five weeks of living as three people taken in by the village as their own, and the friendships and bonds we formed with the people there will be remembered for a lifetime. What will continue for a limitless time are the effects this new place of education will have on the prosperity of the village, as we hope it will help create a snowball effect in making the community more self sufficient and improving the way of life for its people.
We would like to thank all that have made this school possible through their moral support and selfless donations, as well as the people of the community for making us feel so at home. We now turn our attention to Mali, where the next school will be built, and for which we are already well on our way to funding. Please let us know if you are compelled to help out in any way with our future endeavors in Mali and Nepal, and continue to follow us right here on this ongoing journey. An easy way to help is to spread the word to others by directing them to this blog and to our website at www.projectcommencement.com.
Salud,
John, Taylor, and Evan
P.S. Thank you to Barth Falkenberg for providing most of (and the best of) the photos that can be seen by following the link below, and for sharing this experience with us with his stay for our last week in the village.
PHOTO ALBUM:
http://picasaweb.google.com/john.falkenberg/FirstSchoolNicaragua#
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