A Brief History

Juancito (far right) and some buds with their versions of life preservers at Lake Nicaragua, 2009 

Estefani and me fooling around on the greenhouse site, 2006

     Many people have already asked me, “Why are you doing this?”  Why would you put yourself through it?” In 2006 I studied abroad in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.  It was my first time out of the country and really my first taste of true poverty on a grand scale.  Our group had the pleasure of participating in a service project where we lived in a rural impoverished village called El Fortín (Nicaragua) and we worked with the people to build a greenhouse and plant over one hundred fruit trees so that they would have fresh fruit to eat and herbs to sell at local markets. 

     I kept a journal during my experience and I believe the following entry sums up most accurately the why behind this project:

            “Change the world.  It's easy if you try.


I was convinced it didn’t get any better than I had had it.  I was convinced we would meet and greet the same sort of faces we have grown accustomed to... meet and greet the same beauty we have almost grown numb to.  I was convinced I had been molded and remolded ten times over, nine times too many, the eleventh time was the charm.  I was convinced I couldn’t save the world, and then I met the children of El Fortín, Nicaragua. Our first day we rode up like rock stars, cramped people in cramped houses, rushed out in silence to the only cramped dirt road in the entire town.  We had only driven 5 miles from the city of Granada, but it seemed like we were a thousand miles away.  Pregnant moms in their early twenties shuffle their 2 and 3 year olds in tired rags, once again.  Kids old enough to walk the street do so on naked feet with eyes wide open.  I had no idea what I was driving into. 
            

     When I met yet another family, they sat me down in their one room house; in plastic chairs they surrounded me with curious eyes.  Nine of them sat, stared, said absolutely nothing... the only movement was that of my 20 year old sister breast feeding her 1 year old two feet in front of me.  My encounter.
          

     I would come to find out that true compassion isn’t money bought.  Love can be achieved in eight short days; tears fall harder on dirt roads, and no matter how beautiful a place can be there is always something to obscure pure sight.
         Every day we worked as a team, we used our hands; we created something beautiful, together.  A greenhouse with herbs to heal, plants to eat, bushes to sell is what resulted, but it could have been anything.  The magic was in the relationships built, without nails, without wood, but with something else I’m still trying to put my finger on.  The true beauty was in the eyes of Estefani, or the smile of little Juancito.  In school you work hard, and you learn.  Not every day reveals results.  In El Fortín, I came home every day with sore muscles from the day’s work, with sore muscles from my bed that was little more than a quilt draped over a steel frame.  With one particular sore muscle for the children who don’t have the means to buy a uniform to go to school or rice for dinner.  But every day I saw results.  I saw smiles.  I saw people, interacting with people, for the greater good of the whole rather than the individual.  for 8 days my sense of self fell away... for 8 days I lived and loved like it would all be gone in 8 days... for 8 days I was so incredibly me.  When our 8 days were over we left the town in the same converted school bus in which we had come, and once again we were stars, but this time we left a part of ourselves--and even as we drove further and further away and became just faces behind glass plate windows we were close enough to touch.
 
           
     So even if it is the life of one bright eyed child--change the world.”

            I am doing this project for my family in El Fortín and for the billions worldwide that must live in poverty each and every day.  I am doing this project for me, to better understand the human condition through its highest highs and it lowest lows.  I am doing this project because as a young artist I believe art still possesses the ability to promote change.  I’m not naïve enough to think that this piece will end world hunger, but if it changes just one mind and challenges that mind to act.  Well, I guess it’s a start.