Growing up in small-town rural Iowa, I always expected that living in a big city meant that you don’t know very many people. But here, that is actually the contrary. In fact one of the great things I’ve learned while living in Nicaragua, is that it’s a pretty small world. When you get to know someone, you’re bound have some shared friend or at least acquaintance. And once you’ve started making a web of connections, it only goes on expanding more and more the longer you spend time here. One example of this small and connected world of Nicaragua happened last month when I realized that our Formation Coordinator at the Center, Sonia Olivares, had met and gotten to know my host mom from my study abroad trip two years ago. My host mom’s name is Lola Esquivel, a strong leader and member of a women’s cooperative in the rural community of Santa Julia. With this community only being about a 45 minute bus ride out of Managua, we decided to plan a trip to visit Santa Julia with the idea of providing a service to those in the community, especially the women from the cooperative.
So on Saturday morning the Beauty class along with some scholarship students got on a bus along with all of their hair-cutting supplies, books and a cd player bound for Santa Julia. The 16 women in the beauty class set up to begin giving free haircuts, while the 6 scholarship students got ready to play games, sing songs and read stories with the children from the community. Usually members of this community have to travel into the city to get a haircut which could mean an hour walk and a 30 minute bus ride. Not only that, but also many of the women in the community dedicate so much time attending to their crops, their family, their house and organizing meetings with the cooperative that there isn’t much time left for themselves. Therefore the opportunity to get a free haircut right there in the community as well as the chance to take a morning to pamper themselves was a treat! The activity was a quick success and more and more people began to arrive until finally we had to stop and pack up to get back to the Center.
It was a strange yet gratifying experience to be back in the community I lived in for 6 weeks and see all of the women from the cooperative again. It was especially unique to see my two worlds colliding as those from the Center shared their talents and services with the community that I had come to know and love over two years ago. Hopefully there will be more exchanges like these in the near future, both in Santa Julia and in other places where we’re sure to meet someone we know who greets us with warm hugs.
-Kelsey
Friends of Batahola Volunteers 