Kids in a small rural school hold up supplies from Vecinos, delivered by Maverick and Crispin, two of our most hard-working volunteers, who live in nearby cities. Photo by Maverick Velasquez.
Early this year we weren’t worried about COVID-19. No one had heard of it yet. In January, we were more concerned about Nicaragua’s ongoing political strife. But I had traveled to Nicaragua in November to assess the situation, and returned confident that we could take a team of volunteers down safely and carry out our annual project as usual.
The previous year, 2019, was the first year in a decade that we had not traveled to the country to bring school supplies, dental treatments, veterinary care, and school repairs to the small rural communities we serve near the city of Leon, Nicaragua. Political violence was still too volatile.
That didn’t mean the project was cancelled. We have the best volunteers in the world, and most live in Nicaragua. Maverick Velasquez, our Nicaragua Project Coordinator, worked with our school liaison Crispin Canales to assess the needs of the students and the communities. After a successful fundraising cycle, our Program Director Mateo Garibaldi couriered the funds to Nicaragua in early March while visiting friends and family.
Maverick bought all the school supplies, and Maverick and his wife and mother packed them all into boxes by classroom, a huge task we usually do with teams of 10 people or so. Then they delivered those supplies to the classrooms with a small group of volunteers. It was a ton of work, and I felt bad that they’d had so much to do by themselves. I was sure we would be able to help this year.
But storm clouds were gathering. Awareness of COVID-19 began to emerge in February, but I refused to worry. Then the U.S. volunteers, of which we had the largest group in our history, started cancelling for various reasons. Sherry Cook, my mother-in-law and a brilliant volunteer, shockingly developed lung cancer. We lost her two months later. My aunt Mary, another erstwhile annual volunteer, injured her foot. Rob Sweetser, our Youth Coordinator, got a new job and couldn’t travel. His Mom, Gina, our R.N., also experienced a sudden career intensity and reluctantly cancelled her plans to volunteer. Two other young people withdrew.
That left just Steve Swank, the fabulous volunteer from the Des Moines, Wash. Rotary Club, (and now a board member!) and I. The COVID-19 numbers kept going up as the date approached. A conference in Australia I was supposed to present a paper was cancelled just days before we were scheduled to leave for Nicaragua. I bought travel insurance for my ticket and crossed my fingers. Steve was already in Central America, and planned to meet me in Leon. But national borders began to close around the world. The U.S. State Department advised that all non-essential international travel be cut.
Finally, a week before I was scheduled to fly, I had to face the facts. It wasn’t safe, and there was no guarantee I could get home. More importantly, Seattle, where I live, was the center of the first COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. Many friends had been affected; three almost died. I’d been working from home for weeks, but it was not ethical to risk bringing the virus to a country with many vulnerable people far from medical care. Mateo and Steve agreed it was the right thing to do, and we called it off.
Once again, for the second year in a row, Maverick and his family did a colossal amount of work by themselves. We all decided to delay the project until May to get a better sense of how to carry on. In May, once again, they bought all the supplies, loaded them all in trucks, drove them many miles over bad roads to far-flung schools, and dispersed them. This year, they added new schools, as well, even more remote and difficult to access, and Maverick and Crispin and other volunteers had to carry supplies a long way on foot to reach one of them.
We were not able to provide dental care-the risk of spreading COVID was too high-but our extraordinary team of veterinarians, headed by the incomparable Duilio Juarez, gave vitamin and anti-parasite treatment to hundreds of farm animals in two of our communities. And we also were able to provide new wooden chairs to one school, and to do repairs on school playground equipment at several others.
In my next post, I will write the details of all the supplies given and the animals treated.
Once again, think you from the bottom of my heart, on behalf of all of us, for your support. These are trying time for all of us, and that you have been willing to remember our neighbors to the south through this speaks to your generosity and compassion for those with fewer resources with which to face these challenges.
