11: Home Again

As we wound our way towards the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, I became more and more excited. After many days of travel, we were finally getting close to my second home: Pueblo Nuevo, Nicaragua. After passing through customs, we hopped on a local bus continuing down the Panamerican Highway and I pointed out familiar landscapes flashing past the window. At the entrance to Pueblo Nuevo we clambered off the bus to catch a ride in the last 13 kilometers into town.

I remembered the first time I arrived at this crossroads, loaded down with two duffle bags packed with all my belongings and feeling nervous about the adventures facing me of living in a foreign village for two years. Many students in the United States know the excitement of moving to a new country, the sadness of leaving friends and family behind and the nervousness of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. I felt all of this at once when I first arrived in this small mountain village. Would I be able to communicate well enough with my newly learned Spanish? Would I be able to make new friends? Would I be a successful volunteer?

As a Peace Corps volunteer I had been assigned to teach environmental education classes in the public schools of Pueblo Nuevo. My first year was challenging. Teaching in my second language was tiring, it was hard to make new friends and I often missed home. At the same time, though, I delighted in the adventures of living in a foreign country and learning a new language. With time I grew to love my new community: my friendly neighbors and the children that came to read in my house at night.

At the end of my first year, Pueblo Nuevo began to feel like my second home and I was glad I had stuck it through all the challenges at the beginning. My relationship with the neighborhood children blossomed into a beautiful project of working with my community to build a children's library. Together ~ children, teenagers, girls and boys, mothers and fathers ~ we cleared the land, built the walls and painted the furniture in cheery colors of red, yellow and blue. I hired two librarians, Irma and Nolvia, who became close friends as we spent hours, days, weeks and months together developing exciting programs and working with the many children who came to the library.

By the time my two years in the Peace Corps were up, I didn't want to leave Pueblo Nuevo to return to the States. I extended my service a couple of months, but eventually the day arrived to say a tearful goodbye to the neighbors and friends who had became like a second family to me.

Fortunately, goodbye doesn't have to be forever. I've been able to stay connected to my Nicaraguan friends by letters, long-distance phone calls and email messages. Best of all, I've been able to go back many times over the years to visit friends and continue working with the children's library. This visit, however, was to be particularly special. First of all, I would finally be able to stay for more than a week. Second of all, Patty and I were special invitees of the library's first-ever kindergarten graduation celebration.

Patty and I arrived in Pueblo Nuevo in the middle of the final preparations for the graduation celebration. Irma and Nolvia were busy making final arrangements with the Ministry of Education, planning the order of events and organizing the many mothers in the cleaning and decoration of the library. Irma's own daughter, Osmara, was graduating from the preschool program this year. Their house was bursting with excitement and family getting ready for the big day and Patty and I were swept up into the preparations.

The preschool families had all decided that they wanted a particularly special graduation ceremony in celebration of how hard the librarians and community worked over the year to create this new program. As part of this, they wanted all the children to wear little graduation gowns. They were incredibly adorable all lined up by the Office of the Ministry of Education in their matching caps and gowns, clutching their relatives hands and looking nervous. Slowly we all processed down the dusty main road, waving to neighbors and friends as we passed, and then trooped into the library.

The ceremony itself was wonderful. Several people gave short speeches (including myself), congratulating the librarians, parents and students on a successful year and encouraging the community to continue working together so that the preschool program strengthens and grows. However, my favorite part of the ceremony was when the graduating class stood up to share a song with the audience. Nolvia handed little Francis the microphone so that she could lead her classmates confidently in singing "Nicaragua Linda" without the help of a CD playing in the background or the librarians mouthing the words. I had never seen preschoolers sing with such confidence! The students had certainly changed a lot since I had last seen them at the beginning of the school year!

A party followed the ceremony, with food and cake and excited children running around the patio. When the last family had finally waved a contented goodbye, we all collapsed with exhaustion. What a day! What a year! Despite all the obstacles and challenges, the preschool program had been a success! On our way back to the house, we all shared our favorite parts of the ceremony and laughed about how tired we were. By the morning, though, we were already back in the library excitedly making plans for the next school year and dreaming about the new class of incoming preschoolers.