La Chureca, Managua's municipal dump, is home to over 118 families.

La Chureca is a 4-square-mile landfill in Managua that is home to more than 1,500 Nicaraguans. The Spanish slang word for “dump,” La Chureca is exactly that- the municipal dump, which boomed in 1972 with rubble from the Managuan earthquake and has been steadily growing since. In addition to rubble, the earthquake left more than 700 Managuans unemployed. Now stricken with poverty, these people found refuge in the smoky walled “Trash City” of La Chureca, building their houses from the trash they found there. Churequeros, or people from La Chureca, have made their livelihoods in this dump. They work longs days collecting reusable trash to sell for profit, and repairing their rubble-based homes. It is Central America’s largest open-air landfill, and even houses a school with six classrooms.

“Battling our fears and our stomachs into submission, we slipped past the school gate and peeked into the first classroom, we were greeted by screams of excitement. Children stood beaming up at us. A young girl whose name I later learned was Maritza, grabbed my hand, and tugged me across room to a pile of picture books she had collected from a skeletal shelf that rested crookedly in the corner of the room. I sat down on the floor beside her; she picked up a book, closed the distance between us without a word. She snuggled herself in my lap and leaned her head against my chin, opening the first page of a donated copy of a translated Clifford the Big Red Dog. I was taken aback, I had worked myself into a panic the night before, wondering: What if they don’t like me? What if my Spanish sounds stupid? What if I can’t talk to them? In that moment I learned that connection transcends English, Spanish, or the words of any language. Maritza wanted me to read to her, to be there for her. We had the next two hours and we were going to make the best of it. She spoke to me in rapid Spanish and though I did not catch every word, I understood enough to ask questions, and she was eager to answer. Maritza told me about her brothers, and the tricks she liked to play on them, she spoke excitedly of her beautiful mother and her father, who she did not see as often but, from the light in her eyes when she spoke of him, vehemently admired.”

Freyja helping school children

Tell us a little bit about yourself:

Hello! I am Jessica, a recent graduate from the University of Colorado Boulder in International Affairs and Spanish & Portuguese Language & Culture. I love to travel, having studied abroad in both England and Brazil, as well as having travelled to Argentina and throughout Europe, it is definitely an addiction!

Jess in Rio de Janeiro

What’s your role for Al Campo?

My role for Al Campo is informing high schools about the opportunities ACI provides and trying to spark that desire to travel and to help the world. I also am researching ways to help keep extra trip costs low for our participants and to update current, past and perspective students on news in both Honduras and Nicaragua.

How does the work in Denver make our trips possible?

Denver is the home base for Al Campo, where all the behind the scenes work is accomplished. Service trips are not just a plane flight to another community, it involves organization as well as getting the word out so people know opportunities like this exist. We do what we can here so students across the country are provided with the information and chance to participate. Beyond providing the information we also are here to make sure the trips go smoothly so our participants can take full advantage of their experience.

How did you find Al Campo?

I found out about Al Campo through an internship listing through my primary major at CU, International Affairs. And just coming home from Brazil in December I knew I had to continue to stay involved in study abroad like opportunities and Latin America!

What do you normally do for Al Campo?

I normally research high schools in different states and send out brochures to their Spanish Departments, as well as doing research for Al Campo such as travel insurance. I also read daily news about our destinations to write blog posts and keep everyone updated!

What are your goals, within ACI and in life?

My goals within ACI is to open up an opportunity to travel and work with a community to students, throughout my own experiences I have learned the importance of such opportunities. For me, what makes travel great is engaging yourself in the community and to really know where you are. We are becoming global citizens every time we experience new opportunities and better informed citizens and to me this is the most important thing in today’s world. I hope to stay involved in the international world for the rest of my life, either travelling, living, teaching or studying so I myself can continue my education of the international community.

Interesting fact (about yourself):

Other than studying politics and languages, I have a huge weakness for the arts. I have worked for a few theatre companies making costumes, such as complete 18th century gowns and men’s suits!

Known for it’s flashy stripes and venomous spines, the lionfish is one of the ocean’s most aggressive predators. It’s a native to the Indo-Pacific ocean. How did an Indo-Pacific native end up in the Caribbean where they were never previously seen? Good question.

Lion fish sightings in 2012 (Map credit: USGS)

While the exact origin of the Atlantic Lionfish explosion is debated, many blame it on Hurricane  Andrew. During the hurricane, an aquarium broke releasing several fish into the ocean. Untouchable by the typical predators in the Caribbean, these fish reproduced freely and the population grew exponentially from there. As the map above shows, lionfish can now be spotted along the Caribbean coast of South America and as far north as Connecticut.

The coastal ecosystem, which was stressed before, is experiencing large changes with the addition of the new predator. Fish that previously dwelled amongst the coral in the bay now struggle to survive. Lionfish are known to eat any fish that will fit into their jaws. In Roatan Marine Park in Honduras, there has been a visible decline in the number of juvenile fish since 2009, the year lionfish first started to appear in the waters surrounding the islands. The Roatan Island coral reefs, like any ecosystem, maintain a fragile equilibrium- one where predators eat, but smaller fish are still able to breed and survive. The lionfish invasion threw this balance off. Without help, the lionfish could eat the smaller fish species into extinction.

Marine specialists in the Roatan Marine Park think they may have a solution. Sharks, though not eager to munch on the invader, have the proper enzymes to digest lionfish toxins. If we can teach sharks to eat lionfish, a new ecological balance may be found that keeps the invasive predator in check and gives other species a chance to survive.

Sharks spying a lionfish (Photo Credit: National Geographic)

If you think that training sharks sounds like a daunting task, you are not alone. However, marine specialists say that with a sharks fast learning rate, it should be a breeze. Sharks can learn ten times faster than a cat.  In one experiment, a dead lionfish was thrown into the middle of a shiver or sharks. The lionfish was gone with in a few minutes. Mistakenly, a living lionfish dared swim close to these sharks only moments later. He too suffered a fast death. While training the shark will take some time, it definitely has potential.

Al Campo International lends a hand at Roatan Marine Park in the project Marine protection and Lionfish Capture in Honduras. Participants not only earn their scuba PADI certification, but get to put their new scuba skills to use protecting the reefs.

Resources and Further Reading:
Al Campo International Lionfish Project
NPR: Spreading Lionfish Invasion Threatens Bahamas
WRI Insights: Lionfish invasion threatens coral reefs...
USGS Lionfish Fact sheet and map
National Geographic: Sharks Taught to Hunt Alien Lionfish
Time Science: Taming the Lionfish
Roatan Marine Park

If you participated in our program while in high school, we’d love it if you took this survey.

If you participated in our programs while in college, try this one.

If you haven’t had the chance to travel with us yet, the Al Campo Team is still traveling school to school on the east coast. If your school has a summer programs fair, you just might see us! Or, request a brochure.

My experience with a language barrier in Nicaragua fueled my passion for foreign languages. I hope to study foreign languages in college, and aspire to be fluent in Arabic and Chinese along with Spanish. Nicaragua forced me to use a foreign language, an experience I had never had with learning Spanish in high school. For the first time, I saw that language is key to understanding other people’s perspectives, lives, and wishes, and understood that little to no sustainable progress can be made without communication between locals and outsiders. Any program focused on alleviating poverty can, in my mind, only effectively reach its goals by communicating with the people it hopes to target.

Girls at Colegio Esperanza in Nicaragua

My trip to Nicaragua helped me understand my own identity in that it allowed me to see that I am extremely passionate about humanitarian work and love travel, languages, and meeting new people with different backgrounds and perspectives than my own. The trip with Al Campo has had an enormous impact on my life.

A big thanks to McKenna Asakawa for all the time spent writing! Best of luck with the Spero Foundation and all of your endeavors.

Centaurus High School is going on another service and  eco-adventure trip this summer! You can find out about their trip, or learn about customizing a trip for your own school.

My co-president (who also attended the 2010 trip to Nicaragua) and I were resoundingly impacted by the severe poverty we saw during our day spent at La Chureca (the unsanitary landfill and home to many local trash-pickers and their families) and Colegio Esperanza, the nearby school. Growing up in a middle class family from suburban Colorado, I have been fortunate enough to never have to worry about where my next meal will come from, whether I can go to school, or be constantly surrounded by the decay of a landfill. My experience with the students of Colegio Esperanza showed me that kids will be kids—exuberant, silly, loving, and of course, immature and prone to tantrums—even in the midst of severe poverty. It is this school that provides not only an education for these children, but hope for a future away from the landfill.

The Spero Foundation from Centaurus High School Volunteers locally, as well as helping over seas.

Through the Spero Foundation, we raised $500 for Colegio Esperanza, and have continued to serve the global community with projects such as establishing a micro-loaning operation in concert with kiva.org in which we loan small amounts of money to pivotal entrepreneurs world-wide. Currently, we are fundraising to build a school in the rural village of Putti in Uganda, the population of which has been persecuted because they are Jewish. Our advisor will travel to Putti this coming summer to help build the school and create its curriculum. If you are interested in helping us reach our goal of at least $3000, please contact me at mckenna29@gmail.com.

This is the second part of an on-going feature on our blog. If you missed the first part, you can read it here. Come back to read about how McKenna handled language barriers and what her plans are for her future.

Although the trip was incredibly meaningful in a plethora of ways, I can boil down its significance to me into three main aspects: the relationships I established, the poverty I was exposed to, and the language barrier I had to work with. Rather than go into detail as to how each of these aspects were defined during my trip, I’d like to explain how they’ve resoundingly impacted my life “post-Nicaragua.

In this first part of McKenna’s accounts, she gives us the inside scoop on how her trip opened her eyes to diversity and gave her friendship:

McKenna and her host sister, Dilcia, in their home in La Pacaya, Nicaragua

The relationships I was able to create during my trip have been pivotal in my philosophy toward international relations and plain human interaction. My trip made me realize that people are people, regardless of nationality, language, belief-system, or background. We all are capable of hard work, of kindness, of empathy, of gossip and chitchat, of selfishness and selflessness, of foolishness and fun. The sooner we see that we are so very similar, the sooner we can cut to the core of our differences and establish understanding. Above the trip’s influence on my outlook on life, it provided me with the invaluable gift of friendship— I am still in contact with my home-stay sister from the small mountainous village of La Pacaya. It’s difficult for me to contact her but Dilcia calls me every two months or so. Our conversations are brief (the call usually cuts-out) but memorable, and humorously involve me trying to remember how to conjugate Spanish.

This is the first part of an on-going feature. Come back to read about how McKenna dealt with exposure to poverty, language barriers, and what her future holds.

**If you went on a trip with Al Campo and are interested in telling your story, contact Caitlin at caitlin@alcampointernational.org

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Before I went to Nicaragua, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life.  When I came back I felt like I had developed a new sense of purpose.  I decided to go to the University of Denver and pursue a degree in international studies so that one day I might be able to continue doing the kind of work I did in Nicaragua.  I hope to eventually make a career of it.

 

My experience in Nicaragua sets me apart from other students and gives me a unique perspective in my classes.  I have no doubt that my experience played a part in my acceptance to the University of Denver and helped me receive much needed scholarships.  In one of my classes, a professor asked each student what kind of international experience we had had.  I was proud to be able to talk about Nicaragua when some of my peers didn’t have any international experience at all.  In addition, discussions about poverty and world hunger are more real to me because of the people I met in Nicaragua.  Learning about non-profit organizations and ways they help people in need is more interesting to me than to others because I would eventually like to be part of one of those organizations.  Nicaragua changed my life and the way I view the world.  I’d love to go back someday but for now, I’ll just cherish the memory.

 

Written by Caitlin Mendenhall