Leaving Sabana Grande

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Leaving after three months of staying within the intricate community of Sabana Grande brought a strange mix of emotions. Bidding farewell to Yelba, our host family mother, was poignant. Yelba had been wonderful providing us a cosy home and going out of her way to look after us even to the lengths of staying with us for two days and nights in hospital whilst we enjoyed the delights of an intestinal infection. Mauro, who ran the solar panel workshop, it was also sad to leave. His phenomenal patience with our faltering Spanish is worthy of the highest acclaims. However, mixed with the emotion of leaving those great people that had helped us to acclimatise to a very different way of life was a distinct air of relief.

Relief was probably not an emotion that we had predicted we would feel in the closing moments in Sabana Grande. Having spent three months deconstructing the project we were part of and gradually understanding the community around us we knew it was the right moment to exit stage left. Everything about the volunteer experience we had planned was designed to avoid an unsustainable transactional exchange. Transactional being materially wealthier people giving money to materially less wealthy people for experiencing their way of life and then walking away. Unfortunately despite our best efforts when it came down to it that was pretty much what had occurred. So it was a relief to shed ourselves of the pretence that it was about anything more than that simple exchange. It had just taken two of our three months to realise that within the scope of the project we’d found it could have been nothing other than this (see last entry - Change of Plan). For us the value of the experience and learning incalculable for our host family some rather nifty home improvements and a DVD player.

So we have moved on an hour and a half down the Pan-American Highway to the city of Esteli. Buoyed by the mother of our new home-stay family telling us we had good Spanish after today’s casual lunch time conversation we will spend two intensive weeks in Spanish school and hopefully emerge with something resembling a reasonable Spanish linguistic capability.

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Comments

[Chris]

Love it
Hey Steve Really not sure of your email nowadays so a comment it is. I'm loving keeping up to date with your adventures. Occasionally over a lunchtime I log on to your blog and have a read. Not only a great escape from the office but an escape into a world so different to Sydney. Looking forward to reading more about your adventures and once again thanks for keeping the blog going!