In El Porvenir

During Deerfield's spring break, March 12-26, Mara Whalen '95, Director of Community Service and Multicultural Programs, and fine arts teacher, traveled to Leon, Nicaragua. She and six students volunteered in the village of El Porvenir; among them was Lauren Valchuis '06, featured below in a reflection by Mara.

Mara and the students helped with the early stages of construction of a new schoolhouse for the children -- one that would replace the present one room schoolhouse that once served as a chicken coop. The students and Mara also spent time with the children -- playing, reading, coloring, and conversing. The group was also able to deliver goods like Tylenol, vitamins, basic medical supplies, books, toys, crayons, and clothes to the children and parents of El Porvenir.

El Porvenir is one of several projects that the Polus Center, a not-for-profit organization based in Worcester, MA, has underway. Mara met a member of the Polus Center board of directors, Reverend Rich Founier, a resident of Northampton, MA, nearly five years ago. Since then, her connections with the Polus Center have strengthened, and her goal of creating a service project for students has been realized. Her motto is quite simple: exposure and action can change the course of a young person's life...there is a humanitarian within all of us, and may we seek to embrace the needs and combat the hardships of our fellow humans.

Mara will return to El Porvenir this summer. She hopes to return with students in March 2006.

A Meditation
by Mara Whalen '95

I watch her without wanting to be too obvious. I turn my head instead to the empty dirt road before us. As if I were looking vacantly at a bustling Parisian street, I stare lankly, absorbing the world around me...a Beaudalarian flaneur of sorts. However, this is not Paris. This is El Porvenir. I focus my stare on its volcanic dusty landscape, my space of solitude is preserved, as I do my best to resist breaking my trance and invading the moment that Lauren is living. This is when being a teacher conjures up an instinctive force within to simply observe. Lauren is experiencing. something that should be left entirely to her, a story that she will someday retell to family and friends…this morning she befriended Meynor, and this afternoon he rode back to her on a scrawny white horse -- saddleless, bitless, and devoted under Meynor's eight year old frame.

I watch without wanting to, not wanting to disturb the beauty and natural evolution of this moment. I lean against the side of the cinder block schoolhouse/former chicken coop, legs tucked up under my chin, and slightly lean my glance in their direction. Meynor squats on the rump of his horse. Lauren stands at the horse's withers. The horse, seemingly realizing the value of rest lowers its head in sleep, no longer anxious about Lauren's fingers madly combing through its mane. Meynor is covered in black dust. Lauren is as well. Were it not for her anglo skin, features and freckles, or the funky, colorful shorts and t-shirt that she wears, one might assume she and he are brother and sister. Siblings stopped along the road to the shack they share, chatting about the chores that must be done, the mother that is sick, the teenage sister that is pregnant, and the alcoholic father they dread...but, no. Lauren is just a visitor, a single indication that there is something, anything beyond the endless dusty countryside and the impoverished state of El Porvenir. That scenario, that is Meynor's life.

The work she will do someday will come back to this moment many times over. Tears leave the most beautifully tragic impressions on dirty cheeks...