Camille Gagnier Returns to Nicaragua

This story is from the March 2012 edition of The Columbian

By Keri Hoovler, Columbia High School senior - Staff Writer

Page Designer – Stephen Monaghan, Columbia High School senior

For most Columbia High School students, winter break meant rest and relaxation. For Camille Gagnier, ’12, this was not the case.

Instead, she traveled to Nicaragua, not for the first time this year, but the
second. During this trip, Gagnier visited Managua, the capitol city of Nicaragua, with a group called Mission of Peace.

The program “is an immersion and service group associated with the Methodist Church that goes to countries all over the world with high school students,”
Gagnier explained.

Over the summer, Gagnier got the chance to live in the town of Agua Fria, Nicaragua for six weeks with a group called Amigos de Las Americas, a non-profit organization that helps young students learn more about different cultures. During her stay in Agua Fria she lived with a family and taught elementary school children about the environment and community health.

Not only did Gagnier face her Nicaraguan community totally alone, but
she also lacked fluency in the language.

“My limited Spanish mangled the meanings of my words and left me with the communication skills of a toddler…it was pretty rough at first trying to speak Spanish all the time,” said Gagnier.

However, by the end of the six weeks she was able to communicate with her family through actions and “broken up words.” When Gagnier returned to Nicaragua in December 2011 she did not have to deal with the same language barrier problems.

The group spoke English and joining them on the trip were two Nicaraguans who spoke both Spanish and English.

Gagnier’s second trip to Nicaragua enabled her to partake in recreational activities like visiting volcanoes, touring different cities and visiting the beaches. Gagnier and the group also spent time helping out with different charity groups.

They visited a city landfill in an impoverished area of the city of La Chureca where people have lived for years; there, people make the most out of the trash, whether it be by selling it or even eating it.

“It is a disturbing sight to see children walking barefoot among piles of burning trash,” said Gagnier. “We visited the dump in an attempt to understand what the lives of the families at Project Chacocente, whose school we helped work to build, had been like before they were given the opportunity by the project to relocate out of the dump and into a home.”

There they met a woman named Esther who had lived and raised her 11 children in La Chureca for 30 years.

Esther supported each one of her kids through high school and four of those children have earned college degrees as well. “For someone to keep one child alive at La Chureca is a feat,” Gagnier marveled.

“I am definitely going back,” said Gagnier. “I consider [Nicaragua] my
home away from home.”

Her experiences in Nicaragua have inspired her to focus on social justice and human rights issues and to explore how public policy and grassroots efforts can work in a globalized context.

“I have learned so much about how the rest of the world lives. It’s not something you can just forget about. It changes the way you think and makes you want to change the way you live.”