Spanish Students Spend Summer in Nicaraguan Bicycle Venture

Aaron Salinger, doc­toral stu­dent in Span­ish & Por­tuguese, and Lloyd Merino, an under­grad­u­ate, spent a month this sum­mer on the bicy­cle project in Granada, Nicaragua.

Before head­ing south, they spent a week rais­ing money. With some help from the Depart­ment of Span­ish & Por­tuguese, they came up with about $450.

Salinger and Merino work on bicy­cles at Casa Xalteva

“We spent just over $100 here in Albu­querque, buy­ing tools and patch kits,” Salinger said.

He said that in Granada, Span­ish classes were held at Casa Xal­teva, a school that uses pro­ceeds from teach­ing Span­ish to fund edu­ca­tional pro­grams for local chil­dren. His Span­ish class met three hours each day.

“Dur­ing the first week we ded­i­cated the last hour of class each day to learn­ing about bicy­cle repair in Span­ish and sub­se­quently repair­ing Casa Xalteva’s half dozen bicy­cles, which were in var­i­ous forms of dis­re­pair,” he said.

He and the stu­dents not only engaged in bicy­cle repair, but were even able to use their Span­ish to explain what they were doing.

He added, “We often kept work­ing after class had offi­cially ended.”

At Casa Xal­teva, they worked closely with an employee of the school. “Andrés ‘El Guapo,’ not only com­mutes by bicy­cle to work each day, but is also a capa­ble mechanic.”

They wanted to train him to work with the tools that they brought to make sure the bicy­cles stay in good repair. “The bicy­cles will be used to rent to Span­ish stu­dents and, in this man­ner, they will gen­er­ate rev­enue for the school,” Salinger said.

He added that “El Guapo” is the guide for the school so it’s likely that in the future Casa Xal­teva will offer guided bicy­cle trips of Granada and the sur­round­ing area. At the end of the month-long stay in Granada, they took the cash not spent on bicy­cle repair to buy two adult and one small bicycle.

“The small bicy­cle, and another that Casa Xal­teva, already had, will be donated to a boy and a girl at the house,” Salinger said. The bikes will be given to the two stu­dents earn­ing the high­est grades on their final report card this year, he said.

Salinger felt good about what they were able to accom­plish. “In all, we left Casa Xal­teva with more than a dozen work­ing bicy­cles,” he said.

Before going to Granada, Salinger didn’t know that every­one there rides a bicy­cle. “It is a nor­mal mode of trans­porta­tion and an obvi­ous part of local cul­ture. Many peo­ple fix their bicy­cles with match­ing col­ored parts. It is also nor­mal to see two or three peo­ple rid­ing down the dusty streets of Granada on the same bike,” he said.

No doubt the bicy­cles they left at Casa Xal­teva will be well used.

Media con­tact: Car­olyn Gon­za­les, 277‑5920; e-mail: cgonzal@unm.edu