In a place where families make little to no money and live off of the land and lake, I assume it’s easy for one to understand why I don’t like to talk about money here. I feel that the religion question, however, is a bit more complicated.

My problem with answering either question comes from my fear that what I say will change people’s perceptions of me for the worse. Ever since I got here I have been trying to get closer to people and build stronger bonds with the community. There are days when I feel that I make leaps and bounds simply by visiting people in their homes and sitting with them for a few moments. Yet, when somebody asks me about my faith or my money I usually end up feeling distant and defeated.

The other morning, for example, as I was eating my breakfast one of my host-father’s fifteen siblings asked me if I believed in God. My instinctive reaction, as usual, was to just smile, lamely say “so-so,” and search the other’s face for traces of disappointment. In response, my host-father’s sister lifted her eyebrows, looked down her nose at me, and simply said, “Oh.” I didn’t know what to make of the ambiguous “oh” left hanging in the air but I assumed it signaled her understanding of an overwhelming ideological divide between us. Keep in mind, this is only one of many examples.

My relationship with my host-father’s sister continues to be as amiable as it ever was but I still wonder about how my agnostic beliefs changed her perception of me. Or rather, how her, and others, new opinion of me will affect my work within this very small religious community.

What do you think? Is it better to stand by your true religious beliefs even if people will think you’re crazy because a) you don’t believe in God and b) you believe mankind evolved from a monkey? Or, is it better to affirm a false, though convenient, belief solely for the sake of social integration?

Tiago Genoveze is currently volunteering for Alianza de Solentiname as a photography teacher in Solentiname, Nicaragua. To read more about his experiences and see some of the pictures he has taken, check out his personal photo blog.

Emanuel, a student from Santa Rosa, takes a picture.

I’ll never forget watching my first group of photo students in Solentiname walk away from me to shoot some of their first pictures. I was standing inside of the poorly lit classroom with a massive smile on my face – I could hardly contain my happiness – and reminded them one last time that I would be waiting in the classroom if they needed help with anything. But I doubt any of them actually heard me. With donated digital point-and-shoot cameras in hand, the students walked out of the small classroom building (that used to be somebody’s home) and immediately stopped to take pictures of each other, of the brightly colored hand prints painted on the wall, and of the pathway that led away from their current positions. It seemed as if they couldn’t wait to start taking pictures. It also seemed as if they were looking at the banal area outside of the classroom for the first time.

That was over two weeks ago. Now, I’ve started to give classes to four other groups, including a group of ten students from a very small island with a population of roughly 55 people called Santa Rosa (one of the archipelago’s 36 islands). Most of my students, whose ages range from nine to 18 years old with the exception of one adult student, have proven themselves to be natural born photographers even though the majority of them had never taken a picture before.

Just days before my first class I was having doubts about the role and importance of photography in such a rural area of Nicaragua. I kept thinking about the countless other ways that I could help the community of Solentiname and continuously questioned how photography might help the youth here.

After witnessing the beautiful pictures and even more beautiful smiles on the childrens’ faces as they took or looked at their pictures, my apprehensions withered away. My sense of purpose became clear as I realized the importance of developing a child’s confidence and creativity through extracurricular activities such as photography – especially in a place where extracurricular activities are virtually nonexistent. Another benefit of these photo classes is that each student receives prints of his or her best photographs after completing a certain number of photo assignments. While the students’ photos document their culture, the prints they receive will help preserve memories of their families, friends, and archipelago well into the future.

Well, as the title of this post indicates, I still have a year’s worth of photo classes and pleasant surprises ahead of me. Stay tuned for more!

I’m currently working on a blog where I can showcase the student’s work and share their stories. I’ll include details when the blog is up and running. For the meantime, check out Kids with Cameras, an awesome organization and a great example of how photography has helped a group of children from Calcutta’s red-light district.

He led me to another young man, though slightly older, who was standing in the dark holding a notebook. The youth holding the notebook timidly asked me if I could help him with his homework. I said of course and followed them to one of the village’s five lampposts. The three of us sat together on a stone bench and the man with the notebook told me he didn’t understand his secondary school English homework. He opened his notebook and told me he had to write five sentences using the words “in” and “of,” which were sloppily scribbled on a blank page. Beneath the two prepositions was an example (written in much neater handwriting) that read, “The people of Solentiname are funny.”

I made the mistake of assuming that he knew what the sentence meant and asked him if he needed help understanding the difference between “in” and “of.” He gave me a blank look and nodded his head. After defining the two prepositions several times and providing examples of how and when to use them, I finally felt like he understood his homework assignment. He was nodding as if he understood and seemed ready to write something. But instead of putting pen to paper, he looked at me and his eyes seemed to ask, “What now?”

Long story short, I soon realized one of the only words he knew in English was “bedroom.” I felt completely helpless and could not understand how he was expected to complete his homework without a basic understanding of English. When I asked him to show me some other homework questions, I noticed that several questions were grammatically incorrect and several words were misspelled – whether the student or the teacher made these errors, I truly do not know.

I realize this was an isolated incident. I also know I cannot make any assumptions about the education system here based solely on this experience, but I feel compelled to share this story and to talk briefly about education here.

While primary school students in most of Solentiname usually have school five days a week, secondary school students attend school every other weekend. In other words, they have four school days per month.

I can’t help but think about my days in high school when I forgot math equations and historical dates after only one or two days. Even with the instruction of the world’s finest teachers, how much information can the average student keep over 15 days?

The organization I am volunteering for, Alianza para Solidaridad de Solentiname, has recently begun week-long intensive classes once a month for secondary school students who are interested in continuing their education at university. Click here to read about the second session that took place in November, 2009.

Well, in my first few hours in Solentiname I realized that rushing into my projects was not the right way to start my year as a volunteer. The best thing I could do was to switch gears and take my time. After all, I was entering a small village with a population of roughly 300 people where life moves at a much slower pace than São Paulo – the metropolis I call home.

Before I got started on my work I had to start learning about the islands, their inhabitants, and how things work here. Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m not lying in a hammock all day twiddling my fingers. I’ve been busy helping teach reading classes to children and young adolescents, I’ve helped lug all sorts of heavy objects in preparation for Solentiname’s first music festival, and, most importantly, I’m constantly making an effort to establish new friendships and integrate myself into the community by participating in as many activities as possible, such as playing hide-and-go-seek with the kids, soccer with the young guys, and checkers with the old guys.

I can say that my change of plans is working out better than I had hoped.

Now, two weeks after my arrival, I’ve met most of the people that live in my village and feel more at home every day. I’ve started to photograph the people here as they go about their daily lives and, consequently, have received a lot of interest from several curious children and adolescents who are eager to attend my photo classes. If everything goes as planned I should be teaching my first class next week. In the meantime, I’ll start transitioning out of my “take your time” state of mind and into my “let’s get cracking” mode.

To check out some of my first pictures from Solentiname, check out my personal photo blog. For further reading on working as a volunteer within a new community, have a look at “Community Relations & Expectations.”

Before I even began considering volunteering, I was looking into teach English abroad programs in Asia. At that point, I knew that I wanted to immerse myself in a foreign culture. Why? Because I wanted to test myself. I also wanted to expand my photography portfolio and try my hand as a freelance photographer abroad.

Granada, Nicaragua

I realized pretty quickly that teaching English in Asia was just a pretext that fit in with my own selfish motives. So, I discarded my disappointing plan and began to rework my intentions. It was at this point that I started considering working for an NGO. And thus the research began. The more I read about humanitarian organizations, the more I began to ask myself, “What can I offer with a passion?” It didn’t take long for me to find the answer: photography.

While I found several organizations all over the world that offered photography classes to underprivileged youth, I indulged the idea of starting my own photo program. But where? Well, here’s how my interest shifted away from Asia and moved towards Central America. In my final year of university, I wrote a research paper about some literature that revolved around the archipelago of Solentiname. In writing the paper, I became fascinated by Solentiname’s primitivist painters, liberation theology, and Eden-like landscapes. My attraction to Solentiname intensified tenfold once I learned that there were several organizations present on the islands.

The rest happened very quickly. I called the founder of Allianza para Solidaridad de Solentiname, spoke to him about his organization, asked him if there were any volunteer opportunities, and, once he answered affirmatively, I pitched him the idea of starting a photo program. We met in October and again in November to discuss the logistics, budget, and preparation for my dream photography program. He told me that I would also be very involved in another project to promote reading to the islands’ youth. After much consideration, I agreed to volunteer for one year. A friend of mine donated some money for us to buy cameras. I bought a one-way plane ticket to Nicaragua and now I’m in Granada where I will be taking a very long ferry ride followed by a much shorter boat ride to Solentiname.