Hannah Kelley’s Blog

This past Tuesday, the 16th of September, I went to Puerto Montt and the island of Chiloé in the southern part of Chile. I was lucky enough to stay with locals that I met through friends.

Puerto Montt reminded me quite a lot of Alaska, many of the houses looked like cabins or wooden shacks, with wood shingles on the outside. When I went to Chiloé, my friend told me that on the island the shingles were traditionally made from the Alerce Cypress. This tree is now endangered. Almost everyone has a wood burning stove in their house for heating, which in turn created a quite interesting exterior landscape of small, shingled, misshapen houses with smokestacks billowing out of them. The town has a very frontier like feel to it.

left: the pier at Puerto Varas, sister city of Puerto Montt

right: Rotary Women’s Comittee of Puerto Varas

While there I went to the Saltos Río Petrohué, which are rapids near the Volcano Osorno. It was nice to spend some time outdoors breathing fresh air after being in the city for so long. I was struck by how similar landscapes can be…the saltos could easily have been in northern Michigan (save the volcano and Andean mountains in the background) or in the northwest United States.

Saltos Río Petrohué with Marta, in the background is Volcano Osorno

next to the river at Saltos Río Petrohué

Puerto Montt happens to be a main access point for traveling to Chiloé, a series of islands with one Isla Grande or Main Island. On the 18th I went to Ancud, Chiloé. Ancud is the first city reached by Puerto Montt in the northern part of the Main Island. I had to take a bus for an hour or so to get there, and part of the journey was spent aboard a ferryboat carrying the bus to the island. In Ancud I stayed with a former classmate of my friend Goyo, Sebastián. He was visiting his parents’ for the holidays and he and his parents were all nice enough to let me spend time with them. His mother Danitza makes excellent seafood!

Sebastián showed me around Ancud - former military canons from the Spanish invasion of the island, the dock and some other small sites of interest. Many things were closed because of the holidays, so the town was very quiet. In the evening we went to the town ramada or fonda, which is a type of shelter with eucalyptus branches with various Chilean dishes, desserts and drinks sold underneath. There were also games for about 100 pesos each.

Chilote landscape in Ancud

The 19th I went to Castro, the capital of Chiloé, to poke around before I had to catch my bus in Puerto Montt that evening. Castro was also a little low-key because of the holidays, I walked down on the river front, went to the artisan fair and looked at the woolen goods typical of the region. There I also found some smoked shellfish..I can’t wait to make stew with them!

left: the waterfront in Castro, Chiloé

right: the Cathedral in Castro

You can see more pictures of this trip here.

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I am extremely excited to announce that Scholars for Schools now has a 15 minute video describing the project. Please share this link and the news about our project!

Scholars for Schools from hannah kelley on Vimeo.

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This past Sunday I went to the Naval and Maritime Museum on the Aduana side of town near C˚ Artillería with my friend Emily. It was an amazingly warm beautiful day, and since she was leaving the next day, she asked me to take advantage of the weather with her by taking a walk.

We ended up at the museum, which luckily is free to the public the first Sunday of every Month. A few pictures of the day can be found here: http://gallery.hannahkelley.org/Chile/explore_emily

In the “pirate” room

Emily next to the manicured lawn anchor

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If you have been in touch with me other than through my blog, you may already know about a project I have developed with three other Rotary Scholars in Valparaíso called Scholars for Schools. In a nutshell, this project is helping to bridge the gap between public and private education in central Chile by renovating free space in local schools to create multi-media libraries.

Education and children at risk are some of the main focuses of Rotary International and certainly also some of the most pressing social needs in Chile. After two months of designing and organizing the structure of the project, we are finally ready to receive donations and we encourage any humanitarian minded person to get involved. Most questions about the project can be found at http://scholarsforschools.org.

The Saturday before last we had an inaugural activity in the first of what we hope to be a succession of elementary schools. Over 40 people came to help us dust, sweep sand and paint the room which is to become the future library of Escuela David Ben Gurión in cerro (hill) Las Cañas.

This school is in a barely accessible location, which means they need our help more than ever. Many of the schools in the cerros are completely forgotten about by people carrying on their daily life in the lower part of the city (referred to as the “plan”), neighboring Viña del Mar or wealthier cerros. The school has nearly 200 students and two school schedules (day and night) to accommodate space constraints. The majority of the children (pre-kinder to 8th grade) are on a government meal program called Puente and based on information gleaned from schools officials, these meals may be all students eat for the entire day.

Take a moment to look at the pictures from our cleaning day on May 31st and share this post with others by using the share tool at the bottom.

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1.) Rotary Scholar Nathan Gill and volunteer Fernanda hard at work scraping dirty windows 2.) Rotaract Valparaíso volunteers get their hands dirty with some paint 3.) Rotary Scholar Susan Owen taking a moment to read with a student who came to visit us 4.) Cataloging old books! 5.) Some of the volunteers coming together for a group photo 6.) Scholars for Schools!

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