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A Letter to a Fourth Grader
ByPeter Bastian ’98, Olga Gruss Lewin Fellow

This letter was submitted by Peter Bastian ’98, who served as the Foundation’s first Olga Gruss Lewin Post-Graduate Fellow working with special needs students in rural Mantinilla, Costa Rica through the Costa Rica Humanitarian Foundation. The

Olga Gruss Lewin Post-Graduate Fellowship Endowment was established in 2000 with a gift from Andrew '81 and Marina Lewin, in honor of Andrew's mother.The fellowship supports graduates within the year immediately following their graduation who have demonstrated leadership in the Dartmouth community and who are pursuing significant acts of citizenship and service to others. Lewin Fellowships support six-month to one-year post-graduate projects affiliated with a domestic or international non-profit organization.

Peter Bastian’s work in Mantinilla centered on service to at-risk populations including street children, abused women, pregnant teens, special needs students, indigenous tribes and marginalized youth. Peter had previous experience with the Humanitarian Foundation where he served as a Tucker Fellow during the winter 2000 term as an adolescent counselor working with street children in impoverished areas around San Jose.

Dear Jesús,
I miss your three and four hour stints in front of my laptop
computer. It has been three weeks now since we have seen each other, and I hope that you still remember most of what you mastered in our computer classes. For a fourth grader who had never even touched a computer before, in just six months you mastered Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Print Shop. Your ability to take great digital pictures and then adapt and print them is exceptional. You type about ten words per minute, and you do this without looking at the keys.

Two weeks from now will be the six-month anniversary of your father's drowning accident at Jaco Beach. I know that he is very proud of you right now while he watches over you from heaven, just as I am proud of you as I think of you here in the United States. I never knew your father but I remember you showing me pictures of him. You were just beginning to stroll into my classroom at that time, which was about halfway unteer will arrive soon with more laptops from Dartmouth. I know that in Costa Rica school is mandatory only up until the sixth grade. In addition, your mother has told me that she doesn't want you to be taking the half-hour bus ride everyday to the school in the town below where the seventh grade begins. She believes that riding the bus everyday could be dangerous. She is frightened because she only has you now that your father has passed away. However, a half-hour bus ride is nothing for such an explorer like yourself, Jesus, and certainly less dangerous than tending coffee plants all day on the steep, hot hillsides of Matinilla. Besides, you told me yourself that unlike most, you have never picked coffee beans in those poisonous snake infested rows of coffee plants.

I want you to think of your continuing on after the sixth grade as your last homework assignment from me. This homework assignment is for the rest of your young life. I will be checking in on you from time to time to make sure that you are completing your new homework assignmen

By the way, I never did find you in my suitcase where you said you would be for my flight home to Boston. I checked the overhead compartment really well just in case. Hey, did you watch my plane take off from the top of the mountains in Matinilla? I think I saw you there. Did you see my computer fingers go up like I was typing? I did our little computer salute.

In other news, the Dartmouth t-shirt on which you painted the colors of the Costa Rican flag is hanging up in the front room at the Tucker Foundation, headquarters for volunteers at Dartmouth. I want you to know, Jesús, that you will always be special to me. I was a father figure for you. A positive male role model in the absence of any in Matinilla. I cared for you so much. I still do and always will. Remember that I am only a happy memory away from you.

Your teacher and friend, Peter Bastian ‘98