Teacher and Student Find Threads of Their Friendship Sewn on the Road

Pat McCully and Maribel Torrez took a trip to remember last spring. They went to Europe, which isn’t remarkable in itself. It’s the two of them who made it special.

McCully is the 72-year-old founder of Circulo de Amigas Foundation, a Nicaraguan aid organization she started in 1987 by taking some secondhand sewing machines to the mountain village of Las Latas and teaching the women how to use them. The foundation has grown; it now has a clinic and a preschool in the town of Jinotega and helps educate about 100 Nicaraguan children by finding U.S. sponsors for them.

McCully is also the mother of six supportive children, ages 39 to 50, whom she raised as a divorced parent, teaching Spanish in Huntington Beach middle schools for 22 years.

Torrez, 20, was just a little girl with scant education and prospects when McCully taught her how to sew. When Torrez was 10, McCully brought her to the U.S. to attend school. Now Torrez is studying pharmacology at a Nicaraguan university. She speaks English and Spanish and is planning to learn Italian.

McCully was in Jinotega when I spoke with her by phone in late August about their European trip and her other travels.

Question: Why did you choose Maribel?

Answer: I didn’t. She chose herself by deciding she wanted to learn to sew. She waited until the women students had gone home. There was no light. But she still wanted to try. “I can see, I can see,” she told me. I have a picture of her in my mind with her foot reaching down to the treadle. After that, she was always there whenever I went back. I took her to the beach. She had learned to swim in lakes and rivers. “All that water is salty?” she asked me, astounded, as she came out of the ocean. When she was 7 or 8, I took her to dinner at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Managua. Here was this child who [at home] squatted eating tortillas and beans with her fingers. She copied everything I did. She watched which fork I picked up and did the same.

Q: Was she a good traveler in Europe?

A: You would not believe how fast she learned to navigate the Paris subway. We had week passes, and sometimes when I got tired I let her go off on her own. She rode all the lines.

Q: What was your itinerary?

A: I traveled through Europe in a VW van with three of my children in 1976 and 1977. I was talking to my kids, saying I wanted to go back and stay in three places for a month each: Segovia [Spain], Venice [Italy] and Paris. I knew I’d be lonely if I went by myself. So one of my kids said, “Take Maribel.” But I really had to twist her arm, because she wanted to continue her university studies.

Q: Where did you stay?

A: I don’t ever stay in fancy hotels. I had a travel agent set up the first few nights for us in each place. After that, I’d go to the tourist bureau and find a pension.

Q: How did you pay for the trip?

A: With the help of my kids. They put money in a travel fund for me because they say I need to lead a more balanced life by doing fun things. They paid my way to the Galapagos Islands, Alaska and Bora-Bora. I love to snorkel.

Q: Had you done much traveling before the Europe trip?

A: I went to Nicaragua for the first time in 1983 [during the country’s civil war]. When I contacted a travel agent, I was told that Nicaragua wasn’t a tourist destination. I felt guilty about what our country had done by supporting the Contras. I saw that Nicaragua had been really improved by the Sandinistas. They had built schools all over the countryside and given land to the peasants. I went back home and told my story to church groups. In 1987 and 1991 I drove trucks full of donated supplies from L.A. to Nicaragua.

Q: Didn’t you have a male companion?

A: Yes. I wouldn’t have gone without a guy, not in Central America. The men there are very macho. A woman alone is an open target. They don’t see you; they see dollar signs. Maribel knows how to handle guys, maybe because of the machismo in Nicaragua.

Q: How did she like Europe?

A: Well, I loved Segovia, but Maribel wasn’t jazzed. It’s very quiet. She called it an “old folks’ town.” She expected to go to Spain and find her roots. But she found that the people had no Latin flavor. They were European, very standoffish and cool. [In] Italy, she fell in love with the food and the outgoing people ... and the language. “It’s pure music,” she told me.

Q: What did she get out of the trip, besides being able to distinguish Rodin from Michelangelo?

A: It changed her view a lot. Kids in her country get pregnant at 15. But she just broke up with her boyfriend and now wants to marry an educated man. She says she’ll marry a doctor and be a pharmacist.

Q: What did you get out of the trip?

A: I got to see things I love through Maribel’s eyes. It was sparkling and new because of her.

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Circulo de Amigas Foundation, 20631 Kelvin Lane, Huntington Beach, CA 92646; telephone (714) 962-6136, Internet https://www.camigas.org.