This is one of my young students, a nine year old girl who was born and lives in our area and comes for weekly piano lessons at my home studio. She and her mom have okayed my sharing her photo and the story that follows, but to protect her identity and save her any embarrassment, I will call her Aisha rather than her real name as I tell you about her and ask for your help with fulfilling this child’s dream.
As you may already know, teaching music to local kids here is one of the ways I’ve stayed involved in our local community, with most of my students or their parents paying very little or bartering in exchange for lessons. Music pretty much saved my life at an early age, and that’s motivated me to continue teaching here in Costa Rica, where I’ve enjoyed working with a number of very talented students. Aisha, though, really stands out among them for her exceptional focus and concentration, careful technique, and real dedication to learning to play and understand the instrument she loves so much. I see so much potential in her. And I think that if you met her, you would quickly find that Aisha is all this, as well as being a very warm and thoughtful child who is a delight for her teacher to work with.
However, the really surprising and, for me, heartbreaking thing about this student is that she does not even have a keyboard at home or even at her school to practice on, and her hard working mom has been unable to find one she can afford to purchase despite our joint outreach within our local community and beyond. The prices for musical instruments are surprisingly high in Costa Rica compared to in the States because of the 50% duty and 13% sales tax the government adds to the price of nearly everything of value imported from the north, which of course only heightens the barrier between Aisha and her dream.
So that’s what brings me to reach out to you to ask for a one time donation to help us raise the money we need to buy an electronic keyboard for Aisha. From what I've seen so far in shopping around, we will probably need around $300 - 400 for a suitable instrument and the cost of getting it to her. If a handful of you chip in, I’m sure we can acquire one on our next trip to the city. And if it can happen in time, what a great Christmas gift she'd be enjoying this year.
If you'd like to help, we welcome a donation of any amount, and if you’re on for this, you can send it to my PayPal account, listed as jim@jimvick.com. Or if you’re a Cash App user and prefer that route, just respond to this email and tell me how much you want to chip in and I’ll send you a request for that amount in the app from my phone. I will update you once we've found a keyboard for Aisha, and I'll put any donations received beyond what we need for it into a fund for buying more instruments for other kids who cannot afford them. It's something I've had in mind to get started for years because there is a real need for it here with so many children and teenagers longing to learn to play music but unable to acquire even a cheap second hand guitar.
I’ll leave you with that for now and get back to you in the next few weeks with an update on our mission to get a keyboard for Aisha. And hopefully have some new music media to share with you by then too. I'm amazed that I managed to get through this update without mentioning you know who - the USA's 45th president even once. (Well, almost!) I'll save further remarks for after the long awaited impeachment vote tomorrow and grit my teeth as the ongoing drama unfolds on my iPad screen.
Happy holidays to all of you who are celebrating them, and
peace and love to all!
