A YOUNG Reading resident has set off on a global journey to visit one of Reading’s twin towns.
Francisco Maddicks left to visit Nicaragua today, and will arrive in the town of San Francisco Libre with his dad with a number of educational materials for the town’s residents.
Ahead of his trip, he met with the deputy mayor, Cllr Glenn Dennis, who gave him gifts to take with him as well as formal greetings and letters from the mayor at an event in the civic offices.
Now Francisco has travelled to his namesake town with his dad, Russell, who has visited the town a number of times.
He has also been learning Spanish, the official language of Nicaragua, and has been posting his progress to social media in a series of videos called Speak like a Nica.
San Francisco Libre is a small, rural town with a population of around 13,000 people, and Nica is the name given to the Nicaraguan variant of Spanish.
It is surrounded by a number of smaller villages, and sits in the shadow of the Momotombo Volcano near Lake Managua, around 80km from Nicaragua’s capital, Managua.
Reading has been twinned with San Francisco Libre since 1994 with a view to creating a cultural and educational exchange between the two communities.
When the town was hit by Hurricane Mitch in 1998, Reading’s then mayor helped raise funds to rebuild the town.
Nicaragua is the second-poorest nation in the western hemisphere, and Reading has been supporting its twin town with a number of agricultural projects, English classes, and fundraising.
Visits to the town have become difficult since the beginning of the pandemic, so Francisco’s is the first visit from a Reading resident for a number of years.
The Reading San Francisco Libre Assosciation has been dedicated to promoting links and exchanges between the two towns for more than two decades, and set up the David Grimes Trust to support environmental projects in the town.
The relationship also saw a walk in Reading town centre named San Francisco Libre Walk, close to the Hexagon.
