Dec 17, 2017 8 min read

Chelsea Good Abbas, East Washington native and 2003 Washington High School graduate, had every intention of becoming a human rights attorney when she signed up for an anthropology class at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

“I had no idea what an anthropologist was,” she said.

But when the professor explained to the class what the profession involves – interviewing, travel, research – Abbas was captivated.

“I thought, ‘Sign me up,'” she said.

Instead of a law, Abbas has devoted her life to anthropology, the study of various aspects of being human. She earned a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and international-area studies, then a master’s degree in anthropology and education from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a master of philosophy in applied anthropology from Columbia. She is completing her dissertation as a doctoral candidate in applied anthropology at Columbia.

Her passion led her to the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border, where she examined the interactions between police, migrant workers and landowners during a land dispute.

Now an anthropology instructor at Widener University, Abbas will return to the region through her recent selection for the Core Fulbright Scholar Program.

Sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright is intended to build relationships between the United States and other countries. Recipients are selected on academic and professional achievement, as well as service and leadership.

Over the next two summers, Abbas will continue previous research on migration between Nicaragua and Costa Rica and teach at the Universidad Centroamericana in Managua, Nicaragua.

“(Anthropology) has taken me in so many interesting directions. This academic journey has been my life’s journey,” she said. “I feel so blessed.”

The instructor who confidently teaches how to conduct field research grew from an inexperienced undergrad who first traveled to Costa Rica more than a decade ago.

“I always wanted to go to Costa Rica. I remember flipping through books, (seeing) the volcanoes, the beaches and jungles,” she said. “I had no clue what I was doing. I had never been abroad.”

She signed up with a volunteer organization online and made plans for travel. Abbas said she thought she knew Spanish, until she arrived at the airport and could not decipher the announcements being made over the loudspeaker.

She couldn’t find her hotel and, when she found a pay phone to call her mom and tell her she’d arrived, couldn’t figure out how to make the call.

“I sat on the sidewalk and cried,” said Abbas.

But Abbas was determined to stay, and for six months, taught English to single mothers and their children. She ended up making friends and loving the experience.

When it was time to write a proposal for her master’s degree, she wanted to return.

She focused on the San Juan River border dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The conflict was over the boundary line of the common border on the east and subsequent navigation rights of the San Juan River.

Abbas’ idea was to explore how the conflict affected the migrant workers who traveled from Nicaragua to Costa Rica.

The dispute eventually made it’s way through the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the U.N.’s highest court. But, at the time, Abbas said, very little international attention was given to the people who were living and working on the border.

In 2011, she traveled to Barra del Colorado and stayed in a remote fishing village that had an airplane landing strip running through the middle. Once or twice a week, the national police would make deliveries, pick up officers who had been stationed there and drop off their replacements.

During one of these sojourns, Abbas approached an officer. She showed him a letter from Columbia and explained that she wanted to interview people about their experiences and how the dispute affected them. He told her she should go to Delta.

“I said, ‘Take me,'” she said.

The police allowed her to accompany them on a 19-mile hike through the jungle. While they cleared paths with machetes, Abbas got her tape recorder ready to interview anyone they came across.

Next, she decided she needed to enter Nicaragua, so she chartered a boat and traveled down the river until she reached San Juan del Norte. There, she sought permission from the mayor and local military leaders to conduct interviews. But they wouldn’t permit her to “nose around” in a politically-charged international border dispute.

“At first, I didn’t realize how they perceived me,” she said. “I was white girl asking questions, with the police. I was on their radar.”

So she left and headed back up the river. When she reached Costa Rica, she was met with national security. The U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica made calls to Abbas’ parents, Deborah Wiley and Mason Abbas of East Washington, and to Columbia University, to tell them to urge Abbas to return to the United States.

“That was the only incident where I felt like I had to get out of there,” she said.

But the experience didn’t scare her off. When preparing for her dissertation in 2014, Abbas knew she would return to Central America. So, she started planning, secured funding and made arrangements for a 15-month trip.

“I wanted to do it right,” she said.

She returned to Delta, a border outpost on the San Juan River. She went to the general store, where a woman called Flaca worked. Abbas met Flaca during her last visit. At the time, Flaca, who knew Abbas was teaching English in Barra del Colorado, told her that if she returned and taught English in Delta, Flaca would help her get interviews with the locals.

“I didn’t have a phone number or any way to get in touch with her,” said Abbas. “I showed up three years later, like, ‘Remember me?'”

Flaca did remember her, and she made good on her promise. With Abbas teaching English in a wooden schoolhouse with no running water and one electric outlet that worked only occassionally, Flaca made introductions and took her around to the people living there.

“‘Tell her about your husband,’ Flaca would say,” said Abbas.

Thus Abbas would get the interviews she was after.

Research wasn’t her only priority, though. Abbas bonded with her young students, most of whom came to school barefoot. Their parents were Nicaraguan workers, employed by farm owners.

When teaching them about Thanksgiving, she asked the students for what they were thankful. A 10-year-old boy started disrupting the class, so Abbas took him outside and asked him what was wrong.

“He said, ‘I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell anyone,'” recalled Abbas.

The little boy missed his mother, who had stayed behind in Nicaragua while he accompanied his father to work.

“I miss my mom, too,” she told him. And they sat there together and cried.

When she wasn’t interviewing or teaching, she was collecting information for a census of the village, which was a four-hour bus ride to the nearest health clinic or pharmacy.

When she got a 4×4 vehicle, Abbas became a taxi for the villagers, even taking a pregnant woman who was in labor to a hospital.

“It was a crazy time, but the best time in my life,” Abbas said. “It changed me. It informs how I teach now.”

One of the things she teaches her Widener students is to establish a rapport first, before asking questions.

“I didn’t ask questions for six months, until I was one of the community,” she said of her second trip. “You have to be vulnerable. If you don’t put your trust in people, you won’t find what you’re looking for. You watch and observe and listen. And you’re humble and thankful. They’ve got work to do, babies to feed. You’re asking for something from them.”

Abbas leads courses on cultural anthropology and the Latino experience in the United States.

As a Fulbright scholar, she will teach courses at Universidad Centroamericana and assist with creating a research agenda on migration, write and publish a scholarly journal article on migrant education, and revise her doctoral dissertation into a publishable manuscript.

She also wants to take Widener students to Costa Rica and expose them to research in a foreign country.

She feels her experience will allow her to initiate conversations based on knowledge, rather than hype.

The Costa-Rica-Nicaragua dispute is a “microcosm of global trends,” she said, and similar to the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. Abbas plans to continue to work on migrant rights on a global level.

“I want to use my experience of what is happening in other places,” she said. “I feel like I can contribute change.”