When the idea of a Bainbridge-Ometepe Sister Island Association first sprouted in Kim Esterberg’s head, he found himself stepping into two worlds.

In one, he’s on the tarmac of an El Salvador airport on his way to Nicaragua for the first time.

Surrounding the plane are soldiers armed with AK-47s. It’s 1986, and Nicaragua is in the throes of its own civil war, otherwise known as the Contra War.

In the second, he’s swimming in Lake Nicaragua at twilight off the shore of an isolated Ometepe Island farm with one of the town mayors. Tía Chela is sitting on her porch watching. The fireflies are coming out and the island’s two volcanoes form a silhouette in the backdrop.

“I thought, boy, I can hardly wait to tell the story of this island,” Esterberg recalled thinking about that night in the water.

He encountered both worlds quickly, but they set the theme for what has become a 25-year-long community friendship.

After three years brewing over the idea of a sister island association, Esterberg visited Nicaragua for the first time with the Seattle-Managua Sister City Association — a campaign aimed at forming friendly intergovernmental connections at a time when U.S. policy was to oust Nicaragua’s Marxist government.

An alternative approach

The difference from the sister city association and what Esterberg had in mind, however, was he hoped to bridge Ometepe and Bainbridge in a way that surpassed formal relationships.

“It’s going to be non-political,” Esterberg explained.

“It’s going to be non-religious. It’s going to be simply people on this island at whatever level that are interested in connecting with people on that island at whatever level.”

The trip served as a fact-finding mission for Esterberg. The most he anticipated was more talk with the sister cities office about the potential of a sister island organization. But before he had a chance to get settled in his new surroundings, he was on a crowded ferry crossing Lake Nicaragua to Ometepe where arrangements were made for him to meet its two mayors.

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