Message in a Bottle

By Dawn Makinson

The glitter of glass on the sand surprised the Australian retiree, who spied it on the Adelaide beach where she regularly exercised. It was a bottle sealed with a cork; inside was a mysterious message, in Spanish and intact.

Across the world in Rio Gallegos, Argentina – a city stranded on Patagonia’s vast, windswept plains – Delfa Rivas, a social sciences teacher at Pablo VI Secondary School, was in for a surprise as well. The school secretary rushed in with news. A three-year-old project, begun with students throwing 200 bottles into frigid Atlantic waters, had finally paid off. Australians had translated the message in the bottle and followed the request to contact the school and tell the story to their local press.

“The idea came from the 11- and 12-year-old grade six students,” says Rivas. “One of students has a brother with Down syndrome.” As a social science project, “they decided to try to understand how people with special needs experience life.”

The students used wheelchairs to explore access issues, and asked local businesses why ramps where not installed in local stores. “They wanted to attract media attention to disabilities, and the idea came up to throw 200 bottles into the ocean.”

Argentinean oceanographers say the survivor bottle defied odds, travelling around the bottom of the world through some of the roughest waters known to humankind. Students like Ana Gonzalez, now graduated from the school, point out that the bottle’s message of disability awareness is even more resilient. “We observed discrimination in our classroom, in our school and in our town, and we want to change that.”