March 2014. A group of 19 students, my colleague Cris and our world challenge leaders Zack and Jake arrived at the tiny school of El Chagüe, Leon, Nicaragua. We arrived to a line-up of excited little children all dressed in crisp white shirts and navy skirts or pants, holding a welcome sign. We sat and listened to a small concert and then drank a sweet, white, milky corn drink and had a sweet bread. The students began to play with the children, games of soccer, baseball and 'rugby'. The school is small, 5 classroom and about 100 students.
Two of the classroom were painted in December by another service project. Our plan is to use some of the money we raised to put doors on the long drop toilets and to paint the remaining classrooms. We set to work scraping the first classroom once the children leave at 12:00.
At 4 some children come to collect us to eat dinner at two of the homes in the community. We walk about 1km to a family home and help to make tortillas on their fire before eating a lovely dinner of rice, beans, carrots, cucumber, plantains and fried cheese. A chicken steals my tortilla off my plate, twice! There are children, chickens and dogs running around everywhere. They have an interesting hand well to get water.
We slept in the classroom, a little dusty but not too uncomfortable, and cooked meals on the camp stoves.
We spend the next two days scraping, painting and building garden beds, eating at family homes in the evening. The third home had a couple of teenagers that speak English and a soccer game broke out after dinner with the older children.
Some of the boys found a board and painted it and turned it into a sign for the school. We hung the sign and when the teachers came to school on Monday morning, they were delighted!
We left the school bright and clean, with gardens ready for the niño's to plant and doors to provide privacy in the toilets. The students feel satisfied that they have made a difference.
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