Tuesday, 26 November 2013

Nicaragua: "Sonria!"

Distribution #6 today was in the delightfully named town of Tipitapa. Once again, our friends from the Nicaraguan metalworks company Indensica provided great volunteer support for our efforts making the distribution of 400 bedkits the smoothest to date.

"Sonria" is Spanish for "smile" - and there were many, many of them today. Sometimes, we need to break the ice (a distinctly Canadian term) with balloons or our hard-working hand puppets Octavio the Otter and Tortuga the Turtle. Other times, sonrias are brought on by Duncan's magic tricks or by Duncan and Stuart's kazoo band. And today there were many smiles as our disc jockey pounded out Latino Christmas songs - certainly more dance-worthy than our sombre Canadian selections.  (Feliz Navidad anyone?) But no smiles are bigger than those that we see peeling across the children's faces when they receive their backpacks and bedkits. These are smiles of joy, gratitude and, in some cases, disbelief that such good fortune has landed on them.

One of the more interesting things we try to do at each distribution is to interview parents of children receiving the bedkits to see what is most useful and what they might like to see in future distributions, as well as what the bedkits mean to them and their families. One mother told us today that not only would her daughter have the best sleep of her life tonight but that she herself would sleep better too - now only having to share her bed with one child instead of two. This is something we can all really appreciate, having had the opportunity to be welcomed into several homes of bedkit recipients over the past few days. An early Feliz Navidad to 2,4000 Nicaraguan children from SCAW's generous bedkit donors.

Team Nicaragua
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