This morning (very early this morning in fact) found our merry team on
the road again to the hill town of Boaco, about 80km NE of our home base
Managua. Boaco (population 49,000) is predominantly an agricultural
town with coffee and dairy being the prime
products. Our host site for the distribution was the Agricultural
Co-operative Tierra Nueva - set in a lush grove of organic coffee
plants, banana tress and pepper bushes. This well laid out facility
coupled with the enthusiastic support of a strong volunteer
youth team from the Catholic University of Nicaragua made this the most
efficient distribution to date. However, as energetic as we all seemed
to be inside the distribution facilty, the same could not be said for
the hundreds of children receiving the bed
kits. Many had travelled many miles from surrounding villages to the
site. We met one woman who had walked for over two hours on climbing
roads with a 6 year old and a toddler to get to Boaco. And on top of all
of this, our distribution was on a
Saturday
meaning
that the children had to get up extra early on a day off whereas
distributions scheduled during the week have often meant free time off
school.
So our team, always wanting perky faces for our donor's photographs,
found it particularly challenging to muster smiles over yawns. As a
result, we had to bring out our full arsenal of smile-enducing weaponry.
Nothing like a good old Canadian dollar store for
a plentiful supply of balloons, bubbles and kazoos. Our two hand
puppets - Ottavio the Otter and Tortuga the Turtle worked
double-overtime. Silly glasses, hairbands replete with springing bunnies
and Santas were also called into action (By the way, for all
you Leaf fans out there, Santa in Nicaragua dresses in blue and
white!). Duncan performed an admirable slate of sleight of hand magic
tricks to try and enduce the children from their slumber. As a result, I
feel that the general, endearing impression many
of these children must have of Canadians is that while they are very
generous as donors, some of them are just, plain weird.
Nevertheless, all in a good cause, we soldiered on and at the end of the
day 411 bed kits were happily loaded into buses, trucks, donkey carts
and bicycles and sent off to their new homes in Boaco and surrounding
villages.
Tomorrow
is our last distribution
- here in Managua. It is hard to believe we are almost finished our
work here. I believe we will all truly miss that magic, daily connection
that we get when we look into the eyes of a child as they receive their
bedkits and backpacks. I believe I speak for
all of our team in expressing our gratitude to SCAW and its wonderful
donors for giving us this opportunity to be of service.
Stuart Culbertson for Team Nicaragua
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The first group of people are the members of The Rotary Club of
Managua. Our Rotarian Partners looked after the purchasing and
warehousing of the bedkit items. They ensured that sites were selected
and volunteers were in place to help at distributions.
They coordinated the selection of the children and were extremely
hospitable to members of our team. We say a HUGE THANKS to this
wonderful group of Rotarians (pictured L to R are: Rodrigo Salomon,
Violeta Barreto, Francisco Ortega, and Abelardo Sanchez).
In simple terms, they made it happen!
The second group of four quickly became members of our distribution
team. Three were interpreters (Marcos, Dorling, & Mario - paid for
by Rotary) who travelled with us to each site and communicated when we
often had difficulties with Spanish. The fourth
was our driver (Hector) who ensured we arrived safely wherever we went,
day and night. All four ended up working shoulder to shoulder with us
as we delivered the bedkits and we sure appreciated having them with us.
