Nicaragua: Boaco

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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