We gringos are starting to wilt on the outside under the heat, but our spirits are high! We had a great day out yesterday. Janeth decided to stay around camp and to go shopping in Rivas with our caretaker’s wife, Beatrice. She finally got so hot that she came back to the camp to cool off. When she got here there was no wind and the lake was like a mirror. She was enjoying the lack of the almost constant wind, that is until it became dark. Then the bugs came out. She described them as being like black lady bugs that bit. When we arrived at the camp last night at 9 pm, we thought the electricity had gone off, but Janeth and Oscar’s family were sitting on the porch with the lights off to keep the bugs away. Janeth said that we were very lucky to have been gone so that we didn’t experience the onslaught. I am afraid that we might experience it tonight, but here’s to hoping.
This morning we are going to visit two schools. One school is a short walk west of here. It has 47 students in it who range in ages from 6-12, but all are in first grade. They are the students with learning disabilities that have been “let go” from the other schools because of the difficulty in teaching them. They have to write on a wall with chalk because they have no blackboards, books or paper. We have ordered a couple of boards for the school and Peter’s idea of the week is to take over the school and call it “School of Joy”. He wants our students to see how most of the world is educated.
After that, our students are going to walk down the beach and see the school that we painted last year. We are also getting them a couple of blackboards as well. We are going to bring them some of the donated school supplies that we brought down with us. What we brought them last trip lasted them a whole year and they were very thankful. Some of the donated clothing that we brought last trip were given to a single mother with five children. A month ago someone burned her house down while she and her children were sleeping. They barely got out alive, but they lost all of their possessions. It is good to know that what we are bringing down is being put to good use. We will be handing out the clothing we brought down to the 60 kids when they go home from out next three day camp on Sunday.
Our three day camp starts on Friday. We will have Sunday afternoon to rest up. Monday we are going to give the camp a thorough cleaning and give away the rest of the donated items. Tuesday is our “big hurrah” where we drive an hour to the west to Pacific Coast. From there we will be hopping aboard “Pelican Eyes” for an all day sail south toward Costa Rica. We will have lunch on the beach, hopefully fresh tuna that we catch during our sail; poor us.
There is very little wind tonight, we fear that the black bugs will descend upon us. It is just getting dark, so we will see in about 15 minutes.
Everyone worked very well this afternoon. We got some of the doors sanded and painted and also got our road gate painted. Campo is sure looking spiffy.
We had a busy day, but time is short so we will be brief.
We left campo at 8:30 am and drove to the city of Granada. It is the oldest city in Central America. We took pongas, or boats, out on the lake. There are about 350 small islands that were formed when the side of Mombacho Volcano blew out a couple of million years ago. Each island is privately owned and has a house on it. We rode on boats for about an hour in between the islands.
We then loaded onto the bus and drove to Masaya Volcano. It constantly burps up a sulfur cloud. You can look over the edge into the volcano, it was a little scary. Most of the group then climbed 177 stairs up to the overlook over the volcano. It was blazingly hot. It had to be in the mid 90s, but Dawn says it was closer to 190 degrees. She was a bit hot.
We drove down the volcano and headed to Masaya Market. The students had a wonderful time for about 2 hours shopping. Each of the students will have to tell you about the “deals” that they got there. We got about 25 chair hammocks to use as a fundraiser for next year’s trip.
We are now all sitting at Narcy Chicken/Papa John’s. We had a great dinner. The Wilkinson family came here early instead of going to the market. They have a shaded play area, so everyone was well pleased. We are getting ready to take off and will try to send the email from here.
Well, we are going to sign off and get in the bus for our 2 hour ride back to camp and then head off for bed. Thanks for your love and support. We are all having a great time and getting ready for our next three day camp to start on Friday.
Today we are working on painting the outside of the dining hall. Adam may be a little bit color blind so what was supposed to be a dark blue dining hall is now an indigo/purple color. Purple is supposed to be the color of royalty, so we are just going for it. We painted the lower portions of the building very quickly and now they are working on covering the higher portions of the building by using scaffolding. The students are working very hard in the hot sun and spirits are high. They did a great job on the bathroom/bodega yesterday. We have decided to name that color “daffodil sunset”.
To give you a picture of how things work around here, yesterday in the dining hall we noticed that the fans and upper lights were working but the fridge and freezer were off. After more exploration we noticed that all of the outlets in the building were off. After a quick look at the breaker box, we saw that no circuits were tripped and stood about scratching our heads as to what the problem might be. We got the best electricians we have, Dave and Adam, on the job. They finally went out to the pole and found that a sagging wire was cutting off half the electricity to camp. What is the fix you ask? Well, you obviously take a block of wood and pry the (live) electrical wire up and then leave the block of wood there so that the electricity stays connected. Of course we noticed that the power was off right before bed, so Dave and I ventured out in the dark to see what we could do. The wind had blown the block of wood out. What was more apparent in the dark was the flash of light as the electricity “arc”ed inside the box and it made the stereotypical “zapping” sound. Dave and I looked at each other and felt so fortunate for our simple lives in America. Then Dave started dancing around and I wasn’t sure if he was getting juiced, but he yelled “Fire Ants!” and took off hopping. We are hoping that the electrical company can come out today to look at it.
We did have one small scare after we ate out. Morgan knew she was allergic to lobster, but she didn’t know she was allergic to shrimp. After a couple of doses of Benedryl, she is right as rain. We think that we will lay off the shrimp for the rest of the trip. We have had a couple of minor injuries. Dawn stubbed her pinky toe and broke it, Heather has a splinter in her foot (Janeth dug it out), Jonathan cut his hands after doing an impression of monkey for the campers in a tree and we also have an assortment of a few burned necks. We brought a nasty cough with us from Maine and it seems to be making its rounds. We even have given it to Oscar who is the caretaker of the property. We really love to give to the locals. Adam and Rachel are having so much fun with us that they both hope that they get sick after we leave, if they get sick at all.
This afternoon most of us piled into Adam’s truck and Peter’s rental car to see how most people actually live in Nicaragua. The area we visited has no electricity. The family had to draw water from a well with a bucket. Noah enjoyed tugging feverishly on the rope to raise the water. Everyone was surprised with the wood-planked two room house. They just added a small brick building, but it is still disconnected from the rest of the house. The family shared one bedroom, two adults, two children with a third on the way. The outhouse was very modest, a hole in the ground surrounded by tin roofing. Adam pointed out that the toilet was so close to the water supply that it was impossible to keep contaminents from entering the well. Chico, one of our translators, spoke with the women and we discovered that her husband makes about $2 a day milking cows. This is a pretty common salary in Nica. On the way back we took an “alternate route.” Adam took off down the beach and then cut the wheel heading straight for the lake. Peels of laughter echoed across the lake. Jonathan tried to follow their trail, but Peter’s rental car did not fair so well in the crashing waves.
Everyone had a little time to relax before hitting the books. Dawn graciuosly provided brain food for all, butter and coconut cookies. They were devoured in minutes. Bethany prepared an excellent braised pork for dinner. The meal left us all full and satisfied. Plans for the evening are still up in the air. There are rumors of a movie or a possible second study session.
Hope you all had a chance to look over the pictures Adam posted to the web. We spent today recovering from our three day camp. We had an easy morning with a long study session and then free time before lunch. After lunch (hottest part of the day probably not the best plan to not work in the morning instead) we repainted on of the building at campo. It is amazing what the sun can do to color in just three years or so. The group was awesome. We fully painted a 25×35 ft building in under 2 hours. They did a great job. We cleaned up and cooled off with a swim in the lake. Dinner was delicious fajitas and even some fresh corn tortillas, Janet, Bethany, Beatrice and Rachel fed us well. Students are now sitting down for a quick study session with Bethany reviewing the first few chapters of the Scarlet Letter.
Last night Liam and Robin danced to the 80s song “Mister Roboto”. Liam was horribly embarrassed, but I have rarely heard such applause. We learned last night that perhaps “Narnia” is a bit too scary to show to 9 year old girls. They kept leaving the dining hall during the movie when there was a frightening part. Aliva and Jill were there to comfort them. We were afraid that some of them would have nightmares and wake up even earlier than 3:30 am, but everyone was pretty quiet until 6:00 am. We really must have worn them out the day before!
This is our last day of camp until next weekend. The kids are going home at 2:00. After they leave we will give our students a little time off to swim and relax. We are going to leave at 4:30 to go to a restaurant in Rivas for dinner. Then we will come back to the camp for a little studying time.
Hannah had some interesting observations. She has been a camper herself at Chop Point and she said,
“I have a new found respect for counselors. I never realized before what a hard job it is. I am surprised by how tiring it is, but at the same time I am having so much fun! At Chop Point, I was always a little suspicious that the counselors were ‘just doing their job’ when they seemed to like their campers. I wondered if they were reading from some script. But now I understand how much they truely liked us. Being a counselor is too hard of a job to ‘fake’.”
I thought that was very insightful and a great observation by Hannah.
I looked over at Jill at dinner last night and she looked like she could fall asleep in her chair. I aked her if she was OK and she said “tired but happy”.
Our students are now in morning group meeting and they are having the campers memorize John 3:16. They are also acting out the parable of the Prodigal Son. We will soon break-up into groups and have several morning activity periods. Two years ago, we purchased and brought down 6 microscopes. We are going to use them this morning in science class to look at sand that we make after shaking rocks in a bottle. In English we are learning parts of the body and colors. In arts & crafts they have broken out the crayons and are writing their names and decorating them. The boys on the beach are playing “Pickle”.
Since Ortega has become President of Nicaragua, the country is getting more organized. We used to be able to approach individual schools and have them cancel school for the week and come to the camp. The new superintendent now is asking that we put together a proposal so that they can know whether the camps we are running are educational. Adam and Jonathan have been taking pictures and videos and are going to put a media presentation together so that we can run camps during the week and not just on the weekends. Nicaraguans love paper work and proposals, so we will jump through whatever hoops we need to continue our work.
- The Group
P.S. As I am sending this pre-typed email out from my house, I thought I would take some photos off of my digital camera and post them online to those who would like to check them out. They’re from the last few days of camp. We had a good dinner in town tonight and the team headed back to do some homework and most likely go to bed early. I saw some tears today from the students as the local kids headed home on the bus. I’m still a young buck myself but I felt very proud of our students in a “parental” sort of way. They have all stepped up to the challenge and have done such a fantastic job. Keep us in your prayers. - Adam
We are now having our second day of camp and all is running smoothly. Janeth has a crew of about 5 Nicaraguan women chopping and slicing all day long in the kitchen. We are all eating well.
The 60 campers that we are hosting are having a ball. What our students didn’t like was the fact that one girls’ cabin was up at 3:30 am, ready to take on the day and the other cabin of “late sleepers” were up at 4:30 am. Hopefully they will sleep a little later tomorrow morning. Most Nicaraguans get up with the sun and go to bed with the sun since it saves on electricity. I say that the sun doesn’t come up at 3:30 am except in the arctic. The students are still doing a wonderful job, even with the early start. Most of the students walk to and fro with a child clinging on to each arm.
Our daily schedule is as follows…
7:30 Breakfast
8:00 Chapel and morning meeting
8:30 Brush teeth and the first activity period begins
8:30-11:45 Activities (like Bible stories, Arts & Crafts, Field Sports, Science and English)
11:45 - 12:15 Group Swimming
12:30 Lunch
1:15 - 3:45 - Activities
3:45 - 4:30 - Group Swimming
5:00 - Dinner
6:00- After dinner meeting and a movie (our students have some time off during the movie)
8:00- Wash up for bed
8:45 - Lights out and quiet
We did have a couple of slight sunburns today since our kids were in the sun all day long. We have found that shoulders get burned more easily after our students have been giving shoulder rides to the children in the water and the abrasiveness of the sand takes off the sunscreen. We will only be having a 1/2 day of camp as the children will go home Sunday afternoon. The students look tired but they are loving every minute of it.
Thursday February 28th 2008, 9:33 am
Filed under: 2008 Winter Trip
Hola Everyone!
We almost all made it. Janeth had a slight kerfuffle with her passport at check in. It was going to expire at the end of June and the ticket agents wouldn’t let her go unless her passport was good for at least 6 months after her date of travel. To make a long story short, she spent an extra night in Boston, pulled a few strings with the Columbian embassy, and she is on her way to meet up with us, tracing our route just 24 hours delayed. We are eagerly awaiting her arrival.
The trip down went very smoothly. The roads were surprisingly good for the terrible forecast we had the night before. Linda did an awesome job driving the bus. All of our 42 bags got loaded onto the plane and we were off. Our two “first time fliers” did magnificently. One even commented the he “loved it, especially the take off.” He arranged for a window seat on the Miami to Managua leg of the trip. We may have created a couple of world travelers.
When we arrived at the Managua Airport the student were super excited. They were so helpful in hauling the heavy bags from one pile to another and then finally getting them onto the bus. We all piled tiredly into our bus and headed for Campo Alegria. It was about a two hour ride south. We finally arrived exhausted at about midnight our time. Every one tired but of good cheer. We got into our bunks for a well deserved rest.
This morning most students were up with the sun, some even got to see the sunrise as it came up over the volcano on Ometepe Island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. We had a casual breakfast of cold cereal and delicious fruit. After breakfast we did some cleaning and unpacked all of the donated clothes and supplies we brought. It is amazing how much you can fit in 22, 50 lb bags. We are excited to be able to hand out new outfits and shoes to our campers when they leave camp to go home. In the afternoon everyone had an opportunity to go for a swim and take a quick rest before we geared up for the camps that we are going to run. We have had a “slight” change in plans and have found out that we can only run camps during the weekend without special permission. So we are starting our first camp tomorrow (Friday) and it will run through Sunday. We are going to be busy right off the bat! So keep us in your prayers.
Everyone in the group is doing fine. They all love it, they had a great time swimming, no one got sunburned and besides a few sniffles and cold, we are all in great health.
We have had a few exciting days site seeing and painting a school nearby the campo that we have adopted. Many of our team members donated a few bucks and bought some new tables for the school children and today they were delivered to the school along with the clothing and shoes that were donated to us in Maine. Tomorrow we head to Montelimar, an all inclusive resort where we will un-wind and relax at the pool side for a day and a half before heading to Managua for a night and then heading home. Keep us in your prayers as we continue to travel.
Greetings from Campo Alegria,
We have finished a very successful five day camp with the kids from the local school. Why was it successful? The kids arrived to play with and learn from a group of foreigners who they had never met. Our kids responded with maturity and enthusiasm for the job. They led classes in English, sports, arts and crafts, science, and geography. Swimming was spent either as a lifeguard or as a water toy. Some were involved in being the engine of a long line of train cars (the kids basically hanging off each other to form a line that walked around in the water shouting “choo choo.”) If we wrote about each of our kids concerning this camp experience it would be the same for each one. They were tireless when they were tired, they were patient when they could have been impatient, they were enthusiastic when they frustrated, and they loved the Nicaraguan kids through it all. Yesterday the parade of horse drawn carts left with kids who had a little more hope. We have “adopted” these kids because we want to help their school. We may paint the school building and give them supplies, but the love shown them by the hugs and time spent with each of them will forever be in this country.
We are now sitting in Pollos Narcy (Narcy Chicken) in Massaya, it also has a Papa John’s attached to it now. It is a cool evening in Massaya so we are eating outside under a large roof complete with a giant playground (Noah and Elias are in heaven). We have just spent the day sightseeing and shopping. We have been up the Mombocho Volcano in huge four wheel drive trucks, it is a super steep road up the volcano. We had sandwichs for lunch at the top and then walked around the smaller of the craters on a nature trail. The top is covered with a cloud forest so it was nice and cool. We then drove to Massaya and went to the market there. Students stocked up on gifts for friends and family. We are driving back to camp tonight and we will be working the last two days down there on painting the school for the children we ran a camp for. Hopefully we can finish in two days.