A Hard Day of Work

By Logan and Eamon

The first time we went to Chacocente we delivered desks funded by ICS and ANS and had a field day with both students from both ANS and Chacocente. Today we went back to Chacocente to do some hard labor for the community. It was a very interesting experience. When we arrived they were in the process of building a new restroom for the school with running water and flushing toilets. There was only one toilet in the whole project that had a flushing toilet and that was in the house of the coordinator of Chacocente, Juan Carlos. Every other bathroom was a latrine, which is basically a hole in the ground. Before we started the day everyone from Chacocente and ICS gathered around and greeted each other, thanking each other for either the experience or the help. Afterwards, the boys, Tr. Anthony, and a few kids from the project started to play a quick game of soccer, while the girls got straight to work and started painting metal support columns red lead by our bus driver who jumped right into the mix, Don Pablo. 

After a while, Omar, the delegations coordinator, came to give us a tour of the entire community. On the tour we saw eight houses, a store, the well, and the school. During the tour we also saw various plants and animals such as pineapple bush, cinnamon tree, and a cashew tree (each fruit makes only one cashew). We also saw many chickens, cows, horses, birds, and DOGS. We were all fascinated when Omar told us that the families built their own houses with the help of volunteers. Each house was different in its own way. The way the houses looked or things the house was decorated with. The way the families got their water was from a well that was 600 hundred feet deep. It cost 45,000 thousand dollars which was donated by a church in Texas. We also got to tour one of the houses which was considered the white house because Juan Carlos owned the house. The way his house was different was that he built a porch, had cable, television, and also a flushing toilet.

After the tour we began working on helping build the restroom at the school. There were three different stations to work at. The three different stations were making support beams, moving cinder blocks, or shifting sand for the cement. Each station was brutal. At the sand shifting station the sun was beaming down on everyone, the sand got into peoples eyes, we had to lift shovels of sand, and the sand changed the color of our skin by making it darker and dirty. There was heavy lifting involved in the cinder block moving. The pile of blocks seemed 10 feet high. Everyone from the project were helping out by building the foundation or doing the same thing we were doing. In the middle of the work Cullan’s buddy from ANS showed up to help. The families cooked us a traditional Nicaraguan lunch with chicken, rice and beans, fried plantains, and watermelon. We sat on the floor in the special lunch room for visitors.  

After lunch we had a little break time to do whatever. The boys went to play soccer with some boys from Chacocente. There was also a little market hosted by the families with a bunch of little things such as bracelets and bags. We started to work again after the break and everyone was filthy and tired from a half day of work. We still had about half the mountain of cinder blocks remaining, so everyone stopped what they were doing to help the people at the cinder block station complete the task before we left. Once everyone started to work we got about twenty blocks from point A to point B in a minute. And after forty five minutes we had gotten all of them to one side of the school. We then said our goodbyes to the families or what they like to say, “see you later” and we gave hugs to everyone, a tradition for visitors to Chacocente.

Throughout the day we all realized that even though we got all hot, dirty, and sweaty we all did a great thing to help out the families. They thanked us for helping them,  but honestly we all want to thank the families at Chacocente for letting us have this chance to help them, and just for being so open to us. They all stayed strong through the rough times and because of that they are all kind hearted people. After helping the families it changed the way everyone thinks from Take Flight.  Not all of us do hard labor volunteering, but after seeing the smiles on the families’ faces when they thanked us, we all felt it was worth the sweat and the work. This whole trip has been a life changing experience for both the teachers and the students.