Alpha Eight Week One round up by Nikki Traynor

Waking up at 3am in a Nicaraguan school, Alpha Seven and Alpha Eight gave it a clean and loaded up our old American school bus with tools, bags and food. The caretaker of the school was very proud of his patch and we cleaned it three times before it was up to scratch! It was worth it though as it was a beautiful building.

Our four hour journey to Miraflor was to the soundtrack to the 80s and before we knew it we were saying goodbye to Alpha Seven and being greeted by members of the community who expressed their gratitude for Raleigh’s assistance by writing a song for us. Roughly translated it went something like this: 'These people have come to us with lots of goodwill and we hope that they are strong enough to work hard. They bring friendship from four countries around the world.'  An hour long service in the church left us feeling very welcome indeed.

On Monday we were woken by the sound of chickens and pigs and we filled up on what was to become our usual meal – beans, rice and tortillas. Work began which consisted of clearing the site of trees and boulders to prepare it for laying the foundations. We were given a quick Spanish lesson to help us communicate with our families. Nikki thought twice about having a shower when a pig tried to eat her head torch and then tried to attack her! Aida and Charlie made a fantastic dessert which consisted of cornflakes, condensed milk and butter – delicious!

On Tuesday we continued clearing the site and at lunchtime we compared lunches since we all had been given various local dishes by our local host families. The last tree was removed in the afternoon so that we could begin laying the foundations the following day. (You’ll be glad to hear that for every tree that is removed another is planted to replace it). On Wednesday we had all eight of the concrete columns down by the time we packed up. In the afternoon Nikki, Max and Heather visited the local school to give an English lesson. In the evening we had an art session with Josh doing some sketching and then he and Nick serenaded us on the guitar.

On Thursday the steel reforming was created and Josh, Aida and Hannah went back to the school. The boys started mixing the cement which was exciting because we would soon be able to see the building taking shape. On Friday we had a lot of metal work to do, so we were all kept really busy and then in the evening we sang a personalised version of Amarillo to the community. On Saturday we had a lassoing lesson from Don Jairo and made Valentines Day cards to exchange the next day. All in all we’ve had an extremely interesting and exciting week in Cana Florida - bring on the next one!