Zulu Eight - Caña Florida community project

Retrace your steps from Los Tololos, around Cerro Juan Sapo and across the Rio Grande to Esteli, then head northwest and you’ll arrive in Miraflor, a beautiful mountainous reserve protecting a 206sqkm primary dry forest and cloud forest intermingled with tropical savannah and pastures – famed for its beautiful orchids and home to the iconic Resplendent Quetzal.

Now, rewind to last Sunday when our hardy travelers reached Caña Florida, a small community in the north of the wildlife reserve, late in the afternoon - it’s the first time that Raleigh has worked in this park, and our plucky pioneers will have received a warm welcome from this rather special farming village. Here, Raleigh is masterminding a brand new community centre for the village, to be built from scratch during phases one and two. This social hub will provide a space for meetings, education (as a pre-school and for adult learning) and more creative and cultural events such as celebrations and fiestas - an important part of life in Nicaragua.

After settling in with their new homes – like Los Tololos, the group divided into pairs to stay with local families – they can begin to get their heads round the task ahead. It’s going to be a hard graft – during the first three weeks, they’ll be working closely with a local Maestro de Obra (site foreman) to dig out the foundations, haul rubble and hardcore into the trenches and then create a perfect concrete base on which to start construction. By the third week, they’ll be starting to build up the walls, before handing the baton to the phase two team.

In March, the walls will be completed, a zinc roof added and the whole building will be plastered and decorated. With a bit of lucky, our resident artist will be on hand to inspire the groups to create a memorable mural for the walls, working together with the community to put the finishing touches their new social forum before the grand opening…

The reserve is somewhat unique for Nicaragua in that it is made up of a number of small coffee farms and was created upon the request of the local people to protect against deforestation and hunting. The many of the communities who live in the reserve are members of a local coffee growing cooperative, currently developing the export of high-grade organic coffee. In many ways, this rural idyll is a beautiful place to live, but the people here have few resources and lack access to basic services such as health and education. To this end, the cooperative has been focusing on helping the communities build sustainable futures, including working to train young guides in eco-tourism, numerous educational projects (including environmental education) and community concerns such as this multi-functional forum.