Delta 2: A real sense of achievement in Jokbata

Delta 2's Glyn Worthington writes from Jokbata's newly completed primary school:

We said goodbyes to Fieldbase early in the morning and headed off on our bus to the Chirripo Indigenous reserve. The drive was amazing, driving up winding mountains and down steep slops with spectacular views. The reserve is very remote and there are only a few roads entering the Talamanca mountain range.

Our bus couldn't go any further due to the terrain so we trekked on foot with horses carrying our building equipment. We walked up steep muddy paths that were often very tiring and the weather sometimes turned sour!

After about three hours we arrived at the Jokbata primary school. The old school was made out of wood and in terrible condition. It was also pretty clear that it was far too small for the current number of pupils. We were sleeping in a house about twenty minutes walk away so we set up base camp and rested – we knew we had a tough few weeks ahead of us!

The next day we got up and set about demolishing the school, which was actually very fun – it’s not everyday you get to destroy a school! We were working with a few local builders who spoke Spanish but we had people in our group who could translate so communication wasn’t too bad – let's just say my Spanish was a little rusty!

Unfortunately not all the building materials had been delivered (it's pretty difficult to organise things in such a remote place), so the group decided to carry wood down from the mountain – which was hard but rewarding work.

The building phase consisted of levelling the ground, digging holes for the foundations, laying the foundations, laying the floor, building the frame, nailing the walls up, painting and raising the roof. There was a lot of manual labour and sawing in between this but everyone pulled their weight and handled it very well.

The locals are very different to us. The majority are poor farmers and have little or no education. We spent a few nights playing with the kids who were nothing but smiles and helped boast morale – it is after all the children who we are trying to give a better chance to.

A local woman who was our cook. We had a wide range of local food – mainly rice, pasta, chick peas, lentils and plantains. We also had some delicious salsa sauce and some very strong local coffee. Communication was hard at times as nearly all the locals only speak Cabecar, although a few did speak Spanish.

Overall the project was a huge success. We got the majority of the school built although due to delays outside our control (mainly wood supplies) some bits were not fully completed. I have made some friends for life and was blessed to have fun and interesting leaders. I think everyone in my group will come away feeling a good sense of achievement and I even found the inspiration to give up smoking out here!