Trip to La Carpio

Thursday morning I was sitting in an assembly, tag-teaming a notoriously talkative group of boys with Kelsie. It seems that at every assembly one staff member or another is telling these boys to be quiet and eventually separating them. Well, at this particular assembly, the National Honor Society was inviting a women to our school whose ministry they had raised money for so that she could receive the check. Now this woman started by explaining that the neighborhood she works in is known for its Nicaraguan immigrants and is plagued by many problems. About half of the boys I was sitting with are from Nicaraguan families and one in particular was very angry that she dared "to offend him" in that way. I pointed out to him that she was pointing out the reality and that instead of being angry he should be grateful that this woman is doing something about it. Miraculously, as this woman spoke about building bunk beds for families to keep children from sleeping on the ground, this group of boys was silent. After she spoke, one turned to me and said "Miss Hansen.. I'm going to do that." I don't think I can communicate how shocking this was to hear, unless you truly knew this student, in which case, you'd be shocked too. But I told him to go introduce himself and make it happen. Again, another first for this student. He was too shy to go talk to her and asked me to go with him and do all the talking. I agreed. How can you not when one of the meanest kids at school is asking you to set up a community service opportunity for him? So with very little prep time, Kelsie and I arranged a time and place, got a van, recruited another kid (equally shocking was his interest in coming) and headed out Saturday morning. As we got nearer and nearer to La Carpio, the boys got more and more nervous. They also were a little mad that having us gringas around would blow their cover and call more attention to them. We got to the workshop where the pieces were being cut for the beds and then carried the pieces down the street to our first site. The beds need to be assembled in the houses because the doorways are too small for a bed to pass through. This was definitely true of the first house as we passed single file down a little corridor between a different house and a makeshift fence. We mostly stood back and watched the boys drill holes, screw the pieces together and talk with the families. After building our beds for the day, we got a tour of the community center and were lucky that a group of women has assembled for English lessons. Since the boys are fluent in both English and Spanish we split them up and they went to work. I wrote phrases on the white board and then my student explained them to the women in Spanish. We came back to Escazú, only a 10 minute van ride, but a totally different reality. I'm proud of the two students who joined us and I hope that they felt the rewards of helping other people. Baby steps I guess.