“Countryside haven” – El Centro Cultural, Los Quinchos
After a week’s holiday it’s time to reconvene in San Marcos. The organisation we are working with here is called Los Quinchos and it’s run by the wonderful Zelinda – an exuberant Italian lady who sold-up everything and moved to Nicaragua to help needy kids. Our first order of business is to find out what everyone has been up to since we went our separate ways a week earlier. We do this at Los Quinchos’ pizzeria which is staffed by some of the older kids that we’ll be working with. Los Quinchos takes vulnerable children from the streets of Managua and transplants them to this idyllic little countryside haven. It houses and feeds them, puts them into local schools and teaches them trades like hammock making, bread making and the fine art of baking Italian pizza pies.
Saturday night is karaoke night. So we exchange slices of pizza and stories of our time off while tipsy Nicaraguans caterwaul songs they have seemingly never heard before. After we endure this for an hour or so it’s time for PWB to represent. Aileen belts out a sterling rendition of “Estoy Aquí” by Shakira in Spanish which seems to mightily impress the assembled locals. Our project has begun.
Los Quinchos children enjoying the PWB show in the pizzeria
The next morning finds us back in the pizzeria but this time to perform our show for the children of Los Quinchos. To see so many faces I recognise from last year is a heartwarming experience. We rock out our show which is greeted with suitable amounts of laughter and applause. We then pass out some props and they proceed to blow us away with how much they can do. Seeing kids nailing diabolo tricks, weaving poi, dancing with hoops and juggling four balls, and all before we’ve started teaching them again, is a beautiful and inspiring sight to behold.
A Quincho gettin´ his flow on!
We spend the week topping up their skills and introducing the kids that weren’t here last year to the wonders of circus. These kids are such a pleasure to teach because they are eager to learn and pick things up so quickly. They also seem many times more confident and focused this year then they were last year. Some of the kids have their own circus show now which we’ll get to see next week and they obviously have a passion for circus which is tremendously rewarding to see.
El Nido de Las Artes show
At the end of the week El Nido de Las Artes (translation: “the nest of the arts”) come down from Estelí and perform their show then help us teach some workshops. It’s so exciting to see these connections between organisations being made. Hopefully they can come and visit the Los Quinchos kids again during the year and bridge the gap between us leaving and returning next year. Forging links between organisations like these is a really important part of our work if it is to stand a chance of becoming self-sustaining.
Despite it’s seemingly relaxed country location San Marcos is crazy noisy. Packs of loudly barking dogs decimate the night while eager cockerels penetrate our morning slumber. Both get particularly agitated during earthquakes – we had two minor ones this week (but as of yet we’ve had no problems with volcanoes). At weekends a brass band erupts at six in the morning for reasons unknown, accompanied by startlingly loud fireworks. But the loudest and most frequent noise is due to what I believe to be (and I’m no expert on this) a modest-sized colony of bats noisily engaging in intercourse, at all hours, in the rafters of our residence. However, we have all survived and flourished here and we are eager to see what the next few weeks have in store for us.
. . . And here´s the “happy children in hoops” photo you´ve all been waiting for!
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