PWB Nicaragua 2013 – San Marcos – Life With Los Quinchos

Categorised in: Nicaragua 2013

By Performers Without Borders

By Emily Ball

Our days here in San Marcos begin with various wake up calls – the morning sweeping of the yard, the first bus to Managua honking its way up the hill at 5.30a.m, or children popping their heads in to say hi on their way to school at 6.30 a.m – school here starts at 7 for some of our students. It’s early to bed and early to rise in countries like Nicaragua – and India – where the middle of the day is so hot it makes it hard to do anything, and PWB’s volunteers adapt to this lifestyle throughout the tour.

The PWB team roll out of their cocoon like hammocks or clamber down from their bunks and find their various ways to wake up properly – coffee, tea, breakfast, a stretch…Our ‘team mum’ reminds us we are leaving in half an hour for the first session of workshops, and we gather kit together and recap on the plan for the day before dividing up into 2 teams and walking opposite directions along 2km dusty dirt tracks to reach the girls and boys homes respectively. As we arrive we are greeted with smiles, hugs and ‘buenas dias, hola!’. Children make their way to the yard and join in our warm up games as they finish their morning chores of sweeping and cleaning and then workshops commence for the next 2 hours, with skills improving daily, and at quite an impressive rate. The kids have to get ready for school after our session – some have afternoon classes – so we finish and pack up, say ‘hasta manana’ (or Tom’s version, ‘pasta banana’, which some of the children have adapted with gusto) and make our way back to meet up with the other team of teachers. We regroup and exchange notes and experiences of how our morning sessions have gone, who’s learnt what and which progressions would be good for the next day.

We have some time to ourselves to train – 5 balls, hula hoop, the splits, whatever takes your fancy – relax and eat lunch and then its off to our afternoon sessions for the children who have been at school in the morning. We meet back in time to de-brief about the sessions, chat about the plan for the next day over dinner and relax (or write blogs or edit videos!) for the evening.

Weekends here are slightly different as the Quinchos who live in Granada come up and visit at the weekends, so we have some extra students and everyone gets to learn circus and play together at the boys’ home on a saturday. Last saturday we were lucky to be visited by Diego and 2 of his students from the Escuela de Commedia y Mimo in Granada, (we visited them at the start of the tour and we will also visit again at the end) who taught alongside us and then performed a show for all the Quinchos. It was received with many laughs and smiles, much clapping and even screaming from some of the girls who seemed to take a particular liking to Francisco who having attended the Escuela for 4 years is rapidly becoming a very multi talented 16yr old. Saturday evening is when the pizzeria is open, and we were asked to perform a couple of acts for the cliental- Francisco, Rob and myself were happy to help out, and I believe it is the only time I may ever perform to a remix of a Vengaboys song….

On sunday there was a further treat in store, as a small nicaraguan family circus had arrived in San Marcos and Zelinda decided to take all the Quinchos to it – and of course we came along too! The general verdict from the children was that the show was ‘Aburrido’ (boring), and that there were too many clowns. Indeed, half the acts were clown acts in rapid spanish which we understood in varying degrees depending on individuals grasp of the language! There were also some aerial acts, singing and dancing – but the children wanted to know where the juggling was and declared that our show was better – lucky us!

As for me, I have to say that going to see a circus with 70 children is one of the highlights of the trip so far for me, it was so much fun. In spite of their verdict of ‘boring’, they were laughing and clapping for the whole show and I think it would be impossible not to have fun when you are surrounded by so much of it! Other memories that will stay with me and make me smile are some of the shows we have done where we have been asked for our autographs afterwards, which is funny, touching, and a slightly weird phenomenon. Lastly, after performing a show in the school that many of the quinchos attend, I overheard one of the girls proudly telling a friend of hers that she was learning circus from us…and that’s just some of what makes me want to carry on being a part of these projects! I’m very excited to be telling the children tomorrow that they have the chance now to make their very own circus show, and can’t wait to see what Zelinda thinks of it – she said it has been a dream of hers for quite some time to have a ‘Quinchos’ circus, as she herself is originally from a circus family…well, I hope maybe we can help that dream come alive for her…watch this space!!