ICS blog

This week has been exciting. We have run our first anti-drug fair in the local schools. We have all been working hard preparing, and it has paid off, we ran two successful fairs. The focus of these fairs was good study habits. We prepared interesting and engaging activities to teach good study habits followed by games designed to test their knowledge on what they had learnt. The children were aged 6-11, which required us to adjust the material that we were presenting to make it relatable and understandable to each age group.

The UK and Nicaraguan ICS volunteers carried out surveys in La Sabanita to get an idea of the different problems the communities face and what their needs are. The surveyed communities were Romero Cerda and Calero.

In addition to identifying the needs of the communities, these surveys were necessary to identify the neediest families, those that would benefit most from the vegetable patches and the bins, where they could deposit waste instead of throwing it out on the streets or burning it.

As I sit here writing, my stomach churning and head pounding to the rhythm of my heart, I can’t think of anything else to write except health. It is definitely not what I thought my first blog entry would be about, but taking into account how many times I have fallen ill over the past few weeks, it seems pretty relevant.

This week the whole team has been hard at work making progress on the running track, and we’re nearly finished. We’ve been weeding the ground and shoveling tonnes of gravel around the track. The patients have also been getting involved in helping; we wouldn’t have been able to get all this work done without them. It’s been great working together with the patients, it’s given us a good opportunity to get to know them. With their help it won’t be long until the running track is finished. 

To arrive in La Sabanita and visit the community of Romero Cerda is to come face to face with the reality of life for a huge number of Nicaraguan families, where poverty lurks in the very foundations of people’s homes.

Neglect of the elderly and the need to do something about social exclusion is evident. The volunteers have seen this up close.

There was a power cut on the first night I arrived in Honduras. It did not come as a complete surprise, because as I travelled through the sprawling capital of Tegucigalpa I was immediately struck by the power lines. In England where there would be a single cable here there are at least five tangled, knotted wires hanging perilously from one post. 

Upon visiting a Special Project on 29 April, there were smiles all over the faces of the Mulanje Cedars ICS volunteers whilst seeing the ever-green tea grown on top of the mountain, some kilometres away from the community. 

UK volunteers’ journey…

Our journey began at Terminal 2, Heathrow on 17 April. A group of nervous young adults gathered with their bags waiting to board flight ET2701 to Lilongwe via Addis Ababa, Ethiopia with DEET spray in hand and passport at the ready. We hadn’t seen each other since the training weekend back in March so it was great to see everyone’s shining faces again.

As our first week in Mulanje moved towards its close, we embarked on our first campaign to celebrate Labour Day. Labour Day is a time to commemorate the role of workers and labourers and the contributions that they make to our society because as none of us can deny at times such contributions go unrecognised. Labour Day is also an opportunity to address how the social and economic wellbeing of workers can be improved. Malawi ranks 171 out of 187 in the Human Development Index (2012), which in turn inevitably produces some of the toughest conditions for workers worldwide.

Our welcome to La Sabanita

The volunteers arrived in La Sabanita full of enthusiasm and ready to get acquainted with the place in which they will be working over the next eight weeks. With this in mind, they set out visiting various communities, so they could become familiar with the area and identify the range of problems they will be dealing with, such as waste and the lack of waste disposal.