However, here is the recap of the last week in volunteering:
1. La Carpio—City of Hope. La Carpio is a slum outside of the Costa Rica’s Capital, San Jose. CPI has work the Humanitarian Foundation there for years. It’s an incredible story of Nicaraguan Immigrants pull themselves up by their own hard work and faith despite the hardships and poverty they’ve had to endure. Our goal in La Carpio was to play with children at the Model Education center and paint houses. The idea behind painting the houses is that the brightness and cheerfulness in the colorful house instills hope and positivity in whoever sees it. It’s kind of a cool concept. However, on this day, I spent most of my time with Fatima (a Nicaraguan immigrant), the Model Education’s teacher. Her job is to develop the curriculum for poverty-stricken children from ages 2-6. If you think daycare is difficult in the U.S., you should see this undertaking. It’s incredible what Fatima does! I spent a good hour with her talking about how she is more than a teacher to a lot of these kids who come from broken families and no food. She showed me her entire curriculum and how she develops it. It was amazing just to talk to her about what she does. I had this beautiful moment where I felt like I learned so much more that day than I ever could have if I didn’t know Spanish. I was so grateful for my ability from God to speak another language so that I could just talk and learn from someone else.
2. Kids Camp. Our group met up with 25 boys, ages 10-14, at a Sports Camp. These boys were on a soccer league that is in La Carpio and having been winning most of their games. This is a big deal considering how much pride it has instilled in the community, so as a reward, the kids got to go to a Sports Camp featuring soccer, basketball, and….the pool! Let me tell you, it is the hardest thing in the world to get these guys out of the pool! It’s a luxury rarely seen by these guys, so when we offered to go play bola (soccer) at one point, the most adorable kid name Esteven (pint-sized, big ears, tiny belly poking out, missing his two front teeth) looked at me and yelled, “Bola, no! Piscina, síííííí!” as he double fist-pumped his hands. (Soccer, no! Pool, yessss!). He was so excited to be near a pool. It was so cute that I nearly took him back to the pool myself. J On a side note, it was really cool that once the boys knew I spoke Spanish, they would regularly just ask questions or start conversations knowing that I understood them!
3. Flamingo. We painted a house for a family that wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford it. I was so proud of the group and the effort they put into doing a quality job. Our site manager, Diego, was amazing as a well. Diego is actually my boss’s son who helped me out on my first group ever at CPI. Since then, he’s kind of been a little brother to me. Of course, given that he’s nearly 18 years old, I’ve never seen the girls in our group so motivated to work! I also haven’t seen the boys so motivated to work either. After Diego asked one of our guys to start painting a huge section of the house, the guy looked at our chaperone and said, “He’s just too good looking to say ‘no’ too.” Haha.
We also worked in a school where we painted and played with children, but the top volunteer moments were listed above. What started out as a struggle to get kids working at the beginning of the week ended as a really well-done project and the kids seeing their project through to the end. If nothing else, I wanted the kids to learn the importance of finishing what they started and not just walking out at 1:00PM because the schedule says we should.
Pura vida,
Jessica Lynn
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