Now the niceties, greetings and settling in are over, hard work needed to commence. Not only was there to be between four and five hours of construction each day, there were also community activities to plan and daily Spanish lessons to undertake.
Ambitions high, the Nicaraguan volunteers were set to teach 16, partially bumbling, British volunteers how to build eco latrines - a sustainable form of waste management that is good for the environment. It has long been a dream of mankind to poo out money; eco latrines make this dream reality by enabling compost conversion to be made from the aforementioned poo.
Varying levels of ease were witnessed during this construction training. Whilst some volunteers took to building like a Nica to gallopinto, others struggled a little more; with pick axes coming within nanometres of people's eyes. Skills were quickly picked up though, with some even mastering the art of ‘repellar’ (a construction technique similar to plastering) within days.
Although we weren't quite in the same league as Bob the Builder yet, a motivation to contribute to the decontamination of the Masayan water supply spurred on an eager set of volunteers to learn and to make a change.
Written by Jamie Regan
