After working continuously for the past eighteen months I finally took a break this New Year. Along with a group of 27 people from the South England I went to Peru to work with a small charity within a small community in Pucullpa, Peru. .Our task was to assist in building a new School as the current one had been condemned by the local government.
It didn’t look too bad for a 46 year-old school but the upper floor was no longer safe, the hot midday sun would stream through the glass-less windows of the upper school and during the rainy season the rains would flood the teacher’s staff room. The grounds also had insufficient space for playing, outdoor-sports or the separation of primary and secondary school children. The current school library is small and cramped with little in the way of books learning materials. The school is able to teach computing but the quality of the machines was questionable.
When you consider that the school body is made up of 300 students (175 Elementary School students and 125 High School students) you can begin to see the problems and the task that lay ahead of us.
The start of the project saw the building of two new classrooms and a toilet block with an additional two to be built in this phase of the programme. When more funds are raised another identical block will be built directly behind this one.
The location for the new building was ideal in many ways but it had its own problems and challenges. The site is 4.5km from the current school, but even in such a short distance, we saw an incredible and dramatic change in the socio-economic profile of the local community.
The current location is in the centre of town where there are relative signs of wealth. The new building is going up in an area surrounded by communities who live in extreme poverty - it wasn’t unusual for us to turn up for a 7am start and see families, alongside the vultures, going through the local rubbish tip. The housing is poor, the roads full of potholes and local facilities are limited.
This group of 27 people from the UK were always going to stand out in this community and every day we saw groups of children and adults coming to see what we were doing. Questions were asked about the new school and why we were there, friendships were made and laughter sharedBy spending this time in Peru we were able to get an insight into what it is like to live in extreme poverty and we were fortunate enough to see the hope in the eyes of local children and saw a world of possibilities opening up.
There was no way that a group of 27 were going to complete a new school building (especially when you consider the number of days lost to illness, accidents, and other incidents). In fact, the foundations should have been prepared for us to build on. The summer rains, however, prevented work being completed on the foundations and on arrival we saw the extent of the task ahead of us.
There were foundations which still needed to be poured. Where foundations had been poured but not filled, we had to remove rain waters and refill holes large enough for the person of average height to stand in. Walls had to be built and the grounds levelled.
There was a lot of work done but we have left behind a team of Peruvian construction workers with less work and more encouragement. We left behind a community not only with a vision and hope for a new school but with the actual structures part completed.
It was a great way to spend the New Year break and the loss of our luggage to the Peruvian mafia will not be able to take away the experience!
Councillor Carole Williams
