A month after Hurricane Mitch the Santa Rosa Fund’s first volunteer placement, Tanya Rodriguez from Bristol, flew into Managua for a spell of three months in the country, some of it spent at the Escuela Ernesto Ché Guevara teaching English to a few of the teachers. This is her report.
Escuela Ernesto Ché Guevara
I found Escuela Ernesto Ché Guevara looking very proud. A crowd of beautiful 5-6 year old children were graduating from their ‘pre-escolar’ education. The school playground was decorated with bunches of balloons. Arriving late, I expected to slip into the back-row unnoticed, but I heard an announcement concerning “Guests from the Republic of England” and was escorted in a state of shock onto the stage where several important looking people were sitting. I wanted to laugh and cry simultaneously. Facing me on one side was an audience in miniature: a fragile, demure and terribly smart crowd of 5-6 year olds, all in full-length burgundy graduation cloaks and matching tassled hats. They seemed awed by their own uniforms. On the other side, proud Mums and Dads. And there too were the press. Maybe my tearfulness arose from the innocence these children exuded, or the immense earnestness of the whole atmosphere of the event, and my laughter because there seemed something ridiculous to be dropped, green, straight out of England into this sort of honoured position at the centre of it. Each child was assisted onto the stage by a boy in a soldier’s uniform, each child treading on their cloak and seeming too frail for the big steps and big clothes, and with a serious and awe-struck expression, to receive their award. I imagined that from their eyes, such an event would communicate to them that their own personal education is such an important thing, not just for them, but to their parents, teachers and even outsiders that they don’t know, which to them may represent the world in general.
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