Phase 1 complete...

Back in touch with the outside world once more! It feels like I have been living on another planet for the past 3 1/2 weeks. This update is going to have to be brief as I'm going to try and summarise so much information and I only have so much time before I have to be back at fieldbase to pack for my next phase. So I am currently sitting in an internet cafe in Turrialba which is the town closest to our fieldbase in Costa Rica. We just arrived back yesterday after finishing our first phase- I was allocated to a group of 16 on a water project in Nicaragua. We spent 6 hours every day digging trenches and laying 5km of pipes in total to allow clean water to reach 12 houses in the village. The town where we were living was next to a place called Achuapa which is apparently the second poorest area in Nicaragua, which I have been told is the second poorest country in the continent. That's a pretty staggering statistic, and true to the facts, these people really did live in intense poverty. Myself and another girl from Glasgow were living with a family of 5 in a tiny brick house with a tin roof. They gave up an entire room for us, and the whole family crowded into one other room, even sharing beds to accomodate us. Their generosity was overwhelming. I have to mention that these were ironically some of the happiest people I have ever met in my life. There was hardly a moment when I saw a family dispute or even an unhappy child. The villagers were so eager to welcome us into their community, when we first arrived after a half an hour trek through the dust and heat up to their village which is inaccesible by motor vehicle, they were gathered in a barn to greet us, with the head of the cooperative (an organisation operating with raleigh to provide fair trade sesame seed production and other services for the villages surrounding Achuapa) with a guitar and a good collection of songs. I am willing to admit that after Don Brigido( the head of the co-op) told us that he wanted the community to welcome us into their homes as if we were their own children, I had a pretty emotional moment. Like I said, their generosity is overwhelming. They stuck to that promise. We were always fed before the rest of the family, our clean washing was waiting for us at the end of every day, and they catered as well as they could to our tastes, with the very limited ingredients of rice and beans, and beans and rice. Disaster struck when the majority of our group contracted some very nasty diarrhoea and vomiting, with some people in bed and out of work for up to 10 days, however, as I have the stomach of a LEACH, I was spared the drama. It's one of our many family traits. Mom and Pops, I hope you're proud.

There is so much that I can include in here but I'm just going to present you with a few highlights:

- Meeting all the costa rican and nicaraguan host venturers at fieldbase after arriving for the first time, to a crowd of manic singing and dancing. We all stood there like good little Brits and clapped awkardly. I enjoyed the embarrassment of it all.

- Playing endless games with the ticos (costa ricans) and nicos( nicaraguans) usually involving singing and stupid dances...at 8 pm in the evening after travelling for 48 hours on 4 hours sleep- this has come to be the equivalent of a late night for me here, after rising at 5 am or earlier every morning.

-Having my Nicaraguan "sister" write a poem for me at the farewell gathering in the village and reading it out in front of everyone- another emotional moment for Hannah.

-Sitting outside in the dusty "yard" of my house looking at the millions of stars which are so much more incredibly clear than I have ever seen and suddenly seeing the most beautiful comet fly over my head- the first time in my life I have ever seen one like that.

- Watching the 7 year-old village kids offering to carry our tools for us into the village, and marching off with three times the weight I could ever manage on my own.

- Day trip to a local river on our day off, had to trek for 2 hours in the midday sun to get there but so worth it...it. was. lush.

-Learning how to make tortillas over an open fire from raw maize.

I'm being hurried along by Charlie as we need to go eat and get back to fieldbase pretty soon so I'm afraid that's all I can fit in for now. There is a raleigh blog where you can leave messages and they get delivered to me on my various projects. It would be great to hear from you all. Here's the link: http://www.raleighinternational.org/expedition-blogs

TTFN xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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