A Fine Morning in Conchucos

The sun was shining brightly at 9:00 am and the humidity had thankfully dropped overnight when we started out for the village of Conchucos to deliver these school supplies plus 24 chairs, 6 tables and 2 whiteboards to the pronoei and primary schools.

We stopped at the pronoei first. This is how it appeared during our first visit. On that day there were exactly 2 students, no school supplies, a room full of broken furniture and a teacher very worried about the future of her school.

This is what it looked like when we left there this morning. What a change! All 15 registered students were there plus 3 happy moms. The only negative was that Fanny, the director was hospitalized following emergency surgery but we’re told she is on the mend and will be back soon. We know she’ll be pleased.

And speaking of pleased, I’m not going to tell you that the kids went nuts over their school supplies, but they sure got a kick out of strutting around the room wearing their school bags. The woman is a seamstress from Chiclayo who makes the bags and uniforms for us. She was there to measure the kids for sport uniforms that we’ll be furnishing.

Our next stop was the primary school where we dropped off the remaining school supplies and whiteboards. There were 19 students there today…better than the 11 during our first visit but still short of the 35 registered. Ed, the director is confident that the others will return now that he has school supplies for them.

The kids staged a brief ceremony thanking us for the donations. As part of the ceremony the boy in the bright yellow shirt stepped forward and gave a short speech. I don’t remember his exact words, but what he basically said was… ‘Thank you for helping us. We know that education is important for us, our families and our country. We promise you that we will come to school and use the things you have given us.’  Those words had an impact on me and Maribel. We sure hope they turn out to be true.

In addition to the 15 sport uniforms for the pronoei kids we’ll also be furnishing 35 t-shirts for the primary kids, and we’re trying hard to find a way to include 35 pairs of matching pants. We plan on delivering the uniforms in mid-April. We need to thank Clifton B, Chris R, Amy B, Yescenia, Pablo and the Alice Cool Foundation for helping us to help the kids of Conchucos.