Last week Junior Achievement gave me permission to work from Monday to Sunday with the Red Cross. The special event was a National Camp of the Costa Rican Red Cross for young people. The majority was between 14 and 17 years old. After baking typical German food for the Cultural Fair, Tuesday night we headed to Liberia. It is the capital of the province Guanacaste, in the Northwest of Costa Rica, which is located close to the campground.
On Wednesday during the day groups of the different committees arrived. At night the Cultural Fair took place and because we were 5 German volunteers we had our own exhibition stand. Previously we had prepared posters with information about history, important cities, places and people of Germany as well as German brands. The area around our stand was crowded and everybody loved the German/Austrian cookies “Vanillekipferl”, which tasted (unfortunately) more like peanut than vanilla
On Thursday workshops and activities took place the whole day. For the afternoon activity they divided us (Germans) into two groups and for the first time we had to guide games, in a foreign language, all on our own. Luckily some songs/games were already known so we did a good job.
On Friday there was a big clean-up-project of Liberia. It was impressive to see how motivated these young people were. They collected trash, cleaned banks, helped with the restoration of the Museum of Guanacaste, handed out brochures and painted the faces of children.
Everybody was excited for Saturday: the senda. On a distance of 12 kilometers there were 28 physical and mental tests. Depending on the level of difficulty every test was worth a certain amount of points. For a group consisting of about 6 people it was not only important to reach a high amount of points but also to run the senda as fast as possible.
For the night the Red Cross arranged bullfighting in a little stadium next to the campground. The bulls looked beautiful and elegant but I already told you my opinion about bullfighting in the last Blog.
Sunday was the last day and the winner of the senda and of the whole camp was announced.
Another aspect I would like to mention was the morning ritual, which was very unusual to me. Every morning at six o’clock all participants including staff formed rows. While setting up their flag they sang the Costa Rican national anthem and some kind of motivation song of the Red Cross. Afterwards the program for the day was announced. The committees earned points for attending but still I cannot imagine the same thing in a camp in Germany.
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