Hey Mum! I was on the radio!

So how did I end up on the radio? And where?

Well the where is easy, Sucre - Bolivia. The why, is going to take a little be longer. So go get a cup of coffee, and I'll tell you all about it.

While I was in Sucre, we arranged for some of the group to go and visit a local school and hand out some gifts (pens, pencils and the like). Anyway the school is one of the poorer schools in the city of Sucre, and I was told it had 800 children. That's about all I knew. So we load up our bus and off we go. On they way out to the school, I give the guys a bit of a run down on what to expect and what's going to happen based on previous school visits I have been on. Normally what happens is we get met by the principal or some other official, who shows us around and tells us about the school, we visit a class or two to hand out the stuff we brought along, the class will usually sing a song or two for us, and then we are expected to sing something for the kids. Now this sounds pretty easy, but it almost always ends in disaster. Get a group of about 15 adults together and then give them about 30 seconds to come up with a song to sing and see what happens. If they are smart they will go with something simple like, Old McDonald or the Hokey Pokey (They call it the Oakey Cokey in England, don't ask me why), and they will normally do ok, for a verse or two and then it disintegrates into either everyone mumbling along looking around to see who knows the words or just straight out fits of laughter. So with this in mind I warned the guys while will on the bus that they might need to sing. So they spent a couple of minutes going over options and came up with 2. Yes you guessed it. Old MacDonald and the Hokey Pokey (we had a mostly Australian group). So the bus ride out spent practicing Old MacDonald, right up until the moment the bus got bogged...

Fortunately by this stage we were just down the road from the school. So we all piled out of the bus and walk down to the school. Where we were swamped by hoards of kids, all about waist high. It was all very crazy, and there didn’t appear to be much in the way of order. But we were led into the Directors office and introduced to the big boss, who proceeded to welcome us, in Spanish. Being one of the only ones to speak Spanish in the group I was left to translate his words of welcome on to the rest. Well he spoke at length for what seemed like 10 or 15 minutes without pause, I then turned to the group and translated his 10 or 15 minute welcome speech into a 30 second version. I am pretty sure I got it all in, well the important stuff anyway. We were then led back outside where a semblance of order had been restored by the PE teacher. I could tell he was the PE teacher cause he was wearing a blue tracksuit and had a whistle on a string around his neck, just like PE teachers everywhere. So the PE teacher got out the microphone and introduced us to the school, and then various students came up and performed in front of the school for us, singing a couple of songs. Except for being paraded in front of the entire school (about 600 not 800, though there only seemed to be about half of them present), everything was going pretty much as I had expected. The kids all then went back to their classrooms, well most of them, there still seemed to be heaps of kids running around, and we were led back into the directors office where we were given lunch. Potatoes and spaghetti, tasted pretty good too.

While we were tucking into lunch, Nela the lady who had organised the trip for us came up to me and explained that a reported had shown up, unexpected of course. So I am thinking reported = newspaper. But no, we go inside to chat with the guy and he is on the phone and I can hear him saying “Good morning” and explaining about the gringos visiting the school, so I lean over to Nela and ask her what’s going on. She explains to me that he is a reporter, for a Sucre radio station and he is going to do and interview with us. So I am doing my best to follow the Spanish and getting pretty lost, but fortunately Nela is doing most of the talking. Then I hear the guy introducing me and he hands me the phone and BAM! I am on the radio. I’m not sure if anything I said was understandable (you try giving a radio interview in a second language), but I told them where we were from, why we had come to visit, and explained what a wonderful opportunity this was for us all. I think I might have repeated myself a little bit, but it seemed to go over well.

After all this excitement we were then taken to visit a class room, where as predicted the kids sang for us, fortunately we didn’t have to sing anything back. Then we were led to the next class room, and then the next, and then I started to get the idea that we would be visiting every class in the school, and yes that was the plan. It wouldn’t be fair to leave anyone out. So we continued our tour of every class, some of them even stayed back at lunch time so we could come and say hello and listen politely as they sang for us. I am not sure how many classes we saw, I think at least 12, but I think there were are few more. By then end we were all exhausted, and a little relieved to get back onto the bus, which had be rescued from the mud by some of the kids or so I was told.

All in all, it was an amazing experience. I have visited a few different school here in South America but I will always remember that one, and not just cause I was on the radio….