The Little Cob library

In June this year, Nathan Rutter (from Gloucester) and Phoebe Burton (from Somerset) visited The Little Cob library in Matagalpa along with one of the SRF trustees. They spent a day helping Dominique Olney who runs the library. This is their account of their time there, along with two photos taken by Phoebe. Our first visit to Matagalpa included a days involvement at The Little Cob library, a facility built and run by Dominique Olney. The cob building style from Celtic areas of the UK is similar to the adobe building of Central and South America where it is particularly associated with the rural poor for whom it is inexpensive. It requires basically a mixture of mud, water and straw dried in the sun as blocks or plastered onto a lattice of bamboo or other poles. The Little Cob is built in this style but with a few Making papier mach heads for piata models improvements and strengthening features such as a concrete base, a long overhang of the roof to prevent rainwater hitting the walls and the great thickness of the walls. Children began to trickle in as soon as they knew that Dominique had arrived. Out came the tables and chairs, the drawing materials, the pens, coloured pencils, crayons, games, cards and other items for the kids to enjoy themselves with. They were all well-behaved and clearly absorbed by whatever activity they chose to pursue. This is the kind of learning environment we hadnt yet seen in Nicaragua where classrooms tend to be very ordered and in rows facing the whiteboard. When the morning group departed at 12 noon, we snatched a few moments to make ourselves a sandwich of things we had bought on the way there. And then the afternoon children arrived. Another round of games, drawings and enjoyment until the heavens opened and we all moved inside The Little Cob to avoid the storm. It was certainly cramped, but that didnt spoil the fun everybody was having. We ended up with one big card game involving nearly all present, including all the smallest and youngest a game called UNO. They were all well practised at this and most of them knew how to cheat successfully. Meanwhile, Yveth, Fanny and Phoebe had spent the afternoon making earrings and bracelets, and Nathan had been building a new storage space for the larger equipment.
Yveth and Fanny showing the earrings they made

It was a great learning experience for us as well as the children and we may go back there to do some more volunteering later in our stay in Nicaragua. The Santa Rosa Fund has recently begun to support The Little Cob with what few funds are left after we have honoured all our other funding commitments in Nicaragua. At the start of this year we made the gigantic donation of US$100 to The Little Cob we hope to improve

on this in the future. More information about The Little Cob can be found at http://littlecob.wordpress.com June 2012