POST by RENZ: Carried Away on the Carreton

Fran loving Nicaraguan hugs

Here in Nicaragua, the richer of the poor people use carretons to get around, get fire wood, transport crops, etc. We have a carreton and five horses and a foal. A carreton is a wooden cart pulled by a horse or a strong animal like that. We use ours to collect kids for the school. I go in the morning with Fran and Yader.

We pick up the kids that live too far to walk and the kids that their parents cannot drop them off at our center. Sometimes it takes longer than other times but it is fun and I like doing it.

At midday we take the kids that we collected back home. It is hard sometimes especially with the rain and the flooding. One girl´s house is up a big hill and the carreton cannot go up it because it’s really steep. So I am the one that usually has to walk up the hill, to her house, and see if she is ready.

Most of the time she is ready, sitting down, watching the tele, but other times I just wait outside awkwardly until she comes out. She is really dulcet and her name is Francesca like my sister. On the way to get the kids, it is a bumpy road. There are a lot of holes and hills. Sometimes it is hard to get around because of that.

One day when I was learning how to drive the carreton, we had a lot of kids with us. Francesca, the little girl, dropped her hair clip so Rene went and retrieved it. While we were waiting for Rene to come back, Moises, one of the boys in the school, was hitting the horse with a branch to make it go faster.

The horse & cart, with Yader driving

Suddenly the end of the rope got stuck in the wheel whilst we were going and it scraped my thigh. I felt my leg burn! It hurt! I had a big mark across my leg and some type of yellow, sticky liquid was coming out of it. We had just left the house and I could have gone back but I didn’t because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal.  So Yader took over the reins and we were off again.

Lorenzy's leg - YOUCH!

When we were going down the first hill, I went to get a drink at Yader´s house. Yader let Rene drive the cart down the hill for some reason. When I came back to where they were I saw that all the toddlers were off of the cart and some were crying. I asked them what had happened and they said that the carreton had gone too fast down the hill because of Rene´s driving and that is why they had jumped off and walked down the hill.

Lorenzy

We took them home and came back to the house as fast as we could. When I got home I showed my mum what had happened to me and she took care of it. The next day it hurt even more than when it had happened and I could barely walk. Now it is much better but it still hurts. Rene is now not allowed to drive the cart with passengers on it. He is psychotic.

Rene reading to Capital Edge kids