¿Y Entonces...?

In school in the US, all students are accustomed to doing fire drills. The alarm goes off, the teacher escorts their classes to the outside of the building, takes roll call, the fire department comes, gives the "all-clear" and 20 minutes later, we're back in class. 

In Nicaragua, the same thing happens, but it's about 100x more intense. I was with the teachers during the week helping plan for the simulacro ("simulation"). The students only knew what day it was going to happen, nothing more.

During one of my presentations, the sirens went off, Cruz Roja ("Red Cross") volunteers ran up from the street and chaos ensued. The profe took her class outside to wait and as I was walking out with the group, I saw "bloody" bodies, volunteers running around with stretchers and fellow students carrying around other injured peers.

I was in shock. I had to keep reminding myself that this was all a simulation, none of this was real! Man, it was just quite the spectacle to see, though! The "blood" was ketchup, the "actors" put dirt on their bodies and colored their bodies to look like they had some pretty intense bruising.

The volunteers gathered all the bodies on the basketball court and students looked on as they were "reviving" the bodies; CPR, checking for a pulse, and in one case, putting a foil blanket over a "deceased" student.

After about 20 minutes, the drill was over and we went back to our respective classes and continued on with our lesson plans. Before I continued with my presentation, I described the differences of what OUR fire drills are like and that we only perform drills that would occur in case of a fire, especially since in Colorado we don't experience natural disasters like floods or earthquakes.

The profe chimed in saying that her class did especially well in cooperating and in case of a natural disaster, sometimes some people don't maintain order and get frantic and in some cases get seriously injured.

I'm glad I was able to participate in this and see how institute-level students react in emergency drills, as well as experiencing how different cultures prepare for natural disaster situations.

Below are the photos. Keep in mind, EVERYONE was ok and "acting". No one was legitimately injured and there was makeup and ketchup used for the purpose of  presentation.