Over the weekend of September 22, members from all areas of Markham College, in fact over 230 of them, performed the incredible. Board members, School administrators, Old Markhamians, parents, teachers and students, all came together as a team to build, paint and fit together six provisional classrooms for Public School 22266, Sunampe, destroyed in the earthquake. These volunteers were able to get 150 students back into class where they belong. In fact, it was the only school of the 33 schools in the area devastated in the earthquake to return to classes.

This amazing act of teamwork began with a week long challenge of preparing the panels needed to make the classrooms. These panels were made in the College's own Design and Technology workshops every day after school. Girls and boys from Primary 6 upwards used the Design and Technology skills they had learned in class with help from teachers of the department and others.

After the panels were completed, they were loaded onto donated trucks for Sunampe. The 230 volunteers followed on Saturday and Sunday to help with the two day re-construction and clean-up work. In Sunampe there were student volunteers from Primary 1, who came with their parents in their own cars, all the way up to the last year of the Markham IB Programme itself. All of these volunteers were assigned tasks when they arrived, clearing away debris and rubble, helping to build the new classrooms, sanding and varnishing desks, distributing food packs or playing with the local children who were curiously watching their temporary school being built.

Everyone was proud to work together side by side in full-gear of dusk masks, gloves and hard hats to perform whatever task was asked of them. The personal goal for everyone was to dig in and to be the dirtiest you could be; the dirtier you were, meant the harder you worked. It was an incredible show of Markham spirit and something we as a community are very proud of.

Sunampe: A First-Hand Account By Andrea Fleming   Driving through the Sunampe district of Chincha, 200 kilometers south of Lima, Peru, it is obvious Mother Nature spared no one here. Piles of rubble crowd the narrow dirt roads, making it nearly impossible to maneuver a vehicle. Painted on walls, a red X within a circle symbolizes what the Peruvian government deems as an unfit abode after the August 15 earthquake, yet families still live in tents amongst the remains of these homes, trying to recapture some semblance of a life once known. Tarps and cardboard boxes also serve as shelter, and as we round the corner I spy a large cross – still hanging high – through a gaping hole in the back wall of the town church. My nostrils fill with dust, rancid smells from open sewage holes waft through the air, a song of defeat drifts. Not quite. Amid the destruction looms a large figure with about forty-or-so highschoolers tagging excitedly behind him. Harry Hildebrand, an Australian who has lived in Lima and taught at Markham College for the past ten years, is a force of nature himself, exuding more contagious energy and inspiring more positive change in one weekend than most people do in a lifetime. Along with Steve Bolton and the Kiteflyers (a soccer team from Lima), he has mobilized people and resources to build 35 homes in the Sunampe district as well as 24 classrooms. Over a four-day period, some of us worked on lifting and placing 3 x 2 meter estera (woven cane) mats to the eucalyptus poles fixed firmly in the dirt. Using pliers, we had to tightly fasten the mats together with wire, one section at a time, until the walls and roofs were secure, thus creating classrooms measuring 8 x 5 meters to fit no less than 30 pupils. Teachers and "padres de familia" from the schools in Sunampe were diligently sanding desks and shellacking chairs alongside those from Lima. Jeff Smith, a teacher at Colegio Roosevelt, acknowledged in awe, “We're not just building classrooms; we're building community.” Neither age nor language nor culture was a factor – our aspiration was collective: “To be involved in something as magical as providing for these children who have suffered so much,” Harry states. At one point, we surveyed the destroyed site of Colegio 22267 and found children's drawings amongst the rubble. Ale, a seven-year old who lives nearby, showed us the still-standing blackboard amidst the pile of adobe bricks that was once her classroom. Her teacher's words were written there in yellow chalk, notes from the day's lessons on August 15. Despite this tangible devastation, our group radiated an ethereal hope, a passionate sense of actualization for ourselves and those of Sunampe. Spending a weekend rebuilding a community left me with mixed feelings: empowered at truly having made a difference in someone's life, impotent with the realization that there is so much more we can do.

Of course none of this could have been possible without the monies needed to buy the materials, and we are very thankful to everyone who has already contributed to the Relief project through our website. Some of these donations came from as far away as Hong Kong, Dubai and Luxembourg. All in all, thanks to the volunteers and the donations for transport and several of the building and cleanup materials needed, we were able to build the provisional school for less than $4000!

But Markham College is not stopping here. Another phase of the project (fifteen more temporary classrooms) has just been completed over 4 days during the October College break. This time we invited other British schools and LAHC schools to join us; students and teachers from Newton, San Silvestre, Fleming College in Trujillo and Roosevelt, the American School, decided to join us in support.

For more information, please contact Harry Hildebrand, Head of US Science at: hildebra@markham.edu.pe; or if you would like to make a donation to this effort please review the Markham College website at www.markham.edu.pe and click on the presentation for “Terremoto en el Sur.”

The problems facing the people in Sunampe are far from over, but efforts to solve immediate needs, like building temporary classrooms, are invaluable to them and the road to re-construction.

The final goal of Markham College is to completely re-build school 22266 in Sunampe in 2008 with the funds collected by our web-site. We have done this before in Moquegua after another earthquake and we are committed to doing it again. We need your support!