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Tuesday, 09 Sep 2008
In the summer holidays thirteen Harrow School boys undertook a "Harrow Challenge" in Costa Rica, Central America. The aim of the Harrow Challenge was very simple: to build a bridge fifty metres long over a river. The bridge gave the very poor community there access to the beach and negated the need to cross the river with canoes. It is also to be hugely beneficial to the conservationists, biologists and volunteers that work to protect the endangered turtles that use the beaches around the area to lay their eggs. "Everybody realised on arrival that I had not exaggerated when I warned the boys that we were going to a very remote area in the Costa Rican jungle with very few luxuries," said Mrs Lotje Smith, the Harrow beak who organised the project. "However, I had not exaggerated the beauty of the area either, which was some compensation."
As well as the planning of the bridge, the boys had to dig six foot deep holes in thick mud for the anchors and towers and then mix and pour the concrete for the anchors. The planting of the four six-metre steel towers included mixing and pouring 12.5 tonnes of concrete, manually collecting all the sand and stone needed for the concrete and carrying the steel towers for more than 500 metres through the jungle.
The boys did have some breaks, with a trip to Cano Island for a day of snorkelling and swimming and a football match against a local team.
"In spite of a number of setbacks where materials hadn't been supplied, the day before we had to return to England we actually had built a bridge that could be used to cross the river," said Mrs Smith. "It was a great relief to get to a stage where we could all walk over the bridge and we put up the plaque with the names of all the Harrovians that helped build it. I congratulate all the young Harrovians, they are excellent ambassadors for Harrow School. They worked hard and gave something of themselves for the benefit of a community that they hardly knew and might never see again, working long hours in terribly difficult conditions where everything that could go wrong tried to do just that. But what an experience! What an achievement!"
Source: Harrow Communications Dept