'Nicaragua', George Thomson

Our speaker, George Thomson, gave a fascinating account of a project he had been involved with in Nicaragua. George was a plumber by profession and a former President of the British Plumbers Employers Council (BPEC).   

The BPEC had established a charity which provided support and expertise for international projects. One such project was undertaken by George and two colleagues – the 'Stonebreaker's Laundry' project, so called because it involved providing laundry facilities, effectively a water tank with a water supply, for a community whose livelihood depended on breaking up rocks.

George described his first experiences of Nicaragua which involved a journey across the country on rough roads or tracks ending with a small village community in which everyone, from small children to adults, was employed breaking rocks by hand for the construction industry. He described the poverty and deprivation and the primitive life-style of the village people who said that George had been sent by God.

George and his colleagues found that clothes had always been washed in the river below the village. When they departed they left a facility with a water supply in the village itself.

Report by Mike Rowe