The End..kind of.

Hola

Well, as of 7th August my team has officially ended and everyone has gone their separate way. Except Hannah Woods and I. Those of you who have facebook will have noticed my statement that I am 'no loger bound by the Tearfund contract'. This, of course, means that I no longer work at Mosoj Yan or represent Tearfund, now do they have any responsibilty for me now. HannahW and I got our flight pushed back a couple of weeks so we can spend some time enjoyig Cochabamaba independently before we have to return home.

Our plan is to do an intense two week Spanish course (ie 4 lessons per day, every day) and around that fit in a few morning at Peter's orphange, at the community centre, with Gladys and the Nucleus project, and some touristy things as well. We want to explore the city a bit more, and we bought a disposable camera for these two weeks for some photo safari fun!

HannahW, Heather and I saw the other three off at the airport on Thursday afternoon. It was a strange feeling being at the airport watching my team board a plane that I should have been on with them. A feeling, though, that had been there for the whole previous week as well. The week was filled with goodbye parties for 'the Tearfund team'. Literally every single day from one Thursday to the Thursday they left had at least one goodbye party.

It was Connie's the first Thursday as she went back to Canada; Friday night the Mosoj Yan staff held a party for us with speeches, gifts, dancing and the first tears; Sat night our Spanish teachers cooked (hired a chef) dinner for us; Sunday after we led our last service at Calama the English service (and Brasilians who helped out with music) took us out for lunch; Monday I went back to Albergue, my first centre, with the Hannahs and said goodbye to the staff and girls there; Monday night we said goodbye to our friend Gerry from Singapore (yep,thats his whole name haha); Tuesday I went back to Trabajadoras to say goodbye to staff and girls there; Tuesday night we played wally and went for icecream as our Brasilian goodbye; and Wed night we spent the day as a team and went for dinner and then bowling. So really it goes without saying that it was a hugely emotional week for everybody. For me it was exceptionally bizarre having these goodbyes but knowing I'll see most of the people again in my extra weeks. But my teammates wouldn't. Bizarre week. There's no other way I can describe it really.

Tino and Ross Mary, from Mosoj Yan, drove us to the airport on Thursday. Ivan came too with his 3 weeks old son, Paulo. William (who is back from Brasil, finally! yay!) and Jonathan came too. Some girls from the seminary came too but they were too late and missed us. It's so nice that people come out of their way to the airport to see their friends off. It's so surprising to us because it's something that's not really done in the UK. Of course there were many tears at the airport. HannahW, Heather, William, Jonathan and I stayed with them until they went through the gate. After that HannahW and I headed to La Cancha. We needed some retail therapy.

It was only Thursday morning that HannahW and I found out where we would be living in our extra two weeks. We hought we had it sorted but that kind of fell trough. This is Bolivia - people are very laid back. We sort of adopted this laid back attitude (yes, even me) and still on Wed night joked that we didn't know where we would be sleeping the next night. On Thursday morning we spoke to the director of the seminary and he offered us the apartment upstairs. It's the one Connie, phil, Dave all lived in at one time or another. The apartment I'd wanted since we decided to stay on longer. It's a long story but basically the people who were living in it up until now were swapping with us. They moved down into oiur old place while we moved upstairs. The move didn't happen until Friday so Thrusday night we had to spend in our old place just the 2 of us. It was strange without the others! We love our new place and are very excited about starting this new part of our time in Bolivia.

Hey!
Finally got round to sticking up some photos. Only a few though - I wasn't sure if it would work. Also my battery died - something about me and batteries, it´s very annoying!Now that I know I'll try and get some proper sets of photos of work etc up asap. For now enjoy these couple of randoms..

This is me and my chums out for lunch (charque, I think it was llama..) after church one Sunday afternoon. It was one of my best days here - great fun.
Here is HannahSR with jose, amanda and carla who live at the Restauracion centre, and Gladys, the psychologist there. They're dressed in green for a dance they performed for the Day of the Teacher.
This is the dance they performed..
Random pic but I don't have many of Wally yet! This is regula(a girl I only met twice, she was only here for 2 weeks), Bart (we miss him), Renato and Hannah W.
HannahSR´s birthday at our centre. They gave her a card which she models here. This is at lunchtime, in the dining room of the centre.

British Evening!

Every month the Mosoj Yan cafe opens fo a cultural evening. We've been to an African night and a Brasilian night. This time we were asked to present Britian! Paulina asked us and we of course said yes. It's such a nice gesture that they gave us a night and want to get to know us and our culture. That's another good thing about working at Trabajadoras - it's where the main Mosoj Yan offices are so I can get to know the office and behind the scenes staff a bit more. So it was on Friday night past. It was fantastic! Best cultural night ever, if I do say so myself..but I'm not because we got a lot of praise for it. Brasil had a dance on their night though, which was pretty cool. They asked us to do a traditional dance but we don't really have one except maybe Morris dancing which we weren't prepared to do so we had to decline that suggestion. Pity. There's a Scottish night coming up in September so we also didn't want to steal Alison's jig!lol

We started preparing at 3pm. The other four of our team came to our centre (where the cafe is) to join Heather and I. It was actually realy nice to be doing something together as a team. We've not done that in a long time - we work in pairs and it's very rare, even socially, that all 6 of us will be out together. We had a really good afternoon setting up, making decorations, playing English music (ie dancing in the closed cafe to Duffy - Mercy..best song EVER) and preparing the food. It was a really good fun afternoon, for me anyway..poor HannahSR was a little stressed about the presentation and Katie near had a hernia over the stew (thanks Alison for coming to the rescue!). Me? I spent the entire afternoon making two huge union jacks! Why can't our flag be one simple block of colour, maybe two stripes would be ok, but seriously.. it's so difficult to make and so time consuming! Although they looked good and Ludwing, our Bolivian friend, now has one in the back window of his car, haha.

The night was great fun, all of our friends came to support us and Alison had gone mad on the invites too. The small cafe was packed out with people. The menu had the usual dishes plus our British add ons - stew, eggs and chips, scones with jam and cream and shortbread. Oh and good old Nambarrie tea! (Thanks mum - I knew I'd find a use for them lol!) It all went down a storm. They loved the stew. The kitchen was complete chaos with no system or organisation whatsoever. Enter me and HannahSR! We tried to delegate jobs and areas (the kitchen's tiny and had too many helpers) and organised the orders into 'done' and 'to do'. It was crazy and I was rather stressed out at one point but then I took a deep breath and said to myself 'this is Bolivia..roll with it'.

We did a powerpoint presentation to music with photos of Britain and facts. HannahSR and I did the talking. She did most, I just wanted to be a part of it so she gave me two paragraphs to read haha. Then Paulina opened question time! Oh wasn't that fun. Bolivians are soo interested in Britain. They asked things I didn't even know the answer to. Lots about the Queen and the flag and the government etc.. HannahSR and Katie, our strongest Spanish speakers did a fantastic job in answering all that was fired at us. There was such a great, friendly, light-hearted atmosphere in the cafe that if we said the wrong word or something stupid in Spanish they kinda laughed but in a nice way corrected us. Of course the whole thing - presentation and questions where in Spanish. The atmosphere was so relaxed that it prompted one guy, who was with Marcus, to wave his British flag (that's what you did to ask a question) and say, "I have two questions. First question, what's the difference in the United Kingdom and Great Britain? Second question, what's your name?" As he looked and pointed at me!! It was hilarious! I don't think I've turned redder and the whole cafe erupted with laughter, haha! It was a hilarious and all round fantastic evening :o)

A pretty great week!

Hola!



I've had a pretty great week this week so I'm going to share a little bit of that with you.



Work at Trabajadoras is good.I'm enjoying it more and more each day. It's had much more structure this last week because school has re-started. The school holiday was supposed to be one week but it got extended to two weeks to keep the teachers happy who were threatening strike about something else. Then, and this is funny, the government then extended the holiday to a third week because it's "too cold". Extending a school holiday because it's too cold is ridiculous anyway but even more so here because we are averaging about 16degrees in the morning and mid 20s midday! haha, freezing eh? Anyway the kids that come to Trabajadoras all go to school either in the morning or the afternoon. A typical day runs like this : the kids arrive from 8.30am and eat breakfast; they then start homework. Education here is dreadful - I'll not even get into it now but it's a terrible system. They then have some recreation time then lunch starts at noon. Before lunch the girls all have to wash their hands then, as the morning group are mostly young children, they line up and sing a song and one of them prays. They pay 1Boliviano(that's the currency..they don't trade people, girly..) for lunch and breakfast. Lunch runs from 12-2pm because there is a changeover of girls. Those at the centre in the morning go to school in the afternoon and vice versa. So the morning girls eat lunch and leave while the afternoon girls come straight from school and eat lunch.Then after lunch there is some recreation time and homework begins around 2.30pm. They get a snack around 4pm and leave at 5pm when the centre closes. From time to time there are special talks on hygiene etc.. Since I've been here we had an afternoon headlice talk.



what I'`ve called 'homework time' the girls do schoolwork or, if they claim to have none, are encouraged to read.The schools are rubbish and the girls get little or no help or encouragement from home. Their parents don't care much about education - they send their kids to school cause they have to and it's free but as soon as possible they'll have their kids back out selling and working their stalls. So here the staff encourage learning and help teachthe girls if they don't understand things from school. They want the girls to do well in school and want to continue their education and make something of themselves.



The older teenage girls who come in the afternoon are given more freedom. They can do schoolwork if they want but actually most of them go to technical colleges and so make good use of the craft room. Here they listen to music and make various bits n pieces that are then sold in the Mosoj Yan shop.



I've found out recently that all of the girls at the centre now have come from La Cancha. This will mean nothing to you but I'm going to tell you about the cancha project called "Nucleus".



"Nucleus" is right at the heart of the Trabajadoras centre. One member of staff, called Gladys, runs this project. Basically she goes onto the streets and, more importantly, La Cancha, to promote Mosoj Yan. La Cancha is the largest outdoor market in South America. I don't know exactly what size it is but it's a huge place, I've never seen anything like it. It's so big it's like an actual town of venders and stalls. I don't even know how to describe it - it's just something that has to be seen. And smelt. It's where all the poorest people sell things, and more often than not the people manning the stalls are children. Girls as young as 8yrs old vending in the streets.

I've been through La Cancha many times just with friends and seen things but going there with Gladys when she lets me tag along is a totally different experience altogether. My eyes have been opened. What she does is such a vital work. She's an incredible, passionate, caring woman who loves what she does and is so good at it. When I first went with her I felt like I was filming a behind the scenes watchdog-type documentary. I first went with her on a Wednesday morning. It was just me and her and I've never spoken to her before that day and she doesn't speak any English..butI had the best time ever with her. I love her to bits now! My Spanish just seemed to click into place and I chatted with her the whole 30 min walk down and back. She was telling me all about Bolivia and Cochabamba, La Cancha and about "Nucleus". Usually what she does is play games for an hour with the kids who are hanging about the market selling or whatever. This just gives them a bit of fun and laughter, a change from sitting behind a stall selling oranges for example. In this time she builds relationships with the kids who come back each week to meet her where they play andshe can tell them about Mosoj Yan. However, this time when we went to the usual place to play ther were no kids. So Gladys let me come with her walking around the cancha talking to people. If she say a girl manning a stall on her own she went over and started talking to her and telling her when and where we usual play games and also about this place called Mosoj Yan where she can come to spend her days. On that Wednesday she was chatting to one girl at a stall and was writing down the phone number etc. of Mosoj Yan. Meanwhile I noticed a man selling shampo and deodourant out of his wheelbarrow pull up and stop nearby. I thought this could be the girl's dad and he was going to tell Gladys where to go. Lots of kids can't come to Mosoj Yan or even to play for one hour because their parents don't let them leave their stalls. La Cancha is a scary place too, I would love to take some pictures to show everybody but I daren't even carry my camera with me nevermind take it out and get snap happy. Anyway, Gladys finished talking to the girl and the man called her (eek!). He actually turned out to be the loveliest man ever. Just looking at him while he spoke to Gladys was heart-breaking. He was quite old and had obviously had a very hard life. He'd overheard Gladys talking about this Mosoj Yan place and he wanted to find out more about it. He said he has daughters himself and was very interested. It turned out that his children were too old for Trabajadoras at Mosoj Yan but Gladys was able to give him the name and number of another similar organisation in the city. After their chat he brought Gladys over to another woman and told the woman to listen to what Gladys had to say. The woman had a 5-6 yr old daughter by her side as she sold some horrible brown juice. As Gladys told her about Mosoj Yan it touched me just how much hurt and longing was in this woman's eyes. She listened to Gladys and she looked at her daughter and it was clear that she didn't wish the life that she had had on her own daughter as well. We continued aruond la cancha for an hour, stopping to talk to any young girl venders or woman with children. Gladys does this four times each week and every Thursday night she does the same thing (playing games and promoting Mosoj Yan) but in the main plaza in the city, not la cancha. I'm hoping to go down with her next Thursday. The first Wednesday that I went down with Gladys was possibly the best day of work I've had here. It opened my eyes to so much and I had a miracukous injection of the Spanish language that enabled me to learn more about Nuclues, Cochabamba, and get to know Gladys.

When my Tearfund contract ends on 7th August, Hannah Woods and I will hopefully try to get more involved in the Nucleus project. We've now confirmed we will be leaving Bolivia on 23rd August. Staying the extra couple of weeks independently. Woohoo!!

Now and again when we arrive at the centre at 9am we see the girls' mums dropping them off. We don't ever talk to them or anything, but yesterday the mother of two very sweet (but they know it and use it to their advantage) girls was there. She was sitting with Emily, her youngest daughter, and I walked past and said hello. Then Emily ran at me with a hug and kisses - score! I look good in front of their mother!haha Then her mum called me over and asked did I speak English. Then she shoved this phone to my ear and asked me to translate what it said. It was ringing for ages and went onto a voicemail answer service. So I told her what that meant. I thought this was a good opportunity to chat and I was feeling a little more brave that morning so, without knowing what to say, I sat beside her. She started telling me that that was the father of her daughters she was trying to phone. He's been working in the States for 5 years as a mechanic. He always said he would return to them but he hasn't. She tries to call him all the time but he never answers her. What do you say do that? This hurting woman, mother of two girls who are in a centre for working street girls and whose father has taken himself off to the States and won't take her calls. I don't even know the right response to that in English. I sat and had a really good conversation with her for a good while, whilst playing with her girls. It was nice. I'd quite like it if I got to see her again.

That same day, feeling now even more brave, I made a big effort to talk to Luidmila, the Argentinian volunteer. She's hard to understand because of her strong accent. We were doing a British evening that night so we talked about that. Then I did it. I made that universal connection that bonds woman everywhere. I mentioned boys. Haha. I mentioned the rather "guapo" young man who was at the centre two days previous and that opened up a good old girlie gossip and totally changed the atmosphere between us I think. She's such a lovely girl, only 18, and I think that if she spoke English or I spoke Spanish we would probably be quite good friends. Which is a pity because there is the huge language barrier.

Other Projects

I've mentioned before about meeting people and hearing of their own work here in Cochabamba. Finally in the past few weeks I got the chance to visit a couple of them.

Gwen and Marcus are a lovely couple who I think I've told you about before - about how they met. He was the Youth Pastor at Calama, she was 18-19 on a missions trip similar to mine, they fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after. Well, they've bought a big empty house on quite a large site and are in the process of turning it into a community centre. Gwen showed me, Emma and Dave Barbon around one Saturday and I got goosebumps of excitement about the place! She pointed out bare rooms which will be the offices, the medical attention room, dentist room, gym, and upstairs the childcare centre. It's got huge painting of Noah and the ark and a rainbow taking over one whole wall. It's class, and we painted a red wall in one of the rooms adjacent and the other rooms will have one wall painted one colour from the rainbow too. We also sanded the bannister in the morning that we were there. I hope to get the time to helo out a bit more with any painting or cleaning needing done before I leave. They hope to open in November, the childcare bit anyway cause they want it to be open in time for the school year to start.

There's a man called Peter, from Australia who comes to Calama. He runs an orphanage with his wife Dehlia. They've been here for 10 years but only in November they bought their property and have been developing it since. The inside is pretty much finished except the kitchen needs torn apart and re-done as it's a big space but not well used it's not very practically designed. I had to be repetitive but I got goosebumps of excitment here too. Perhaps even more so! There is a huge garden with a multipurpose playing court, a half finished swimming pool and an animal coop with ducks and rabbits, and Peter wants to have goats too. The grounds are a mess. The builders he had were really untidy and left loads of dirt just piled at the bottom of the garden and everything. Peter says that there is no steady income to the orphanage and they can't afford to do anything more at the minute. They rely on donations and volunteers. He had some fantastic stories for us I can't tell you them all, maybe when I'm home you can ask for more! For example.. The swimming pool was sitting useless for months it wasn't in a useable state but they couldnt afford to do anything. Then a 65yr old woman from Canada came to volunteer who happened to have been an interior designer in her youth and she knew how to tile. So she actually just bought all the tiles they needed and started last week to work on tiling around the pool. Another one.. Peter's minibus broke down and he couldn't get it fixed. About a week later he got a phonecall from one of a group of volunteers who had been with him a while ago saying that they still had some money and was there anything he needed. So he was able to buy a new minibus. Two weeks ago a man was passing by Cochabamba and visited Peter's orphanage for a day. After being there he really wanted to help in some way. This man happened to be an Optician and so he offered free eye tests to Peter for all the kids and free glasses and any treatment they needed. So last Monday some of the kids got their glasses and that was all free. I really could go on and on with these kinds of amazing stories.
There are about 25 kids at the home at the minute. Most of them are referred to Peter from the Government. There are, however, some exceptional cases. One heartbreaking story is of a boy who was abandoned on the steps of the church. A woman found him and brought him up to Peter and asked could he take this boy. So Peter did. The boy didn't know his name or his age. After some research over a period of a few months they finally found out that this mother was a prostitute and had another young baby as well. She would often leave her children behind while she went away with her clients sometimes for a few days. When Peter brought the nameless boy home he asked the other kids what they should call him. They suggested 'Peter Pan' because they'd watched the film the night before, haha, but then they settled for 'Jack'.
Adoption is tricky here and not very popular. So the turnover rate of the home is very slow. Most of the kids there at the minute have been with Peter for about 6 years. He's adopted 3 himself. He ecnourages the kids to learn English. There are no classes at the home but Peter and Dehlia speak to them in English and bring them to the English service at Calama. It's really paying off because the kids are actually speaking fantastic English just from being around it so much, watching English films etc as well. There are no jobs in Bolivia anyway, but if you know English, especially starting from such a young age, you can go far.
The kids are fantastic I love them. A couple of boys in particular have stolen my heart I want to bring them home with me! Don't worry mum, I won't, but I´m definately going to try to spend some more time at the home before I leave too. There just isn't enough time to do everything I want to do here. I'm not ready to leave yet :-( I don't want to say goodbye..

New blog entry below ugly party photos!

Hola,
There is a new blog entry underneath the ugly party photos..! I started that one before I put on the photos so the date is earlier and I can't figure out how to change the order of my posts so this is just to let you know to check it out below..! thanks! haha
x

Fiesta Fea (photos)

UGLY PARTY PHOTOS - at last!!! (They didn't upload in the right order so are a bit mixed up sorry!)


This is Bruno the 'ugly nun' haha.
There was a catwalk competition at the end of the night!
The pastor of the Portuguese service at Calama!
Bart here won the best costume prize
All 5 of us with some new friends :o)
(slippers do not count as dressing ugly!tut tut)
Us all again with Bart, our hero. Can't believe he's now gone!! :-(

Katie and HannahSR before we left

Emma, HannahSR, me, HannahW

My fav photo of my entire 3 months to date, honestly!!

These are 3 of my favourite people in the world. L-R.. Renato, Jonathon and William

Love this guy soo much. Jonathon. He's the funniest guy here!

More 'ugly' Brasilians..

So there you have it.. When I said a fiesta fea, I really meant it! Awesome, awesome night!!!!!