Hi everyone
Today we started at our projects. Me and Tom are at the working girls centre in the centre of town - for the next 3 weeks or so we will be painting and gardening and getting it ready and looking nice for when the girls start coming in again which will be more like the end of February. They also go out and do visits to the girls' families, to try to talk to the parents, presumably about the importance of schooling etc, and maybe we get involved with that, but I'm not sure yet. I know you are all desparate for a blog update about our little weekend away to Lake Titicaca - this is coming soon but might take a while as we did quite a lot.
At our centre there is another volunteer called Diana, from Germany but half Columbian and speaks Spanish like a local therefore. She's been here since August and is staying a year altogether, so it's great to have her there as she knows the staff and can translate when we can't communicate well (being German she obviously speaks English like an almost native too). She's only 19 would you believe it.
Our first task today was moving 3 large lockers from one side of the garden to another, where we will paint them. This was not that easy, but me and Tom came up with the clever plan of cartwheeling them across the garden, as they were too heavy and cumbersome to get a good grip on for carrying. We were pretty proud of our cartwheel technique, but had to keep an eye on the open lockers whose doors flung open and then nearly got squashed in the process. We cleaned the lockers that were open, and emptied out various bits of cobweb/a pair of old socks (surprisingly clean), a packet of what looked like mini cheddars, and then began one of those tasks which is like those ones they give people for eternal punishment - a large bunch of keys, and a large amount of locked lockers. We had to figure out which opened which locker, if at all, as the staff weren't sure if they were in fact the locker keys at all or from some other cupboards in some other room, or other city, who knows. We soon realised that for some reason all the keys worked in locker number 11, so missed that one out from then on. We managed to identify about 9 other ones that fitted and opened lockers (imagine how exciting it was when that happened) (but that was only 9 out of 40 lockers so not a great success rate). Tom then got a makeshift hammer (ie a piece of wood), and started hitting one to see if it would just magically open. It didn't. We need a plan C.
We wrote a list of things needed to help us in our work (paint, new padlocks, a paint scraper thingy, anti-corrosion spray (if this exists) and some advice about the lockers) and went of to La Cancha (the market) with Diana. Sadly it was by now around noon, so of course the shops we needed had decided to close until 2, according to a man at a little stall. We will go back tomorrow. Diana went home to her Bolivian family for lunch, and me and Tom thought we knew the way back but got slightly lost. The city is on a grid system, so for me that makes things harder as every street looks pretty much the same. And the shops are quite non distinctive - they tend to be: an internet 'cafe', a stationery shop (I spend quite a bit of time in these and I think when I'm older I'd like to have my own stationery shop), a clothes shop, a food outlet. That's kind of it, repeated quite a bit with slight variances. We found a nice place to eat rellenos (stuffed fried things with chicken or beef or cheese in them) which will I think become our local lunch stop - though we do get a packed lunch too.
We started on some gardening after lunch. This involved finding a few pairs of shears, none of which had any kind of cutting power. So we got some lowly kitchen knives and attacked the long grass with those. The idea being that once the long grass was short grass, Tom could use the lawn mower to actually mow it. I was surprised to find there was a lawn mower, but less surprised to find that it didn't work. I think it is just a lack of petrol, so tomorrow we should know. Eric and Lineke, the Dutch couple, were there too, and as 5 people we cleared most of the long grass. They will be there every Monday and Tuesday, and in the motivation centre from Wednesday to Friday with Darryl and Nicky.
We stopped for a few fanta breaks, as it was hot sun by now, and it ends up being quite a work out. We found a few spiders - one white one, which we thought could be poisonous, so Tom removed it to further away. I got bitten a lot by mosquitoes and other buzzy things, none of which I presume had malaria let's hope. They were probably just annoyed to have their grass disturbed. I then started doing some paint scraping to get the walls ready for painting - guess what I used - the lowly kitchen knife. Who knew it could be such a useful tool for DIY and gardening. It reminded me of seeing little kids in Belize mowing their lawns with machetes... Much safer though. I sure hope they wanted that wall painting that I started scraping, as it looks pretty bad now with half the paint missing. The staff pretty much leave us to it, we have to just make sure we get things done that will make everything look nicer. The plan is to paint the lockers and all the outside walls, and if there's time then it'd be good to paint some pictures on the walls, maybe on the lockers too, so it's all nice and bright when they return. The garden needs tidying up obviously, and the swings, climbing frame and slide need painting too to brighten them up. I'm really excited about all this manual work, especially as it's so good to be working with Tom, and Diana and the Dutch couple when they're there. I haven't got to know the staff yet, due to language barrier, and that these things take time. They are very lovely and welcoming and glad of our help though.
After our hard day's work we went for an ice cream (the equivalent of sitting down with a lovely cool glass of beer - we're not allowed to do thta), then wandered to the main square to try to find a map at the tourist office, but this bit of the plan failed. Tom is pretty good with directions, so we will probably be ok if we need to go out during the days to get things. Can always just get a taxi if we get lost as I do know the address of the centre.
In other news - had a Spanish lesson yesterday, an individual one - it was really intense and made my head feel like it was going to explode. Then had a burger at burger king and temporarily lost my wallet but found it again at the school (was due to the intensity of the Spanish lesson I think). Had a really interesting session with David yesterrday morning about the bigger issues of poverty and international development - we have these every Monday, so will soon all be pretty clued up on things. I haven't time to summarise what we learnt right now, but will do so soon I hope.
Ok, that's it for now, and I will write again soon about our other trip. Bye for now xx
Today we started at our projects. Me and Tom are at the working girls centre in the centre of town - for the next 3 weeks or so we will be painting and gardening and getting it ready and looking nice for when the girls start coming in again which will be more like the end of February. They also go out and do visits to the girls' families, to try to talk to the parents, presumably about the importance of schooling etc, and maybe we get involved with that, but I'm not sure yet. I know you are all desparate for a blog update about our little weekend away to Lake Titicaca - this is coming soon but might take a while as we did quite a lot.
At our centre there is another volunteer called Diana, from Germany but half Columbian and speaks Spanish like a local therefore. She's been here since August and is staying a year altogether, so it's great to have her there as she knows the staff and can translate when we can't communicate well (being German she obviously speaks English like an almost native too). She's only 19 would you believe it.
Our first task today was moving 3 large lockers from one side of the garden to another, where we will paint them. This was not that easy, but me and Tom came up with the clever plan of cartwheeling them across the garden, as they were too heavy and cumbersome to get a good grip on for carrying. We were pretty proud of our cartwheel technique, but had to keep an eye on the open lockers whose doors flung open and then nearly got squashed in the process. We cleaned the lockers that were open, and emptied out various bits of cobweb/a pair of old socks (surprisingly clean), a packet of what looked like mini cheddars, and then began one of those tasks which is like those ones they give people for eternal punishment - a large bunch of keys, and a large amount of locked lockers. We had to figure out which opened which locker, if at all, as the staff weren't sure if they were in fact the locker keys at all or from some other cupboards in some other room, or other city, who knows. We soon realised that for some reason all the keys worked in locker number 11, so missed that one out from then on. We managed to identify about 9 other ones that fitted and opened lockers (imagine how exciting it was when that happened) (but that was only 9 out of 40 lockers so not a great success rate). Tom then got a makeshift hammer (ie a piece of wood), and started hitting one to see if it would just magically open. It didn't. We need a plan C.
We wrote a list of things needed to help us in our work (paint, new padlocks, a paint scraper thingy, anti-corrosion spray (if this exists) and some advice about the lockers) and went of to La Cancha (the market) with Diana. Sadly it was by now around noon, so of course the shops we needed had decided to close until 2, according to a man at a little stall. We will go back tomorrow. Diana went home to her Bolivian family for lunch, and me and Tom thought we knew the way back but got slightly lost. The city is on a grid system, so for me that makes things harder as every street looks pretty much the same. And the shops are quite non distinctive - they tend to be: an internet 'cafe', a stationery shop (I spend quite a bit of time in these and I think when I'm older I'd like to have my own stationery shop), a clothes shop, a food outlet. That's kind of it, repeated quite a bit with slight variances. We found a nice place to eat rellenos (stuffed fried things with chicken or beef or cheese in them) which will I think become our local lunch stop - though we do get a packed lunch too.
We started on some gardening after lunch. This involved finding a few pairs of shears, none of which had any kind of cutting power. So we got some lowly kitchen knives and attacked the long grass with those. The idea being that once the long grass was short grass, Tom could use the lawn mower to actually mow it. I was surprised to find there was a lawn mower, but less surprised to find that it didn't work. I think it is just a lack of petrol, so tomorrow we should know. Eric and Lineke, the Dutch couple, were there too, and as 5 people we cleared most of the long grass. They will be there every Monday and Tuesday, and in the motivation centre from Wednesday to Friday with Darryl and Nicky.
We stopped for a few fanta breaks, as it was hot sun by now, and it ends up being quite a work out. We found a few spiders - one white one, which we thought could be poisonous, so Tom removed it to further away. I got bitten a lot by mosquitoes and other buzzy things, none of which I presume had malaria let's hope. They were probably just annoyed to have their grass disturbed. I then started doing some paint scraping to get the walls ready for painting - guess what I used - the lowly kitchen knife. Who knew it could be such a useful tool for DIY and gardening. It reminded me of seeing little kids in Belize mowing their lawns with machetes... Much safer though. I sure hope they wanted that wall painting that I started scraping, as it looks pretty bad now with half the paint missing. The staff pretty much leave us to it, we have to just make sure we get things done that will make everything look nicer. The plan is to paint the lockers and all the outside walls, and if there's time then it'd be good to paint some pictures on the walls, maybe on the lockers too, so it's all nice and bright when they return. The garden needs tidying up obviously, and the swings, climbing frame and slide need painting too to brighten them up. I'm really excited about all this manual work, especially as it's so good to be working with Tom, and Diana and the Dutch couple when they're there. I haven't got to know the staff yet, due to language barrier, and that these things take time. They are very lovely and welcoming and glad of our help though.
After our hard day's work we went for an ice cream (the equivalent of sitting down with a lovely cool glass of beer - we're not allowed to do thta), then wandered to the main square to try to find a map at the tourist office, but this bit of the plan failed. Tom is pretty good with directions, so we will probably be ok if we need to go out during the days to get things. Can always just get a taxi if we get lost as I do know the address of the centre.
In other news - had a Spanish lesson yesterday, an individual one - it was really intense and made my head feel like it was going to explode. Then had a burger at burger king and temporarily lost my wallet but found it again at the school (was due to the intensity of the Spanish lesson I think). Had a really interesting session with David yesterrday morning about the bigger issues of poverty and international development - we have these every Monday, so will soon all be pretty clued up on things. I haven't time to summarise what we learnt right now, but will do so soon I hope.
Ok, that's it for now, and I will write again soon about our other trip. Bye for now xx
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| Tom and Eric inspecting the lawn mower |
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| Where they will plant salads and carrots etc |
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| Before |
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| And after. Apparently there could be scorpions in the grass but so far not witnessed any. |
Info is out of this world, I would love to read more. knifesharp
ReplyDeleteThese look like really nice knives! I've been looking for the best kitchen knives to use in my kitchen and I could definately see myself using a few of these.
ReplyDeleteI just found a pretty cool site where you can buy the best kitchen knives . I want to get them in the mail right now!
ReplyDelete