ball pools are fun!

Hello again,
                 Right, well I reckon I've depressed you all thoroughly over the last week so on for some cheerful news! Today we unveiled our new ball pool in the school tadaa!

BIG excitement (just the kids obviously!) I never once got into the pool *cough cough* ok maybe once but only because a kid begged me to join in....ok twice then if I'm being honest.

Where's Wally?

To introduce the children to the ball pool I took each child for 10 mins and let them play. They LOVED it :) They particularly loved having balls "rain" down on them.

You should have seen their faces, they were so happy they couldn't stop smiling.

You should have seen their faces, they were so happy they couldn't stop smiling.
One little girl laughed out loud for the first time.

Yesterday was national none child abuse day. To raise awareness I joined a march around Laura Flores and handed out information leaflets on sexual abuse.

As you know LF is our shanty town where I work twice a week. It's built on a rubbish tip and is horrible but is massively over crowded.

 As I've said before only people in the worst situations live in LF. Nobody is there because they want to be there, they are there because they are the poorest and usually seen as worthless. Yesterday was hot and walking round made me so thirsty that I made a comment in passing to a child. They came back 10 minutes later with a drink they had specially bought for me! I know the family and believe me they don't have money to spare. I was so touched by their generosity I wanted to cry.

   I know a few families there and yesterday I was joined by 5 sisters. Gorgeous little girls! They followed me round, holding my hand and skipping along and generally chatting away to me none stop all afternoon. All of them at once was quite exhausting but they were so happy to join in and friendly that I didn't have the heart to shoo them away. As I walked along I read my info sheet and saw this-21.4% of all children and teenagers in Ecuador have been sexually abused. That is a huge and horrifying number.

  I looked down at the sisters and realised statistically one of them may have been abused.

waste of time?

Last night and this morning a youth spoke at the church services. He's 21 and wants to go to China as a missionary. He is passionate and he wants to help the persecuted Chinese Christians. That is great! But...he says that missionaries should only go to places where there is no church or Bibles. Only these places really need help, otherwise we not following Gods' plan and basically we are wasting time. Is this true?

Am I wasting my time?

Have the last 10 months been a total waste of time? What have I achieved? Lets see shall we? Well....
I've managed to catch Typhoid fever (which was theoretically impossible!)
I've made of lots of glittery craft things with kids
I've totally humiliated myself by trying to speak Spanish in public
and I've been to the beach and got spectacularly sunburnt!

Nobody has spoken to me and then suddenly become a Christian. I haven't healed the disabled kids or stopped the poverty stricken children from being poor or abused. Not a single abused woman has left her home and started a fresh life. So what have I been doing? Has my time here been worth anything?

 I thought about what that boy had said and he was right in that this is a good country. Churches exist and aren't persecuted, People aren't beaten or executed for their faith and yes we have plenty of Bibles. But then I also remembered what I've seen and done here. We have Bibles but most people can't read them. The women know the church says they are precious but their boyfriends and husbands tell them they're worthless and beat them. Children are free to go to Sunday school but then their parents prostitute them for money. This country might be free and tolerant but it also has it's problems.

    I haven't given anyone here a new life although I wish I could. I haven't done any miracles and to be honest I sometimes doubt I've even helped a single person but I am trying. Every day I get up, go to work and try to help. Every day I try to show these people how wonderful they are and show them that they are loved by God.

Am I wasting my time?

Am I wasting my time? I don't know but I hope not.

Am I wasting my time? I hope not but I'm going to keep trying my best anyway.

happy ever after...?

Monday night I go to a weekly prayer meeting with the other local Brit missionaries. Plus each month we have our national missionary meeting which involves food, gossip, a lot of teasing and yes some prayer too. It is so good to have time to share with others and be able to ask for help and support. I love you guys; friends, family and random strangers who read this and your support means SO MUCH to me but...sometimes it's good to share with people who are here and share my pain and frustrations.


  The thing is, yes I'm used to having a NO as a response to my prayers but usually it isn't too bad but here it's different. Last week we prayed for a young man with AIDS. His family had thrown him out and he was ill so the local orphanage was caring for him. We prayed and happily he made a miraculous recovery! But this week he went home, his family refused to care for him and today we found out he's died. 6 months ago we prayed for 2 young girls who'd run away from a charity school my friend runs. They were only about 12 tears old and very vulnerable to abuse. We prayed for their safety but they never turned up.


   Each week I pray for these terrible situations; for the sick, abused and lonely. These people desperately need help and it just breaks my heart when there is no happy ever after.

horses, turtle and jellyfish

 My friend Amy has her parents visiting her at the moment. (Ecuador has been full of British parents!) Amy invited me to join her and her parents for a trip away to Purto Lopez and we left early Tuesday morning. On Wednesday Amy and I went horse riding!!! Very scarey (my first time) especially when the man stopped leading my horse and left me alone. How on earth does one brake or steer the thing?! No helmets or anything namby_pamby like that so falling and being seriously injured was quite a concern. We just about managed to survive the experience though ;) Riding along the beach was lovely but my our pleasure was somewhat marred by the agony of riding on a saddle for the first time. Was an interesting afternoon but highly painful! Sitting hasn´t been the same ever since!

  Yesterday we did a day trip to the Isla de Plata (Island of Silver.) Was  a wonderful day. About an hour and a half boat trip to the island.

There we went on a 2 hour walk to see Frigate birds and Blue footed Boobies. Quick pause for all sorts of "I came to Ecuador and saw Boobies& I love boobie! jokes. We saw LOADS of birds and really close up too!

Was fantastic! The island itself is in Winter mode which means no rain. Everything is dry and dead looking. All the trees and bushes are without leaves, the ground is dusty and cracked. The bareness of a European Winter but hot&dry-weird. The Boobies nest on the ground and are very relaxed about visitors. They would nest in the middle of a pathway and we would have to edge nervously past them (they have long and vicious looking beaks!) They´ve just had their nesting season so we saw dozens of little ugly newly hatched chicks. Repulsive but gorgeously cute too. The older chicks were big and covered in thick white fluff making them look like cuddly soft toys (the guides description!)

   After the walk we went back to the boat. A couple on the boat threw their food left overs into the sea. This is disgusting and really annoyed me, I was quietly irritated until I noticed the food attracted turtles! Suddenly we were surrounded by beautiful turtles. My first time of seeing them out in the wild, it was lovely. After this we went snorkelling.

Anyone been snorkelling ? Is it me or did it take you ages to get your breathing right? I know breathing through your mouth sounds easy enough but I swallowed half the ocean before I finally got it right!

   Oh wow, it was stunning!!!! We saw blue&silver fish and loads of Angel type fish. Black with orange stripes and blue tails.

Also some coral. It wasn´t coloured which surprised me but the textures were fascinating. One down side though, there were flocks/herds/crowds of minute jellyfish, each one was the size of a bread crumb but they stung us. Didn´t half hurt, each sting was like being jabbed by a needle. I´ve still got marks on my arms!

 

welcome to my weird world

Had an Ecuador moment on Friday. Decided to treat myself to the cinema and it was boiling hot so I wanted a taxi. However I only had a $20 note and no change. When a taxi pulled up I explained about the note and asked if he had change etc. He said he had, was he sure? Yes he was so in I got and off we went. Why did I fall for it?! Of course, of course when we pull up the driver has no change at all! So I had to go into the shopping centre and ask around with the driver trailing around behind me like a folorn puppy! A Most awkward social situation; I tried light chit chat but he wasn’t interested. In the end I bought my cinema ticket and was given a $5 note (no blooming coins) but he did manage to get me change of 5. He charged me 50 cents extra but by that point I had given up the will to live and just wanted to watch my film!


  Walked back from lunch today with Israel (my host "brother".) Funny the way this country works; because I was with a local male, no guy went near me or made comments! How weird to be a fully grown woman but need a 12 year old boy for protection.

We spent yesterday (Tues) in Santo Domingo where I live. Rather unsurprisingly Julia and my mum were not massively impressed. Santo is my home and I’m fine there but it is not clean, pretty or interesting. Apart from meeting my Ecuador family there was nothing to do. I showed them my chuch (was closed) and the post office (big excitement) and then...that was it. I think mummy and Julia might have been slightly underwhelmed!

  

   Today we came back to Quito and I took mummy and Julia to the airport. They leave in 1 hour. I’m sittng in a missionary house half a mile away. Pouring rain outside so I’m huddled indoors clutching a cup of tea and writing this blog to try and stop myself from remembering that my mum will be gone in an hour.

  

  I want my mum.

Happy hols 2

Hummingbird!

Saturday we got the bus and travelled down to Mindo. If I said Chordeleg is a tiny town then you should see Mindo. It’s a 1 road town, literally! Although only 2 hours away from Quito it’s a whole other world. It’s in the middle of a cloud forrest and is beautiful. Very peaceful; just a river, milliones of trees all covered in flowered vines and beautiful butterflies and hummingbirds flitting around.  We only had 2 days there but we tried to make the most of it.

Sunday we went to the butterfly house which was gorgeous. Julia had a giant butterfly land on her and didn’t wan’t to leaver her but mummy was so covered in mosquito repellent that the butterflies were flying away from her! We saw dozens of vivid hummingbirds “humming” away in the trees. We visited an orchid garden. It was just the garden of a local lady who rushed ut to meet us with a magnifying glass. Bit stunned by this reception but we paid up our $2 and off we went. 

Some of the orchids were amazing, we saw TINY flowers which were about 1-2mm big but perfect in form and detail. 


   After lunch we went on a tour of a chocolate factory (had to be done!) Was extremely interesting and the free samples were scrumptious! In the evening we went to a frog concert! Such an unusual but great idea. A hotel had built a nature reserve and at night they took us a on a tour in the edge of the forrest (in torchlight) and showed us tree frogs and toads. Low lights was spotting a HUGE spider but the highlight was some ubelievable glowing bacteria which made the wood glow in the dark.

  Monday we were up at 5am, yuck, to go bird watching at 6am. I can’t remember everything we saw (26 different species apparently) but I do remember seeing different Toucans!  The colours here are almost unreal-we saw golden, red, green and bright turquoise birds! Makes our British Robin seem quite dull in comparition. In the afternnon we went tubing down the river. Errm do you know what tubing is? It’s big rubber rings tied together, we sat on top of them and then you go down the river on the rubber rings. 

Completely mad! Was sooo much fun though!  Got totally wet of course so had to get back to Mindo in the back of a pick up truck. As I said to my mum; you haven’t had the full South America experience until you’ve ridden in the back of a truck J

Happy Hols

Right lets see..where was I up to in my exciting travels? Ah yes, Thursday in Cuenca. It turns out that there are no tours at all on a Thursday in Cuenca. Whatever you want to visit is impossible! Naturally we ignored this rather weak attitutde and decided that if there was no tours to Chordeleg & Gualaceo on Thurs we’d go on our own so we did. Slight complication with the bus which meant we ended up in a deserted country lane in the middle of nowhere in the rain but...we finally got to Chordeleg! I bet about now you are saying “what on earth is Chordeleg?” Well, it’s a tiny town where the locals make and sell stunning silver filigree jewellery.The pieces they make are totally worth the pouring rain and rather dismal town square! Did we buy any pretty things? Yes we did. Are they for you? No they are not ;)

   After Chordeleg we went to Gualaceo which has a speacialised artisan market. Sadly the tour guides were right on this one and on Thursdays the market is closed. We walked around but without wishing to be mean there was nothing to see or do so we went back “home” and gloated over our lovely, new jewellery.

  Friday we did a city tour of Cuenca.

Blue Czech tiled roofs in Cuenca (tiles bit far from home!)

Dove House-a painter lived here and painted all the walls as decoration!

 Had a lovely guide who showed us all sorts of fascinating places we would never have seen on our own including a Panama hat museum (sounds boring but was great!) and the flower market. 

do I look fab or do I look fab in a hat?

   

Woman weaving a Panama hat   

Cuenca Cathedral

After lunch I  took Julia and my mum to the Banco Central museum. The museum was brilliant! Was quite unique to walk through exhibitions of native indians and look at photos of them in native dress whilst standing next to a local who was wearing the exact same clothes! Fancy going to a museum and seeing your clothes and lifestyle up as an exhibition?

I dragged mummy and Julia off to the big museum to see the shrunken heads. I thought it sounded really cool, they (the mature adults) did not. The truth is we did see the shruken heads and it wasn’t what I expected. They seemed unreal, like toys at first. I went up close and saw a mans’ face, I could see his eyelashes and then it hit me-this was a real person. It seemed wrong to see “people” like that. We then read that the shrunken head ritual was only ever used very rarely and only as part of a sacred justice ceremony. The heads belonged to murderers who had been executed. I looked at the faces and felt uncomfortable to look at killers and yet I also felt pity for them. It was a weird experience.

   Friday night we flew back to Quito and Saturday morning we went to the main Quito cultural museum. Here we saw Inca gold! Was fascinating to see the actual crowns etc that I’d seen in guide books etc. Don’t want to sound like the guide book but the craftmanship was amazing. You should all come to Ecuador and see all these things J You’ll love it honest!