I missed a few key moments in my last two postings.
I´ve gone back and put them in now - so if you´ve already read those posts, apologies, but click back in - they´re in bold so just whizz to those bits (They´re also all the way through, so keep scrolling to the end!)
Enjoy
Thursday 3 July 2008
Wednesday 2 July 2008
Our last week in Posadas...sniff!
And all too soon it´s coming to an end.
Monday. Fin joined me for school - 5a & 6a, learning food. I was a wreck by afternoon after my boozy late Sunday, so had to bail on finishing the mural and had a much needed siesta.
Met the girls later that evening (C passed) for Sex In The City...We´d all squealed, girly-style and did a little excited jumping on the spot and rapid mini-clapping of our hands when we heard the NYC girls had finally come to Posadas town. The original idea had been to dress up and I had suggested champagne, but in the end, all coming from different projects and different times, and with our vastly edited wardrobes out here, it was all we could do to just get there on time (as OZ Kirsten said "I´m only wearing my dyke boots and dyke shirt & jeans that I´ve had on all day"). Although I did woof down a Capirihna in Alex´s bar, on principal (no Cosmos here, sorry!)
I don´t know if it was just the sheer emotion of seeing Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte & Samantha on screen again, or the fact there was a baby thing going on with Charlotte, everything about Carrie´s wedding, the big relationship issues we all identify with, whether I just missed my gal pals back home dreadfully (I so do!), or that I´m just a big softie, but I found myself welling up quite a bit in the dark.
As we came out, Oz K said she found herself really missing her glam girly wardrobe back home. I was shocked, but only at the realisation I hadn´t even *thought* about mine.
Two bits of the film particularly struck a chord for me though...when Carrie gives her assistant a Louis Vuitton handbag, and her assistant goes crazy with joy, Carrie says it was the best money she´d ever spent. But for me, it´s the i-to-i experience that has been the best thing money *I´ve* ever spent (a different type of giving, but still!).
Also when Samatha goes on a shopping spree and fills her boot with tens of designer bags, Chanel, Prada, Vuitton, etc, I did think how much further that kind of money would go out here, and how different a world it is to that of the refugio kids.
Should I ever get a job again (!) it´s going to be hard to go back to splashing the cash in London on champagne, meals, taxis and shopping without that thought niggling in the back of my head.
______
Tuesday with Leanne, revising food with the fill-in sheet. As it was my last day with 5a and 6a, I was literally *mobbed* to sign their English books (which I finally let them keep!) and given a host of really sweet leaving cards made out of pages from their books, and a couple of kids brought me sweets. (I´ll post more pics later, this is a quick blog to get up to date with this week, I don´t want to forget it all)
After lunch at home, I met Fin & Leanne and went to put the finishing touches to our masterpiece.
I had to pick up Millie (my favourite cutie, about 18 months) a lot during this session as she kept crying if I put her down or if anyone else took her (she positively howled and ran away if C came near her on Saturday, we think it´s the beard). With my colouring so different to the other voluntarios but similar to the locals, I think she thought I was her mummy...she kept staring at my face and reaching out for it.
Millie
But finally - tadaaaaa! Here it is.
We all signed it "Bueno Suerte, ¡Besos!, Sapna, Finnuala & Leanne". Then one of the kids pointed out it´s "BuenA Suerte, so I added a little line to the "o" to make it an "a".
Norma would be proud she taught us all so well...ahem!
Michaela and 2 of the boys, loving our work
One thing that really hacked us all off: Lea & Fin realised today that two unused pots of paint (a blue and a white) had gone missing. I´d prescribed more paint than we eventually used, as the original plan had been to do two walls, so they were either going to try and take them back for a refund, or failing that, give them to Veronica for the use of other i-to-i volunteers and projects.
The pots had been there on Saturday when C & I had gone in, and as no one admitted to knowing where they were, we could only come to one conclusion, that José had stolen them for his own personal use. That was 60 pesos worth (or 10 quid) - paint is relatively quite expensive round here.
As we walked out, to the sound of cheering children shouting "Ciao!" through their barred windows, we turned a corner, and I casually - but pointedly - remarked..."*That´s* a nice blue house". The girls stopped to see what was looking at, and we all burst out laughing. The girls said they´d been coming to this project for a motnh and had never noticed this brightly painted house before. It certainly did look shiny and fresh. And exactly the same shade you would have got if you mixed the two pots.
Wonder if José lives here?
Wed: went in, with C this time, to school. I´ve sacked off 5b so had a lie-in and just did 6b, my best class. They were perfectly behaved and all but 2 got "Excelente"s. I´m not sure if they´ve tried extra hard in my last week OR I´m finally making progress. Either way, it feels over far too soon.
Spent the afternoon drawing a picture of Cami as a thank you to Aida & co, I´m doing one of Filipe for our Spanish teacher Norma too, and have done a photo montage for the lovely Veronica.
I´ve also sacked off Salsa with the girls tonight - it´s exhausting doing nice things for people all the time! - so I´m heading off to bed now...it´s only 9.30pm.
Tomorrow is our last supper, with about 24 of us voluntarios and our homestay "mums" and our connected friends like V & her family.
I can´t believe it´s nearly over...
Monday. Fin joined me for school - 5a & 6a, learning food. I was a wreck by afternoon after my boozy late Sunday, so had to bail on finishing the mural and had a much needed siesta.
Met the girls later that evening (C passed) for Sex In The City...We´d all squealed, girly-style and did a little excited jumping on the spot and rapid mini-clapping of our hands when we heard the NYC girls had finally come to Posadas town. The original idea had been to dress up and I had suggested champagne, but in the end, all coming from different projects and different times, and with our vastly edited wardrobes out here, it was all we could do to just get there on time (as OZ Kirsten said "I´m only wearing my dyke boots and dyke shirt & jeans that I´ve had on all day"). Although I did woof down a Capirihna in Alex´s bar, on principal (no Cosmos here, sorry!)
I don´t know if it was just the sheer emotion of seeing Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte & Samantha on screen again, or the fact there was a baby thing going on with Charlotte, everything about Carrie´s wedding, the big relationship issues we all identify with, whether I just missed my gal pals back home dreadfully (I so do!), or that I´m just a big softie, but I found myself welling up quite a bit in the dark.
As we came out, Oz K said she found herself really missing her glam girly wardrobe back home. I was shocked, but only at the realisation I hadn´t even *thought* about mine.
Two bits of the film particularly struck a chord for me though...when Carrie gives her assistant a Louis Vuitton handbag, and her assistant goes crazy with joy, Carrie says it was the best money she´d ever spent. But for me, it´s the i-to-i experience that has been the best thing money *I´ve* ever spent (a different type of giving, but still!).
Also when Samatha goes on a shopping spree and fills her boot with tens of designer bags, Chanel, Prada, Vuitton, etc, I did think how much further that kind of money would go out here, and how different a world it is to that of the refugio kids.
Should I ever get a job again (!) it´s going to be hard to go back to splashing the cash in London on champagne, meals, taxis and shopping without that thought niggling in the back of my head.
______
Tuesday with Leanne, revising food with the fill-in sheet. As it was my last day with 5a and 6a, I was literally *mobbed* to sign their English books (which I finally let them keep!) and given a host of really sweet leaving cards made out of pages from their books, and a couple of kids brought me sweets. (I´ll post more pics later, this is a quick blog to get up to date with this week, I don´t want to forget it all)
After lunch at home, I met Fin & Leanne and went to put the finishing touches to our masterpiece.
I had to pick up Millie (my favourite cutie, about 18 months) a lot during this session as she kept crying if I put her down or if anyone else took her (she positively howled and ran away if C came near her on Saturday, we think it´s the beard). With my colouring so different to the other voluntarios but similar to the locals, I think she thought I was her mummy...she kept staring at my face and reaching out for it.
Millie
But finally - tadaaaaa! Here it is.
We all signed it "Bueno Suerte, ¡Besos!, Sapna, Finnuala & Leanne". Then one of the kids pointed out it´s "BuenA Suerte, so I added a little line to the "o" to make it an "a".
Norma would be proud she taught us all so well...ahem!
Michaela and 2 of the boys, loving our work
One thing that really hacked us all off: Lea & Fin realised today that two unused pots of paint (a blue and a white) had gone missing. I´d prescribed more paint than we eventually used, as the original plan had been to do two walls, so they were either going to try and take them back for a refund, or failing that, give them to Veronica for the use of other i-to-i volunteers and projects.
The pots had been there on Saturday when C & I had gone in, and as no one admitted to knowing where they were, we could only come to one conclusion, that José had stolen them for his own personal use. That was 60 pesos worth (or 10 quid) - paint is relatively quite expensive round here.
As we walked out, to the sound of cheering children shouting "Ciao!" through their barred windows, we turned a corner, and I casually - but pointedly - remarked..."*That´s* a nice blue house". The girls stopped to see what was looking at, and we all burst out laughing. The girls said they´d been coming to this project for a motnh and had never noticed this brightly painted house before. It certainly did look shiny and fresh. And exactly the same shade you would have got if you mixed the two pots.
Wonder if José lives here?
Wed: went in, with C this time, to school. I´ve sacked off 5b so had a lie-in and just did 6b, my best class. They were perfectly behaved and all but 2 got "Excelente"s. I´m not sure if they´ve tried extra hard in my last week OR I´m finally making progress. Either way, it feels over far too soon.
Spent the afternoon drawing a picture of Cami as a thank you to Aida & co, I´m doing one of Filipe for our Spanish teacher Norma too, and have done a photo montage for the lovely Veronica.
I´ve also sacked off Salsa with the girls tonight - it´s exhausting doing nice things for people all the time! - so I´m heading off to bed now...it´s only 9.30pm.
Tomorrow is our last supper, with about 24 of us voluntarios and our homestay "mums" and our connected friends like V & her family.
I can´t believe it´s nearly over...
Sunday 29 June 2008
Putting in the overtime...a "muriel" and new furniture
Thursday pm, after school in the morning: I headed straight down to meet Fin & Leanne and to head to their refugio (Arco Iris de Sueños = Rainbow of Dreams...I´ll call it "Arco" from now on) as the girls had asked me to help them on a wee project they had come up with.
The kids have moved into this new home a few weeks ago, so it´s been in chaos for a while (lots of clothes in boxes etc) but now, mostly unpacked (still a lot of boxes!) the girls thought they´d cheer up the rather drab living/play/dining area (they have some toys and a radio, but no telly and the large room is lit by one solitary bare 40W-ish bulb which I swear makes the room darker when it´s on) with a mural.
So they enlisted the help of Posadas´ newest artist-in-temporary-residence to help. (I´m starting to panic about jobs back home, btw, I emailed the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago - my main contact is on holiday and the other two haven´t replied yet...so anyone want a piece of art comissioning when I get back...?! I´m only semi-joking...)
They knew they wanted a rainbow spanning a wall, but I had carte blanche after that.
Like me, the two girls (already friends from Ireland) managed to fund-raise before they came out, so they´ve been able to do bits and pieces for the kids, take them out, buy them stuff, and so earlier in the week I´d helped them put a shopping list together (colours, brushes, trays, etc).
Arco is a lot less crowded than C´s "Hogar" refugio, with only about 12 kids (compared to his 30-40). It´s also more of a proper house rather than a concrete 3-walled garage, and consequently it´s cleaner, dryer, warmer and more comfortable.
Also, Arco´s a lot calmer and more manageable than Hogar as there are no kids here with learning difficulties, retardation, other birth defects, chronic illnesses or behavioural problems. In fact when I met them all, they all seemed like a really good-looking, happy, healthy and well-adjusted bunch, considering their parents don´t want them. 3 little boys, I discovered, all brothers, have been ditched by their dad whose new wife doesn´t want them around, another set of siblings have a mother but she´s a drug addict so is only allowed to vist them every 2nd Saturday. Tragic.
When I arrived it was deathly quiet: the babies were siesta-ing and the older ones were at school, so I took advantage and cracked on.
The bedrooms did stink of urine when the door opened and a little cherub, Milly (quite the cutest, I´ll post a pic!), about 18 months, wandered in still sleepy from hernap - so I didn´t venture further than the kitchen and this room...!
Fin had taken photos of the two walls to help me plan a scene, which I used to plan the job, but unfortunately they gave no indication of scale when we got there!
We quickly revised our plans to focus on just the end wall, so I sketched it out using a makeshift step-ladder of a chair balanced on a table with a dodgy leg: a rainbow (that was bloody hard keeping that arc steady and reaching that far up - I´m only tiny!) with pot of gold at the end, a cat, butterfly, flowers, sun, clouds, grass and the name "Arco Iris de Sueños" arcing over the rainbow.
By end of day one we´d done all the sky (Leanne & I) whilst Fin did a grand job running round trying to stop the 3 toddlers from creating a mess (one did manage to put both hands in blue emulsion and then in her hair!).
Safe to say, the kids seem to love it already and are very excited about it all.
We had a quick self-congratulatory drink at Vitrage in town, and I headed home for dinner as Kirsten was coming round for Aida´s famous home-made sausages. I´ve already blogged about that in my last post. So I´m out of synch. Apologies!
An early one, I was pooped after all the DIY!
______
Friday: 4a and 4b with US Kristen - cute classes, they are my littlest ones (8-9), and no trouble at all, but what with having so many lessons cancelled on a Friday due to fiestas, holidays, fumigation etc this was only the 3rd time I´d had them in 7 weeks!
So I adapted my revision sheets as they´d learnt Los Animales a month ago, to practice their comprehension and listening skills as I called the animals out to my flash cards.
Friday PM: More mural painting - with Fin, Lea and US Kristen. Touchingly, a lady came to take away two of kids tonight (adopting, not kidnapping them) whilst I was painting, Florencia and Briaham, siblings, so it is good to know there is hope for some of these kids, at least.
We got most of the colours done and basic shapes filled in. Just got to do blue, indigo, violet and red of the rainbow plus the detail.
Friday night, stayed in, pooped again. This do-gooding and overtime is doing me in! C pointed out I worked longer hours there, but I guess it´s emotionally draining too, plus it´s not stuff I´m doing on auto-pilot. Anyway, it was torrential rain outside. Cuddled up and watched Harry Potter on TV. Never been into that fantasy stuff, but I was pleasantly surprised.
That reminds me: OZ Kirsten´s friend Laura, apparently taught herself English (nigh on perfectly) through Harry Potter audio and actual books. She loved that wizard so much, he inspired her to learn so she could enjoy the books in their native language. Dedication or what?!
________
Saturday am: V & Marcelo took C&I to order furniture for the Hogar kids. Their decrepid dining table has split in two and needs to be precariously re-assembled for every meal. They also don´t have enough seating for them all.
We did have to go back to Hogar to measure up, so I took the opportunity of taking a cute pic of C & the gorgeous Augustin. I´ll also post a couple of pics C took on other days (those are Fin´s glasses he has on!), because you can never have enough Augustin-love. We´re going to miss him so much.
So we decided that some of the money you helped raise will buy 2 x 2m wooden benches (chairs get tend to thrown about by Danny & Maria - one hit C the other day; benches, I reasoned to him, would be impossible to chuck) and 2 x 2m table tops. A
4m one would be too heavy to lift - they assemble the table in the main room daily, as it is also where they play "indoors" (there are only 3 walls to this concrete, grey room, which means that it is never closed from the elements. On the plus side, it means the stench of urine gets dissipated as it´s always airy.)
After lunch with the girls, I went with them to Arco for Mural Part 3. C helped by largely keeping the toddlers out of my paint (and in a quieter moment, painting the flowers in pink - he´s so metro!) whilst the girls - Fin, US Kristen & Leanne took the kids (Michaela, 6, and all the boys, including cutie Tatui, 3) to see The Incredible Hulk (dubbed into Spanish, of course - they didn´t understand much but the kids loved it!), complete with popcorn and fizz - a trip they´d been looking forward to for days, and a memory they´ll no doubt treasure for a very long time.
Carolina, 13, the oldest "in-mate" (as C calls them!) didn´t get to go. Apparently, Leanne had discovered items of make-up missing from her bag, and randomly, the next day, C was all dolled up with lip-gloss, glittery eye-shadow, mascara etc. Fin´s 200 quid prescription sunglasses also went missing after C tried them on. Subsequently, Leanne told me a silver bracelet her gran gave her for her 21st was half-inched, plus they´ve found games they bought for the kids stashed under C´s mattress.
Stealing from volunteers is pretty low, especially as, as Leanna said, if she´d *asked* for those bits of make-up she could have had them, no problem. They didn´t tell the people who "run" Arco though, as the man (who disgusted them on day one when he proudly showed off his new top-of-the-range mobile) regularly beats the children.
Mind you, I half-joked, seeing as he and his missus (I presume), Alicia, stole all the fruit that Fin & Lea bought for the kids, if he *did* find out he´d probably promote Carolina to staff.
That man had also had the gall to ask the girls for his 2 peso bus fare - and he´s a cabbie! They did not give him any money, of course. They have however spent more of their fundraising money on products for the kids, soap, washing up liquid, nappies, wipes, loo roll...all necessary stuff that was not there before.
In fact, Fin told me, every morning they always find the babies wandering round in full-to-bursting nappies and only they seem to change them...the babies have chronic skin infections with huge infected sores as a result. We all wonder what happens when there are no volunteers: at night, at weekends, on the weeks or months where no-one has booked that project.
It´s even worse at Hogar, where Danny & Walter, retarded and still in nappies at 9 and 11, are left to wander round literally until, as they other day, C watched horrified as Walter, evidently with a badly upset tummy, pulled his own overloaded nappy off in the playground and it flumped heavily onto the ground, the contents going *everywhere*. Oz Kirsten, on a visit to C´s project, also told us she saw Danny with the sludgy contents of his nappy running down his legs and into his *shoes*. They eventually changed him and put him back into his soiled trousers as there were no clean ones. His shoes weren´t even taken off during this procedure.
Seeing the kind of dishonestly, cruelty, corruption, neglect that goes on, these first-hand accounts, I now fully understand why i-to-i insist on not giving any money directly to the projects. Volunteers´ time, effort, love and cuddles are what the kids really are lacking, and any money we raise we use to make their lot more comfortable - either for the time we are there (the baby products, toys, paper, pens, trips out), or more permanently as with the furniture and mural.
It makes me wonder, of the several charity direct debits I have coming out of my account, of the various sponsored silences, fasts, runs, bike rides, challenges and fund raisers you and I´ve done over our lives, how much of that actually makes a difference at the destination it was intended for. It´s certainly a commodity that´s rarer than money in London, but I´m going to see if I can give more *time* to projects back home when I get back.
Anyway, I digress wildly. I pushed mine and C´s hoodies firmly into my bag and threw it to the top of a tall fridge/freezer so young sticky-fingers couldn´t help herself surreptiously whilst I got to work.
When the girls returned, they and the kids, thrilled, took lots of photos of progress and we whacked the radio on and had a bit of an impromptu dance with the kids (no doubt high on sugar, post-Hulk!). US Kristen´s camera suddenly malfunctioned, and she was really upset as it was her entire trip, gone (BACK UP, girl! I´m so paranoid, I also made C buy a USB so we doubly back up, weekly).
Turns out later, when she deleted a (great) pic of C, they all came back. His pic had literally broken the camera! Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa...!
Walking back home with C, he asked me what was wrong and why I looked sad. "Not sad, just pensive" I replied. When he pushed me a little, I told him how I was thinking how nice it is to nice things for others, how my media job never gave me this feeling, how I´m gonna miss this place and everyone, how I couldn´t believe what great friends we´d made in such a short space of time, and how if I rented my pad out, I could stay here indefinitely, but hat he´d need to get a job to pay his way. He smiled and said Alex had offered him a job in his new bar/restaurant opening on the Costanera.
Obviously it´s a pipe dream right now, but I love my life here, I´m feeling really emotional about leaving it. What´s happened to me?!!? I wonder how weird London life is going to be.
Sat night: El Fogon bar, where US Kristen, Fin, C& I met, and we sat, strangley, on white pleather sofas placed on the pavement (we were, like, 2 inches from the gutter) and drunk scarily HUGE cocktails of 750ml. We watched the world totter by, complete with crazy leggings, impossibly tight jeans and more camels´ toes than the Sahara desert. What is it with the wearing stuff too tight!?!?
Then onto Sampaka, where our great chums Mario and Carlos greeted us with hugs and kisses. Sweetly, they´ve asked for some pics off my camera of me & C with the boys, and said they are going to blow them up for the bar. We swapped email addresses, more hugs, and sincerely said we were going to miss each other.
_________
Sunday: Got up late after our 4am finish the night before and met for a Chinese lunch with the girls (Fin, Le, OZK & USK) and US Kristen´s i-to-i *mom*, Inés. She´s completely "loca", but great fun...although ravenous before we got there, I strangely couldn´t eat much, although I put this down to having a Chinese all-you-can-eat for breakfast. That or the blood sausgae they offered our table (all declined). With drinks, it came to a princely 4 quid each.
Sunday night was dinner with local big-shot, lawyer and football manager Cesar and the beautiful Mariana (see pic...doesn´t she look like Penny Cruz!?!). They didn´t pick us up till 10.15 (Cesar is always grandly late) and then we didn´t eat until 12.30, by which time we´d had a bottle of wine already, so we ordered another.
At dinner, Mariana asked what we really thought of her little town. Had it met up to our expectations? I told her I had come with an open mind, that I´d had no idea what the scale was for a town with 300,000 inhabitants (smaller than I thought! But then Glasto gets about 170,000 doesn´t it, now I´m thinking about it as I type...) and therefore Posadas had no preconceptions to live up to. Then, whilst trying not to well-up too much, I told her that we´d grown to love Posadas and its people and that we were going to miss everyone sooo much. C nodded a quiet assent. I knew he was too choked to speak. Probably thinking of Augustin, especially, as I was.
Cesar generously picked up the whole tab of this gorgeous meal (probably the tastiest I´d had in Posadas!) in this beautiful tiny restaurant tucked away off the Costanera and took us home, way too late, but not before unintentionally pulling the huge (8 foot?) restaurant door off it´s hinges as we left!
C had sensibly stuck to water. I, on the other hand (although I would live to regret this the next day) thought "Sod it, I´m in my last week in Posadas now..."
Sadly.
The kids have moved into this new home a few weeks ago, so it´s been in chaos for a while (lots of clothes in boxes etc) but now, mostly unpacked (still a lot of boxes!) the girls thought they´d cheer up the rather drab living/play/dining area (they have some toys and a radio, but no telly and the large room is lit by one solitary bare 40W-ish bulb which I swear makes the room darker when it´s on) with a mural.
So they enlisted the help of Posadas´ newest artist-in-temporary-residence to help. (I´m starting to panic about jobs back home, btw, I emailed the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago - my main contact is on holiday and the other two haven´t replied yet...so anyone want a piece of art comissioning when I get back...?! I´m only semi-joking...)
They knew they wanted a rainbow spanning a wall, but I had carte blanche after that.
Like me, the two girls (already friends from Ireland) managed to fund-raise before they came out, so they´ve been able to do bits and pieces for the kids, take them out, buy them stuff, and so earlier in the week I´d helped them put a shopping list together (colours, brushes, trays, etc).
Arco is a lot less crowded than C´s "Hogar" refugio, with only about 12 kids (compared to his 30-40). It´s also more of a proper house rather than a concrete 3-walled garage, and consequently it´s cleaner, dryer, warmer and more comfortable.
Also, Arco´s a lot calmer and more manageable than Hogar as there are no kids here with learning difficulties, retardation, other birth defects, chronic illnesses or behavioural problems. In fact when I met them all, they all seemed like a really good-looking, happy, healthy and well-adjusted bunch, considering their parents don´t want them. 3 little boys, I discovered, all brothers, have been ditched by their dad whose new wife doesn´t want them around, another set of siblings have a mother but she´s a drug addict so is only allowed to vist them every 2nd Saturday. Tragic.
When I arrived it was deathly quiet: the babies were siesta-ing and the older ones were at school, so I took advantage and cracked on.
The bedrooms did stink of urine when the door opened and a little cherub, Milly (quite the cutest, I´ll post a pic!), about 18 months, wandered in still sleepy from hernap - so I didn´t venture further than the kitchen and this room...!
Fin had taken photos of the two walls to help me plan a scene, which I used to plan the job, but unfortunately they gave no indication of scale when we got there!
We quickly revised our plans to focus on just the end wall, so I sketched it out using a makeshift step-ladder of a chair balanced on a table with a dodgy leg: a rainbow (that was bloody hard keeping that arc steady and reaching that far up - I´m only tiny!) with pot of gold at the end, a cat, butterfly, flowers, sun, clouds, grass and the name "Arco Iris de Sueños" arcing over the rainbow.
By end of day one we´d done all the sky (Leanne & I) whilst Fin did a grand job running round trying to stop the 3 toddlers from creating a mess (one did manage to put both hands in blue emulsion and then in her hair!).
Safe to say, the kids seem to love it already and are very excited about it all.
We had a quick self-congratulatory drink at Vitrage in town, and I headed home for dinner as Kirsten was coming round for Aida´s famous home-made sausages. I´ve already blogged about that in my last post. So I´m out of synch. Apologies!
An early one, I was pooped after all the DIY!
______
Friday: 4a and 4b with US Kristen - cute classes, they are my littlest ones (8-9), and no trouble at all, but what with having so many lessons cancelled on a Friday due to fiestas, holidays, fumigation etc this was only the 3rd time I´d had them in 7 weeks!
So I adapted my revision sheets as they´d learnt Los Animales a month ago, to practice their comprehension and listening skills as I called the animals out to my flash cards.
Friday PM: More mural painting - with Fin, Lea and US Kristen. Touchingly, a lady came to take away two of kids tonight (adopting, not kidnapping them) whilst I was painting, Florencia and Briaham, siblings, so it is good to know there is hope for some of these kids, at least.
We got most of the colours done and basic shapes filled in. Just got to do blue, indigo, violet and red of the rainbow plus the detail.
Friday night, stayed in, pooped again. This do-gooding and overtime is doing me in! C pointed out I worked longer hours there, but I guess it´s emotionally draining too, plus it´s not stuff I´m doing on auto-pilot. Anyway, it was torrential rain outside. Cuddled up and watched Harry Potter on TV. Never been into that fantasy stuff, but I was pleasantly surprised.
That reminds me: OZ Kirsten´s friend Laura, apparently taught herself English (nigh on perfectly) through Harry Potter audio and actual books. She loved that wizard so much, he inspired her to learn so she could enjoy the books in their native language. Dedication or what?!
________
Saturday am: V & Marcelo took C&I to order furniture for the Hogar kids. Their decrepid dining table has split in two and needs to be precariously re-assembled for every meal. They also don´t have enough seating for them all.
We did have to go back to Hogar to measure up, so I took the opportunity of taking a cute pic of C & the gorgeous Augustin. I´ll also post a couple of pics C took on other days (those are Fin´s glasses he has on!), because you can never have enough Augustin-love. We´re going to miss him so much.
So we decided that some of the money you helped raise will buy 2 x 2m wooden benches (chairs get tend to thrown about by Danny & Maria - one hit C the other day; benches, I reasoned to him, would be impossible to chuck) and 2 x 2m table tops. A
4m one would be too heavy to lift - they assemble the table in the main room daily, as it is also where they play "indoors" (there are only 3 walls to this concrete, grey room, which means that it is never closed from the elements. On the plus side, it means the stench of urine gets dissipated as it´s always airy.)
After lunch with the girls, I went with them to Arco for Mural Part 3. C helped by largely keeping the toddlers out of my paint (and in a quieter moment, painting the flowers in pink - he´s so metro!) whilst the girls - Fin, US Kristen & Leanne took the kids (Michaela, 6, and all the boys, including cutie Tatui, 3) to see The Incredible Hulk (dubbed into Spanish, of course - they didn´t understand much but the kids loved it!), complete with popcorn and fizz - a trip they´d been looking forward to for days, and a memory they´ll no doubt treasure for a very long time.
Carolina, 13, the oldest "in-mate" (as C calls them!) didn´t get to go. Apparently, Leanne had discovered items of make-up missing from her bag, and randomly, the next day, C was all dolled up with lip-gloss, glittery eye-shadow, mascara etc. Fin´s 200 quid prescription sunglasses also went missing after C tried them on. Subsequently, Leanne told me a silver bracelet her gran gave her for her 21st was half-inched, plus they´ve found games they bought for the kids stashed under C´s mattress.
Stealing from volunteers is pretty low, especially as, as Leanna said, if she´d *asked* for those bits of make-up she could have had them, no problem. They didn´t tell the people who "run" Arco though, as the man (who disgusted them on day one when he proudly showed off his new top-of-the-range mobile) regularly beats the children.
Mind you, I half-joked, seeing as he and his missus (I presume), Alicia, stole all the fruit that Fin & Lea bought for the kids, if he *did* find out he´d probably promote Carolina to staff.
That man had also had the gall to ask the girls for his 2 peso bus fare - and he´s a cabbie! They did not give him any money, of course. They have however spent more of their fundraising money on products for the kids, soap, washing up liquid, nappies, wipes, loo roll...all necessary stuff that was not there before.
In fact, Fin told me, every morning they always find the babies wandering round in full-to-bursting nappies and only they seem to change them...the babies have chronic skin infections with huge infected sores as a result. We all wonder what happens when there are no volunteers: at night, at weekends, on the weeks or months where no-one has booked that project.
It´s even worse at Hogar, where Danny & Walter, retarded and still in nappies at 9 and 11, are left to wander round literally until, as they other day, C watched horrified as Walter, evidently with a badly upset tummy, pulled his own overloaded nappy off in the playground and it flumped heavily onto the ground, the contents going *everywhere*. Oz Kirsten, on a visit to C´s project, also told us she saw Danny with the sludgy contents of his nappy running down his legs and into his *shoes*. They eventually changed him and put him back into his soiled trousers as there were no clean ones. His shoes weren´t even taken off during this procedure.
Seeing the kind of dishonestly, cruelty, corruption, neglect that goes on, these first-hand accounts, I now fully understand why i-to-i insist on not giving any money directly to the projects. Volunteers´ time, effort, love and cuddles are what the kids really are lacking, and any money we raise we use to make their lot more comfortable - either for the time we are there (the baby products, toys, paper, pens, trips out), or more permanently as with the furniture and mural.
It makes me wonder, of the several charity direct debits I have coming out of my account, of the various sponsored silences, fasts, runs, bike rides, challenges and fund raisers you and I´ve done over our lives, how much of that actually makes a difference at the destination it was intended for. It´s certainly a commodity that´s rarer than money in London, but I´m going to see if I can give more *time* to projects back home when I get back.
Anyway, I digress wildly. I pushed mine and C´s hoodies firmly into my bag and threw it to the top of a tall fridge/freezer so young sticky-fingers couldn´t help herself surreptiously whilst I got to work.
When the girls returned, they and the kids, thrilled, took lots of photos of progress and we whacked the radio on and had a bit of an impromptu dance with the kids (no doubt high on sugar, post-Hulk!). US Kristen´s camera suddenly malfunctioned, and she was really upset as it was her entire trip, gone (BACK UP, girl! I´m so paranoid, I also made C buy a USB so we doubly back up, weekly).
Turns out later, when she deleted a (great) pic of C, they all came back. His pic had literally broken the camera! Ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaa...!
Walking back home with C, he asked me what was wrong and why I looked sad. "Not sad, just pensive" I replied. When he pushed me a little, I told him how I was thinking how nice it is to nice things for others, how my media job never gave me this feeling, how I´m gonna miss this place and everyone, how I couldn´t believe what great friends we´d made in such a short space of time, and how if I rented my pad out, I could stay here indefinitely, but hat he´d need to get a job to pay his way. He smiled and said Alex had offered him a job in his new bar/restaurant opening on the Costanera.
Obviously it´s a pipe dream right now, but I love my life here, I´m feeling really emotional about leaving it. What´s happened to me?!!? I wonder how weird London life is going to be.
Sat night: El Fogon bar, where US Kristen, Fin, C& I met, and we sat, strangley, on white pleather sofas placed on the pavement (we were, like, 2 inches from the gutter) and drunk scarily HUGE cocktails of 750ml. We watched the world totter by, complete with crazy leggings, impossibly tight jeans and more camels´ toes than the Sahara desert. What is it with the wearing stuff too tight!?!?
Then onto Sampaka, where our great chums Mario and Carlos greeted us with hugs and kisses. Sweetly, they´ve asked for some pics off my camera of me & C with the boys, and said they are going to blow them up for the bar. We swapped email addresses, more hugs, and sincerely said we were going to miss each other.
_________
Sunday: Got up late after our 4am finish the night before and met for a Chinese lunch with the girls (Fin, Le, OZK & USK) and US Kristen´s i-to-i *mom*, Inés. She´s completely "loca", but great fun...although ravenous before we got there, I strangely couldn´t eat much, although I put this down to having a Chinese all-you-can-eat for breakfast. That or the blood sausgae they offered our table (all declined). With drinks, it came to a princely 4 quid each.
Sunday night was dinner with local big-shot, lawyer and football manager Cesar and the beautiful Mariana (see pic...doesn´t she look like Penny Cruz!?!). They didn´t pick us up till 10.15 (Cesar is always grandly late) and then we didn´t eat until 12.30, by which time we´d had a bottle of wine already, so we ordered another.
At dinner, Mariana asked what we really thought of her little town. Had it met up to our expectations? I told her I had come with an open mind, that I´d had no idea what the scale was for a town with 300,000 inhabitants (smaller than I thought! But then Glasto gets about 170,000 doesn´t it, now I´m thinking about it as I type...) and therefore Posadas had no preconceptions to live up to. Then, whilst trying not to well-up too much, I told her that we´d grown to love Posadas and its people and that we were going to miss everyone sooo much. C nodded a quiet assent. I knew he was too choked to speak. Probably thinking of Augustin, especially, as I was.
Cesar generously picked up the whole tab of this gorgeous meal (probably the tastiest I´d had in Posadas!) in this beautiful tiny restaurant tucked away off the Costanera and took us home, way too late, but not before unintentionally pulling the huge (8 foot?) restaurant door off it´s hinges as we left!
C had sensibly stuck to water. I, on the other hand (although I would live to regret this the next day) thought "Sod it, I´m in my last week in Posadas now..."
Sadly.
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