Carneval

The last four days have been full of water and foam splashing around in all directions.  This is Carneval Santo Domingo, Ecuador style.  My daughters seem to be permanently soaked and covered in foam.  They are a menance with the foam cans.  The rivers are full to over flowing with people enjoying water fights.  We cannot get out along our road because of the queues of traffic coming out our way to the rivers.  It is happy mayhem. 

The festival originates in pagan festivals to pagan gods, but was renamed Carneval in the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, meaning "No more meat".  It was a time to enjoy all excesses before the lent fast.  Today Carneval is a time for families to have fun.  Tomorrow the Catholics will celebrate Ash Wednesday then life will continue as usual. 

In other parts of Ecuador there are brightly  coloured parades with traditional dancing, flowers and fruit displays.  Many people head to  the beaches to play in the sea.  Families gather buckets and hose pipes and stand outside their houses spraying the passing cars with water.  Water balloons may catch you unawares. 

Ecuadoreans are amazed when I tell them we do not celebrate Carneval in Britain, until they think a little and imagine everything covered in snow.  Water fights in the cold would not work so well.  In the interests of cultural exchange I am contemplating cooking the extended family some pancakes for tea.  (They are at present all getting wet in the river.)  I wonder what they will make of crepes a la lemon and sugar.  I fear it may seem a little tame in the face of the local exuberance.    

Just a Typical Morning

It was a typical morning in Santo Domingo.  I drove to the car park without incident and walked to the Notary Office.  This was now my third attempt to obtain a document for my daughters.  The first time they took copies of their ID cards.  The second time they said they needed their birth certificates (plainly ridiculous as the ID cards are produced from the birth certificates).  This  time they wanted a certificate I do not owe the country money.  In the end I managed to obtain the document I needed.  

Next job was doing a test about dengue.  This is obligatory this year in the long process of renewing the annual health centre permit.  I did the test but will have to go back  another day to get the result as there was no one around qualified to mark a multiple choice test (!!)

The queue in the bank was out the door, but thankfully moved fairly quickly, so I thought I was still going to get home in good time for lunch, when I discovered a car had parked in the car park blocking me and the journalist next to me in.  We had to sit and wait until the owner returned.  There was simply no way out until then, no matter how much we protested to the car park attendent.  

Now running late, I was none the less driving carefully through the busy town traffic when I heard a sickening thud next to me.  I was horrified to see the yellow taxi in the lane next to me had knocked down a middle aged woman.  As the traffic ground to a halt the woman stood up apparantly unharmed and stumbled off into the crowds.  As I glimpsed her face and manner it was obviously she had learning difficulties.  Shaken, but relieved no harm seemed to have been done I continued home, driving past the local schizophrenic man who lurched towards me wildly gesticulating to thin air.  

Our farm seemed pleasantly calm after the chaotic morning, despite the gobbling turkey and clucking chickens.  That´s Santo Domingo for you!

The Wonders of Work.

Maria came to see me in the health centre suffering from gastritis and helicobacter infection.  She needed to take a course of medicine three times a day for a week. I sent her away with the medication and was surprised when she came back a week later not much better. 

"Well, to be honest with you Doctor, you told me to take the medicines after meals.  When I have had something to eat I have taken the medicine, but often I do not have any food to eat, so then I did not take the medicine." 

I was just treating a symptom.  The real problem was lack of food, which in turn was due to a lack of work. 

Here in Ecuador there are still many people who if they do not work, will not eat.  People around us work in the fields cultivating bananas, manioc and maize.  Some days they have work.  Some days they do not.  If  they are fully employed they may earn $65 a week.  Many have six children or more to buy food for.  I doo not know how they make the moeny stretch to buy their rice, eggs and tuna fish.  I know they do not have any money left to buy clothes.  People never go on holiday in their lifetime.  People work every  day they can.  Even those in full time employment have only 2 weeks annual leave and many choose to work those as well. 

If I am honest I have been known to moan about having to go to work on a Monday morning.  Sometimes I have taken having a job and an income for granted, or viewed work as a necessary evil: something to be endured so that holidays and weekends can be enjoyed.  Meeting women like Maria has changed that.   

Maria is a single mother of six children.  She can only find work washing clothes which pays very badly.  She relies on the benevolence of her neighbours to survive.  She would love to have a full time, permanent job: it is an impossible dream. She does not have the education to secure one.  Every job that comes her way is a precious gift, which means there will be food on the table that night for her children.

I am so thankful to have work: work I love and enjoy.  Work which means I can help others as I gain an income to raise my children.  It is a gift from God.

 

Home Education

A few months ago I wrote about my fears and reasons for starting to home educate my girls.  Now, six months down the line I am so glad I am doing it: most of all because I now have the time to teach them the things they want to know.  What better way to inspire a lifelong curiosity and thirst for learning than that? 

My eyes have been opened to the opportunities for education that present themselves every day.  I am now alert and ready to investigate the answers with them.  Take Wednesday for example.  We were in town and I had to get a permit from the Fire Station for the health centre.  Before, I would have dreaded taking the girls along to do this waiting-in-a-queue job.  The girls would have been wriggling and climbing up the walls of the Fire Station.  Not this time.  This time we looked at the ambulance that was parked in the entrance while we waited.  I took the chance to explain what the Firemen do and the kind of emergencies they attend.  Once I had the permit I needed we had a peek through the railings at the back and spotted the bunk beds and uniforms hanging up and talked about there being Firemen on duty day and night.  We found the phone number we would have to dial if there were a fire and examined the fire extinguishers on display in the shop.  The girls were fascinated. 

Next my five year old asked why there were so many posters of men and women around the town.  I spent the twenty minute walk to ballet class explaining about the upcoming Mayor elections in Santo Domingo.  Not entirely sure they had understood we then had a Barbie Mayor election the next day during “homeschool”.  They both made posters for their candidates (design and writing), made speeches about what they were going to do for Barbie town, (English and Spanish vocab), made voting papers, all the Barbies voted and then we counted the votes up to see who had won (maths).  My five year old then built a fabulous play park with her Barbie who was voted as Mayor, and my three year old an orphanage (she was deputy Mayor).  We all loved it and learned loads. 

Today we learnt while making chocolates in molds.  We read instructions, weighed out ingredients, counted down from thirty with the microwave a few times and talked about melting and solidifying.  It is brilliant.  And best of all they have plenty of time left over to simply play with the village children.  Time they did not have when attending school. 

I wonder what the next topic will be?        

Happiness is....

I wrote my first blog over a year and a half ago sitting in the telephone company office, waiting to request a landline for the umpteenth time. 

A week ago we had our landline installed at last, and two days ago the internet was connected. 

I have lost count how many contracts we signed, how many trips to the telephone office we made, how many times they anulled our petition.  But it was worth persisting in the end. 

To start with they said there was a line available, but every time the technician went to connect it he said it was a damaged number and would not work. 

Then they admitted there were no functioning numbers available. We had to wait until they fixed one.  

A month ago Vladimir spotted workmen up the pole near our house.  He went to chat to them and found out they were at last fixing the problem.  We immediately requested a phone line again.  This time the technician came but took one look at the river he had to take the line across to our house and scarpered, cancelling our request AGAIN.  Such is Ecuadorian efficiency and work-ethic.  

Vladimir went to the boss.  He promised to come and connect the line himself... but of course he did not.  Vladimr went to see him again and he did send his workmen that very day.  This time they braved the river and did their job and installed the phone.  I danced around the living room! 

Yesterday we experienced what having the internet connection at home means to us, living as we do, thousands of miles away from my family in the UK. 

From the comfort of our living room we dialled my sister on skype.  My girls were bouncing with excitement at the prospect of seeing their baby cousin.  To our delight both my sisters were there and little Sebastian babbled delightfully to my girls.  Then my sister in law came to join the gathering with her two little ones.  It was such a wonderful scene;  My niece reading her book, my nephew smiling away, my other nephew chatting insessantly... and we could join in. 

Happiness is skype.  

Christmas in Ecuador

The tradition here is to give bags of biscuits and sweets to the children.  Villages organise events and ask members of the local community to donate the bags of sweets.  These are then given out to the children, much to their delight. 

We raised funds to give brightly coloured draw-string bags to the local school children this year.  In each one we put an activity book for them to colour.  We travelled to all 7 of the local schools to give the bags to the 300 children.  All of the schools are at the end of unmade roads.  One was beyond a bridge that was broken, so we had to finish the trip on foot in the mud.  The children were absolutely delighted with the beautiful gifts and are making good use of them. 

The sponsored children gathered for their gifts on the 23rd December.  They were over the moon with the pretty Barbies, lovely lego and swish T-shirts their bags contained.  These are the only gifts these children receive this Christmas, so they are very special to them.

Families that can afford it gather together on the night of the 24th December to have a meal together and exchange gifts.  Vladimir´s family came to our house on the 24th for an evening meal and to give their granddaughters their dolls. 

The 25th is a bank holiday here, and many people will head in to town to buy gifts on Christmas day itself.

The 26th people are back at work... now waiting for the New Year celebrations to begin. 

Life and Death

A short while ago I was asked to visit a man in his 60s dying of cancer.  He had been successfully treated for his disease some 8 years ago, but in the past few weeks the disease had reared its ugly head with force and his final decline had been rapid. 

Just a few weeks before Don Juan had been to the health centre his usual gentle self, still full of life and love for his 8 daughters.  Now he was prostrate in bed, struggling to breathe.  His wife hovered by his side, and his daughters were attentive to his every need.

As we fixed up the oxygen concentrator to ease his suffering, I knew he did  not have much time left in this world.  I knew his daughters well.  The twenty year old who had recently graduated from Secondary school through the sewing project and now with a baby boy of her own.  The mother of two cute little boys who always came to the health centre when under the weather.  The granddaughter who had also graduated from Secondary school recently through the sewing project who was training to be a police woman.  They all spoke of him as an excellent father.

"I can only say he has been a gentle, good father."  One of them confided.  "He always did all he could to help us.  We are going to miss him terribly."

Witnessing death always make me stop and wonder and worship.  It makes me pause and reflect on time gone and yet to come.

And then the whirl of  life continues; my little girls who want to paint and jump on a trampoline, and Don Juan´s youngest daughter who wanted to be able to continue to go to school. 

When I told 14 year old Lorena I had a sponsor who would help her continue to go to school her grief etched face broke into a beautiful smile.  "You are an angel."  She exclaimed.  Hope began to fill the future with happiness once more.