Back in good old Scotland ...

Finally after getting thrown back into my Scottish life immediately when I stepped of the plane I find time to write about the weird thing about coming back and the plans we set up in Ecuador for working together.
Yes I am back and I got flooded with Scottish life, responsibilities and a huge amount of 3rd year uni work. I had no time to actually really reflect on what has just been happening in the last three months of my life. But on the plane already I was thinking about very daily issues like: where do I actually put the money in again when I step on a bus. When I went for dinner at my friend's house the night after I arrived I automatically leaned forward to kiss them on the cheek, but...I got the hint from their suprised look on their face just second before my mouth actually reached their cheek bones. This turned out not to be the last awkward situation I was supposed to land in. In the morning I went to the bank and I felt so stressed by all these very busy and nice looking people around me that were in a rush and did not seem to notice me, that I felt so tight together without being able to breath and the pressure of the tears coming up in my eyes.
It is not exactly that I want to go back but despite my friends that really tried to make me feel welcome at home, I did not feel understood. But then I met a friend who did something similar this summer. I had no idea what was happening to me but I just burst out in tears.
So that's about it, coming back. I think I am still not over it and I think I really start to miss my Ecuadorian family.

So, now about the project:
Margarita, Juan and I agreed that it would be a great help for them if I could look for enthusiastic an in a particular art skilled people that would like to work for Mano Amiga for a couple of months. They would need people with music, theatre, handicrafts, builders, plummers, agricultural knowledge, social work, psycholigical etc. skills. If you maybe have those on offer, know someone that would love to do something like that, just refer them to this site and me and we can have a chat about it. There are also a lot of other things on the go and needed and if you have any questions or ideas, please feel free to email me.
I promise, when I get my feet back on the ground I will start to update the blog and will give you some more information of what is going on over here and over there.
In the meanwhile I thank you for supporting us and hope you keep in touch. I am so grateful you have been here all the time.

Saying Adios… one of the hardest that I have ever done…

And yes, that is it already: 3months that flew by like nothing. 3 months full of challenges, sweat, smiles and laughter, tears and discussions and finally a huge circle of friends and two more mums and dads in Ecuador. Those 3 months were a rollercoaster, like life in general. But they were full of colors and not just black and white. Another time it was confirmed that life is not as easy as black and white, there are much more colors to it.
Last week Wednesday before I headed off to a couple of days nature, I was received at the Centre to say Goodbye. Finally we decided that it might be just a “See you soon”. And Juan is quite sure that I am just taking two years holidays to study and to return after that. For me it was a very hard moment and I tried to wipe my tears away. They all were so lovely and for one of the first times really honest, which was the biggest present to me. What really impressed me was that they wrote little notes and thanked me for the following: Thanks for always encouraging us in our capacities and always giving us the confidence in our own skills and abilities. Still when I think about this, I feel so touched and surprised. For me it is an amazing thing to leave them with… Thank you!
For them I prepared a presentation with the typical me jokes about our time together, with some photos to reflect on what we have done together and what I enjoyed with them most. I think everyone had a big smile on their face and a little tear in his/her eye at the end of it.

When I prepared the two folders as a description of my work in those three months last week, I finally realized what we have done together and that it is actually quite a lot and useful to them. While one is working, one is stuffed with experiences and impressions that it is difficult to see the whole picture sometimes. Today I see the whole picture and feel freer to go.

Everyone is asking me when I will be back and if I come back next year and I always have to say that I have no idea. I would like to come back but there are a lot of other things out there I like to learn and live. I absolutely got to appreciate the culture, nature, people and their way of thinking and being. I really fell in love with Ecuador and the diversity that one can find here. It is an absolutely amazing country that is incredibly tiny for all the things it offers.

I am so glad I climbed this mountain and I pushed myself with support of all of you so far although I had some fear…
But if a plant does not grow towards the light and always turn its head above, it would probably never flourish…

Thank you all so much for your support over the last year and especially the last months, support in being friends, writing encouraging emails when I hit a low, reading the Blog, looking at the pictures, giving advice and ideas and supporting financially some of the projects we did over here. Your help is hugely appreciated…
I am looking forward to see you all soon.

Muchísimas Gracias

Sabine

Are we not all one big family?

This week I have been in Chone. Chone is in the coast and the climate here is very hot for someone who is used to Scottish weather. They have to parts of the Foundation here. One is in a village about 15min out of Chone. That is were I am. Here are three, soon four houses that host 6 to 11 children and young people with a disrupted family background. They work like a big family. Every house has a mother and kids, but still they are all a huge family with helping each other, playing together, sharing and loving. It is amazing to see them saying a prayer out loud before every meal and how the older ones take care of the younger ones and how much love they have. I actually expected them to be much more reserved and careful in trusting and giving love to people because they were hurt a couple of times in their lives quite deeply. But when I arrived on Monday night a huge group of kids stormed in our direction, jumped around us and greeted us with smiles, shining eyes, hugs and kisses. On the way to the house up on the hill I had a lot of guides on my hands and just could not believe what I was experiencing. Until today these kids mean a lot to me and taught me so much about sharing, humility and being a child. I mean, according to friends of mine over here I am a “niña”, but I think we all forget so much when we grow up, are afraid of things that we before approached with this adventure seeking nature and we today make things far to complicated.
By talking to Juan, Gina, Baci, the young people and other people that work and live in the little village of muchachos, I learned that there are some things they like to develop and improve. In the morning the kids go to school, return after just a few classes and have lunch. After lunch they do their homework with one of the housemothers who is also a primary school teacher. After that they play outside, help out in the households or work in agriculture of the Foundation here, that (much to my delight) grows cacao and bananas and has pigs and chicken.
At night time there is not much to do rather than play which all of them absolutely love. What really impresses me about that is that the age of my friends here is from 4 to 17 and that the toys they have is very limited and therefore they invent games which do not need materials or they play just with a ball or the things that surround them. When I do look at our European society, especially in cities, I do think we have lost a lot of imagination in a lot of respects.
What I do encounter here and in Riobamba and also talked to Marco about is the lack of technical skills of the staff. They do not really seem to see the need for evaluation, recording etc. Therefore they do not have a lot of information and evidence of their work on paper. And if they do have, they have no idea for what this could be useful and how to use it. Therefore Juan always pushes me to do some kind of Workshops to develop these skills and make them aware of the importance of planning, evaluating and setting measurable and realistic objectives. This kind of work challenges me quite a lot so that I read a lot of the material I got and revise the things I learned from CWW in Scotland and in my practice in other jobs. Furthermore I need to develop strategies on how to make this western way of thinking accessible to them and maybe adjust things with them to fit for the circumstances here.

With the kids here I play a lot, climb orange trees, suck the juice of the chocolate beans, chase cucarachas and make music. Today I will get the photos back they all took with their little cameras that my colleagues from Streetwork send with me. We will make a little exposition with the photos and I realized that it is an amazing tool to explore themselves and create an own history.

Soon I will send you some pictures from here…but we do not have telephone or Internet very close. Take care and I will see you in three to four weeks back in Europe…

Volcano News!!!

This time it is even more real. People here in Riobamba wear masks, the streets are full of volcano dust which is toxic and everyone suffers from breathing problems. I came abck last night from the beautiful and warm coast into a city which is grey. Today things seem to go normal although you can see people with masks and the army and police are trying to clean up the streets. At the moment Mama Tunguraha is quiet, but people here think that there will be another even stronger eruption of the volcano. At the moment they are trying to evacuate the people living close to the volcano in order to prevent more people from dying.
But for everyone one of you who watched the news and send me an email: We are all ok in Riobamba! I will keep you informed.

New Photos…

I finally managed to upload them and put them in the right order.
Enjoy!

Final 4 weeks and still so much left to do...

Today is Tuesday and Tuesdays I always start to panic because the day after is Wednesday which is the middle of the week and Wednesday afternoon it is even more than just half the week over. Time seems to be running and I feel to be really slow with advancing in things. Nevertheless I always find ways or better I get send people and ideas to encourage me and renew the energy to go on fighting for things. Thanks so much for that. To be honest it is not even four weeks away, only 3 and a half, I think because I am leaving, hopefully to the jungle on the 24th or 25th of August. Margarita and Juan seem to become even busier as time goes on and I am trying desperately to get a chat out of them to structure my leaving and all the tasks and developments that are still going on. Just now I sat down with a huge pot of very rich Ecuadorian chocolate to start writing an “Informe”, about my work here, my observations and to leave it with them together with some good material to hopefully go on in transforming the Centre and encouraging the staff of the Desarrollo Infantil Project. Although my Spanish Grammar still is on a very basic level I hope to manage to bring my point across. I really do hope I can leave all the material in responsible hands.
This week started a new social worker who is quite young and does not have family responsibilities and until now not another job. She seems very enthusiastic and full of energy and the right ideas. It is so relieving to work with someone that seems to be open for ideas and suggestions. I really do hope she will go on like that and together with Anita the secretary can move things forward as a team, because team work in this kind of work is hugely important to do a good job and work for the sake of a better life of the boys who hardly know any values or the right way to live peacefully and respectfully in society together. The Centre is a great place but is also in great need of improvements of the work. For example they do not have a structure or evaluating their work. Paper work hardly exists and people remember things in their heads which makes taking over impossible, which makes evaluating and evidencing work, also for funding purposes and lobbying purposes incredibly difficult, the same for following the development of the boys and making any conclusions that have foundations. With the social worker and psychologist I tried to explain the importance and offered to design some tools, which they welcomed happily but after 4 weeks of introducing two forms, that make it easy to evaluate and establish continuity in the work, nothing has changed and forms are still not used. And in place of the forms nothing else is used. Furthermore they have a huge lack of Coordination of the work everyone does. Everyone has good intentions and runs into one direction. The right hand does not know what the left hand does and does not seem to have interest to inform the left hand what it is doing as the right hand. This is a huge problem which links into all the others that exist. The work with vulnerable boys that mostly have very hard lives, come from disrupted family backgrounds, spend most of the time in the streets and are involved in all sorts of things, needs continuity, limitations that are clearly outlined and a focused orientation point.
Last week we almost finished the world map on one of the walls of the Lounge of the boys. Just a few countries in South East Asia are missing and than it is done. It is absolutely huge but colorful. We hope that the educators that return in September can use it as a tool. Furthermore the boys always ask lots of questions and watch TV. When we put down the names of the countries in the next two days, hopefully together with them, we have a chance to get them talking about the world and its problems.
One of the boys has a favorite word he uses quite a lot especially when I am around: CORRUPTA! Well, because I am (in his opinion!) from the rich part of the world, I am just here to abuse them. He thinks I will go back with the photos they took and will sell them for a lot of money and will keep the money for me. That is what he thinks. Interesting for me, because the boy is very clever and thinks a lot and for me it is impressive to hear and feel what opinion he has of gringos (although I am not a Gringa!).
The whole experience teaches me so much about our world, the difference and indifference of things. The North and the South. Are we really rich? Does money make rich? What are our responsibilities? Whey are we corrupt (if we are) in their eyes? Is there a “they and we”?


This week the Italians will arrive and we plan a get together with the boys of the centr to share a meal and to have some fun together. Therefore Marco and I will organize some stuff and we think about having some Scottish Dance as well.
After I finally will get Margarita and Juan to sit down I hopefully get some names and addresses to invite people for an Exhibition of the photos before we will hopefully be able to exhibit them in public places.
On Thursday afternoon I plan to visit the Barrio El Bosque another time to meet the little boys again that taught me about the “Trompo”. I would love to see how they are and say goodbye. In one of the next two to three weeks I will travel to Chone (the coast) with Juan to get to know about the work they do there. I will definitely will let you know what is going on there and how it all went with the people there. As I still have a few cameras left I will do a little project with them there as well which will probably be very different to the rest. Margarita also anticipated doing a session about Child Abuse with the house mothers and fathers there. I will see how it goes and will keep you informed. I am sorry for not being able to upload pictures for a long time but I do hope I will be able to do that this week…
Thanks for staying in touch…and all your support financially, morally and as friends and family…

Volcanoes…first it was joke, now it is real…

Yes it is true, Tunguraha is erupting since Friday, and last night quite strongly so that Margarita and I hid in one bed, because the windows were shaking loudly in every eruption. People living at the volcano lost their houses and the livestock they live of. People living from tourism loose their business for a couple of days in high season. I am very worried about the campesinos that already live in great poverty very close to the volcano. I saw pictures of the places I know which looked like from the moon after the Lava came down the hill. It is still erupting and it does not seem to stop soon. Today we bought food to send to the family of Margarita which hosts a lot of people close to the affected areas as a refuge. If you think you can mobilise some people to give money to support the campesinos after everything is over, to buy new liefstock, rebuild the houses and send their kids to school, it is very much appreciated and I will find the right organisations to give it to or families that are affected.
SUPPORT NEEDED - URGENT