Most exciting places which you should have visited in 2008

There have been strange things happening to us throughout our honeymoon yearlong trip. First of all it seems that we have chosen the most exciting places on earth to visit:

- it started with Nepal where we arrived to a burned down border town in the middle of the strike
- then Tibet got sealed off - just the second when we wanted to enter it. We never made it there
- right after we got the visa to Myanmar the country got hit by an awful cyclone. Nevertheless we made it there
- once we made it to Buenos Aires the local farmers started burning cars in the middle of the city
- when we were about to visit Bolivia half of the country got blocked by farmers protesting against planned reforms
- in Peru we managed to live through at least two strikes which made Cusco inaccessible
- right now the only modern airport we have encountered in Asia - Bangkok - got totally blocked by protesters
- Mumbai where we started our trip got almost run over by insane terrorists...

Good choice of places wouldn't you say? Not many more places we could have visited where there was trouble this year (actually Kongo, Afganistan and Sudan are some of those places - Rita got job offers from UN to go to each of those places this year :))

I guess it means fun for Warsaw since we are going to spend some time there next year :))) Everyone there get a survival kit handy :)

Secondly, more on the positive note - when we arrived to Peru and started volunteering we both hoped that we won't have to do fund raising. First of all because we had no idea how to do it and secondly because we knew it is going to be damn hard. Of course, we ended up doing it. But guess what - when we started and calculated how much money we needed we both kind of became speechless and very skeptical. We needed USD 4800 - and we were ready to accept the fact that we won't raise even a USD 100.

On the 10th of November we have reached that target so we decided to raise the bar to USD 5800. Well, today we are over USD 6000 !!! Amazing...half of it we raised online and half of it through our activities in Cusco.

Our last event was a big party at one of the dance clubs. We were to receive 50 US cents from each drink during the party. We had to make the publicity, do the decoration including blowing over 300 balloons right before the party and hope that people show up. We did our best and hoped at least that it won't be an embarrassment in terms of how many people would show up. The party turned wild - there were at least 150 people and we raised USD 300!!! We were a bit lucky though. Somebody made us a favor and send the tax authorities to the party. So we really received 50 cents from each drink - they watched over the guys serving the drinks so that they give the bills until 6am and then made them pay us!!! We think it was not a coincidence that they came - we even suspect who was the one that made the tax authorities come but we are not totally sure. One way or the other it has been the most successful fund raising event considering the effort - result ratio and the fact that there were some wild things going on (as you can see on the photos...) We did not plan dancing on the tables but it did help keep the right atmosphere throughout the party.

Still alive in Cusco

It was a longer than usual break between posts. Perhaps it is because lately we have been getting sick - suffering from food poisoning. Strange that we managed to survive for so long without getting sick and then suddenly everyone was having serious problems. Or perhaps it is because instead of running the show usually with no more than three people (including us) we were seven (for a week even nine)...So it was much more fun...Temporarily we also have another rabbit - our cook bought her and Chaplin takes care of her for the time being.

We have also been preparing some new events for the kids - tomorrow we have a big party at one of the biggest dance clubs in Cusco - we get 50 euro cents for each drink sold. Lets hope lots of people show up.

Anyway sometime ago I was forced to be the quiz master as we are still doing the pub quizzes- for the first time in my life - until now we had a volunteer from England doing the quizzes. She was really good so I had quite a challenge to much her performance.

I think it went well except for the fact that we raised a much lower amount of money than usually. I felt pretty bad about it. On the other hand there were less people as well. At least it seemed everybody enjoyed the contest but somehow did not donate more than was the minimum entry fee to the quiz. However, strange it might sound I still enjoyed myself very much - it felt good to be running the show the way I wanted :)) You never know whether thanks to the quiz we get a new volunteer or a new valuable contact.

This week we again had native speakers lead the pub quiz - they did a great job and we raised more money. We also sold some jewelery made by our Danish volunteers sold, and me having a role as a DJ during the music section of the pub quiz...Now I can call myself DJ Tomekkk :) Alternatively I should go to the store where they had this amazing mannequin to get a suit since we have also enrolled ourselves into a two day seminar about exporting to EU :)) That's tomorrow and the day after...

The world of our kids...

Our schools provide us with full spectrum of problems one can encounter with kids in terms of learning. One of the problems that I have hard time dealing with are the few kids that somehow cannot learn. We have a couple hyperactive with clear attention deficit disorder - those are ok because if you are patient with them sooner or later you will see some progress. We have also a couple of under aged kids (like 4 or 5 years old ones) due to the fact that often the parents do not want to let their sons and daughters go to school if we do not take the smaller ones. Those obviously are sort of a pain for us because we do not really cater to that age group. Nevertheless, usually they are harmless.

The ones that really scare me are the few that seem not to understand anything they right. They learn to count (and mostly they can) but they are not able to recognize numbers or letters that they have been writing for months. The maximum time they will remember what they have written is five minutes - after that no way. Just like in the movie Memento they somehow do not have short memory. Our teachers try all sort of tricks and are incredibly patient - but it does not help too much. Since we are not a special school and we do not have that kind of background to deal with those kids the best we can do is find them a psychologist.

We have also a couple that seem a little bit retarded and need some more time to learn - but there is hope there. I might be wrong that some of them are a little retarded because of the way they have been brought up or because of the diet their parents "devised" for them...but this is as much wrong as I can be. All the rest of the problems we have with the kids is thanks to the parents. The fact that they have up to ten kids and cannot afford one (afford means that they have trouble with feeding them), the fact that they do not know anything about hygiene, that they make them work instead of going to school, that they make them take care of their smaller siblings...It is not uncommon that they do not allow us to take the kids for vaccinations (because it is going to be bad for them?!) or are not able to administer pills everyday to their kids (we take the kid to the doctor, pay for the medicine and just ask them to give the pills to the kid). With no effect. Last time when I went for the third time with the same kid to the doctor he advised us to take the kid for a week to our centre so that it can finally get better ?! Our kids though are quite good in taking care of their drunk parents after any local holiday (then mysteriously the attendance in the schools goes mysteriously down). In return they usually get back to school badly beaten.

Apart from the parents there are a couple of other institutions that can and should assume the responsibility for this state of affairs - special thanks for the problems of the kids go obviously to the Peruvian government which does not seem to care about kids out of school, does not have any family planning programs running and runs primary schools that are a shame to the word "school". Catholic Church does not help in family planning on its end. It is a vicious circle and most of our kids unfortunately face relatively grim future. It is really scary...

Anyway where I was heading is the way we teach in schools. Both of us have a certain feeling of failure when we see that some of our kids do not make any progress. Actually I think that this is one of the last things which unfortunately we will not be able to change here. We would need another 6 months and somebody really proficient in teaching methods - most likely we would end up implementing one of the concepts (Waldorf, Montessori or HighScope) but it won't happen. I regret that very much because I think we could move our schools to another level and really help the kids. The good thing however is that together with Rita we started studying those concepts and we will continue for the benefit of other children later on in the future :))

Our new Christmas Campaign

Some of our previous volunteers came up with the idea of another campaign to help get some donations for Christmas to the kids. Actually December in Peru it is also the last month of school year. Right before Christmas two month summer holidays start for the kids. We would like to have a graduation party and at the party give little presents for the kids. We have already quite a few from our previous events but still need some. Last weekend we have designed the poster below and got it printed in a very nice format. We kind of became experts in getting great posters printed. Our Sandra is again going to be all over the town :))

The idea of the campaign is to get 40 hotels and restaurants as partners where people will be able to leave their donations. Once in a while we are going to pick up the donations. Since there are nine volunteers at the moment it should not be that big of a job. The first reactions from prospective hotels and restaurants are very encouraging.

We have also managed to agree to have a party at one of the more popular venues in Cusco where some part of the proceeds will go for our cause. Perhaps we will also manage to introduce Beer Pong in the place where we hold our pub quizzes with the proceeds going to us.

About the donations:

We have to say we are VERY PROUD of all the people who have donated money to our kids. Thanks to you we make their lives a little bit less miserable and give them a bit more chances for the future! It is kind of amazing because all in all we have collected almost USD 4800. Just as we have targeted. Honestly we did not really believe it will be possible and here we are - in the beginning of November and we have reached our target!!!!!

It is almost the end of school year and we are preparing the kids for the entry exams to the state schools. It also means that we have to pay a small yearly fee, get uniforms, notebooks and pencils for kids. Since during the break of January and February we will have to recruit new kids for our summer school - condensed program helping kids who would probably not make it to the 1st grade without our 2 months preparatory summer school - we are also going to have new expenses.

But with all our new events in the pipeline, new volunteers and their networks we hope to raise still more money therefore we have increased our target on our fundraising page!!!

We have new volunteers !!!

We have managed to do a lots of things in our Cusco centre. We have new teachers, books in the schools, lots of clothing and presents from donations and we have been quite successful in fundraising. The only things we felt we were not successful in was attracting new volunteers. The first thing we did when we arrived here is we designed little fliers. We did not play on emotions and honestly we failed miserably. Then we found fliers from previous campaign "Don't feel sorry for street children" that was supposedly much more successful - and we restarted it some time ago. Even though we met with some criticism that it is playing too much on emotions.

Today all in all it paid back. We will have at least two volunteer girls from Ireland for a week, and perhaps two longer staying Danish girls. All of them in addition to a Canadian couple that has just started today (and the three of us - me, Rita and our Belgian volunteer). So we will be at least seven starting tomorrow and running like that for some weeks!!!

All great!! We have also been today to the doctor with our girl who had an infected toe and she is doing better. Not great but ok...

Sucre & La Paz

Arriving to Sucre feels like coming from hell to heaven. I guess the Greeks were wrong and the Greek under world of Hades is somehow above heaven not the other way round :) Though Potosi hell at over 4000 meters is also actually under ground - in mines...

We did not expect the positive things by any means. I have been to Bolivia before about five years ago and I did not remember any city that would be close to anything that could appeal to me. I just so a couple but thought it was a representative sample. I was wrong. We arrived after a 3 hour taxi ride to Sucre. We took a taxi because we did not want to risk another hell ride in a bus (nice normal taxi costed us two EUR each - 4 of us in a taxi - I wish taxis cost that much everywhere else in the world). We arrived and we could not believe our eyes. Sucre is a beautiful town with nicely kept houses all painted white, nice green parks, lots of restaurants and nearly perfect climate of around 20 celsius year round. Even though it is at 2600 meters above sea level it felt like heaven. We could not believe it and we were SO happy not to have to freeze at night... Just great - we missed excursions to nearby sights but enjoyed ourselves tremondously.


Good things end though and we took yet another night bus to our last stop in La Paz. In the morning after we arrived we let a taxi driver take us from the bus station to some hotel we did not know anything about (good choice because it was very good quality for the money). Kind of unusal because one should usually not trust such kind of advice. In the city we walked around and honestly apart from markets there is not much to see. Again you can take excursions to some sites or attractions around the city but we did not feel like doing it.

Instead we opted for two things - witches market and a movie theater. On the witches market we bought overselves all sorts of little statues that should make us live long, in happiness, health and have lots of children... The only good luck amulet which we did not buy are the llama fetuses (see on the picture right) which are generally good for your house. We found them a bit to grouse and feared the strict abortion laws in Poland - would they arrest us on the boarder for violating them - do abortion laws include animals? Hopefully they do - is a llama fetus different from a human fetus? Anyway we wondered around the city, enjoyed good food and decided to go to the movies. We ended up in a beautiful modern cinema (kind of multiplex but without a feeling of a shopping center) were we watched a movie entitled "Blindness" - we did not know anything about the movie. We walked out totally shocked - it is like your worst nightmare come true plus shows the worst side of human race. We had hard time putting our act together for at least a day. We went to see one more movie next day partly about Bolivian history but it did not impress us. The only thing we had left was to get back to Cusco - but as we learned later it would not be as easy as we thought...

PS: The sign on the first picture translates to: "Saint Rita - lawyer for impossible cases¨ :)

Visit to a doctor

We had a very interesting day in school today - actually after school. One of the kids - actually Rita's favorite started crying at the end of the day. It happened at the end of the day and we though that some other kid had earlier harmed her in some way. This was not the case - she showed her big toe which looked terrible. Our teacher at once diagnosed that she has a pulga in her toe...went to the little store opposite our school, bought a needle, took our school first aid kid, placed on of the school benches in front of the school and proclaimed that she is going to clean her wound and take the pulga out. Upon hearing that I decided to occupy myself with the only other kid left in the school. Improvised operations of this kind are not my thing. A little later I heard our kid screaming like she would about to be killed and saw Rita holding her and crying. At that point fortunately everyone was of the opinion that we should take her to the doctor...We have a network of doctors who help us with the kids for free and the appointment we managed to schedule was in three hours so we took our girl to the center where she voluntarily went through a transformation. Rita took her to shower and washed her with all kinds of special soaps and shampoos . I in the meantime looked for knew clothing and shoes for her (instead of plastic sandals she had - we have now lots of donations we got during our culinary event). After all this she looked like a little princess. We fed her - there is no problem with her not wanting to eat as she seems to be able to eat more than me. I think she felt very happy though she has not spoken a word since she entered our center. She just complied with our proposals.

Then we went to the doctor - he tried to persuade her to voluntarily succumb to the anasthetics injection but she refused so together with Rita we ended up helping the doctor. I was leaning over her waist and holding her leg while the doctor was giving her an injection. She was screaming horribly and Rita was holding her head and crying with her...

The poor creature was in the end very brave. After the pain of the injection subsided she sat on the bed where the doctor operated her and looked at him cleaning her toe. In other words she screamed only when she really felt the pain. She also did not become cranky or angry with us that we took her through all this pain. We took herto her "home". She must have been very tired because she fell asleep already in the car. At her "place" we tried to be tough on her mother to make sure that our girl gets the antibiotics and painkillers as prescribed...we also demanded that she shows up in her new clothes in the school during the next days. Usually the parents sell the new clothes we give to the children so nowadays we try not to give new clothing but things a bit worn. It is still incomprehensible for me how could this lady have ten kids and be so inept in taking care of them that from a relatively little wound you end up in this terrible situation. Not to mention that she was not too eager to send her to the doctor at all at the first instance...

We are back in Cusco as one can see...we will still though post two stories from our trip across the South American continent...this is just a daily update :))