Busy times at IntiWawa

I started working in the Jardín last week; which meant waking up at half 6 and walking through Arequipa in a completely different light to normal.

There are about 25 kids aged 3-5 shared between 2 classes, Profe Norma and Profe Beren, with Annabell and myself helping out.

I'm not sure if it was because it was early in the morning and you need a lot of energy to hang out with kids, but I didn't really enjoy working in the Jardín. I just didn't feel like I was actually doing a lot. But the kids were so sweet, I'll give them that...

It was the anniversary of San Isidro last Sunday so the kids had to learn a traditional dance to perform to the community. I just find it really amusing how they do things here. Instead of starting to plan weeks in advance, we first introduced the dance to the kids when they only had 2 days of practise left. So this meant two days of going through the same steps for almost 3 hours to the most catchy Peruvian music, with kids who just had no more attention left in them....

San Isidro

I missed their dance performance unfortunately as I was off to the Colca Canyon again to work in another project in a tiny village called Coporaque right down in the Canyon. Intiwawa do an Interculturalidad project there on Sunday mornings for the kids in the village, and also teach English which was what I was doing.

We left on Saturday morning, after having an America breakfast with all of the other chums who were celebrating America that day.

This time Reyna, the bus company I went with last time and which massively let us down, stayed true and got us to Chivay in perfect time, and we got to Coporaque in a minibus full of flies and taking with us all of the stock for the local shop.

Coporaque is tiny, the only people I saw out were an old woman with 3 sheep and an old man with big holes in the toes of his shoes. And it is so so so quiet after Arequipa.

We were staying with the Chocolate family. I was a bit puzzled by this at first too. Mr and Mrs Chocolate have 3 lovely daughters and rent rooms and take their guests out on tours of the area showing them all of the best and secret spots. They collaborated with Intiwawa a good 4 years ago to create this project. And Chocolate used to be just a nick name, now it's his stage name, and it's really good for business as people as far a Lima know his name!

Their wee garden

They really are the nicest family, on Saturday evening after we arrived and played I-spy with Rubith who is 5 and reminds me so much of my little sister Elise, Chocolate took us on a walk down to the bottom of the valley, where on the side of the huge river there are natural thermal baths. It was so so nice, there were so many stars out, it was so tranquil and beautiful and warm and oh I could have stayed there for days!

After some tasty trout, thanks Rosío (Mrs Chocolate), some Milky, and a last little look at the stars and the quiet we went to bed at 9, absolutely freezing.

At 7 on Sunday morning Rosío took us on a walk up and around the sides of the canyon to a mirador with some views that weren't too shabby actually. That lady knows so much about the land, which cactuses you can eat, which cactuses you can use as shampoo to make your hair grow, which plants make tea thats good for you in every way possible... Here is a poor representation of the beauty:

Then the project, which I had kind of forgotten was happening by the time we had had breakfast outside in the morning sun with the Chocolate kids...

Punctuality is not one of South America's strong points. We were meant to start at 9 but we started at 10, Maria and I teaching English to first a group of shy little kids and then to a group of older kids split between the cool boys who just messed around all lesson and the really super mature girls who really wanted to learn. But we managed, and now they know how to be very polite in english as well as talk about the wherabouts of tableware. Kerryn and Dave were teaching about Interculturality; this week was life's important values. 

Kerryn is starting a photography and art project on Saturdays as well to make more use of their time there, and she is raising money for cameras right here... 

http://www.gofundme.com/camerasforcoporaque

You can donate for nothing or donate for some photos the kids take in return. Best of luck to Kerryn, please give what you can!

We, the volunteers, also had out own dance to practise though, another traditional Peruvian gem, for IntiWawa's 6th birthday on Monday 29th... For the last two weeks we have been taught how to boogie the Peruvian way by our diva dance teacher who sometimes turns up and sometimes doesn't...

Despite many problems for everyone organising this fiesta, I think it went just great.

First thing in the morning I was live on television. I had met the manager of channel 9 who picked up Annabell and I hitching back from San Isidro one day, drove us all the way home and said he'd be interested in doing an interview about what Intiwawa does. 

Thus I went with Dave and Raffa, and spent a very surreal half hour in ATVSur's studios. First of all we had to wait by the live screen with this lady overly made up wearing the tightest clothes doing aerobics very inappropriately. Then they just said, yep come in, make sure your mobiles are off, here are some microphones, sit down, 123 and live. Whilst the aerobics lady (Claudia)  was asking us questions we had written about Intiwawa acting really interested and concerned it was really difficult to take her seriously and not laugh. Halfway through my little speech about our objectives someone waved at me to tell me to talk into the microphone so you probably can't hear half of what I said...

But it was a truly peculiar time. And no-one asked for my autograph afterwards. what!

After our 5-10 minutes of fame we joined the others to decorate the museum where the presentation and exhibition was going to be. Banners, yellow balloons, crepe paper, yellow ribbon, the place looked a right treat!

Beth knows it

After a huge lunch for 2 squids, we made the final preparations and the guests and the kids (way more than we were expecting) arrived, 59 of them managed to fit into a minibus, which was way more than we were expecting.

Each group did their little act, listened impatiently to lots of talking from board members and thoroughly enjoyed the copious food prepared by fellow volunteers.

However, our dance teacher, who someone had put in charge of the music and the costumes, didn't turn up. But we did it anyway, and it were hilarious...

Here it is;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCR1GrM7_Ds

Enjoy!