The La Esperie Christmas shindig (or 10001 sweets)

  Near Tandapi, which is near nowhere, Ecuador
Saturday, December 22, 2007

www.volunteersecuador.com

Well as my time at La Hesperia winds down, the work certainly doesnt. We were busy last week getting the school tree nursery readyfor the school open day on Friday. This consisted of carting hundreds of our ickle trees down the hill to the nursery and generally making the place look all nice n tidy n weed free and stuff. 

Worra lorra trees!

um more trees

The actual day started with the arduous task of filling 70 goodie bags with sweets, chocs,  pencils,  rather randomly "wear your life vest" wrist bands (useful advice to these children living in the Andes...), and then as we run out of stuff a random assortment of hair clips, toy soldiers, construction workers, whistles and anything else we found laying about. 

Goodie bag production line

Then we headed down to the school for the "lets see how much sugar we can get the kids to eat in one day" contest. The army came along, gave a speech and the kids got a goodie bag,

GI José

the school gave a speech and the kids a goodie bag, the church (Raul in fact) gave a speech but no goodie bag (it was awkward...) then it was the entertainment...

We had a vote for the Christmas princess where 6 girls aged about 6/7 had all donned their best posh frocks and each came up on stage (accompanied by two of the boys - one in a full DJ with tails outfit) blew kisses to the crowd, tottered around on the high heels which I suspect they werent quite used to wearing and then waited for the other to go. After that, they all gave a little christmas message (cute rating is now going off the scale). 

Aaaw cute

Then the rest of their classmates got to vote for their favourite by going up and giving a flower, this is where the controversy started. The girl sat nearest the steps romped into an early lead, before it was noted that maybe the kids were just giving to the closest one...a quick shuffle of seating positions was called for, but by this time little cute girl A (forget her name, probably something with about 8 different names) had an unasailable lead and voters following the shuffle clearly did not want to go against popular opinion. I think the final count of flowers for her  (which were very deliberately and ceremonially counted out) was 18 with the runner up on a poorly 6, and rather uncomfortably leaving two girls up there sin flores (donations for later therapy bills gladly accepted). The girls then got gifts (nice big gift bag wrapped up for positions 1-3, black bag for the flowerless ones (ooh cringe, nooo, bad). 

Dodgy voting...

Christmas princess

Then it was time for some entertainment, we had dancing (slight element of stripping involved - dont want to sound like an old man, but noooo theyre 7, dont let them wear crop tops...)and singing. 

Bita dancing

Then it was our turn. We started with some cello music from Sarah, one of the volunteers here, which the locals all seemed to like (guessing Bach on the cello is not something they are that familiar with). 

Bach in the cloud forest

Bit of culcha

Then JP gave a short speech, so half an hour later Alexandra got him to stop. 

JP, Alexandra and kids from the eco club

Basically the jist of the speech was that we anted teh people to take as many trees as they wanted from the nursery to plant at home, we were trying to get the point across that they can plant these trees for their kids future. Both environmentally and financially - they can plant a Pachaco or Cedro now and when their kid grows up they will be bale to harvest the tree and sell or use the wood, and during that time use the seeds that the tree produces to plant more. We also gave away bags of seeds for then to plant. It was quite nice that quite a few came around to the nursery to take some trees. It took quite a lot of persuading that, yes they were totally free and theirs to take whenver they wanted, one bvloke asked me a couple of times if i would give him one as a present, I had to keep saying that he was free to take as many as he wanted. I think he took a few in the end.

JP speech (again...)

who wants a tree?

Not sure whos getting the tree...

Tree giving

Have a tree, no go on.

what u mean posed?

 

who will have our lovely trees?

It was really good to see them understand a bit more about what the strange gringos up the hill are doing and understand some of the concepts about what we are trying to do. We also produced some posters about reforestation and deforestation etc which most seemed prepared to take the time to read. 

Info posters

Seeing the folks from the community, who by western standards and even most Ecuadorian standards, have very little, trying to take an interest in solving problems that have been largley caused by us was quite moving and inspiring. It certainly makes you want to see how you can help them more, hopefully we will raise enough money soon to start on the community centre and get that going. Sorry to end on a beg, but time of giving n all that - donations can be made via the website at the top. Get somebody you love some roof tiles, or planks of wood for a community centre in Ecuador for Christmas. They certainly wont be expecting that.

Coming next (after lunch in fact) - bridge building at La Hesperia.