Quest for work

Where was I last …

I haven’t updated our blog properly ever since we went to Baños, the weekend of November 3^rd and 4^th. What happened next …

In terms of work, there wasn’t much going on in November or December. After a reunion with ACJ Sur – on which I insisted – I got a couple of dates out of them when I would have to “work”. What I thought would finally be the activities with children for which I had come, turned out to be capacitacion (training) to prepare for the festivities that would take place on the 23^rd of December. On that date, the town of Quito would have activities going on on all its major squares to celebrate Christmas and ACJ had planned some activities in collaboration with them to celebrate the end of their campaign against violent toys (Mambru no va a la guerra!).

So, the Saturday after our Baños weekend, I went to ACJ´s Filal Sur in the South of Quito where I learned how to make animals and flowers with these thin, long balloons and how to paint children’s faces (although only two children were present to try our skills on, Natalia and Milli, daughters of Leo and Pato who usually play football with us on Sundays). We had a lot of fun, but it was then that I started wondering where all those children were that I was supposed to work with and what exactly they’re doing in the Filial Sur …

The week afterwards, we heard from Elba that they would organise a tombola at the daycare centre of ACJ Sur on the 17^th of November. Both Will and I went to have a look that day. I discovered a couple of buildings of which I didn’t know they also belonged to the filial and a monton of parents and children.

The atmosphere was great, children were playing football (2 to 3 year olds, quite funny to see) and performing their dances, they had invited a (semi-)professional group to perform some traditional Quichua dances and there was all sorts of typical Ecuadorian food to be eaten, like guatita (prepared with cuero - literally “leather”, being intestines), which is actually quite yummy if you don’t think too much about what you’re eating, and llapingachos. Together with Diego, who is one of the regular volunteers for ACJ, we helped to prepare the llapingachos - mashed potatoes in the shape of a hamburger with cheese inside.

We bought some tickets for the lottery as well and became proud winners of a pair of children’s socks, which we gave away, and a sort of tupperware pot with children’s glasses in it, which I gave as a (joke-)present to my amigo secreto in the week leading up to our Amigo Secreto Christmas Party at work. The tupperware pot prooved to be quite useful in the house.