WSeriously. Las Mangas, my home for at least the next month is beautiful. The other people volunteering, so far have been ´interesting.´ For a start Scott and Elly claim to be Mormons. A slightly worrying discovery and even more so when they invite me round for ´readings.´ Suddenly I am panic stricken by the idea that I may spend the year dry (they don’t drink) and trying to avoid conversion to the Mormon faith. Mac is the campest Man I have ever met and Simon doesn’t speak to me for the whole of the first day. Apparently he is a bit moody. It’s not until the evening that Mac and Simon confess the whole thing has been a bit of a practical joke. No Mormons, Mac is not gay and Simon is as nice as nice is. Thank God. Sods.
We’re up bright and early for a workshop led my Scott on the future of education at GUARUMA. Evidently I am a bit of a novice on the subject area but it´s enlightening insight into the politics of the project, peoples teaching styles and some thinking on education generally, particularly as Scott has an education degree.
The second part of the workshop takes place the next day in the form of a five hour hike. Just for a change on this trip I feel like a fish out of water. The team are all experience hikers. I am not. When I say hike I am not referring to a bracing walk up a hill either. I am taking about swimming up current in rapids, climbing up and sliding down huge waterfalls and generally falling over a lot on slippery rocks. Albeit through breathtakingly beautiful cavers and gorges. I return bruised, battered and knackered with the headache I woke up with in the morning., Joy. If this is the long and short of GUARUMA Staff days out give me a year though and I think I might be Tarzan.
I spend the afternoon in contrast in a meeting of the kids involved in the newspaper project. A new drive to produce Eco Cangreal; a paper about life in the Cuenca and Environmental issues. From what I can make out I am going to be interviewed. Which will be fun. Everyday I meet more and more children from the project and I am enchanted. I can´t wait to work with them.
GUARUMA has two bases currently. One in Las Mangas and one in El Pittal, the El Pittal project is new and only just getting it’s first buildings and round of volunteers. Scott and Elly currently work at El Pittal and there’s every chance that I will when the new computer room (and my house) is finished and its here Mac and I walk up to (half an hour with night vision) to have a curry and a few beers (you can do that when you´re not a Mormon) in Scott and Ellys very basic house. Looking around it’s a far cry from my relatively luxurious little pad down the hill. In fact it’s a completely different flavour all together and in the next few weeks I too could be living in a wooden shack with an outside toilet…we’ll see.
Today is Friday and I have spend half of it trying to translate my teaching manual for the classes next week and half of it turning the room I sleep in into a home. I have to confess myself pretty happy with both sets of results. It´s sad to think I may have to leave this place soon. If the new volunteer is better suited to this project then I will have to go to El Pittal. However, for the mean time I´m unpacked and my photos are on the wall, I have a new fridge, a hot shower and for once I feel at home.