I thought I would lave a quick blog just to keep things up to date. For the past week I have been working for an organisation called FODI which works with child development schemes in rural communties all over Ecuador. I have been based here in Macas, of course, and in the past week have visited 8 communities already, and next week will follow the same pattern.

The first of of the communties involved 2 hours in a bus followed by 2 hours walking through the rainforest. The walk required us to cross the same river 14 times, due to it´s meandering ways! On arrival I was greeted by a man with no hand and introduced the community of Chikichikentza, which means one river in Shuar. The program provides nursery facilties for children between 2.5 and 5: i.e. toys, paints, tables and chairs, a teacher and even a cook to make them meals. The benefit of it all is that the children are occupied in a clean and safe environment, where they receive basic education and an improved diet, allowing the mothers to work. I would like to pretend that I do work in these communties however the truth is I end up playing volleyball. I spent 2 hours playing volleyball in the midday heat, whilst wearing wellington boots...bad choice. After that all I had to do was the journey back, which seemed alot longer than on the way in. I went swimming in the river but strong currents and insects ot the better of me, so instead I fell asleep on some dirty rocks by the side of a road: which by the way has become my main past-time out here.

On Wednesday Tony and I went to 2 communities: Las Palmeras and San Miguel. At Las Palmeras I spent an hour playing with a football and the kids, then walked 40 minutes to San Miguel where I listened to my ipod for a further 2 hours...it´s a hard life. Before anyone feels that I am becoming too lazy I shall remind you that visiting these communties involves a minimum of 4 hours rainforest trekking everyday in the heat, that is my excuse anyway.

On Wednesday night Tony and I started the ball rolling on our very own development project in a community called Dos Lagos which is 10 hours travelling away in the Jungle. We are planning to do a visit for a week in early June and before then we have to organise a large medical brigade amongst other things: one of the biggest things being developing educational posters for the children e.g. brushing your teeth (their teeth are absolutely terrible)

Thursday we headed off to Shakaim (an illegal community), Masap and Playas de Macumas again. Shakain involved spending more time with the kids, eating alot of chicken and trying my hand at lawnmowing except with a machete. How they do it all day long I do not know, as after 30 seconds my back really hurt and I was out of breath. We also spent some time learning Shuar and Quechua, fairly simple languages. Walking back involved getting covered in mud and then we were off to Masap. The kids here wer so friendly and they all wanted to be lifted up, spun around etc.After an hour I was dead, and at one point I had 4 children on me, hanging of my arms. As sweet as they were, I was glad to get out. Finally to Las Playas de Macumas (the one we visited last week) to see how much they had done: absolutely loads. As interesting as it was I went and fell asleep in a hut, however the dreaded turkey, from the week before, returned so I got out of there.

I forgot to mention that all of these communty visits involved getting up between 3:30 and 5:30 in the morning, hence I am exhausted.

Friday involved the most walking yet, as it was the remotest community. It was really hilly and slippery and it took us a good 2 hours to get to San Juan. Half an hour of it was walking across sinking mud, trying to balance on little poled ad braches. The ever crazy Milton decided to wear jeans and trainers, but again he is used to this environment. We stopped briefly to have breakfast with some crazy woman who was shouting down a mobile phone whilst weilding a knife (I was more surprised by the mobile phone!). At San Juan I fell asleep in another hut whilst a 2 hour meeting went out. They love to talk out here, even if it means they are repeating themselves. Here in Ecuador, the objective is not to get your point across, rather to see how long you can ramble on about the same thing for.....hours it seems. Hours later we set off back and an hour into our journey I realised my camera was not there!

The next 2 and a bit hours involved Tony and I alone in the rainforest searching for the camera, talking to tribesmen and then getting seriously lost whilst the sun was at it´s hottest. Not only did we not find my camera (still havn´t) but we couldn´t find our was back to the path to lead us out. Eventually with some teamwork and luck we managed to get back-what a day. On the point of the camera,we are almost certain it was taken, so we are going back next Friday.

Well there we are, a rainforest packed week with alot of sleeping on dusty paths and in tribal huts! Hopefully next week will follow suit. One final thing, the weekend was extremely relaxed but yesterday we saw the volcano beside Macas explode 3 times, pretty exciting. It is called Sangay (the frightener in Quechua).