nets for kids

S.A.W.

Today we visited an organization (Social Action for Women) that runs a handful of services (children's crisis center, safe house for women, hospice care for HIV+, and education ) for mostly abandoned Burmese children in the border town. we played down by the banks with the kids, who all had a serious case of scabies (need to do cost comparison to dump all existing mattresses/towels/clothes vs continue buying meds for bugs and symptoms. i say dump all the stuff and buy new, treat the kids once and for all rather than continuous symptomatic treatment. at least it would improve their daily quality of life to eliminate the scabies once and for all. how much would this cost? if anyone is interested in pitching in a $100 bucks, that will buy new mattresses for 40 kids). i'm pitching in to buy a new washing machine for the center...

also, there was a woman who is HIV+ who had a enormous tumor on her eye the size of a grapefruit. she had a dressing over it so i couldn't see it, but it was very maladorous from the dead tissue spreading throughout her face. i felt so bad. i went with my doctor friend, and while they were explaining her situation to us, you could see the pain and humiliation that she was experiencing. the tumor was described as being a big open sore, like a volcano. and because of the dead tissue, flies got in there recently and laid their eggs, which resulted in maggots crawling out of the poor woman's eye. the local clinic that serves burmese migrants could not help nor the local thai hospital.

good to be back in ecuador

Hey everyone! Despite the fact that Ecuadorian Immigration almost didn´t let me into the country b/c they didn´t have a record of me actually leaving the country last time i was here 4 years ago, everything else has been smooth travels. The children at the organization I am visiting (and used to work for back then) threw a "Fiesta para Linda" and they presented me with songs and dance, and we played a bunch of games as well. One contest in particular amused the crap out of me. When one of the educators announced that we would now commence the "Baile de Limon", the kids hurriedly grabbed a partner. Girls grabbed their girlfriends and the boys grabbed their buddies. Each pair then proceeded to grab a lime. They subsequently put the lime on their foreheads and pressed each other hard so as to not let the lime fall without the use of their hands. The objective is to be the last pair dancing with lime intact in between each others faces. Of course, a few kids cheated and they were immediately thrown out. The rest followed the rules and were concentrating really hard, too hard. Soon the dancefloor transformed into something that appeared to be a makeout session of homosexual elementary kids. It wasn´t though, of course . As song after song ended, I was beginning to become impressed with the will and concentration of some of these kids. One particular pair of girls caught my attention. After about the 3rd song, I noticed that the girls had let their lime fall to both their eye sockets. Ít´s inevitable that the lime will slide down the face a bit, but to have the lime pressed against the eye is definitely the worst. So imagine, you´ve got this lime pressed real hard against your eye and you´ve got to dance, i mean MOVE your entire body to the beat of the music, or you LOSE. These girls´ lime had burst a little from pressing their faces so hard together, and the acid from the lemon juice started to make them cry. Yet, their conviction to stay in the contest made them hold each other more firmly, and they continued to dance through the duration of a couple more songs. At this point, I´m laughing my ass off watching the other kids, yet I´m starting to get concerned about the potential danger of pure lime juice seething in one´s eyes. I mean, if you can toss some raw fish in lime juice and called this "cooked" (this is how you make Ceviche)....Well, the contest finally ended and the girls only came in third, and they didn´t get that prize they worked so hard for - a tennis ball. However, they didn´t lose their spirits and we all had a ball till the party ended.
Well, other than hanging out with the organization and my friends, I´ve been enjoying the leisurely pace of a traveler without an agenda, and remembering the days when I used to live here, feeling nostalgic for times past. At the same time, it saddens me about the economy and how the poor and middle class had to bear the brunt of the bank scandals and dollarization of the economy. As a result, the middle class here is disappearing and there is more crime on the streets than before. It's a sad reality that everyone accepts. Just last night, coming back from dinner at my friends house, there was a guy, who was assaulted. He lay bleeding in the middle of the street with a crowd gathered around him. Blood was staining the pavement and from what I could see, it was coming from his head...however, a couple of kids didn't seem alarmed at all. In fact, some girls started giggling and pointing at the victim. Cars drove by and nobody stopped to help. I've learned to listen to people's opinions and perceptions with a grain of salt, however. Some will claim the complete opposite here- that dollarization needed to happen, and now, people actually have credit and can take out loans, unlike before. That now, there's no prostitution on the streets. That now, there are nice public buses manufactured by mercedes benz that guarantee you're never late for anything (i do miss the kitschy old rickety buses with dashboards filled with La Virgen paraphenalia).... As my spanish improves at an exponential rate, i'm forgetting some very basic english...which kind of scares me. Like not remembering how to spell 'confortable(?)', comfortable(?)... hasta luego mis amigos, linda

sucks to be ecuadorian

it's terrible what is going on in ecuador. there is a golpe de estado (coup d'etat) that has enunciated the president and he is detained and the army and indigenous political organizations have closed down the supreme court and congress. the leader or at least instigator of all
this is the ex general of the army who is now a senator in the congress, can you believe that? quito and the entire country is in chaos, protests going on everywhere, military about everywhere, but little violence unlike the coup that happened in chile with pinochet. the coup in E. is not accepted by the international community and the US supports the president. but the extreme economic measures that the president imposed on the people, the cuts in so much
social spending and the attempt to dolarize the economy has driven the people to this. transportation is stopped. my colombian friend who is trying to return to his pais is stuck in quito and had to backtrack to guayaquil to avoid the blocked via panamaerica. i wonder how my ex companeros are doing in cuenca. i haven't heard from them, but i know that they are against the dolarization of their econommy. i don't quite understand how that would affect everyone. i need to learn more about that. well, i left 1 week be the national protests started and i am so lucky bc had i waited a bit longer, i wouldn't be able to leave the country bc all the municipalidad and immigration offices are probablay chaos or shut down and since i was illegally staying in eucador, i would have had serious problems leaving.
this is actually such a crazy thing to be happening, so close to me, to the country where i had lived for half a year. i only read about golpes(coups) in texts mostly and once or twice in the newspaper about some sub-saharan african coutnry. so to be right here when all this is going on, in my generation, blows me away. i feel terrible for the ecuadorians. all year, i witnessed the rapid deterioration of the economy; the super-high inflation driving people to agitation and anger, rushing madly to buy dollars(only means of monetary security for them), with weekly bursts of protests from the police sector to the transport sector to the national health to students(which became the norm) having lost complete faith in the democratic process bc the president and his political interests worked so fervently and selflishly to pursue their greedy
interests, and having the people pay for their corruption by freezing down all current bank accounts while the state cleaned the bank "corrupt" financial system. i was there, as an extranjera, although wroking voluntarily for children, enjoying the fucking extremely low prices of everything that my strong dollar was providing me. i am so lucky and fortunate.
so these are my latest news, i am now in cuzco, tying up my trip like a big circle.

i am buttfucking tired for not having slept in the last 2 days, but i will rest, go out, and hopefully do some trekking in a couple days. i miss you all and for those of you in the states, NOS VEMOS PRONTO!