Wow so it's official we've finally been here in Iquitos for 2 months as of today! I can't believe we've already been here for that long, it's shown me how much im enjoying life here that I haven't even realised it's been that long.
This week has been pretty quiet in the aldea,although on Monday we found out that one of the new girls had tried to escape the Aldea on Sunday night. She had climbed the walls and got out onto the street at half 2 in the morning, the police were called and she was eventually found but it was still a big shock and talking point the next morning all over the aldea! We worked on another Diwalie project with some of the older, hand picked kids-just so we could make sure it looked pretty enough! Haha. I've decided to get myself working with some of the other younger kids, and try and start teaching them the alphabet. I did aim to do it quite a while ago but got distracted....Just psycing myself up for the inevitable stress from all the kids. But I will do it, I WILL!
In other news, one of the older girls, Jennifer who left the aldea a few weeks ago, by running away from school with her sister was heard on the radio talking about her time in the Aldea. She was describing how awful it had been, that they had been maltreated, were made to clean the Aldea every morning at half 4 before school and she also used the marks on her legs from bites (which the aldea put her in hospital for) as marks of abuse from the tías!! The whole aldea was in complete shock, I was amazed that someone who had been so well cared for there, whose sister is currently in Lima having an operation and also lives in the Aldea and who seemed so at home there could say such outrageous lies! We had some journalists come over during the week and interview the director and one of the tías which they showed on TV. That was a bit of an event but all the tías seemed pretty calm about it, however all the kids are horrified at Jennifer and keep talking about how they will refuse to ever look at her again-I think from their point of view it must be like a stab in the back from someone they counted as a friend.
There have been 3 new kids this week, one girl Julie came in adament that her mum would be picking her up the next day so didn't integrate at all and just spent time in her casa. Her mum actually did turn up on Thursday-not the next day but she did come to pick her up much to my surprise! The two other new kids, brother and sister are both pretty quiet and don't say much but the Aldea is definitely filling up again. We've been casa sitting for the boys house every evening this week whilst their tía goes back home to see her 6 month old baby! So we've got quite close to all the boys, though found out how much of a hassle they can be.
On Friday we ended up looking after 3 casa's which was really stressfull! Feeding one of the little boys tea then realising he's wet himself and that's why he wasn't too keen to eat anything. Then finding out that the room with his clothes in was locked! Bit of a struggle but eventually managed to find some freshly washed clothes from somewhere, so everything looked perfect by the time their tía returned. We went out for a drink to get away from the Aldea for a bit, we've found this cool little bar called Musmooky that's really really popular with the locals so it was packed but it plays nice english music and the drinks are nice so we didn't care!
Saturday's in the Aldea seem to get a lot more relaxed so looking after one of the houses wasn't too much hard work. We watched The Little Mermaid in spanish, I loved it! Pretty hard to understand but it was really cool seeing such a well known film over here, even the songs in spanish were still really fun and I was singing along. Alex and I went for a little romantic meal on Saturday night to celebrate our 2 months here! We found a really nice Pizza restaurant-not very peruvian but it was amazing! The food was lovely.one of the nicest pizzas I've ever had probably because it's my first one in 2 months! We had a few drinks at a cool little bar along the river and met 2 peruvian guys who worked with one of the jungle trip companys. They spent most of the time telling us/showing us pictures of these frogs that you get in the jungle which you eat and they're apparently hallucinogenics! One of them then tried to explain what it felt like, both of us found it hilarious and spent the whole time trying not laugh straight out in his face. We also got to see one of them do Bob Marley's Redemption on Kareoke-it was hilarious! So we've come out of this weekend with a whole bunch of new experiences!! Definitely something I won't be forgetting anytime soon that's for sure.
Crazy but surprisingly enjoyable night-perfect end to my week and pretty much sums up Iquitos in a nutshell!
No comments:
Post a Comment