La Carpio 2

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Whilst all of the other stuff I have been talking about happens, Carpio goes on. We still go everyday and it is still the best and most rewarding part of everything I do out here. Everything I wrote about back at the start (if I knew how to do a hyperlink, it would be here, but as it is you'll just have to go back and find it yourself) is still completely true and valid but after several months I now know the kids and their personalities and I can talk to the Pastor in Spanish everyday which just makes the whole experience ten times better.

Alongside all the playing around we do, over the last couple of weeks I have also started spending half an hour or so a day with one of the 11 year old girls, teaching her English. She is so keen to learn as much as she possibly can that it puts the schoolboy me to shame. If anything could have made the whole thing more enjoyable then it was getting the chance to do something like that. Something that you feel might genuinely make a difference to her life. As I mentioned in the last Carpio blog we try and encourage the older children to get involved on our side of things by helping some of the younger kids with various things or by getting them to carry or cook things with us on soup kitchen day, but, these skills that we are trying to teach them (leadership, teamwork, etc) are slowburning ones and whilst being incredibly important, particularly in a place like Carpio, they aren't things that you can see building on a daily basis. I guess this is the ultimate satisfaction for anyone doing what we are doing. You do as much as you can, giving the children attention, having fun, making them laugh, but then if you teach them something that they like and that they pick up, it encourages you that in the future when you're not there anymore, they will carry on learning and developing, and it can turn into something that can make a real difference in their lives. And I can assure you, in terms of feelings of happiness it really doesn't get much better than that.

Last time I mentioned, and showed pictures of, a bridge that goes over the river. I also mentioned that I had been ridiculed by the kids for being little short of terrified about walking over it. Well, it turns out I was right, so, ha ha ha. During the 'arse end of the hurricane' (that would be another hyperlink right there) a few weeks ago, the bridge was hit pretty badly and half of the wooden planks across it came off meaning that it now slants quite dramatically. Despite this, the kids still laugh at me whenever we walk past it, which does make my clear and obvious victory feel a lot more hollow than it should. The other thing that the storms destroyed was the small shed that we do the weekly soup kitchen from. The week after the storms we were heading down there as usual and when we arrived, it just wasn't there anymore. We discovered that there had been a landslide and the inference (a fancy way of saying 'the gist of what I was told by a very excited man in very quick Spanish) was that the hut and everything in it had just been swept away. We now do the food a little bit further down the hill, and that little bit closer to the river and the crocodiles within. So, just in case you thought that all Carpio's problem are socio-economic, you can see that Nature appears to enjoy giving them a bit of a kicking too.

The Pastor who runs the whole thing is called Don Felipe. The 'Don' part is not a Marlon Brando thing, nor is it short for Donald. It is a term of respect here for older people, or for people who deserve recognition in the community and if I'm honest, no one I have ever met deserves more respect or recognition than him. He, his wife and his 4 year old daughter live in a room at the back of the church. Room is actually a slight over-exaggeration. If you are familiar with your average student house in Leeds, imagine the box room, make it a bit smaller and that is where the three of them live. Yet despite this and all of the other problems he faces living and bringing up a family in Carpio, everyday he opens up his church and lets all of the children who want to come in. He himself pays to feed them on Saturdays when they do a second soup kitchen and he along with us make up the (sizeable) discrepancy between what is given by the company I am here working for and what is actually needed to feed the 70+ kids on the normal weekly soup kitchen. An unbelievable man who is one of those people who makes you feel special and humble at the same time. As long as he is there, despite all it's problems, Carpio and the kids in it will be ok.

One final word on the most pressing issue from the last Carpio blog - my knees. It is no exaggeration to say that they are utterly destroyed and over the last few weeks - since I discovered a new trick to scare the life out of the kids while giving them piggybacks - the state of my knees has been mirrored by the state of my neck, shoulders and lower back. I turned 27 last week, but it is probably fair to say that my joints are ahead of me by about 50 years. If I was a horse I'm pretty sure I'd be behind the green tent by now, watching the vet take aim - there's no hyperlink for that, but I can't help feeling that there probably should be.

Pura Vida

Dave

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