Santa Cruz take two and Luz Del Mundo

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Santa Cruz part 2 (Kids are kids.....wherever they be)

Back to Santa Cruz again armed with our improved Spanish and lots of ideas for our volunteering roles with Luz Del Mundo. We had planned to have a few days "chilling" before we started but the co-ordinator Steve had other ideas and wanted us to start straight away.

Mrs P managed to speak to Gabriela, the lady that runs the charity and we made arrangements to catch the number 52, green and white bus to meet her in the village of Plan 3000.

Day one - we started the day well by catching the green and white 52 bus....in the opposite and wrong direction. After several helpful passengers pointed us in the right directon, we were on our way. Our first impressions were.......where the frig have we come to??? On the way to Plan 3000, we passed horses and dogs eating from piles of garbage in the street, men peeing in the street and the most dirty dusty smelly roads we´d ever seen. We successfully got off the bus at the right stop and met with our contact Gabriela and from her warm hug and lovely smile, we knew we were doing the right thing.

Luz Del Mundo is based in Gabriela´s house and is basically a safe place for kids of all ages to hang out (the youngest was 2 years old and the eldest 16), they are encouraged and helped with their homework and also generally chill out. The children usually arrive around 9am and leave at 1pm to go off to school, they were given milk and fruit to take home with them. Some days we had around 25 kids and on other days only a handful. There was another volunteer called Angelo from Italy and he made us feel really welcome. Karolina from Poland is a permanent volunteer with Luz and comes in most days. Karolina liked the place to have a bit of "order" and we sometimes felt like kids ourselves...hey ho!!

We took an instant shine to all the kids there and they to us. I know you shouldn´t have favourites but there was a particular family that came every single day - Vanessa was the eldest sister, Franklyn was her younger brother and the 2 babes of the family were Francine and Chicky (not her real name but she liked to be called this for some reason) The little ones really clung to Mr P and every day they gave the warmest and longest hugs and were always the last to leave. We´d made lots of plans and had lots of ideas of things we could do with the kids but to be honest, it just wasn´t that kind of place, the kids just wanted to chill and be and welcomed help with homework. The little girls were Princess crazy and every day Mrs P spent hours drawing Princessas, Principes and Sirenitas (mermaids to you and me). Mr P got everyone involved in a table football tournament; the older kids seem to make the rules and change the rules as it suited them though!! On Saturdays, the children had a proper cooked meal and we were also included. It was lovely to sit together and share a meal and watch the kids eating literally everything (including some very dodgy looking bits of chicken).

Can´t finish without mentioning the poor dog Peggy- she was covered in tics and had just given birth to a litter of pups and looked knackered. One of the pups was very sickly and we didn´t think it would make it...Gabriela told the kids to take it out to the rubbish when the bin men came round...this was the first glimpse of how simple life and death is to the people here....it´s just a dog, get over it!!! (animals are not exactly cared for). Sadly the pup did lose it´s fight and we assume it ended up in the bin wagon!

The month we spent at Luz Del Mundo gave us chance to explore Santa Cruz a little more and we had fun going up the belltower at the Cathedral, watching the guys from the zoo try and capture two runaway sloths in the park, watching the old guys playing chess, seeing the fantastic light/fountain show and drinking yet more Pacena.

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