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Published: October 9th 2006
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.. so after a couple of weeks of travelling in the mountains.. to PUERTO LOPEZ (a small fishing town on the Ecuador coast) .. for a month of volunteer teaching..
Puerto Lopez is a small dusty town (with few paved streets, hence it gets very muddy after any rain.. and so do shoes and clothes!). The way people talk about PL here you'd think it was a metropolis, but I guess it is the biggest place along this coast! Apparently about 5000 people live here, but there's no ATM, few cars, not much of anything really, so very quiet! .. It's set in a pretty bay and there's a long beach (which I managed to run the length of once!, and walk along a few times), with fishing boats, a small row of restauants, hostels, tour operators and internet cafes (quite a few travellers pass through here to go to the National Park or Isla de la Plata, which is otherwise known as "the poor man´s Galapagos"!).
Life all happens on the street, with kids playing on the roads and people sitting in hammocks or on doorsteps watching the world go by.. and as most people seemed
to know who I was after a few weeks, I'd walk the streets having to say hola to everyone.. nice and friendly but don´t know if I could cope with that for long!
.. fun walking through the early morning fish market watching the catch being bought in, and chopped up (lots of blood and gore).. and hundrends of birds hovering overhead waiting for scraps.
and TEACHING.... well..... I arrived at the school with all my lesson plans, to find that the school is in the process of being (re)built, and the teachers didn´t really know what to do with me (they asked what I wanted to teach.... English? PE?.. I told them I´d stick to the English!!)..
All 200 kids are being taught (by only 6 teachers) in a dusty corridor inbetween two buildings near to where the new school is being built.. no walls, so you can hear all of the classes.. and you have to shout to be heard.. not great for teaching a language, so quite challenging.. though the headmistress keeps things as quiet as possible by running round after the kids with a long wooden ruler, which she uses
quite liberally.. it works though and they´re all scared of her!
.. oh and the toilet is behind a whiteboard in one of the "classrooms" (which has to be moved across every time someone wants to go) so after the first student has visited it in the morning, the class has to sit with tissues over their noses.. and then you have to ask one of the kids to go and find some water to pour down the toilet to help with the smell.. as there's no plumbing! .. all quite an amusing process!
The school is a government school and the kids are obviously very poor.. I quite often have to give out paper or lend pens to those who don't have any.. but despite being stuck in a corridor, the kids are really sweet and so keen to learn, even in this chaotic atmosphere, and they want to share everything they have.. if one comes in with chocolate or an orange they will divide it all up and share with the other kids.
So a great experience for me, and hopefully the children will have learnt something too.. they should at least
be able to describe their family, and sing "heads and shoulders knees and toes" (which Jill taught them the day she came in to teach.. and show me how it´s really done 😊 .. useful stuff eh!
The family I lived with for a month in Puerto Lopez own a restaurant (Las Tejas), so I ate great fresh seafood every day.. and lots of fruit. They were lovely, especially the mother, Carmen, who really wanted to look after me (and feed me all the time!!). The house must be one of the poshest.. it's painted!, though it iss still subject to the dodgy electricity and water supply here (when you have a shower all the lights in the house dim, there are frequent power cuts, the lights constantly flicker, and the toilet just about flushes after a few goes!).
There's a real problem in PL with stray dogs too.. which i hated, and walked the long route home many times to avoid walking past a group of them.. and pigs and chickens in the street scavenging for food, but I can put up with them. I was woken up at 6am most mornings to the (loud!)
sound of all the animals.. oh, and street venders riding round on bycicles calling out details of what they´re selling (fish, shrimp, fruit)
Puerto Lopez was a really friendly place to live for a month, and the teaching was certainly an experience (though it has confirmed what I knew anyway.. that if I was ever considering a change of career, it wouldn´t be to teach!!).. but it was a very sleepy town, so I spent all of my weekends travelling up and down the coast with Jill and Bryan (all that excitement for the next web blog!!)........
.. and I´m ready to head back to a city for a while.. (to Quito next for a week or so before heading South to Peru)
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heads shoulders knees and toes
heads shoulders knees and toes in GERMAN was part of last weeks Primary 7 (Year 6) assembly in rural Aberdeenshire! So your young ones are doing well! Enjoyed all the pics but especially interested to see your teaching conditions. The kids look like a happy bunch and I'm sure they love having you there. How long is their day? Do they get lunch? Keep 'em coming!