Navidad with the Kiddies

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Well, what can I say about Christmas in Ayapata. As you know, we collected money in Ireland with massive help from my family and friends, with which we bought toys and t-shirts for the children in Ayapata.
We got up early on Christmas morning to start preprations. Friends of Wayra´s family stayed overnight so they could help out in the morning. They got up at 5am and started preparing the hot chocolate and the ´paneton´, which is special christmas cake. It originated in Italy apparently and its a huge cake which can be cut into about 16 pieces or more! So at 7.30am a small, well behaved group of children had appeared. At around 9.30am there were more than 1500 children on the road outside Wayra´s home... It was unbelieveable. If you look at the pictures you can see the magnatude of it all. However, this was not what we initially wanted. We had enough toys for 500 children and 100 specially made t-shirts. We wanted the villages of Kana (Wayra´s village) and another village to take part in the festivities. However, the radio DJ (a friend of the family) announced our project just after he had spoken to the alcalde (mayor). The alcalde was giving presents to about 100 children and to make the alcalde look bad, the DJ announced that we had enough toys, choloclate, cake and clothes for all of Ayapata... and 2000 children! I knew when I heard this on the radio that things would be crazy and they were...
First, when the children were lined up outside we walked through the lines with Santa giving a candy to every child. Next we organised the children to move in a circle, conveyor-belt type movement so we could give out the hot chocolate and paneton. We had loads of help at this stage and everything went reasonably well. Next we started to give out the toys. This was the hard part. We knew we didn´t have enough toys for all the children there, so we put an age limit on who got what. We decided any children who were under 1 year and any above 7 years didn´t get. But easier said than done. At this stage the help we had been getting from the adults had waned and me and Wayra were left trying to give toys fairly. I was destraught as I couldn´t speak enough spanish to be forceful when mothers were putting their wee small babies really close to me and almost begging for me to give them a toy. Then we had the problem of the bigger children going around twice in the queue, which is a natural instinct for young boys and girl to do this. Also some who had told us they were 8 or 9 years the first time came back and said they were 7! So we had no control.
When all was finished, the people hung around for ages after. Some people had literally walked for 2 hours to come and had finally received nothing. So after a while we remembered about the t-shirts, which we had forgotten in the rush. About 70 more children received t-shirts and this was a delight. We got beautiful pictures of these children and they really were the poorest of the poor.
After the initial stage of giving toys, I was really feeling frustrated that people were almost angry that their children didn´t get something when they were almost promised by the DJ. I was sitting in a room with Wayra, out of the way, trying to get my head together and I was on the verge of tears as we just hadn´t been able to give all the children that arrived toys as promised, I was almost heart-broken. Then a friend of Wayra´s family arrived in the room with a bag of potatoes for me and Wayra. I was so delighted and overcome by his generosity that I started to cry and couldn´t stop for ages... It made it all worthwhile.

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