Volunteering at ELIM and mural painting

When I arrived at the house, I met Erik (who lives there) and Jamilah (who is staying at the volunteer accommodation in the orphanage). They kindly showed me where the local shop was, so that I could buy some essential supplies (water and wine), and then I sat down with them to watch a movie. I've obviously been spoilt in Argentina, where you can get away with buying cheap wine, because the stuff I bought tasted like extra sweet Ribena! Not nice.

Later that evening the other occupants of the house arrived  back. Sonia and Kerry, who were going to be leaving in a couple of days, and Petra, my roommate, who had arrived that day as well.

On Sunday, Erik took Petra and I up to the orphange. We were slightly surprised to find that there were more volunteers than orphans. No one showed us around, or introduced us to the children, we were just left to our own devices. There were a couple of children sat at the main table with a few of the volunteers doing some maths work... but it was hard for us to really see what we could do to help.

Feeling rather deflated, and unsure what we could do to make a difference when there were already so many people there, we headed into the centre of town (about a 30 minute walk), to pick up some supplies. The other volunteers had arranged to cook for everyone so, later that evening, we headed back to the volunteer accommodation at the orphanage to meet everyone properly. Dinner was great and we played a fun game afterwards although, I have to say, I felt rather old especially when I worked out that one of the volunteers could theoretically have been in my year two class in 2001! There's nothing like people discussing whether they were born before of after Kurt Cobain died to make you feel your age! Nice as everyone was, I felt rather glad that I was living in the other flat, and not at the orphanage. After travelling for 4 months, it's good to have a proper flat, hot showers and be sharing with only a couple of other people.

Nice as our little flat is, there are a few drawbacks. First of all, we have no fridge so, instead, are using a bucket of cold water to put stuff in and buying long life milk in the hope that it will last longer. There is also a huge (yet surprisingly docile) rottweiler that lives in the back yard. The poor dog is rarely taken out and subsequently spends a lot of time crying and barking. It is a shame that there is no Peruvian equivalent of the RSPCA to which we could report Jeremy. On top of all this noise, every morning, at about 6am, a small bird starts knocking very loudly on our window. I didn't actually believe this until I saw it, so understand if you don't believe me now! I can't say it's the ideal early morning wake up alarm.

On Monday morning, some of the girls were marching with their school,so we headed off to watch. In the afternoon, I headed to the orphanage to help out with homework, but have to say I felt a little bit useless. Petra arrived home that evening, however, to tell me that her Spanish School had told her about another orphanage, about an hour out of town, where they receive hardly any volunteers. We decided to go and check it out on Wednesday with someone else from the Spanish School.

Before Sonia and Kerry left, we'd been chatting about things that Petra and I could do at the orphanage. One of the things we came up with was to brighten the place up a bit, perhaps by painting a mural. On Tuesday morning I finally met Jeremy, the coordinator. After a quick hello he was ready to rush out of the door (not much of a coordinator, I thought) but I managed to get permission from him to paint a mural at the orphanage. I'd been told that Blanca, the eldest girl at the orphanage, was very artisitic, so I spoke to her later that afternoon about ideas for the mural. Then, on Wednesday morning, I headed down to clean the wall in preparation for painting. I wasn't able to start the mural on Thursday or Friday, as there were various activities taking place for the bank holiday, so I started on Monday (as the girls were off school) and spent three fun days with them painting the wall. The girls were really focused and really proud of their acheivements.

I wasn't overly happy about this balancing act...

Blanca adding the final touches.

Blanca and I with the finished mural.

Petra and I also bought some fabric to make cushions out of the old mattress the girls used for watching TV, so Defina and Remigia, who work at the orphanage, helped with sewing them together.

In the meantime, we had been visiting the orphanage out of town (and for those of you who have received my email, that is the orphanage for which we are raising money), but I'll give details about that in a separate blog.