Dia de la no violencia

November 23rd, 2007 by Danielle Denis-Lalonde

Ugh…I haven´t blogged in nearly a week, and I have sooooo much to say. I don´t have much time and the internet connection here is sporadic at the best of times, but I guess I´d better start writing because time´s a wastin´! Plus, I left my beautiful little journal (the one Doe bought me from Nepal) on the Galapagos so I´ve had to resort to scribbling down random little thoughts on a scrap of paper. I apologize if this entry is incoherent, boring/factual and totally all over the place.

Ok, *sigh*…here goes.

Friday (yup, that´s LAST friday):

My first word day! Took a crazy truck ride (so much mud!!) to Nuevo Muisne then a quick little boat ride across the estuary to Muisne town (this trip is done almost daily as we do most of our work in Muisne). Spent the morning swinging machetes (deja vu! haha) to clear out a playground that had been neglected and become overgrown with weeds and plants. I´d say it most likely the hardest work I´ve ever had to do, mostly because it was BLOODY HOT. At one point, this little boy came by with a machete, and just stood there, hands behind his back, watching us for a good while. With a serious look on his face, and occasionally tapping his machete, he was the perfect dictator/supervisor/boss man…except that he was maybe 7 years old! At lunch, we all head over to Paolo´s mother´s house where they cook us some sweet grub. Muy Rico!!

That afternoon was spent cleaning garbage off the beach. They have a big waste problem here because the town is too far from any major centre (so no sanitary waste services) and people tend to just dump their shit into the estuary or the ocean…which means it later washes up all over the beaches. Within half an hour, we had collected an insane amount of garbage. Sad, really. All plastics and non-biodegradables too. Part of our work here is to help deal with the trash problem (building trash cans, teaching the children not to litter in the ocean etc. )

Picking up a ton of garbage is hard work (particularly under the hot hot sun), so Mareike, Tania and I took a quick dip in the ocean after work. But we didn´t bring out bathing suits, so unedrwear it had to be! And I had made a very poor panty-decision that morning so I´m embarassed (but not really) to say that I ran as fast as I could into the water in my THONG. Oooo la la.

That night, we all sat up in the volunteer house, listening to some sweet tunes (Mario has nearly the exact same taste in music as I do. Thank god for Germans!) and played poker. I lost, but the chips were made of Tagua (a hard nut found around here) so who cares really! Then I did the thing that I have come to dread every night…try to scale the incredibly ricketty, awkward wooden structure that is my bed (top bunk) without hurting myself or anyone else. I was successful (so far so good), and into dreamland I went.

Oops, gotta go paint a mural for the ¨Dia de la no Violencia¨ (International day against violence towards women) so I guess I´ll come back and write later. One day down…6 more to go.