Back in Europe!

Just a very quick one to say that although we are not home yet we are back in Europe safe and sound! I have just checked my mails from a computer at the airport. Thank you for the many messages...I will reply as soon as I have proper access to a computer.

As I write this we are still in Amsterdam Airport having just arrived here from Peru (we spent the day there yesterday). I will tell that adventure when I get the chance. (I am not going back in a hurry.)

We are just about to fly to Stockholm and we will take the boat back to Finland on Friday night so we'll be back Saturday morning.

Still lots of news. I'll update this as soon as I can. See you soon.

Goodbye visit to Cuenca

We arrived back from the coast on Friday morning for our final few days in Ecuador before we head home.

My research has meant that I have had more of a chance to see Ecuador than Frederic, and we both thought it would be a shame if he returned to Europe without having a chance to visit Cuenca, which has a special atmosphere of its own.

The reality of this town is that it has the highest proportion of people who have left the country to find work abroad. On the plus side this has bought money and facilities into the town, on the negative side there are a huge number of children left in the region without parents. You can imagine the kinds of problems that occur as a result.

In any event, we spent the day on Saturday simply wandering around the town soaking up the atmosphere. Here are a few of the images which caught our eye.

Meet Carina and Danna

I read in the paper yesterday that of all the countries in South America, Ecuador is ranked third after Bolivia and Haiti in terms of the inequality that exists between the rich and poor.

Although its not hard to find evidence of considerable wealth in the big cities, this is not the reality of the vast majority here. For many, life is a question of day to day survival and you can find stories to make you weep on every corner if you stop long enough to ask.

I thought I would tell you just one of these stories.

Carina lives alone with her nine year old daughter Danna. Until Danna was seven she was unable to speak, and Carina took her repeatedly to the doctor to try and find out what the problem was. Various doctors told Carina that her daughter was suffering from the flu, or from asthma and there was little they could do.

You should also know that Carina, who is 29 years old, is the eldest of ten children, the youngest of whom is seven. There is no father on the scene and their mother died four years ago. As the eldest child Carina took on responsibility for her younger siblings as well as her daughter.

The family were living in the province called Esmereldas on the coast. There was almost no work available, so the family relied on what little they could earn from collecting fruit and other occasional work.

Eventually Carina decided that the only way she could help her family was to move away from the family home to Quito were she had heard more work was available. She has now been here for two years and works as a helper to an elderly lady who pays her the minumum wage of $220 net per month. She pays $60 per month in rent for what I can only describe as a shack. It is no more than 15 square metres and covered with a tin roof. It has no heating or washing facilites and the toilet is outside. The "kitchen" is a bag of rice and some pans lying on the ground. There is nothing covering the earth floor.

The money left after the rent goes towards food for herself and Danna - and then towards supporting her nine brothers and sisters who have little else to live on.

Carina continued to look for a proper diagnosis for Danna once in Quito and she succeeded in getting one. Danna had cancer of the throat. This was why she had not ever been able to speak.

Danna has now had two operations and is waiting for a third. Her voice is a little bit "husky" but she is able to speak and even tries to sing. She is an enchanting child who never stops smiling.

We went to visit them at home and I asked what Danna would most like to eat. At first she said she liked vegetable soup, but when I asked again she admitted that she would love to go to Macdonalds. She had been once before but it was three years ago.

I have never been a fan of Macdonalds - until now. Seeing the delight on this little girl's face in having a happy meal to eat made it feel, for a few moments at least, like the best place in the world.

I have spoken to the doctors in the cancer Foundation who have said that with the throat cancer Danna should not be living in these conditions, but that the family has no other option.

It is at times like this that I wish I could wave a magic wand and make things different. Not being able to is horrible.

In any event, whilst it is noting more than a tiny gesture in the circumstances, I have passed on $200 to Danna and her Mum from our Finland collection. Knowing that most of this money will probably go towards supporting Carina's siblings we have also bought several new outfits and toys for Danna. It is nothing more than a drop in the ocean in relation to what this family would really need and it feels totally, totally inadequate but I hope that at least Danna will enjoy wearing her new pink clothes. When I asked her what she would most like to have she told me that her biggest wish was to have a bed so she didn't have to share a mattress with her mother anymore.

We only have two days left here but I am going to do my best to at least organise this before we leave. It is not much, but if we can give this little girl her own bed then that will be something.

That's all I can tell you really. The saddest thing is that there are hundreds of stories like this in Ecuador. It hardly seems possible that we have got to the year 2010 and families are still living in these conditions, but there we are. I am not going to give up searching for that magic wand.

Read if you want to make a difference!!

Canoa is a small fishing village in the province of Manabí. It is a very poor region. There are many (often large) families here who live on a budget of $100 per month. Over recent years the village has had a growing industry...it is especially popular with surfers. Unfortunately most local families lack the capital they would need to set up even the smallest of businesses, so there are still many people here who live in extreme poverty.



Three years ago, an American who owned a restaurant in the town, James Dean Byrd, decided to do something to help the local community and set up a bilingual school in which teaching is in both English and Spanish. His dream was not only to provide high quality education, but also to equip the children with the language skills they would need to find employment in the tourist industry.



And this was the start of Algorrobas. On our trip to Canoa we met one of the directors, Christine, and the headmaster Victor, who are both exceptionally motivated people who are determined to make a difference. Both of them made us feel really welcome and as though we were already "part of the family".


http://www.jamesdeanbyrdfoundation.org/

The school currently has 58 children who are obviously happy and thriving in this environment. The photos give the impression of a comfortable, middle class school... and that is part of this success story. Please don't be mislead about the conditions most of these children live in though. Most of them have several brothers and sisters and often live with up to ten people in the same room. Their houses completely lack modern facilities. What is even more sad is that some of them come to the school never having experienced affection from their parents.


In my background working in the area of child protection in the UK...accusations against teachers have meant that in many schools physical contact between teacher and pupil is forbidden altogether now. I have always found this to be a sad reflection of our times. In this school however, affection is encouraged. These children need to experience affection and for many of them the staff at the school are the only people ever to have shown them any.



Most of the parents who have children here have not had an education themselves, so the school also works hard with them to help with issues such as hygiene, finding a balanced diet, domestic violence and and how to avoid using physical punishments within the home. Just so you have an idea of the scale of the problem, one of the little boys at the school had been deliberately burned by his mother on his mouth, to the extent where he was unable to eat. This was for using a "bad word."



The school is doing a brilliant job. It currently has classes for 5-9 year olds but the plan is to provide an extra year starting from April 2011. The fees to attend the school are $300 per year, and for this the children receive two meals a day, their uniforms and all books and materials. Almost all of the children have some sort of sponsorship to allow them to attend, as the families could never afford to send them otherwise.

We met six children who currently don't have sponsorship but have been allowed to attend until one can be found. I have already had a couple of mails from people who would be interested in sponsoring one of these children. The great advantage with this scheme for someone who wants to help is that the money will go directly to benefiting the child. Not a penny is for administration and you can be sure it won't get "lost in the system". You can see their pictures here.

Those of you who know me will also know I believe in destiny. We had decided to sponsor one of these children ourselves but had no idea how to choose one. I decided that if one of them had a birthday close to someone in our family then this was the child we would sponsor.

I was disappointed when the first five had random birthdays so I didn't get the "sign" I was looking for. Then I heard that the last little girl had an extra difficulty in that she had been born with a hand missing and had been teased terribly in her last school. We decided to sponsor her just before she came out to have her photo taken....so you can imagine how amazed I was when she was asked for her birthday and we found out it was the same day as my own! I got the sign I was looking for! Maria is a lovely little girl who has only been at the school for three months and is still very shy...but we are looking forward to seeing how she gets on.


Please let me know if you are interested in one of the others. Your commitment would be just for one year of teaching ($300), after which time you are free to decide if you are able to continue for a further year.

The school would also be a great place to come if you have ever thought of doing volunteer work somewhere where you would really make a difference. There are all sorts of opportunities here, and unlike other schemes volunteers are not charged "fees" for coming. You won't find many facilities yet in Canoa, (although I am sure it is very pretty when the sun is shining) but at this school you will find lots of love and warmth and hugs all day long. The children here have been born with very few advantages in life indeed...and this school is giving them a chance that they would never have had otherwise.


I made a donation of $500 to the school's general running costs from the money you donated and asked that some of it would be used for books for the children...this year there was no budget to buy English books so they have worked with photocopies, a common feature of schools here.

What I would really like to do though is to collect enough so that we could finance the building of a new classroom, which would cost $6000. This would make a long term difference to these children and also allow the school to expand next April.

If you know anyone who might be interested in contributing to the school then please pass this message on to them! None of us can change the world on our own, but a few of us together can certainly change the world for these children.

(You can find the link to the school's website above)

Thank you!

Seven Hours to Canoa and up to our knees in mud

In principle of course there is no real reason why a goat should not be standing at a bus stop just like anyone else. It is just not something you necessarily come to expect when you live in Scandinavia.

This was one of the many things I saw on our seven hour bus trip to Canoa, a small village on the coast, on Saturday. (This is the first time I have had internet access since then).

It was all a little bit surreal. The men (apart from Frédéric) were all frisked before getting onto the bus, and we set off to the (very loud) sound of the Grease medley with added Spanish rapping over the top. (You're the one that I want...you are the one I want....Si, Si, Si). It was 6.45 in the morning and having not been awake for very long it all felt a bit too much.

Somehow the rest of the family managed to sleep during most of the journey, but I just stared out of the window and found the journey fascinating. The image that will remain in my memory for a long time was a man who was working in very dangerous conditions rebuilding a wall that had been damaged by an avalanche. It was hot, he had no safety equipment at all and the drop below was more than a hundred metres. Yet despite all that, as the bus raced past at 300km per hour he saw a stranger staring out of its window and raised his hand in a friendly wave. He was working in appalling conditions and probably still had another ten hours to go, but he still had the energy, when he caught the eye of a stranger, to wave and smile. I will never know who that man was, but I will remember him nonetheless. In a lot of ways that little scene sums up the image I have of Ecuador.

In any event, I will keep this entry short as I am exhausted, having got up at 6 o'clock for the last five mornings (flight to Lagua Agrio, man spitting in Lagua Agrio, bus to Canoa, early meeting yesterday and early meeting in Portoviejo...cancelled again....this morning).

I should apologize for the photos which are very poor quality given that I was taking them at high speed through a dirty window and in the rain, but they will give you some idea at least of some of the scenes. These are some of the things I saw.

Luscious green vegetation and the snow capped mountains of the Andes, seven piglets scrabbling in the dirt for food, children aged no more than ten putting tar in wheelbarrows to lay a new section of road, dozens of abandoned building projects, handpainted signs offering services and goods of varying kinds, rows of brightly coloures washing hanging out to dry in the rain, whole pig carcasses hanging on hooks, a horse so thin that its ribs were visible, a water park with slides and swimming pools that was completely deserted, women and children in their best clothes going into pastel coloured churches, crosses to commemorate where people had died in road traffic accidents, men sitting on plastic chairs simply staring into space, huge banana plantations and orange groves, front yards containing dirty children and shining clean cars, hundreds of small wooden shacks with corrugated metal rooves....

...these are some of the images you will see should you ever decide to cross Ecuador on a bus.

We had been told that Canoa was a small, picturesque tourist destination on the coast. We had also been promised that after many weeks of rain in Quito we would be greeted by the sun. Sadly this was not the case. For the millionth day in a row it was raining. In addition I should tell you that there is no asphalt in Canoa, so the streets had turned to mud. You can probably imagine the rest.

Seven tired and sweaty passengers getting off the bus after a long journey to find themselves up to their ankles in mud. This was the evening before the morning when I got up at 5.45am to travel to a meeting which in fact was not happening at all. Let me just say that this was not the high point of our trip. Still, Canoa proved to be worth the effort for a lot of other reasons, but more about that next time.

Liliana, Grandma Carmen and little bit of hope

When I woke up this morning I could have sworn I was in a prison in Bangkok. All I could hear was loud screeching, babies crying, several alarms going off and a man clearing his throat and then spitting onto the floor...in addition to at least three televisions blaring out at full volume. When the power cut came and took away at least some of these noises I sent up a silent prayer of gratitude. I opened my eyes to see the remains of a squashed cockroach on the floor. The time was six thirty. It took me a few moments to remember where I actually was....a hotel room in Lago Agrio.

On Friday Saskia, Lucie, Niko and I went to the east of Ecuador for the day, flying from Quito to Lago Agrio and from there to a small village just across the river from Columbia called General Farfan...commonly known as La Punta. We were here to visit a family we had met in Quito and who have since become our very dear friends.

I first met the family through the Sol y Vida Foundation where I have been doing some volunteer work. Both Liliana (23) and her sister Marjory (5) are being treated for tumours which happily have now been removed, although the treatment is ongoing. The two of them live with their mother and Liliana's gorgeous little daughter Kerly.

We arrived in the village expecting to meet the four of them. In actual fact they were joined by several other members of the family who were all curious to meet these strange people who had come to their village from Europe, and we soon found ourselves literally surrounded by several generations of the same family.

As you can see from the photos, their house is surrounded by flowers and plants and looks very pretty...but what is not so obvious is that the house is falling down. It is a wooden construction balanced on concrete stilts, with a roof made of corrugated metal. The house has been in serious disrepair for several years, but a bad storm six months ago tore the roof off completely. The heavy rains soaked all of their possessions as well as the floor and the resulting situation is even more dangerous. I am no construction expert but it is not hard to see the danger. The place could collapse at any time. Grandma Carmen´s house across the road collapsed a few months ago and is now totally inhabitable.

We were shown round the village and we then took a bus to the Columbian border where there was a heavy military presence. The armed guards asked where were from and when we said we were from Finland allowed us across with big smiles and without our passports. I guess they had come to the conclusion that if there was going to be any violent disorder on the border, it was not going to be started by a Finnish mother, her two daughters and a baby. And so it was that we took an afternoon stroll into Colombia.

In all seriousness though, the family told me about the violence in the region and the truth is absolutely horrendous. The area has one of the highest rates of murder in the world. In their village alone there is a murder committed on average 15 times a year. The last was three days ago. A mother was on the river bank fishing when she was murdered in front of her two children. No-one had any idea why. Grandma Carmen told me that she herself gave birth to ten children. When she told me that five of them had been murdered I had to double check my Spanish to make sure I had understood correctly. I am sorry to say that I had. If that wasn't enough the family lost another two family members just two months ago in a motorbike accident. The driver of the other bike was apparently drunk. With a house in disrepair and violence like this round every corner I don't need to tell you how much this family dream about leaving, but with no money and little prospects there seems little chance of this happening.

We must have seemed an unlikely mix of people and we certainly turned heads everywhere we went that day. Grandma Carmen seemed to like holding my hand so I walked with her on one side and Kerly on the other. I have never had a grandmother and for an old lady to hold my hand like this was a very special moment for me too. As for Niko, he was such a novelty he was passed from one lady to another and charmed everyone he met. We could see people asking themselves who exactly was related to whom and not coming up with any sensible answers.

Before meeting up with the family we had found a hotel room in Lago Agrio which was a reasonable size and suggested to them that they might like to join us for the night. What I hadn't bargained for was that by inviting "the family" the invitation was automatically extended to everyone we had met....which meant that I suddenly found myself trying to explain to the hotel receptionist why I was now trying to accommodate a total of eleven people in one room.

For a family used to living in close quarters and sharing beds through necessity this was nothing out of the ordinary, but in the end we agreed to take two rooms to make life just a little easier.

I came to Ecuador with some money to distribute from my friends and colleagues at work, but we as a family also wanted to make our own contribution to helping someone in at least a small way. Of course in an ideal world we would love to be able to build new houses and schools and hospitals, and who knows, maybe one day that will become possible. For the moment though, our contribution can only be a modest one.

Having said that, we thought that the best thing we could do for one family would be to try and make a change which would have a long term effect rather than just feed someone for a couple of weeks. This family offered exactly that possibility.

Liliana is an animated, courageous, intelligent and determined woman. Until her recent operation she was supporting her family by working full time in a shop. Her wage was $80 a month. Our family has had its own financial struggles from time to time, as I am sure have many of you... but it is hard to even imagine what life must be like on a budget as limited as this one. One of the reasons that Liliana cannot earn more is that she has not been able to graduate from secondary school because of the costs involved. She only needs one year more of study in order to graduate and this is where we thought we could step in.

We are hoping that by supporting her family and helping her complete her education over the next year it will not only increase her chances of finding work but will also have a knock on effect for the family. I have no doubts about her commitment or determination to succeed because I have seen it for myself.

Despite the fact she is 23 years old, Liliana has to wear the same uniform as the children who will be in her class, so today we went to buy her school shoes and to have her fitted for her uniform so that she can start in her last year this coming September.

She has never had the chance to use a computer, so we visited an internet café so I could show her the wonders of hotmail. Most of you will know how little I know about computers...so you probably imagine that me explaining such things in Spanish was not a pretty sight. This way though at least she will be able to keep in touch over the next year. I should add that her village has no postal service which means that for the time being I am not even able to write letters.

The family is very houseproud and have succeeded in making their house pretty and welcoming with zero resources. They are talented at knitting and crochet and make placemats in the evenings which they sell when they can find a customer. What the pictures do not reveal is the fact that there is no toilet, bathroom or running water, or that the house is not going to last much longer.

If this family had been born in Western Europe I have no doubt that they would all be professionals living a very comfortable lifestyle. As it is they often wonder where their next meal is coming from and live in a village in which murder has become an every day occurrence. With young children to worry about in this environment in addition to the cancer in the family I have no idea how it is they manage to keep smiling. When I asked this they all said it was because they are blessed by God.

Being in Ecuador has been hugely enriching but I have also found it very hard being here. There are so many deserving people and I wish we could do something to help each and every one. The fact that we can't fills every day with feelings of frustration and inadequacy, but we have to make do with small gestures like this one. I just hope that at least we can make a small difference to Liliana and her family.

Our day and night in Lago Agria was emotional and intense. We all laughted and we all cried. One more time I realised how much I have to be grateful for and how little our family has to complain about. A big hug to you all from Quito where it is raining. Again.

Goodbye Yesica!

It was a sad morning today as we said goodbye to Yesica, who has been staying with us for the last three weeks.

We are known for having a large family... but in fact not everybody knows that in fact we also have two "adopted daughters", Mio from Japan and Yesica from Colombia. Mio and Yesica lived with us from 2005-06 as exchange students when we were still in England and we have been in touch with them ever since.

Mio, who is now 21, is currently travelling around the world and came to visit us in Finland this year in March. Since then she has been to Egypt, Spain and Peru and the latest I heard she was in Thailand.

When Yesica heard we were coming to South America she secretly arranged with Frederic and Saskia to come here and I was taken totally by surpise when she arrived here three weeks ago. When she got out of the taxi I was so happy to see her I cried for ten minutes in the middle of the street without stopping.

We have all loved having her with us, and even though eight of us have been living in the same apartment we are all still alive three weeks later!

Last night I thought we were going out for a meal to say goodbye to Yesica, but in fact I was tricked yet again...as the others had arranged a surprise birthday party for me, even though it's not my birthday until the end of the month. I was given a crown to wear which eventually ended up upside down on Luca's head.

Thank you everyone for the lovely party. We had a very happy evening which I will try to remember over and above the tears at the airport this morning.

Yesica is now in her third year of university and is planning to go to Montpelier as an exchange student next year...so hopefully we won't have to wait another four years until we see her again. In any event both Yesica and Mio are in our hearts every day.

If anyone reading this has ever thought of hosting an exchange student then don't hesitate...our extra daughters have brought a huge amount of love and laughter into our family and we very much look forward to seeing them both again.