Santa Cruz - The story of some amazing kids, hippy-ing it up in Samaipata, Amazon jungle fever and Wills and the wild pig chase

I think this is going to be one of the most difficult blogs to write because it's very difficult to sum up the last 6 weeks. If we had to put it into 3 statements they would be this:
1. We've spent time with the most amazing kids, laughed with them, hugged them when they've cried, stopped a lot of fights and learnt so so much from them.
2. The weather has been completely unpredictable - cylcles of 1 week of blistering sun followed by 2 weeks of storms, rain and the coldest winds ever.
3. Wills has been chased by a variety of wildlife.

So, it all started when we climbed off the 16hour bus journey from La Paz at a time in the morning when only the birds were just waking up and a wave of 30degree Santa Cruz de la sierra heat hit us and our thermal clothes (which were totally needed in La Paz) straight in the face. We were both full of nerves about starting our first volunteering project and feeling pretty sweaty, sleep deprived and disgusting. Santa Cruz de la Sierra is a city in the lowlands of Bolivia where the temperature most of the year round is sunny and tropical - very different to the altiplanos of Bolivia which are higher and colder. Santa Cruz prides itself on being more Brazilian than Bolivian in character and it's a colourful place where buildings, buses, homes and even telephone boxes have a colourful tropical character to them (our favourite telephone box so far has been in the shape of a parrot). We met up with the Director of the charity, Alalay, where we would be volunteering for the next 6 weeks at the bus station and our first port of call was to go to the offices in the centre of town to hear more about what the weeks ahead would hold.

Alalay is a name that was chosen by the street children themselves and is an Aymara word meaning "I am cold". The charity was started in the early 1990's by a student of 19yrs old who would pass the children on the streets daily on her way to university and became determined to do something to help. An estimated 40miliion children live on the streets in South America and Bolivia is the poorest country within South America which is estimated to have several hundred thousand children who are in high-risk situations and who live, work and sleep on the streets. The organisation has 2 'welcome houses' in the centre of Santa Cruz, a girls house and a boys house where the children first come to live when they leave the streets or their current family situation. When the children are ready they then move onto the Aldea which is a purpose built community about 1 hour away from Santa Cruz in the small village of Santa Rita where they live in Cabanas according to their age group. Each Cabana can be made up of between 9 - 19 children and has an 'Educadora' appointed, someone who is similar to a house parent who cares for them on a daily basis. Wiithin the community there are also 2 social workers and a psychologist and workshops such as a bakery where the children help out but that also help to bring funds into the aldea by selling the produce such as bread. The children go to school and learn life skills to prepare them for their adult lives. At around the age of 15 - 16yrs, the children move back to the 'welcome houses' in the city to learn trades and become ready for work and at this stage they also serve as positive role models for the new children who are just starting out on their journey with Alalay and may have only just come from the streets or their families.

Wills and I were going to be living in the Aldea for the next six weeks and after a whistle stop tour in the city where we played football with the welcome house boys and tried to take in as much as possible from the Spanish that we understood, which at that point, wasn't a lot, we eventually made it to the Aldea. For the first four weeks Wills was in the cabana working with the smallest boys and I was in the cabana working with the smallest girls, their ages ranging from 4 - 8yrs. After those 4 weeks, our 2 cabanas joined together so since then we've both been volunteering in one cabana with the boys and girls now living together (the first week they joined was chaos because of how excited all the kids were to be together!!). We've been helping them with their daily routines, Wills in particular has been breaking up a lot of fights that would break out between the boys and we've been taking them to school in the afternoons, down the long dusty track, past the monkey tied to the tree (the kids all shout 'monotita' - little monkey!) and across the road with the green mountains in the background. The kids are amazing - they made us laugh, they made us frustrated, they made us talk about them every single weekend we were away from them, they made us miss them and at times they made us want to run away! But we wouldn't take back a single second because we've learnt so much from them. I have to tell you about some of the kids - one of the little boys, I'll call him JC, is ALWAYS in trouble. He doesn't like to do his home work, he runs to a field on the way back from school to steal mandarins from the field when we're not looking and he has so much energy that a lot of the time he uses to shout, jump around and generally be at the centre of any chaos. When I first started 'helping' him with his homework he wouldn't listen to anything I said - it would literally take us 2 hours to get him to write a few lines. He would do anything to avoid it - run around, sharpen his pencil until it snapped and then sharpen it again, hide the other children's things - it drove me mad! But after 6 weeks and I think with my spanish improving a bit so we can talk to eachother and just giving him hugs when he's been upset, he actually comes to take my hand now and leads me to get his rucksack and his homework. We sit together, we talk and he gets his writing done in half the time. He still gets frustrated, he still cries when he doesn't understand and he still loses concentration but because I've been able to sit every day and give him time, I really feel like we've made progress together - and he's taught me probably more than I've taught him, about the kind of strategies that help and that work for him. Another example is a little boy, S, who has absolutely driven Wills mad over the weeks by hitting him and the other kids and running riot whenever the chance arises. We were watching a film with all the kids the other week and something made S get really upset and he was breaking his heart, sobbing and crying, like we've never seen him before. The first person he looked for was Wills and he ran straight to him, crawled up into his lap and Wills was hugging him for the next hour until he was ok again. Another little boy who's the smallest child in the Aldea and either through not being talked to enough when he was very small or maybe by being spoken to in a different language, isn't able to speak spanish properly. He communicates by shouting things like 'Atta' for 'Provecho' (which means 'enjoy your meal' in Spanish) and only says words like 'mio' or 'choo choo'. All the other kids think it's hilarious to mimic him and we've had some really funny times when he's been asked to say the Lords Prayer before we eat and all the kids love to say it in the way he speaks!! It's all the little golden moments like that which have made the last 6 weeks so special. We've also organised some fun things for them and helped out with some English classes. I bought some textiles from the market for the girls and we made fabric drawings and with the leftovers I taught some of the girls to sew and we made clothes for their dolls. We've all made some masks together, Wills made some paper airplanes with the boys, we've taken part in team sports (with my Yellow Team being awful whilst shouts of 'Hermano William', Brother William, to play on their team ring out) and for our last weekend we stayed at the Aldea and we bought ingredients to make pizzas with our cabana. Apart from one girl licking the bowl of cheese, probably 50% being eaten before they went in the oven (the kids didn't realise they needed to be cooked!) and a few burnt bases, it was a great success and the kids were all so excited and sang the 'Pizza, pizza, pizza, mozarella' song for a long time afterwards! We've also bought them a few treats like DVDs and fruit - which they thanked us for, for days and days afterwards and which it was just such a pleasure to see them so happy about. There are just so many little stories I could write about here that have made us laugh. But all of the kids need reassurance, have times when they need hugs and times when they don't know what to do with all their feelings so they spill out into tears or a punch. We've learnt about some of the children's backgrounds and some of the things they have been through just really bring it home that of course there are going to be times when it's chaos - but those kids smile and laugh and have been given another chance because of Alalay.

Please, if you can, donate to Alalay. They are always struggling for funds and the reason that our 2 cabanas were joined was because of funding issues so if you can spare anything I can truly say that it will be put to the best use possible - www.alalay.co.uk and the page where you can donate securely online - http://www.justgiving.com/alalay-uk/donate. We found out about Alalay through Annie Syrett who is the partner of my cousin and was a volunteer herself and who now works tirelessly to raise the profile of Alalay. The Justgiving page was set up through Annie.

Our weekends in Santa Cruz have been a mixture of doing very normal boring things like getting our clothes washed in the laundrette (there are no washing machines at the aldea), going to the cinema, eating and meeting up with some of the other volunteers as well as one of our friends we met when travelling, Helma, who came and stayed at the Aldea for a few days (we miss you Helma!). We've also been able to explore some nearby areas and this is where Will's run ins with wildlife have all started...

Our first trip out of Santa Cruz was a few days in Samaipata which is a Quechua word meaning 'rest place in the highlands' and we went there to celebrate our 6 year wedding anniversary so thought it was a pretty appropriate place to go after 6 years to have a rest! Samaipata has been my favourite place above all other places so far. There's something magical in the air there. It's a small town in the mountains on the edge of Amboro National Parque and all you can see for miles around are rolling tropical forested green mountains. It's also a hippy magnet and I always thought I was a bit of a hippy at heart. The hostel where we stayed was hippy central and I loved it. It was called Hostal Andorina and it was filled with hammocks, a courtyard covered by climbing purple lillies, painted chairs, balconies with views all across the town and the mountains and hundreds of photographs and nic nacs. It also only served healthy food so for our breakfasts we had huge plates of fresh fruit salads and homemade warm brown bread with homemade jam. Yum. We also had our own magical coincidence happen. We were trying to plan a trip on the saturday to some waterfalls but we kept hitting dead ends - the tours were too expensive, the transport wasn't available etc. We went into a panaderia to buy some pastries for a picnic and on the way out we were stopped by a guy who asked what our plans were. It turned out that he and his girlfriend had stopped us in the street 2 weeks earlier in Santa Cruz to ask directions and we'd spoken only for a couple of minutes, but they were looking for a couple to share a taxi with them to the waterfalls and spotted us when we went into the panaderia! So for 4 pounds each we spent the day at Las Cuevas waterfalls and a world heriate site called El Fuerte where there are some pre-Incan rock carvings. I went under the waterfalls which were just amazing and so powerful, whilst Will's drew a big heart and our names in the white sand beach which surrounded the waterfall. Then we ate our pastries and some mandarins on a big rock in the river in the sun. It was such a beautiful day. The next day we went to an animal sanctuary where Will's animal problems began and where monkeys, pigs and dogs roamed free around the gardens. The first animal to chase Wills was a puppy so it all started off pretty small. It was a puppy of one of those Beethoven dogs and he latched onto Wills trousers and tried to rip them. Only a few minutes earlier the dogs had almost attacked a little boy though(!!) so the laughs were all a bit nervous. Then we noticed a wild pig roaming around the garden. At the time Wills had a banana in his hand to feed one of the monkeys. The pig spotted the banana and spent the next 20 minutes chasing Wills around trying to convince him that the banana should be his. It was hilarious. The pig was rubbing up against Will's leg and Wills was walking away only to be followed by it and once he'd given it a bit of banana that was it - the pig wanted it all. I couldn't stop laughing. Since then we've added geese and a chihuahua to the list of animals that have taken a liking or disliking to Will's. I think he's still on edge from pig-gate. He thought the chihuahua was a snake and when the goose hooted at him he actually shielded himself behind the little boy that he was walking home from school.

Last weekend we made a trip (3 hours on a horse - ow) into the Amazon rainforest at an ecolodge which was actually just a few huts where the villagers help out on a rota basis, called La Chonta, in the northern part of the Amboro National Parque. Will's is a big nature documentary fan and I think I have to stop teasing him about that now because the trip was just spectacular. We saw the most amazing flora and fauna and after a morning of birdwatching I felt like it was the most fun I'd had in ages! We made three treks into the rainforest with a local guide who showed us all the amazing surroundings - the blood tree which when you cut it, looks like its bleeding, giant ferns with leaves twice the size of humans, hundreds of different kinds of butterflies which just fly all through the trees, some with beautiful colours and some which look like brown or green leaves, massive spiders, mushrooms of a million different colours and trees with routes so huge they stand out of the ground and you can stand under them and so tall you can't see the tops. We also discovered a new Bolivian food which one of the villagers cooked for us - its called Sonso and its basically potato and cheese fried on a kebab stick - delicious.

These have been the quickest 6 weeks of our lives, the time just completely ran away. But through all the ups and downs we're leaving with memories of some very special times with the kids, being a little bit wiser (and with a few more bruises!) and I think that's the main thing we'll hold onto after we leave. In the next few days Carly arrives, we have 2 more days with our kids which we plan to fill with as much fun (and cake) as possible to say goodbye and we start on the third leg of our South American adventure.