Bolivia Tomorrow

Hey Guys,
So its now currentley 9.50pm and i am sitting in bed wriitng this blog when Im sure i should most probably be sleeping, but ahh well. So i promised to write a blog before i go to Bolivia and this is what i plan to do.

This week has been VERY interesting to say the least. For the best part of last week we literally had no food in Azul Wasi, there has been no rice, no pasta and no potatoes which makes up 70% of our dailey meals. Alcides had to use money out of his own pocket to buy everything and was even talking about selling a cow (can sell for over 1000 soles) to provide funds which are usually provided by a charity but there had been some form of confusion or something. I don't quite know what but all i Know is the store cupbaord was EMPTY. If only i took a picture of it you would see what i mean. Usually its brimming with pasta and stuff so for there to be no milk, pasta, rice and potatoes is a big thing!

On the Thursday Alcides came over and just told us a lot of the problems he's been facing recently in terms of work and Azul Wasi. It's good to know that Alcides trusts us with this information although a lot of it Rachel and I weren't expecting to hear. Alcides is already under a lot of stress from his work and there are so many other problems regarding azul wasi that he just doesn't need to have. I have so much respect for Alcides and for what he does so for anyone or anything to cause him stress really gets to me. Alcides told us a lot of stories about the boys and reasons why they are here; the saddest thing to find out is that Ivan has literally no family, not one person! It really explains a lot of his behaviour. Other boys have one or two family members, some had run away from family completely due to abuse, one boys mother is unable to walk, both oscar's parents are dead for what reason i do not know, one of the boys came here with an addiction to alcohol which was NOT expected at all. It was a lot of information in such a short space of time and led to a very long conversation with Rachel and I.

Friday I cooked and made some italian fried chicken with mash potatoe which was immense. When i asked which boy's wanted seconds they all jumped at the chance. I mean if i said i didn't like the positive feedback i would be lying LOL. Maritza also came to visit Azul Wasi and brought a cake which all the boys loved. Alcides came over again and brought with him 2 other volunteers, Meghan from Trinidad and Tobago (caribbean) and Sarah from America, they had been working at the colibri day centre (another one alcides was involved with for street kids) and had been invited to visit Azul Wasi, there was also 2 other German volunteers here called Judy and Bjorn. Rachel and I felt bad as we were speaking a lot of english and obviously Maritza can't so we kept trying to fill her in on what we were talking about.

Saturday Alcides's half daughter came over and was asking 101 questions about azul wasi, wanted to create a list of "reglas" (rules) for azul wasi, like a code of conduct for the boys, rules for the computer and punishments if any one of the rules were broken. The funniest thing was that his daughter had only spoken to Anastacia for her opinion on everything and she told a LOAD of lies which me and rachel had to set her straight on. Alcides came round in the afternoon and brought a huge parcel from my parents which i was ecstatic about :D.

Sunday i was given some really sad news, a family friend had passed away due to cancer and so to say i wasn't in the best of moods is an understatement. I was feeling really down and spent the majority of the morning in bed trying to take my mind off of things. It really does hit me a lot more when people pass away when I am here as it just shows anything can happen so I just have to keep on praying that my family and friends are kept safe. Anyway I don't think i need to depress my self or anyone else anymore, i will keep that to my emails to wendy lol. Today we were to make pizza's with Judy and Bjorn (German's) and the boys, the pizzas were really good and we used the actual bread oven which was cool. Today however brought ALOT of problems, anastacia cooked a whole other meal on top of the huge pizzas we cooked which seems wasteful seeing as though for the best part of last week we had no food, the boys were all acting attrociously and there was a huge thunderstorm which ended in a powercut. The best part of the day was the powercut actually, alcides came over to speak to all the boys about their behaviour in the day however the main problem is that Anastacia is not an authoritive figure who the boys respect and therefore run wild on weekends... At dinner we sat with candles and it was really fun, i sat with Dante, little Edwin and Hernan and were teaching them how to talk to girls in english (they asked). Funniest thing was the only thing dante knew how to say was "come on baby" and "big momma" so from the looks of things he's learnt all this from porno's so i have a lot to teach LOL.

Monday went by in a bit of a blur really, rachel and i have just been trying to organise ourselves for peru and spend as much time with the boys as posisble. We have also been enjoying spending time with Judy and Bjorn, they are great volunteers and although they are only here short term (1 week) they are so hard working and brillaint role models for the boys.

Tuesday (TODAY) has involved some serious packing and reorganising my stuff so that incase of any other volunteers coming to stay all my stuff is safe. Fran came over with a photographer from Vodophone to take pictures of the boys. Taking pictures on a school day was defo hard to keep the boys concentration, especially Ivan who struggles at the best of times to concentrate on homework so being asked to take pictures in between homework time was hard as Ivan lost his concentration immediatley. When everyone had left though i was finally able to get Ivan back on task and actually bonded really well with him. Ivan is REALLY bad with rascism when it comes to me, i have been called amiga africa, amiga negra, he has compared the colour of the black tv screen to my parents etc etc. I could actually list the insults they are seriously endless and at the beginning i found it really hard but ive come to deal with it now. As we were working ivan asked where i am from and where my parents are from, i told him that my mum was white and dad was black and he was suprised. I said that i bet there aren't many mixed race people in peru and he told me other wise. He said that there were and that his dad was BLACK and his mum was white and he has white sisters. It explains SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Much, some of the boys call Ivan Negro so i guess having me here he could pass the negro jokes from him to me, which obviously isn't the best way to deal with things but you must remeber he is only a 10/11/12 year old boy. So now i am going to teach him better ways to deal with it when boys call him negro or monkey in the hope to change his attitude.

ANYYYYYYYYYYYWAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
TOMMMORRRRRRRRRRROWWW IS BOLIVIAAAAAAAAAAA
YAAAAAAAAAAAYYYY
I am sooo excited, i am fully packed and now just wasting time on the internet as you do haha. I have an abbundance of letters to send tomorrow and rachel and i need to go and grab some food and stuff for the journey. Its a 12 hour bus journey with a full bed so should be okay.

I really can't be bothered to right any more and won't update till im back from Bolivia. Hope everyone is okay though and doubt i will have much internet connection whilst i am away. So yhhh everyone take care and SEE YOU ON THE FLIPSIDE JACK
Simply Signed
Simply Compas