Is there another way???
I just came back home from my social service in Santa María de Quiegolani in Oaxaca (this webpage was developed as one of the projects of this service).
Something really changed inside of me during those couple of weeks... i mean, you just can't pass through this kinda experiences untouched. You can't ignore poverty once you taste it, you feel it.... you live it.
Anyway... here goes a short chronic of my life in Quiego:
Day one:
We arrived at Quiego around 5 pm after 25 hours of traveling... so we were all so very tired and just wanting to eat and sleep; however we needed to find a family that would take us in (each of us stayed in one different house)
At first I was really nervous 'coz of the way we were supposed to be assigned to the families. We were all stading in a line and several kids from the highschool would pick us, but I was lucky and got a family real fast.
I stayed with Filomeno. His house was made of "adobe", had no running water, no bathroom, had only one room and the kitchen, and they were a total of 6 family members. I would have never thought that I could grow to love such a place in such a short period of time. By the end of the project I left there leaving behind not just a house... but something that felt more like a home.
My Quiego family gave me everything they had... in fact they insisted to sleep in the kitchen floor so I could share the bedroom with Filomeno more comfortably. I wanted to share the "beds" (more like a wooden table) with the whole family, but they wouldn't let me. Now that's hospitalarity.
Day two:
I was up by 5:30 am. Damn.
I was part of a project called "hortalizas" that basically consisted of working two hours straight in order to prepare the beds where we would later plant stuff (that's right stuff... I wasn't sure of what we were plating). It was very tired not only 'coz of the two hours of work, but also 'coz in order to arrive to the working place we had to walk/climb during half an hour... and believe guys, doing that at 5:30 am can be really tiresome.
The rest of the day we spent it in a classic "Color's War" (one of those events in which the whole school is divided in two colors and then face each other in several competitions). I was green and I managed to gain a reputation as "El Griton" and that's how people continued calling me for the rest of the week heheheheh. I gotta say it's real nice to have a whole town knowing you that fast. I gave then a good impresion very fast and since day twoI was making new friends ^-^
We loose in the end... the green team I mean, but I had a great time anyway, and by the end of the day the kids from the school organized a party for us.
... to be continued
Something really changed inside of me during those couple of weeks... i mean, you just can't pass through this kinda experiences untouched. You can't ignore poverty once you taste it, you feel it.... you live it.
Anyway... here goes a short chronic of my life in Quiego:
Day one:
We arrived at Quiego around 5 pm after 25 hours of traveling... so we were all so very tired and just wanting to eat and sleep; however we needed to find a family that would take us in (each of us stayed in one different house)
At first I was really nervous 'coz of the way we were supposed to be assigned to the families. We were all stading in a line and several kids from the highschool would pick us, but I was lucky and got a family real fast.
I stayed with Filomeno. His house was made of "adobe", had no running water, no bathroom, had only one room and the kitchen, and they were a total of 6 family members. I would have never thought that I could grow to love such a place in such a short period of time. By the end of the project I left there leaving behind not just a house... but something that felt more like a home.
My Quiego family gave me everything they had... in fact they insisted to sleep in the kitchen floor so I could share the bedroom with Filomeno more comfortably. I wanted to share the "beds" (more like a wooden table) with the whole family, but they wouldn't let me. Now that's hospitalarity.
Day two:
I was up by 5:30 am. Damn.
I was part of a project called "hortalizas" that basically consisted of working two hours straight in order to prepare the beds where we would later plant stuff (that's right stuff... I wasn't sure of what we were plating). It was very tired not only 'coz of the two hours of work, but also 'coz in order to arrive to the working place we had to walk/climb during half an hour... and believe guys, doing that at 5:30 am can be really tiresome.
The rest of the day we spent it in a classic "Color's War" (one of those events in which the whole school is divided in two colors and then face each other in several competitions). I was green and I managed to gain a reputation as "El Griton" and that's how people continued calling me for the rest of the week heheheheh. I gotta say it's real nice to have a whole town knowing you that fast. I gave then a good impresion very fast and since day twoI was making new friends ^-^
We loose in the end... the green team I mean, but I had a great time anyway, and by the end of the day the kids from the school organized a party for us.
... to be continued
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