Well I've taken a wee blog holiday over the last few weeks, they seem to pass so quickly here, and since I'm getting to the end of this part of my trip, I thought I'd give a wee update of my time here in Banos.
From the moment I stood off the bus, I knew that I could easily spend a lot of time here. The greatest things were the absence of the humidity, and the lack of hungry mosquitos. The Amazon held a very strong, buzzing sort of energy. The whole time I was there it felt like the whole environment was one, gigantic, living organism. There was no way of escaping this intensity. But here it was very contrasting. I was now pondering to myself what it would be like to spend the next month or so here in this small town in the Andes.
I immediatly found the most impressive thing about Banos to be the location. Everywhere I looked, I could see a montage of green mountains, scattered with small clearings, where locals grew their crops. I also noticed that this place is lucky enough the possess numerous natural wonders which make it one of the most popular spots in Ecuador for both tourists, and locals. The Pastaza River flows around the outside, gathering momentum as it gets fed by the numerous waterfalls througout the valley, making it a popular river for white water rafting. The most impressive thing about the natural landscape here is the great volcano called "Tungurahua," which seems to dwarf everything else, standing at just over five thousand metres in elevation. Unfortunatly I arrived in the rainy season, so it's very difficult to get a clear view of the volcano, without it being coverd with cloud. I was informed that it remained dormant for much of the time, but occasionally fires back into life, re asserting it's relentless power dominance over everything surrounding it.
After spending a couple of days acclimatising to my new environment, it was time to get ready for my new project. I had organised to be living and volunteering at a place here called "Arte del Mundo," also known as "The Bib." I found this on the internet back at home, and I was excited that I was finally here to help out.
Over the next four weeks, I offered my services as a roll model & guitar teacher to the children, and also an english teacher during the evenings to the adult students. The Bib is a non proffit foundation, and has been built nearly exclusivly on donations and the services offered by volunteers, and today still relies on the generosity of others the stay alive. When I first walked around, I was blowen away by how such a thing could be built from the ground, with no funding behind it.
This project has several visions, one of them being to turn it into a fully functioning lending library, (there is currently nothing in, or around Banos that offers this service.) They also open their doors at 3.30 from Monday to Friday, to give the children of Banos a productive opportunity to express their creativity, to practice their reading, and also to give them a positive social environment to be in. During this time I've been spending my time hanging out with the kids, playing games, reading with them (although many times while reading in Spanish they ended up helping me more than I could help them!), or somtimes I would just observe. They love the volunteers here, and I quickly found it to be very difficult to beat them in most of the games, they seem to to know how to use the language barrier to their advantage! It also wasn't hard to find a few kids who would be interested in learning the guitar over the following few weeks.
I've really enjoyed the challenge of teaching guitar in a different language. Not only has it challenged me to find a completely fresh approach, but it's also forced me to learn a bunch of songs in Spanish. Most of them have been very basic two chord Spanish folk songs, and most of the children have jumped at the oppportunity to have a sing along with me, even if they found the chords to be a wee bit challenging.
Outside of the Bib, I've been enjoying exploring the huge selection of walks they have here. Whether it's a day walk, retracing the steps of an old drug smuglers trail, a short walk up the hill to a lookout, or an aimless wonder through the town, I never have to go far to enjoy the contrast here. But by far, the highlight of my stay here has been feeling the unforgiving power of an alive volcano.
On a Friday afternoon, three weeks into my stay here, I was informed that I should make sure I have my passport & credit card handy, and that there was a posibility of an evacuation. I'd been quietly hoping that she would come alive while I was here, and I was very excited at the prospect of viewing a live volcano. As I walked back to get a second opinion, I could hear the deep rumbling sound as the volcano churned around, but I couldn't hear any explosions. It wasn't until later that night that she really decided to come alive.
After trying to catch a view through the clouds that evening, I returned to go to bed, hoping for a better view tomorrow. By this time there were a few explosions here and there, but nothing really that scary. But as I lay down to go to sleep, it seemed that now she'd really decided to flare up. About every five to ten minutes, an explosion would go off, shaking the whole building and ratteling the windows. It seemed to get more and more frequent, and for the first time I was starting to freek out a wee bit. I couldn't sleep so I decided that I'd observe things out the window. The town held a very different energy now. Although it was the middle of the night, I could still feel this sense of everyone being on edge.
After more explosions, I noticed a few car loads of families driving down the road, choosing to get out of here. I'd been told that if evacuation was nececary, I would hear a big alarm go off, but no one really knew what was going on though. I figured that if things really were a problem, someone would have told me, so I just spent the night curiously observing this facinating experience.
As the weekend went on, the alert seemed to flow up and down, and with the army arriving in town to enforce an evacuation, the likelyhood seemed quite high. At one point I had all my bags packed, ready to do the dash at any moment. But after nothing happened, I decided to unpack things again. It's remainded that way thoughout, right up until now. Most nights, if the visibility is good, we go on a wee volcano viewing mission. Some nights have had some spectacular views.
A live view of a spewing volcano makes any fireworks display seem inferior. Even today, the power of the volcano seems to have temporaraly taken everyones attention off certian things. For me, this is the most powerfull example I've experienced of how there are many things that I really have no controll over what so ever, and once again an opportunity to just go with the flow and see what it has to show me.
Anyone who would like to make a donation, or is interested in volunteering at Arte del Mundo, please visit:
http://www.artedelmundoecuador.com/
This place relies on donations of any type to stay alive, and I'm sure any contributions would be greatly received.
Thanks
Rob
No comments:
Post a Comment