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| Panama City from the Air (obviously!) |
26/4 On the flight from Panama City to Sao Paolo , having a “Cuba Libre” which apart from the occasional
beer is my first alcoholic drink in three months and this is airline strength!
And I can feel its effect. Once again
the “seat fairy” was good to me and on an almost packed plane the middle seat
next to me is empty! At present we are passing over the Amazon Jungle with its
obvious signs of deforestation and mining that leaves the waters a horrible
brown colour.
Hope its not just the alcohol but feeling very
contemplative, happy to have Jossefet in my life, excited about developing my
“Artes Movile” project [of which much more in later posts] and hope to explore
more. Antigua is suffocating my desire to get to know the real Guatemala,
but maybe with Artes Movile I can really take the project to remote corners of
the incredibly beautiful country.
I have with me my Spanish notes to revise. I speak only
Spanish with Jossefet as he has no English- which is good for me, but I suspect
that he keeps his vocabulary pretty basic for my sake.
Plan for the 3rd day of activities are meeting
with resistance from the Founder in Santiago Zamora, I really am beginning to
think that he runs the project for his convenience rather than the needs of the
children, he needs support yet I think he resents resents the work done by CasaSito. I think his agenda is not 100% healthy for
the future of the project. Jossefet and
I have been working so hard in developing ideas as the children deserve so much
more, in fact they deserve the best. It is amazing what can be done here, but
peoples motives have to be clear and I fear that projects run by well meaning
people but without supervision or oversight can wander from the pathway so
easily! Which is why I want my project
to be firmly under the umbrella of another organisation with a supervisory
boards etc. No such thing here as police
or CRB checks for working with children or vulnerable adults.
Turbulence at 39,000 has made my handwriting quite hard to
read at this point, that combined with the effects of the booze really is
turning this into a bit of a stream of consciousness , but I plan to type it
exactly as I wrote it!
I feel very much the question of what is the meaning of life
~ with mine being so eventful and so not boring ~ I wonder if I have always be
pre-programmed to be a “nomad” and that for me that is the answer to the
ultimate question, so, NOT a lemon or the number 42 and just maybe then the
Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy got it wrong?
And being a nomad is really “simply being” ~ simply being open to
possibilities. If you know different,
answers on a postcard to ……
At this time, with the good fortune of the small pension, I
am able to “give back” and that is important to me. Is it guilt? This is a topic for a few interesting dinners
in August (Martin, Michael, Jeff et al…..) I arrive on August 15th!
I hope that I get to feel that sense of achievement, at the
moment I am struggling with a sense of failure in that my efforts in Santiago
Zamora are not going according to plan and I so want to be successful in one
thing before I shuffle off! I feel my
life to have been a very interesting, exciting, dynamic and creative succession
of events but all ultimately doomed to fall short of the planned success I was
seeking. Or, is ita case of my low boredom threshold, ADHD, or too much
creativity?
Anyways at the moment my heart and soul are in two
things:A. My relationship# have I
finally plucked up the courage to love and be loved? And B.
to strive to get Artes Moviles of the
ground.
OK, still bumping along over the jungle (and will be for
another 3 to 4 hours). Hungry and looking forwards to my lunch especially as
Copa Airlines turned out a very excellent breakfast of omelette, refried beans,
cheese and fried platinos on my flight from Guatemala City
to Panama City.
So folks, happy and frustrated. I hope that one or two
people in Guatemala
will be bale to help me realise my ambitions for Artes Moviles as it will be a
power for good and add something to the lives of about 3000 children a year
many of whom currently have little or nothing.
The Amazon basin really is wonderfully interminable.
Meandering tributaries, of tributaries, of tributaries, of the mighty River
Amazon. And just vast expanses of jungle as far as the eye can see from 39,000
feet.
If I stay in Guatemala
and Artes Moviles gets off the ground the next challenge will be to learn one
of the 23 or so different Mayan languages depending on the area of
operation. Guatemala is 70% a mountainous
country and I so want to see how life works away from it all and learning the
local language will be key to this. Antigua promotes a sanitised version of the
Mayan life ~ especially for the convoys of tourists who arrive from a cruise
ship and “do” panoramic Guatemala in 6 hours and including Antigua in 2 hours
along with obligatory Marimba Music and folk dancers. Who as soon as the
tourists have gone, change out of the “Traditional clothes” and go back to the
westernised life in Antigua! Me cynical?
I want to see this for “real” not as a tourist.
Jossefet and I are currently experimenting with ideas for
crafts projects, the mobiles made from terracotta “Barro” and jewellery made
from wooden, glass and acrylic beads. We
are beading and wiring to our hearts content and have to keep stopping to
remember we are supposed to be creating projects for the children aged 5 – 12
and not get carried away in the sheer creativity of creating another
“outstanding” piece of jewellery!
Hands up, who remembers the formation of Ox-bow lakes from
their geography lessons. The view is a living textbook example of this repeated
many hundreds of times, but the clouds keep stopping me from getting a good
picture of this.
Lunch was a disappointment, very dry salad, bland meat with
rice and for “afters” a packet of Oreos:
those American biscuits simply full of preservatives and so unhealthy. My diet in Guatemala is 100% free from
preservatives or processed foods, though way too high in carbs. I do however, enjoy our weekly BBQ especially
with good steak at £2 per pound and Chicken at 50p per pound. {Carne asada ~guacamole ~chimol ~onions ~corn
on the cob ~ rice, chilli sauce ~tortillas al washed down with jamaica
or tamarindo - food of the (Mayan) gods.
}
Well lunch sobered me up, so now it is time for coffee then
a snooze before I arrive in Sao Paolo for my connecting flight to Florianopolis. And a meeting with Batman ~ oh no, that is
Metropolis!
27/4
Arrived 2 hours late to the hotel, at 2 am TAM the Brazilian airline having furnished me
with material for my session tomorrow!
How can an airline boast of Dialogue being at the heartof its customer service yet fail to inform passengers why the flight is 100 minutes late? But right now I am enjoying the sun and the view and realise just how
much I need this break from my usual routine. Eurochambres kindly allowed me to
arrive a day early in order to recuperate from the flight, it is actually
harder and takes longer to get here from Guatemala
than from London! So I am going to chill.
No more introspection- - - - going to chill and will write again whne back in Antigua!
Hasta Luego Amigos!
More pics of Florianopolis in next blog!
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