Coats for Kids and Birthday #1

I really liked those Carayao kids from the beginning, back in January when I met them at the Leadership Camp our sector was doing, but over the past few months, it's blossomed into something altogether bigger. We were faced with the challenge of doing a successful community project within 6 months, and it is not often that PC volunteers have to talk down Paraguayans and tell them to think smaller, but these kids...It took a month of weekly meetings to convince them we shouldn't do our first project getting clothes, shoes and food for all of the poor kids in their city. I didn't want them to go through one more experience of big talk and big dreams that never come to fruition. Think tangible, I said, we can always do more later, but we have to start somewhere. So we narrowed it down to coats for the winter, and down to one poor neighborhood. They hit the dirt and spent a Sunday going door to door, explaining their project and forming a list of 80 names and sizes.

We met every Thursday night, in the patio of a church. I'd take the 6pm bus the half hour to their town, we'd meet for about an hour, and then a few of them would sit with me by the ruta while we waited the 2 hours for the next bus to come through at 9:30. While we waited, we talked, we planned, we joked, we played - this was the most important part of the project.
Thursday night meeting - Lider, Mariela, and Oscar
Thursday night meeting - Margarita, Felipe, Vicki, and Jorge
Thursday night - me, Margarita, Jorge, and Vicki (and kitten that I found and gave to some friends)

We decided that we should beg for money on the ruta, since we had no funds to initiate anything bigger and less effective. Because they average 16 yrs old, I said we'd need help from the police so cars wouldn't run us down. We stood out on the ruta from 9-5 one Saturday, and I didn't have my camera, so I will paint this scene: Busy 2 lane road, cars and trucks zooming by all day long. About 5 of us, standing on the dotted middle line, holding decorated shoe boxes with holes cut in the top, a cop on each end. The cops motion the cars to slow down, and they do, rolling down windows to see what they'll have to do to get out of this cop situation. The cop steps to the side and one of us steps forward, wielding a box, and asking for a donation to buy coats for the poor children of Carayao. The driver looks at us, looks at the cop, looks back at us, and pulls out 5 mil or so. We got over 1600000gs (about $300) that day.

The next Saturday, they arranged for a driver and truck, donated by the municipalidad, to take us to the market in Asuncion and buy the coats. As anyone would do, however, the driver decided to run some personal errands along the way, so between stopping for chipa, picking up a TV, dropping off the TV, picking up his wife and taking her to the terminal, visiting Caacupe to pray a little, visiting the driver's family 20k off the ruta, and stopping every 20 minutes to pour water in the radiator, it took 12 hours. But we did get the coats, so it is what it is.

Oscar, Lider, Me, and Mariela
Lider, Oscar, Mariela and Cardboard newspaperman
Watering truck for the millionth time
Detour to Church at Caacupe

The next Saturday was the presentation. The muni donated chairs and we cleaned around the plaza, set up a podium, decorated with Paraguayan flags, and wrote a speech.
Lider, me, Mariela, Margarita, Oscar, Nestor, Vicki, and Jorge
Group
Presentation of coats
Oscar giving
Mariela giving
Getting their coats
Kids with their coats

Since it was a week before my birthday, they threw me a party afterwards to celebrate.
Group
Lunch

In order to prove that 3 gifts of makeup were not a hint, they decided to give me a makeover. It quickly spiralled into a costume party.

Makeover
Jorge and me
Jorge, Diana, y Felipe
Venos and me, brujas
Jorge and Diana
Mariela, me, and Venos
Diana, Mariela, and Jorge
Diana, Jorge, Maggie and Nestor
Me and cake
Nestor got tired as we were carrying back the borrowed chairs

And that's how I spent my first 30th birthday.