International women's day speech

On Sunday March 8 Lourdes was asked to give a speech in the main plaza of Sauce by the municipal authorities to commemorate international women's day as a representative of our Friday club for senior citizens.  She got straight to the point in deploring Peru's 'machista' culture and its unfortunate ranking as having the highest rate of domestic violence in South America.

Our volunteers Ronja and Marlene lead some of the members of our senior citizens club in the annual international women's day parade.

Remodel at Estrella de Sauce

In the southern hemisphere the school year starts in March.  Thanks to a generous donation from Freunde der Erziehungskunst Reudolf Steiners in Berlin we are now preparing for the 2015 reopening of our after-school enrichment program by building some walls that were lacking at our headquarters in Sauce, Peru. Additionally we are delighted that our ex-volunteer Andres decided to take a break from his law studies in Freiburg, Germany to come and see us.  He kindly offered to paint our classroom chairs and other furniture to get us ready for opening day next week.

Andres and Lourdes preparing our classroom for the new school year.

Our builder maestro Simon with Lourdes with new wall that includes an area for making compost.

New interior wall behind our traditional oven.

We've moved!

We  decided to spend New Year's Eve in the house we have been building for over 3 years here in Sauce, San Martin, Peru.  It took a lot of work to achieve this goal what with moving furniture and doing last-minute costruction details, so we were both pretty exhausted on Dec 31st and fell asleep well before the midnight celebrations, although I vaguely heard a burst of fireworks to announce the arrival of 2015 then promptly resumed my slumber.
In South and Central America it is pretty normal to live in an unfinished house.  You move in and slowly finish your dwelling as time and funds become available.  We are joining this venerable tradition by moving into our partially finished house and will keep on with the construction one room at a time until the whole structure is complete.
Right now I'm winding up some finish carpentry and cabinetwork in our downstairs bedroom.  Next will be the front door and windows facing the street.

Our cats Moggi and Michita would love to permanently occupy our new bedroom which is close to being completely finished, they have to be actively encouraged to go hang our elsewhere.  It is a bit like the cabin of a ship, small but with everything we need.

Our new kitchen has the basics but lacks cabinet drawers, doors, wall cabinets etc.  The big stove and refrigerator are in preparation for eventually having a coffee shop in the front area of the building.

We now have stairs going up to our 3rd-storey 'mirador' and balcony railing which will eventually also have a design with rustic sticks nailed on.

Season's Greetings!

Here's sending out our warm best wishes for Christmas, Yuletide, Solstice, the New Year and whatever other festivals you are enjoying from Martin and Lourdes from our little corner of the Amazon jungle in northern Peru.

We stayed in Sauce this year for Christmas (last year we joined our extensive family in Lima) and joined in with the 'pastorale' on Christmas Eve in which children and youth enacted the Christmas story with a distinctly jungle flavor starting with processions all around the community which included Maria (Mary) riding on a mule led by Jose (Joseph) and accompanied by many angels, shepherds and kings.  Also in attendance were Gypsies and 'Nativos' (children dressed up as indigenous amazonian tribespeople).  I can only imagine that the gypsies are a holdover from Spanish nativity plays brought over during Peru's colonial past.

Many different groups converged on the Catholic church in the Plaza de Armas (main square) of Sauce and put on small dramas of the Christmas story in front of a nativity scene inside the church. Our dogs Bondo and Bondette wandered in amongst the actors which got a bit embarassing so we decided to leave at that point.  They are delightful dogs but mostly uncontrollable.

Personal news is that we are soon going to make the move into the house we have been slowly building for the past almost four years.  It's far from finished but now has a liveable bedroom with bathroom and the beginnings of a kitchen so we plan to spend New Years Eve in our new house.

Greetings from the heart to all our friends, family, ex-volunteers and supporters.  We welcome all visitors to come see us in Sauce during 2015.  We hope to have our sailing catamaran back in the water over the next few months following an extensive upgrade which has taken far longer than expected as these things tend to do.

What a hoot!  Jungle Santa with helpers.

Jungle-style Mary and Joseph.  Looks like Joseph has been celebrating....

Inside the Catholic church with saints,'nativos', angels, Santa, kings and shepherds and some dreadfully out of tune singing.  Winchester Cathedral this ain't!

A time to flourish

Lourdes has commenced a new weekly radio show here in our community of Sauce.  It goes out for an hour on Sunday mornings starting at 8 AM and is called 'Un tiempo a floricer', - a time to flourish.  Accompanied by some inspiring music she talks about education, child development and tackles some challenging social issues such as teenage pregnancy, the culture of 'machismo', rape and human sexuality in general.  She ends each show with a fairy tale.
She has received good feedback for bringing some rather taboo issues into the light of day, the first step in  hopefully effecting change in some positive directions.

Lourdes reads a fairy tale with our friend Edison at the controls.  He's aptly named as he's the local electronics genius.

'Andador' for Jondey

Jondey is five years old and has spinabifida.  His parents are of limited means so we arranged for him to be fitted with orthopedic shoes.  He also needed a walker or 'andador' to support him as he learns to walk but all the commercially available walkers offered here were too big.  So I made him this wooden push model that also doubles as a cart for his toys.

Amazon birthday cruise

Turning 60 feels like quite a milestone in life, more so than 50 I feel.  We decided to celebrate my October 25 birthday by cruising down the river Huallaga from Yurimaguas to Iquitos on one of the commercial river boats to see how our local river joins with other tributaries, most notably the Marañon, to eventually become the mighty Amazon some distance upstream from Iquitos.

Iquitos, with almost half a million inhabitants is the biggest city in the world with no road access. You can only get there by air or by river.  Lourdes and I had both flown to the city before but neither had approached by river.  We figured my birthday was a good enough reason to finally make this
journey a reality having talked about it for years.

We rode in a 'colectivo' taxi from our local city of Tarapoto 3 hours east to the river port of Yurimaguas, one of the few towns with access by road in Loreto, Peru's largest province and found the 'Eduardo V' riverboat with a sign indicating that it was to leave the following morning.  However it actually took 3 days to load all its cargo before we finally set off.  Here are some photos of our journey down the river and a wild Halloween party on the night we got to Iquitos.

Lourdes making some last phone calls before we headed downstream out of cellphone range for 3 days.

The top deck was cleared of passengers to make way for a chicken corral!

The tiny cabin was OK at night but an oven during the day, hence the hammocks on deck.

My new Kindle which miraculously arrived from my brothers and sister right before we set off.  I read lots of books during the trip.  What a great device, although I have to say I still prefer printed books.  But now I have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century and am now a thoroughly modern bookworm.

Eating the standard breakfast/lunch/dinner of chicken and rice which was slightly strange as there were at least 1,000 chickens installed on the top deck behind me.

Old hippie couple.  Halloween at the hip Karma Cafe in Iquitos on the night we arrived in town.

Performing a few old favorites at the Karma Cafe.  The ghoul behind me is our friend Joss, the owner.