Craft revival in Sauce Peru

Making baskets and other items from the leaves of the bombonaje palm tree is something of a dying art these days as it is so much easier to buy containers made of plastic.  But in our Friday craft gatherings for senior citizens we are helping to revive this craft and also pass along useful traditional skills to the younger generation.

Fine baskets, hats, placemats and other items can be made from the leaves of the bombonaje palm shown above.

Welcome new volunteers to Estrella de Sauce

Ronja helps Zarca who is deaf learn to communicate.  Zarca can write well in terms of copying but... she can't read.  We are working to help her really communicate through writing and not just copy the letters she sees.


 A year seemed to just fly by and suddenly we find ourselves saying thank you and goodbye to our wonderful volunteers Axel, from the Black Forest and Katharina from Stuttgart in Germany.  At the same time we now welcome new volunteers Marlene from Berlin and Ronja from Wuppertal who have already adjusted from the usual culture shock of travelling from Germany straight into a small amazonian community on the shores of a beautiful laguna.  They say they are already enjoying the challenges of working with our various groups of children at our Estrella de Sauce center and our weekly club for senior citizens.  They both express an appreciation for our lovely tropical scenery, the abundance of fresh fruit and the friendliness of the people here and they are participating in our weekly local radio show.





Marlene with baskets made in our weekly crafts club for senior citizens

Mystical sites around Lake Titicaca







Robert Powell dwarfed by huge rock formations near the Amaru Muru portal

In early September I joined a tour put on by the Sophia Foundation and led by authors Jorge Luis Delgado and Robert Powell in the altiplano of Peru and Bolivia.  Twenty five participants from the USA, Europe, Australia and Peru (me) visited the islands of the Sun and Moon, Taquile and the Uros floating islands in the south end of Titicaca.
 And along the shore of the vast, high-altitude lake we visited such ancient sites as Sillustani, Tiawanaku and the inter-dimensional portal of Aramu Muru.
We held ceremonies at each site we visited having to do with reconciling the energies of the Eagle of the north and the Condor of the south invoking a healing for the injustices and exploitation suffered by the Andean people from the conquest and colonial period all the way up until the present day.


On a fast boat to the island of Taquile

Jorge Luis Delgado writes in his book 'Andean Awakenings' how he was guided in a dream to discover this ancient portal.  Here he prepares the site for a ceremony using palo santo incense and the feather of a condor.

 

Travels in England, Wales and Germany

With new grandson Mikka at the Berlin Wall

Our friends Benoit and Hubertus gave us a wonderful tour of Dresden.  The highlight for me was seeing the Sistine Madonna by Rafael

In July and August Lourdes and I went over to visit friends and family in the UK and in Berlin and Dresden.  We had a very typical British tea party with the Seligman side of my family kindly put on by my sister Cath in her garden in Winchester.  This was closely followed by a large barbeque for the Stevens side held at Leaze Farm, Lechlade near Oxford.  Fortunately it was a lovely hot day.





Lourdes in the front at right a bit overwhelmed by so many Stevens!



Mural and improvements

One of the attractions of the location of our 'Estrella de Sauce' headquarters building is that it backs onto a sports ground.  But up until recently we had not taken advantage of this feature.  Over the last few weeks with the help of our volunteers, the children who attend our classes and workshops and a local mason we have added a concrete patio/sidewalk to give access to the sports area, opened up and renovated the back gate which was previously nailed shut and painted a whimsical mural of 'la laguna' with its boats and denizens.

Our volunteer Axel from the Black Forest in Germany with children after a day spent painting our new mural

Special children

In April Lourdes was asked to oversee a new program in Sauce for children with 'habilidades diferentes' - Spanish for different abilities.  The municipal authorities were paying for an organizer for the program but this organizer really had no idea how to set up the program and asked Lourdes for help.  Subsequently a building was found and twelve children with 'handicaps' such as down syndrome, cerebral palsy and deaf/mute started attending morning educational and therapeutic classes three days a week.
This is a big step for a rather remote rural community where special needs children have mostly been neglected in the past and is a sign that Sauce is generally moving forward in some positive directions.
What is interesting is that as soon as Lourdes took on the extra load of running this progam with the help of our wonderful volunteers she recieved news that our Shipibo friends in Pucallpa have decided to close our Waldorf-inspired educational project that we set up in 2007.  This was because the principal teachers in the program have been invited to Canada for an extensive period.  It was painful for us to bring this project to a close but at the same time it frees Lourdes up to be able to concentrate on this new endeavor in Sauce.  Doors close, new doors open....

Oscar is a lovely boy but pretty wild.  He's now learning some social skills in our special needs program.

Lourdes doing therapeutic work with Sindi who is paralized on her right side

Cris has cerebral paralysis but made this necklace with Lourdes.

Work goes forward in Sauce

In our 2 hectare horticulture project called 'Fundo Skydance' we now finally have running water after various hassles with the municipal authorities.  Here's the official Sauce backhoe digging the trench while Bondo supervises...

 

 

 

 Here is a photo of Dan and Donna Facor's wooden lakeside house which nears completion.  In front is the experimental sailing catamaran 'Estrella del Lago' undergoing a refit which called for raising the vessel up on blocks to allow for some hull repairs with fiberglass and epoxy.  We are also repainting the hulls in tropical bright colors and replacing some balsawood deck boards.  What a faff (British for lots of work), but gotta do the maintenance and upgrades or the boat becomes unsafe.  So it goes.....

Shivver me timbers mateys, there's that rascal Bondo again up on the forward deck!!

Slightly Steinerian door by me into almost completed ground-floor bedroom.  Bondo again!

New shower with glass blocks.

 

 

Blackie in my woodshop

 

Green polycarbonate roofing over second-storey walkways.