How NGOs should deal with this is always a matter of debate: it is a local custom (and therefore expected) but couldn’t money be spent on something that is going to last for more than a couple of hours?

Fun and games at a Chocolatada

I work for Latin American Foundation for the Future (LAFF) who partner with groups like children’s homes and projects directed at youth – we could choose to spend funds on chocolatadas at each of our partner projects, but then where would the money come from to fund school supplies, uniforms and other items to further the children’s development?

We have decided not to go down this path.  We have also found that there are organisations who are keen to fund Christmas parties (quite often, frustratingly for me, as their only activity in the whole year) so these kids don’t actually miss out, and even without LAFF participating, can easily have more than one such party.

When I first arrived here, I was surprised by the amount of money that can be spent on these things.  Don’t get me wrong – I love Christmas. I am no Scrooge. And I am definitely in support of children enjoying Christmas.  But surely having five afternoons of hot chocolate and panetón, over just one party along with something more fundamental which will give them opportunity in life (education, clean water, healthcare, nutritious food etc) is a bit skewed.  In fact, the number of organisations and companies clawing to provide chocolatadas does seem to have lead to a rather cynical attitude from some receiving parties: the other day I was visiting a children’s home and the director commented to me that there was ‘some group coming in to do a chocolatada, she didn’t even know where from’, that afternoon.

This isn’t to say that all chocolatadas are wrong by any means, but I do think they should be kept to scale and should be deeper than just a one-off activity.  An example of a great use of the chocolatada tradition can be seen in this video by Ollantaytambo-based Awamaki to attract people to their mobile health clinics.

Fran Talavera is currently the International Projects Manager with Latin American Foundation for the Future. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

Living abroad for me is a constant balance between trying to learn the language and fit into the Latin culture, while simultaneously keeping some American customs and cultural practices.  I enjoy trying to blend in to the fabric of Quito.  Obviously, I physically stand out as a foreigner, but I always feel secretly satisfied when someone mistakes me for a Colombian or Chilean – at least for the first 2 minutes of conversation.

But at the same, being the token standout gringo is also pretty fun.  The month of Movember offers one of those opportunities. According to Movember’s official site, “Movember (the month formerly known as November) is a moustache growing charity event held during November each year that raises funds and awareness for men’s health.” One of the new teachers here at Colegio Americano brought my attention to Movember, and successfully motivated a group of us here at Colegio Americano to participate in the cause.

The international movement has gained some momentum over the last few years, and now it has arrived in Quito. For now, at our school, it is a primarily gringo event, for the simple reason that most Ecuadorians don’t have much facial hair.  Also, the majority of the local male teachers here are quite formal and I’m not sure if they would be interested in looking a bit ridiculous for an entire month.

So, although it may seem extraneous to raise money for an outside cause while living in a city with such immediate local needs, I am enjoying Movember.  At the very least, it povides a theraputic opportunity to laugh at one’s self while raising money for a good cause.  We are, by the way, currently lacking in that department, so please feel free to help out at http://movember.bbnow.org.

Philip Dixon is an English literature teacher in Ecuador, who has just relocated from Guayaquil to Quito, and a devoted mountain biker. For more information on his experiences, check out his blog.

Promotional Poster for the 7th Annual Mathapi - designed by Henry Ticona

The community of sikuris in Buenos Aires is, to say the very least, unique. We are our own little world. Though the community has surely always existed, many consider 1992 (the 500 year anniversary of Columbus) a marking point in its history. Over the past two decades it has been growing steadily and in 2005 a small group of sikuris from different bands in the city organized the first Mathapi Apthapi Tinku.

The essence of the Mathapi is reflected in its name. Mathapi and tinku mean ‘gathering’ in Aymara and Quechua respectively and apthapi refers to a tradition in which communities come together to share. The Mathapi Apthapi Tinku embodies these values.  It is the largest gathering of sikuris in Buenos Aires, this year with more than 500 people in attendance, and it is truly a communal effort. So, after playing in my first Mathapi in 2010, I was intrigued by the organization of the event and decided to attend the bi-monthly organizational meetings and to perhaps lend a hand in 2011.

The process of putting together the Mathapi is without doubt one of the most impressive efforts I have ever taken part in. I had put together small events in college but always within and with the help of the university structure. This was a horse of a different color. With no external funding or official platform, the Mathapi is the definition of grass roots organizing. It is completely funded by a raffle and donations of time, goods and labor on the part of participants. Bands even provided communal meals for all sikuris who had travelled long distances (as far as from Chile and Peru!)

In the end, more than 30 bands participated in the two day event, playing musical styles from all regions of the Andes, as varied as  Lakas from Chile, Suri Sikuri from Bolivia, Sikrui Mayor from Peru, and Huaynos Jujeños from the North of Argentina. You can experience a taste of the Mathapi through the hundreds of videos on youtube!

I highly recommend the following (as I appear in all three videos!):

My band IMPA playing Huaynos jujeños: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gmma8_EV3oM

The ever energetic Lakas del Oriente playing Cumbias from Chile:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99pX5thoxtU

And the poderosos Aymaras Intercontinentales de Huancane Base Argetina with whom I had the pleasure to dance the gorgeous huaynos lentos of Peru: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-caFsqTmI

Lauren Deal is a former Fulbright Scholar and Program Assistant at Sustainable Horizon. To hear more about her experiences, check out her blog.

Estudiantes Chilenos Exilados por la Educación August 25th. Photo by Javiera A. Fuentes

“Y como, y como, y como es la wea? Aca estudiamos gratias en Chile hay que pagar!” ~ Chant of Chilean students exiled by education in Argentina

Surely by now most have heard about the massive student protests going on in Chile demanding free, public and secular education for all students in Chile. La Vida Idealist’s own Paul Kearney recently wrote about the protests in Santiago. Since his article, Chile has seen two days of national strikes, huge marches and manifestations throughout the nation, the death of a 16 year-old student by the hands of Chilean a police officer, and general public outrage.

The raising of voices and public out-cry for change is not, however, limited to the Chilean side of the Andes. Chilean students in Argentina, who consider themselves to be exiled by the educational system in Chile, refuse to be silent on the issue. They too are taking their drums, their banners, and their pots and pans to the streets of Buenos Aires. With gas masks and clown noses on their faces they chant “Se va caer, se va caer la educacion de Pinochet!,” a pointed accusation that the current government and its educational policies fall in line with those of Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet.

Though the issue is incredibly complex and the situation more than a little “heavy,” I honestly find the ferocity with which Chilean students are fighting for their right to education inspiring. The argument is simple: the right to education comes before the rights of big business. Or, at least it should. And yet, students find themselves without options. In order to study they have to leave the country or incur a massive debt. It’s not unlike the situation in the US, something my immense student debt speaks to in volumes. The difference is, Chileans have decided they’ve had enough.

Playing tarkeadas from Sorcoroma, Chile in Aug. 25 March. Photo by Javiera A. Fuentes

So, for me it was an easy decision to march with the Lakas del Oriente, the only chilean style band of sikuris in Argentina, most of the members of which are students who came to Buenos Aires to study. On the 25th of August we were joined in solidarity by members of different bands through out the city as we lead the march playing tarka, a wooden, andean flute traditional used during carnaval.

Marcha chilenos en Buenos Aires Apoyo al movimiento estudiantil from Javiera A. Bontá on Vimeo.

Change is coming in Chile. This Saturday president Pinera will meet with student leadership to begin talks. I guess my question is; have we had enough?

Artists from the Frente de Artistas del Borda Criticize Buenos Aires' Governor, Mauricio Macri, in Reinsertón (Photo by Frente de Artistas del Borda)

One of the best things about rehearsing in IMPA is that there are always interesting things going on in other parts of the factory. Be it circus training on the third floor, dance classes in the machine room, or chess in the lobby, my friends often make fun of me for getting caught up in whatever activity is going on. “Lauren, que barrilete que sos!” And they’re right, I tend to go where the wind takes me. So, a few weeks ago when Jaime, an out-patient from the psychiatric hospital El Hospital Borda who has been rehearsing with us, invited us to see his play, I was more than on board.

IMPA’s recently renovated black box theater, inaugurated the Teatro Nora Cortiñas in honor of Nora Cortiñas, one of the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, and known affectionally as the “Teatrito,” hosts 2-3 shows per weekend and is becoming an increasingly important space for alternative and activist theater in Buenos Aires.  Most recently they have been featuring a show called “Reinsertón” produced and performed by the Frente de Artistas del Borda’s theater troupe “La tenés afuera (You have it outside)”

The show, interpreted by the current and former patients of the Borda in collaboration with actors and other non-patients who together form La tenés afuera, deals with the process of reinserción (reinsertion), defined as ” returning to integrate one’s self in society after having been marginalized”, and begs the question: What good does institutionalization really do? How do we go back?

Scene from Reinsertón (Photo Courtesy of Frente de Artistas del Borda)

The audience, myself included, exploded with laughter as the only character that seemed to have a name, a young woman referred to only by her last name, Desesperetti (a play on the the word desperate), struggled her way through the bureaucratic hoops and contradictions of Argentine society. Unable to pay her rent, which, as a result of inflation, was raised overnight, Desesperetti is sent from one office to another looking for some kind of help. In the end, she finds herself on the street sleeping under an Argentine flag with her land lady, who through her own series of unfortunate events finds herself homeless as well. The play, written by the cast, throws out harsh criticisms against the city government and Governor Mauricio Macri as well as the national government in such a way that is both hysterical and extremely insightful. Most importantly, however, it provides the patients of the Borda with a powerful outlet through which to make their voices heard.

The Frente de Artistas del Borda came into existence in 1984 with the objective of using art and artistic expression as a way of criticizing and transforming society and empowering the voices of in- and out- patients of one of the city’s largest psychiatric hospitals, the Hospital Interdisciplinario Psicoasistencial José Tiburcio Borda or as it’s known El Borda. For the past 25 years they have been fighting for desmanicomialización, a word that is hard to define in english as it is as inherently political. The concept of desmanicomialización is that of both deinstitutionalizing but also more importantly de-stigmatizing mental disease.

La tenés afuera is a theater group based out of the Borda Hospital which confronts the issue of desmanicomialización throughout improvisation and collective construction concerning  issues relevant to the participants both inside and outside the hospital.

Despite outcries by hospital staff, patients and general public, the Borda Hospital has been without heat or hot water for nearly 4 months. This has brought about severe criticism of Macri, the current state of Argentina’s public health system, and the marginalization of mental disease.

Lauren Deal is currently a Fulbright Scholar and Program Assistant at Sustainable Horizon. To hear more about her experiences, check out her blog.

The students created a beach scene in front of la Moneda in an effort to make fun of the then Education Minister.

Right now there are more or less four protests happening in Chile.

In my town right now, Rancagua, the contractors to Chile’s biggest and wealthiest company, have just finished protesting about the size of bonus they’re going to receive. They blocked the road to the mine, and threw rocks at the buses which go to work. They congregated in the main square every day to shout slogans, and regularly marched to Codelco’s Rancaguga headquarters. When this happened, it was difficult to enter the building, and cars regularly got damaged. They were on strike for about two months, the mine lost millions of dollars in productivity, and it was resolved seemingly unsatisfactorily for both parties.

A huge protest against the building of new dams in Patagonia has just ended with success, with the government delaying their start in favour of a further review. Patagonia is a place famous and much loved in Chile for its beauty, and these huge dams, which would need to run electricity lines up the length of this earthquake-troubled country to transport the electricity to the cities, seemed a stupid and clumsy way to generate electricity. The protests were huge, and carried out throughout the country. Television sets and facebook walls were filled with photos of bloody protestors and policemen, as the protests inevitably became violent.

Teargas in Santiago - courtesy of Heather Tang

The biggest of all have been the student protests, which are still ongoing. In every city, school and university students are protesting about the state of education – its high cost, poor quality, and the way it’s driven by the market. Wherever you look, schools are “en toma”, barred to non-students with locks and piles of chairs. On the biggest day of protest, 300,000 people protested, half of those in Santiago. The protests, in general, have been non-violent, witty, and consistently “there” – everyday, for the past two months, there have been protests. One response from the government, laughably, has been to move the school holidays two weeks forward, so the protests are taking place in the holidays rather than the school term. Another has been the replacement of the Minister for Education. In the last few days, this has turned more serious, and the government has just simply “not allowed” the protests to take place. When the students have inevitably protested, police have shut them down, sometimes brutally. Today, Friday the 5th August, the newspapers report 874 students detained and 90 policemen injured.

While all this has been happening, there has also been time and space to have a 10,000 strong march for gay rights in Santiago, and then a “march for values and the family,” of about 1000, in response.

From an Australian perspective, in which people rarely take to the streets, all this citizen action is very impressive. It’s good to see people in the streets, doing something that looks a bit like democracy. Other times it seems pretty futile. As a student told me in a pub, “when the government is this, undemocratic, you have to take to the streets.”

Whether, as some people think, this is all part of an expression of the people, which will force the disliked government to step down and be replaced by a genuine social democratic movement, or whether it is just part of the everyday running of a developing country, these are interesting times to be in Chile.

Paul Kearney is is currently living in central Chile and teaching English. He just finished up a year volunteering with Chile’s English Opens Doors program. To hear more about his experiences, check out his blog.

Alfombras in Ayacucho, Plaza Mayor

It’s Good Friday, and on the streets of Ayacucho, the final preparations are being made for the Easter Weekend. For more than a week now, this quiet Andean city has been abuzz with a spirit of fiesta.

In a town where everyone knows everyone else’s business, suddenly there are strange faces on the streets – from Lima, or from abroad – and every sidewalk is thronged with food stalls, excited party-goers and artisans selling their wares.

At the heart of Ayacucho’s Easter traditions are the processions. Members of religious associations – hermandades – march through the streets, bearing vast effigies of Christ mounted on telegraph poles.

At one of the first processions, in honor of El Señor de la Agonia – Christ suffering on the cross – the thirty men assigned to carry the effigy stumbled at the first corner. I happened to be taking photographs nearby and was called to join them.

Semana Santa Procession, Ayacucho

This is a rare honor, especially for a gringo like me. A full head higher than the other bearers – all of them lifetime members of the hermandad – I stuck out like a sore thumb, even attracting the attention of a Peruvian TV crew as we trudged slowly through the unevenly paved streets. I later had the chance to write about this adventure for the ex-pat site Living In Peru.

According to local beliefs, the grueling physical challenge of the procession has absolved me of my sins – important during a holiday which is, in equal parts, a demonstration of religious devotion and an excuse to party hard for as many nights as possible.

As I write and the sun begins to set, the great alfombras (rugs) are being completed on the surface of the streets – vast and intricate designs worked with paints, powder and flower petals. They are mayfly art: meant to be admired only for an hour or so, until the procession has marched over them.

Artist creating an alfombra in Ayacucho's Plaza Mayor

Ayacucho’s history of poverty and civil conflict still haunts the city from day to day. But the people here know how to celebrate. There’s such warmth and hospitality in the streets throughout Semana Santa, and no better symbol of the care the Ayacuchans lavish on their Easter celebrations than these alfombras, painstaking pieces of street art that won’t last the night – yet brighten our lives for the short time they exist.

Matt Finch is an educational consultant from the U.K. and is currently working at the San Domingo Savio primary school in Peru. For more on his experiences, check out his blog.

Birthday celebrations at home with the host family

A few Saturdays ago, I went to two back-to-back birthday parties.  The first party started at 8 p.m.  Adopted caraqueña that I am, I knew better than to arrive before nine.  I rolled up instead at around 9:15 and – shocker – was still one of the first non-family guests to show up.  I needed to duck out at or around midnight to sneak into my second friend’s birthday celebrations.  Imagine my dismay when 11 p.m. rolls around and people are: 1. still arriving, and 2. just now getting food off the grill.  My taxi arrived soon after and I said my goodbyes, but my friends were shocked that I was leaving before the cake was cut!  I couldn’t understand the obsession with waiting for the birthday cake. I love cake as much (if not more) than the next person, but usually that just marks the halfway point of the party.  I made my apologies, hugged the birthday boy, and left.

I arrived at the second party, where the festivities were in full swing.  Now, caraqueños love to party, and their stamina is admirable, but even I was surprised when 2 a.m. rolled around and no one was making a move to sing “Happy Birthday” (and there were some young, sleepy kids at this party, too).  Finally, around 3 a.m., someone hit the lights, lit the candles and everyone crowded around the dinner table to sing the the Venezuelan “Happy Birthday;” a really sweet ballad rounded off by the traditional “Cumpleaños Feliz” at the end.  Hugs, kisses, and well wishes all around, people sat down to eat a piece of cake and then–mass exodus!  I must have looked a little shocked because someone explained that in Venezuela, the cutting of the cake marks the end of the party.  Everyone eats it and then says their farewells.  For any that don’t get the message, or for non-birthday parties, playing some traditional llanero music (music from the plains-region of Venezuela) also serves as a polite ‘get out NOW’ cue.

Lianne Gonsalves is currently a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant at the Centro Venezolano Americano. To hear more about her experiences, check out her blog. This is not is not an official Fulbright Program blog. The views and information presented are Lianne’s own and do not represent the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.

Finding out you are pregnant in another country can be difficult on many levels. Although the news is very exciting, getting the word out poses serious difficulty when Internet and Internet-based phones don’t always work the way we’d like them to. Then there is time-zone differences and soon-to-be-grandparents who cannot wait to spill the beans to other family members.

Photo via Flickr user gabi_menashe (Creative Commons)

We have somewhat prepared our parents with the thought that we’d one day have a child in Mexico, and despite their initial opposition, they are coming around to the idea — and getting their passports in order for a visit.

But it’s trying to get the word out in a personal way that is most difficult. Facebook seems the easiest method, but also the most impersonal. We have a Magic Jack phone, but when we have a coffee shop full of web-surfers, it’s difficult to hear the person on the other end. So we’ve sent lots of emails and “personal” Facebook messages. In addition, we have two worlds to tell: those back in our home country and those here in our new country.

And now we find ourselves asking around: how does this work in Mexico? What’s the best option for foreigners? We have been told that hospitals here don’t allow family members in the room during or even after the pregnancy, but clinics allow you to have whoever you want in the room with you. So a clinic it will be. As we search the coming weeks for the right clinic and the right doctor, maybe the cat will fully be out of the bag, so we can move onto the next-step challenges of all of this excitement.

Gena Thomas is a women’s coop laborer and faith-based coffee shop co-manager with her husband in Mexico. For more on her experiences, check out her blog.

As a best case scenario, any of these instances could have been the case for the 33 miners who were trapped in the San José copper-gold mine on August 5^th this year after an alarming collapse.

I still can’t even begin to imagine the fearful thoughts that must have been running through their heads after day 5, day 30, and day 60, wondering if they were ever really going to get out of there. And that’s only if hunger pangs and physical exhaustion weren’t completely taking over their thought processes.

Thankfully all 33 were rescued and lifted out of 700 metres (2,300 ft) of mine, one by one. As the last miner was lifted out, the rescue workers held up a sign that read, “Misión cumplida Chile” (Mission Accomplished Chile!) The survival and rescue of the miners was celebrated in Chile and all over the world, broadcast on every major news channel.  Presidents and foreign leaders across the globe congratulated Piñera, president of Chile.

The people of Chile came together like I’ve never seen done in the States.  Together, the 33 miners plan to start a foundation to help in mining safety to prevent cases like this from happening in the future.

Misión cumplida Chile!

Lindsey Chapman is now back in Chile and enjoying her time after extending her commitment with the nonprofit, VE Global.