Travels through South America

As soon as we arrived in Sucre, we decided we would stay a few days. The atmosphere is much different from the other altiplano towns we visited on our route. White stone buildings and palm trees instead of adobe houses and cacti. Well, cacti are still to be found in Sucre but there are plenty other more tropical plants too.

We settled in a cheap hostel called Hostal Potosi, which had an interesting take on hot water, a surfeit of fleas and a far more irritating infestation of Mennonites. To those of you ignorant of the Mennonite clan (as I was prior to meeting them), they are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (thanks Wikipedia). Committed to pacifism they may be, but friendly they most certainly are not. I am also not a fan of their chorale singing, which can be best described as a caterwauling drone.

We quickly decided to seek volunteering opportunities in Sucre and found a language school (Fox Academy) that both offered teaching opportunities and assitance in securing voluntary placements in local orphanages. At this point, I came down with Bolivian belly which left me bedridden for 5 days and well and truly off my food. Perhaps my eagerness to eat in the bustling market was a little foolhardy.

Feeling better one evening, I went to meet Domingo after his lesson teaching English and found him in conversation with a lively Bristolian named Steph. She too was interested in volunteering and mentioned a project in one of the orphanages to create a new games room for the children. A couple of days later, we popped up to the lovely Mirador Cafe for lunch and ran in to Steph again. This time, she was with Stephen, the project leader who quickly spied that Domingo had a sketchpad with him.

“Looks like we found our artist”.

With the help of others, Stephen had already built a partition wall to create a games room out of the previously cavernous dining room. Now he was in need of artists to paint a mural and help with the rest of the room. Thanks to the sketchbook, Domingo was now the mural designer and art director!

It was decided that the mural should be a jungle scene, with waterfalls and animals so Domingo quickly got to work sketching ideas. He was a little overwhelming to suddenly be tasked with creating an entire mural from scratch but I had faith…

The next day, we turned up at the Orphanage, Hogar Sucre. The orphanage is enormous in terms of space with football courts, a garden and even a horse. It is also very run down and need of a lot of work.

The first day, we joined Steph, Stephen and Marc in painting the walls white as an undercoat. The second day, two other girls joined, Michelle and Sarah, and Domingo began to sketch out a scene on the walls.

From then on, everything slowly began to take shape.

Domingo would sketch out a leaf or a tree and then Sarah or I would then get to work painting it in.

Unfortunately, after a couple of days of painting, we realised it is far more practical to paint your background first before doing fine detail.

Whilst we were busy with the one wall, Stephen and Marc began to construct the raised platform that would act as both the smaller children’s play area and the stage for the otder boys’ bands.

Michelle and Steph soldiered on with painting the other walls, ceilings and began to plan what we could fill the room with.

The mural seemed to then come together quickly. On the left of the wall we created a waterfall, then the jungle with insects, monkeys, parrots… Through the jungle we created a window to the salt flats with a llama and a flamingo to represent the altiplano! Climbing up the right side of the wall and disappearing into the jungle is a giant snake, which also acts a height chart. We then left a space to create a bush whose flowers would be the made up of the childrens hands.

As well as making friends with the other volunteers we also quickly found ourselves a social life in the town itself. Our first week was spent socialising with our Salt Flat friends before they left for pastures new. In our second week we discovered the best bar in Sucre, Crisalida. On our first night there we made friends with a Bolivian-German guy named Samuel who was in Sucre for a year. Soon after, on our second visit we befriended the owners, Naira and Vanessa and formed a strong bond.

The final week and Friday`s deadline for completing the orphanage was looming and there was much work to be done. Stephanie, Michelle, Sarah and Lizeth scoured the markets for paddling pools, balls, material for curtains, balloons etc… Then, Stephanie decided to set herself and the girls the challenge of creating bean bags from scratch.

On the Tuesday, two new volunteers appeared, Lottie and Rosie from Scotland. Casually, we asked them if they could they paint a world map on another wall in time for Friday. Just as casually they said yes and went off to research. I was a doubting Thomas and wondered if they would come back and by 11am the next morning I felt sure I was right. A short while later though, Rosie and Lottie walked in , grabbed some pencils and brushes and somehow managed to create a map of the world surrounded by flags in two days flat, without even seeming to break in to a sweat.

Michelle set to tackling the clouds and no doubt strengthening her arm muscles and Stephanie began to draw the patterns for the beanbags. Everyone was mucking in together and the dining room was a hive of activity. Domingo was asked to create some frames to hang pictures, coats or whatever the children wanted and came up with the idea of cartoon phrases. We set to painting them together on the last day and hung them up of the other two bare walls.

Stephen had done wonders sourcing a tennis table and table football game and Oxfam had donated a truck of toys. With the new floor layed (terribly by the professionals and therefore redone by the caretaker, Marc, Rosie and Lottie) everything could be taken in and set up. At the last minute, Stephanie rushed in the mot amazingly comfortable beanbags and the room was done.

The opening ceremony was great fun with local TV station, press and a radio station which interviewed me without informing me it was live.

The whole ceremony was so emotional and when it came to saying goodbye to the children we found it so hard to leave. Two hours later we were still there, sitting in the smallest boys room with the Orphanage administrator just chatting. Walking out of the orphanage was one of the saddest things I`ve done and I hope one day to go back.

Our last night in Sucre was spent at Naira and Vanessa`s housewarming. It was such a wonderful experience to have made such good friends so quickly that it made it even harder to leave. Not only had we had the most amazing experience in the orphanage and made great friends there but also we had seemingly built a life in the town itself with people we would have to leave behind. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to continue traveling…