After a long and awkward morning group
volunteer meeting, during which I could have squeezed gallons of
blood out of the surrounding sedimentary rocks in the time it took us
to make a plan for next weeks activities (which ended up being more
or less the same as this weeks), the kids came to the farm again and
we took the horses out into the little sandy enclosure on the farm.
Later Richard told me that the Foundation is the only free activity
for children in Santa Elena; the government does little to provide
for kids from poor backgrounds.
Richard is standing in as coordinator for
Manfred Monnighoff, a German businessman, who set up the Foundation 7
years ago but is back in Germany at the moment to be with his dying
mother. The current dynamic between Gatrey, Martina (volunteers) and
Richard (coordinator) is interesting to say the least. However, this
is not a blog about power struggles and group dynamics in small NGOs,
so I won't go into details.
In the evening, after failed attempts to watch
some kung-fu films Manuel had bought (the dvd would seamlessly skip
massive chunks of the film leaving me wondering why I couldn't follow
the story) I had a chat with Richard about his horse-riding days and
the trials and tribulations of being a coordinator of the Foundation.
I also noticed the large amounts of mosquito bites on my legs which
I'd obtained from being near horses wearing only shorts. Live and
learn.
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