Cositas

Little bits:
On my last day of the Belen Project, I went out with a vet from Lima and a couple other curious clowns to help vaccinate dogs for parasites and mange. Next year she is hoping to come back and spay-neuter them, which would be faaaabulous. No more stray, mangy, sad looking, skinny, mean dogs roaming the streets! In the afternoon we had a massive parade of clowns and of the children´s work the the ¨streets¨of Belen. The kids paraded their puppets, masks, dances, and other art works they had created during the past 2 weeks. We ended in a large field and danced, had music, awards for the cleanest street-district, etc etc.

I went to a photo exhibition on petroleum extraction in the jungle. Everyone was rightfully horrified by the gulf disaster, but what´s worse is that this kind of oil disaster is happening unnoticed all over the world, specifically in Africa and South America. It is happening in small communities, and in hidden or forgotten parts of the junge where the media doesn´t bother to go. Entire tribes of people and vast ecosystems are being destroyed. Completlely destroyed. And nobody is doing anything about it. The photo exhibit showed people´s bodies mangled by the toxins in the water, baby´s in small boxes for coffins, lakes of petroleum pouring into the virgen jungle, and whole communties swallowed up in the destruction. Furthermore the people in the communities did not earn a thing from the exploitation of their land which they can no longer use in their traditional ways. All the profits go back to the governement and the foreign oil company. This was a very scary thing to fully see and understand...to know that this continues right now at this moment and nothing is being done about it.

On the positive note, we worked a lot this year with a group called La Restinga, which is thriving in Iquitos. It is an organization for street kids--that is the kids who work out on the streets, selling gum or cigarettes or handicrafts. They are given an opportunity to learn dance, paint murals, play, learn computer skills and other skills to help them in their life, and most importantly a community and a safe place to be and create. The group also brings to light community problems like the prevalence of child prostitution and violence in schools by the school teachers to the students. Every May 1st they do a procession through the streets with the icon of a street kid on their shoulders to show their respects to the children of the streets and to display a piece of irony in respect to the processions people do in Peru to saints, but do not do anything to help living people, the living and suffering children right before them in the streets every day.

so much more to write, but so much more to do...