Computers update

It looks like we might be going to buy the computers on Monday. This week has been really hectic - everyone is getting really excited but I only have one week left. The headtecher took me to the LEA to meet all sorts of important people, the highest up of which reports directly to the minister of education. I think she's just playing politics and trying to further her career, but the more people she invites to come and see the computer room, and the more they have invested in it, and the more certain it is to work out well. The local director of the government computer plan came to the school yesterday and complicated matters by advising us to get a different spec than I had got the quotes for - but hopefully it will be worked out by Monday. I'm also staying in Lima this weekend to work with a couple of tech guys to repair some of the older existing computers.

I am getting the school and parents to agree to a few things before we go ahead - it's not a completely free lunch for them - a two way process. They have to make the security satisfactory, and get the older computers mended, and sort the transport, and send me pics every so often. I'm also going to come back in August to check everything is working out, and then I may donate more later. I am also trying to arrange a maintnence contract with a guy who has an internet cabin 50m from the school, so the teachers can easily go and find him if there is a problem.

Computers for a Peruvian school

I am coming towards the end of my time volunteering in Lima. I want to leave something a little more permanent behind, so I planning to buy some computers for the school. As I mentioned in a earlier blog entry, they have computing lessons, but since there are no computers the teachers are limited to showing them pictures and teaching them what the different parts of a computer do. In the modern world I think it is hard to overestimate the importance of learning computing skills, so access to a computer is important.

Over the last few months they have been getting a building ready for the computers, with electricity and security. The ministry of education say that once the school has at least 6 computers that meet a minimum standard; they will provide an IT teacher and help with an Internet connection. On Saturday, they did an inventory of some computers that had been donated to find that those that did work were very old and well below the required standard. But they have monitors and keyboards that work.

Yesterday, I went with some of the teachers to get quotes for second hand computers that meet the required standard. We got a quote for $120 per computer (spec below), which given the dollar to pound exchange rate at the moment doesn't seem like much to us - only £63.

There is a little bit of politics between the school and my volunteer program, which I have been unavoidably drawn into in trying to make this happen. Such are the problems of developing countries - corruption is the biggest inhibitor to growth. But I don't want to become so cynical as not to do anything. The best people to work with are the elected representatives of the parent's association - as they truly have the children's interests at heart.

So I will personally preside over the purchase of the computers, and return to the school later in August to see them in use, and get pictures for you all. As such, I want to place the order soon so that I can see the computers installed before I leave at the start of July. I will also ask subsequent volunteers to report back to me on how the computers are being used.

I would like to start by buying the 6 computers required. If I end up with more money than for this, I will purchase more computers once I have seen the first 6 in use by the kids in lessons. I also may try and set up a maintenance contract for someone to come in once a month or so to service the computers.

So over to you, please donate if you would like to. If you are minded to do so, please do it now rather than later! Let me by email know how many computers you would like to give (fractions are allowed). Or if you would like to make a small monthly commitment for the maintenance contract, that would be useful too.

Thanks for any help you can give,

FC

Tech Spec
PIII 1Ghz, 256Mb Ram, 20Gb HD, CD writer, Floppy, Network and Sound Cards, XP

The Pied Piper of Lima

So what has been keeping me busy for the last few weeks and away from this blog?

I've been at the school five days a week, helping in lessons, getting to know the teachers and the kids, and acting in the school play! I played the part of the shepherd in the parable of the lost sheep - adapted with a bit of artistic license to include an evil wolf who poses as a donkey, and some helpful butterflies. All in Spanish, of course. I've also been a little tied up with the politics of the school which I will write more about in my next entry.

In the maths lessons some of the content the older ones have been doing is quite hard - stuff that I didn't learn until A-level - such as algebraic division, geometric and arithmetic sequences, and binomial expansions. I think they just do more because they have more maths lessons than in British schools - there is less diversity of subjects generally. It's nice when they all seem impressed that I can do maths! The other day the teacher didn't arrive for her class, so I ended up taking the 2 hour lesson and going through their homework to rationalise irrational fractions.

Outside of school, I've been seeing different parts of Lima, and making friends with Peruvians through the other volunteers - good for my Spanish. I've also been making weekend excursions to places within reasonable bus distance of Lima.

• Pacahacamac, for Inca and Pre Inca Ruins
• Tarma, for picturesque Sierra valleys and impressive jungle valleys.
• Pisco and Paracas for an island trip, heaven for ornithologists.
• Huachina for sandboarding on massive dunes - safer, softer and warmer than snowboarding

Some of you wanted to see a few more more pics from my travels, so here they are:

• Ecuador
• Peru
• Sandboarding

FC

Post pending

Apologies to anyone checking here that I haven't written in a while. There are a number of reasons for this, but I plan to post something soon, so don't give up hope!

FC

How best to make a difference?

I've now been in Lima a week and half. It's a big city with as many people as London. Complicated in comparison to Quito, it took me a few days to get my bearings. It's winter here, which means that you might need a jumper if the sun isn't out. It never rains, but some days the sky is filled with coastal haze.

I'm staying with a very hospitable Peruvian family and will be doing some volunteer work for the next few weeks. My volunteer program has placed me at an under-resourced state school in a poor area of Lima. The school has children from the ages of 7 to 16; I have been working with the secondary classes. Conditions in the neighbourhood aren't quite as bad as in Nairobi slum I once visited, but it is poor.

Last week I quickly found that I could be most useful in the English and Mathematics lessons and so opted for those - my Spanish is not yet good enough to help effectively in other subjects. I enjoyed getting back into some easy maths and figured that if I coach operators in Spanish, the first year undergraduate tutorials in English should be no problem next year. People have told me that I am patient when teaching, and I do feel it is worthwhile. Maybe when my academic career is over, I will see if they are still crying out for maths or physics teachers.

The English classes suffer from the same fundamental problems as foreign languages in the UK: The students don't have a reason to learn English, because they don't see how it can impact their life. And, just as in the UK, a couple of hours a week is not enough to make real progress.

I had in an expectation that the school would be similar to my mind's picture of a poor African school, where all the children are well behaved - because they appreciate the value of education. I'm not sure why I had this expectation, but it was wrong - the discipline in the school could be a lot better. Having said this, I think the teachers are gen rally good, despite the low wages they receive.

All the children I have worked with so far seem to be able to read and write, and was thus awakened to one way in which South America and Africa are a world apart - in South American countries the literacy rate is generally 85% or higher, whilst in many African countries it is 30% or lower.

I think if I carry on helping in the way I have been so far, I will be dissatisfied with myslef when I leave. I have high standards about doing something worthwhile, perhaps unrealistically high. I want to do more: I might run some additional English classes after school for those that are keen. Or perhaps something to make a more permanent difference.

There are no computers in the school for the pupils to use, but they have lessons about computers in which they draw pictures of the various components and describe what they are used for. So one idea that came to mind was procuring some computers for the school. However, once I started to think about the practicalities of doing this a number of problems come to mind - there needs to be a secure place to keep them, a teacher that can maintain them, time in the timetable, subject matter to teach, etc.

A simpler plan, which could achieve the same result, might be to make an agreement with a nearby Internet cafe to secure regular timeslot for the pupils - eliminating many of the above problems. To make this a permanent would require money - not a huge amount, but a regular amount. It's still an early stage idea, and I need to think through the problems, but perhaps some of you will be hearing from me. Maybe let me know if you'd be prepared to commit a very small regular sum, knowing that might help me develop the idea. I'm aware that my time here will be over before I know it.

STOP PRESS: I just found out that the school may be getting a computer room soon despite what I said above. I think there will be oppurtunities to donate money there.

Thanks for the positive comments you've been sending me by email - it helps to know I'm not boring you - I'm still a little self conscious about the self obsessed nature of blogging!

Tengas suerte,

FC

Sierra a Costa, Ecuador a Perú

So, I have arrived safely in Peru. Tomorrow I fly to Lima. My route has taken me through:

Riobama - For a bike ride down volcan Chimboarzo (the highest in Ecuador, pic) and through indigenous valleys. Also for the start of the incredible 'Nariz del Diablo' - the most difficult railway in the world, descending down a vertical gorge (pic).
Cuenca - Pretty colonial city, Ecuador's third largest - but sedate and relaxed in comparison to Quito or even Riobama.
Machala - On Ecuador's southern coast. As you descend from the sierra to Machala, the change of climate hits you with the heat you expect of the equator. The sierra is temperate by comparison.
Tumbes - Dusty Peruvian border town with its share of con men and rip offs.
Mancora - Lovely Peruvian beach town full of surfers. I tried to surf a little but didn't have the same determination or energy to succeed as I has last time I tried surfing.

It's true what people say - travelling solo is actually very sociable -in a whole week I have only eaten alone twice. And I have made many friends along the way.

On the train ride from Riobama through some beautiful valleys, I had appreciated the juxtaposition of an indigenous girl chatting on her mobile phone with flashing lights. There are very few places untouched by the modern world - and I think the mobile phone may be the most ubiquitous of modern technology because the infrastructure needed to set up a network is realtively little.

There is a line between vigilance and paranoia - and at certain times during this journey I may have been on the wrong side of it. One example was at the bus station in Cuenca when I dropped a coin - I wouldn't accept it back from the nice girl trying to give it back to me. I was being hyper-vigilant given that my friend had had her bag stolen in the same place just a week ago. But when vigilance means that you trust no-one, it has overstepped the mark.

The border crossing was a particular source of anxiety. There were two possible routes to choose from, and having heard a number of horror stories about the coastal one, I was inclined to take the apparently easier inland one. But doing this, I would have missed Mancora. But in the dorm of my hostel in Cuenca, I chanced upon two other travellers who wanted to do the coastal crossing, and we joined forces.

The difficulty with this border is that the immigration offices for Peru and Ecuador are 5km apart, each inconveniently a couple of km from the border itself - and you have to get your passport stamped at both. Many con men and dodgy money changers operate in the area between these offices.

The key to a hassle free crossing was to get a direct bus over the border which waited for us at both immigration offices. Our 2 hour cross-border bus ride only cost $2, and there were only 4 passengers who crossed the border - so I found it hard to believe it was worth their while to wait for us, but they did. The bus tout was very helpful, coming into the immigration offices with us to make sure there were no problems. Why another company hasn't setup more expensive buses for tourists on this route that make everything easy, I don't know. I would have happily paid $10 to know everything would be smooth.


In my last post I mentioned "We shall meet twice in life". This was exemplified when a friendly Peruvian surf instructor whom I had met in Quito two weeks ago turned out to be staying in the room next to me in the Mancora hostel. My friends and his friends all passed an evening together and we agreed to conduct the whole evening in Spanish, despite the fact that he speaks good English. Spanish is easier after a drink or two, but harder after three or four! And the next day I got some free surf tuition.

Another gratifying outing for my Spanish was when I ended up translating at my hostel for an Australian couple.

The next challenge is to find a way to make myself useful as a helper at a school in Lima. Finding the right niche in which to help may require a little provacticity.

Chao amigos,

FC

The Lonely Planet ticklist

I'm a little stuck between a rock and hard place with this blog - some of you chastise me for not writing often enough - others chastise me for writing in English, other chastise me for having too much time on my hands. So I won't try and artfully craft a work of literary art this time.

The truth is you can't be doing and seeing things all the time, nor should you try. I have reached the stage in Quito where I don't need to be doing the sightseeing anymore - this is the transition from visiting a place to living in it. The Lonely Planet is not another ticklist for me to work my way through - I don't have a need to do and see and everything. The trick is to live in the present, enjoy experiences and relationships without worrying too much about what you could do or haven't done. Nice words, now to live by them. On the next leg of my journey to Peru I shall try to savour the experiences and the places without having to do all the sights.

I am travelling over land by bus to Peru next week. Hopefully I can get there without being robbed - three of my friends had things stolen last week, so vigilance is definitely on the cards.

I would like to stay here to get better at Spanish. The school is good; I do enjoy the learning, and meeting other students. And I am also starting to get to know the family better, another result of living and not visiting. But in other ways I am ready to leave Quito, for new challenges.

The Spanish school has a transitory feel to it with new people arriving and leaving all the time. It is sad to keep meeting people, making friends and parting, but this is unavoidable when travelling. A saying a friend told me recently: We shall meet twice in life, ...

This week I have been learning and reading a very little about South American politics and history. In particular, I am interested in the idea of a United States of South America. This was first proposed by Simon Bolivar in the 18th Century and is currently undergoing a revival in part due to Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela. He wants to move South America away from dependency on the world bank, the IMF, and the subsequent need to subscribe to the washington consensus.

In 2004, the countries in South America signed the Cusco Declaration - the intention being to build a union modelled on the EU, with open borders, free trade, and a single currency.

The more things I learn about, and the more I see of the world, the more I realise how little I know. But life is so short there will never be enough time to learn about everything of interest. Is it better to know a little about everything or a lot about a few things? I hope with my forthcoming PhD I picked the right specialism.

And the Lonely Planet is not infallible - I found a mistake in it when I discovered the climbing wall was not where they said it was. So perhaps I will get my name in the next edition in the list of contributors of corrections. Other things I did recently include: visiting the overrated market town of Quito, attending a local football match, straddling the Ecuador at the tourist musem with suspect scientific experiements, and ascending the cable car for a view of Quito. Tuesday was a national holiday for Labour day.

Will probably write next from Lima, in a couple of weeks.

FC