Pictures from last week

Here are some pictures of things we got to do last week.

On thursday we went with Brigan and Carmen to a village called the 26th of September (that's when it was founded or something), to check on some gardens that ASCEND had taught the villagers how to grow. This is us with one of the families and their nice looking garden! It's an extremely poor community and this house behind us was one of the nicest in the whole village. Most families don't have showers or bathrooms, so ASCEND is also helping them by building latrines. The kids in the second picture were funny and are not all from the same family. They followed us around for a while and were so excited to get their picture taken also. When we got it they all crowded around to see it. Ben told me later that you have to be careful what you take pictures of, becasue lots of these people think that the camera will take their souls.















This is a "perro" that didn't want to be touched. This is a bathroom/shower and it was a lot better than most of the other ones that we saw that day.

These flowers are equal to the wildflowers that grow in the states. Nobody plants them, they're beautiful and they're all over the place. They're sooo pretty and sooo colorful. We saw a lot of them while we were in this village.









One of the women who lives in the village was helping us find all the families we needed to check on. She was really sweet, 6 months pregnant, and these were her two kids. They went with us all 4 hours that we were walking around the village. I forgot their names but they were super friendly and cute.







The roads are all dirt, and this is what the village looked like all around. Big dirt roads, and little houses on the side made of anything that would stand up really. There were also animals roaming all over the place. We figured that they just remember who feeds them and eventually end up there each evening. No tags, and all things from chickens, to horses, to pigs, and lots and lots of dogs and cats.



















This poor man was on the side of the road making shoes. We saw him while we were driving around recruiting people with Jhon and Erwin for the business class. Ben and I think that he's the kind of man who needs help and could really benefit from some business classes. Apparently though, they only work off referals and how often is a sidewalk shoemaker going to be reffered...We're still trying to figure out how to get our good ideas heard and how the system works and where it could be improved.


Well, we'll have many more pictures and things to talk about this coming week! Hope everything's going well in the states!

Ben and Marian