Day one in Villa Maria was welcomed with a blitz tidy for what is
going to be our home for the next 31 days. Litres of bleach, sweat and
tears ensured that the beers consumed with Ola’s spiccccy sausage pasta
in the evening were well deserved. Impressions of Villa Maria were
great, with all the long term project members letting us know that
pranks would be taking place on a daily basis.

Friday was our first fully packed day, involving a trip to one of the
communities located at the top of the shanty town. Football as always
featured heavily as well as skipping ropes, ring toss and memory games
to the excitement of us as much as the children. Then it was our first
introduction to the mayhem that is the swimming pool. Copious numbers of
children togged up in swimming gear followed the Quest team down to the
local pool where for an hour, we were used as what can only be
described as human climbing frames and rocket launchers ‘Gringo, gringo
carga me’.

Weekends involve staging two special events- a Saturday feria and a
Sunday dancing throwdown. It quickly became apparent that no
encouragement was needed to get this Quest team into fancy dress and by
8am on Saturday morning- Ed was Duckman, Hannah Super Gringo alongside
spatterings of Cat woman, Wonder Woman, the Hulk and others. The theme
of our feria was Superheroes so kids had the chance to make their own
capes, play games titled Power Biscuit, Fire Ball, Spiderman’s assault
course, and lets just say it went down really rather well.

Afternoon activities involved a good old swim with the pool being
dyed an assortment of colours due to the running of over a 100
childrens’ spiderman face-paint. Due to the hard work of the team and
Pato and co, the whole team was invited to a community fundraiser dinner
for a local lady who is suffering from cancer. We were all introduced
to a Peruvian drinking tradition, where because not all can afford
bottles of beer a crate is purchased and shared around the circle with
one cup. Salsa was danced, chicken was eaten and fun was had- as
demonstrated with 5 members of the team returning at 4:30 and the music
not stopping till about 6am.

Sunday was another perfect excuse
for a good dress up. Lucho an international (local) kids entertainer
(clown) helped us with possibly the most embarrassing dance routine,
that if we feel brave enough we might allow onto the blog at a later
date. Costumes were epic- the girls as rag dolls, which caused huge
issues with bed hair the next morning, and the boys as clowns. Big cheer
to Louis the great and Flo his beautiful assistant for churning out
some cracking magic skills.

Monday saw the beginning of a new week, with a morning brain storming
session for the week’s games, films, feria and dance ideas. Creative
juices were high, with multiple cinema posters being made to distribute
across the communities. At lunchtime, the topic arised if anyone had
felt shaking during the night, many of us had but completely forgotten
and slumped straight back to sleep. Indeed in the south of Peru an
earthquake measuring in at 6.2 on the Richter scale had hit. However we
are all safe and well.

Want to work with children in Peru? Why not take a look at the 2013 Villa Maria Gap Year team?