Well, that will go down as one of the best weeks of my life in Nueva Prosperina. The House Swap was an experience that will live with me for the rest of my life. Mainly because Freddy and his family are a fantastic bunch of people, who struggle to get on in life. There are so many things to tell you about the week in Freddy’s house. Firstly I should tell you what it looks like: he has a plot of land right beside his Mum’s house and as such they have not put up a dividing wall into between the two properties. He has a brick house, or rather one room where he works, sleeps and washes himself (generally he eats at the school or sometimes next door). Although it is a brick house, it is not plastered and the walls do not meet the ceiling. A simple house! The property is also shared by two ducks, two dogs, one cat (who pounced down on top of my bed on Thursday night (giving me an enormous fright), and, of course three pigs which they keep to sell when they are big enough. There is a constant smell from the pigs but you do get used to it. Of course the other animals that are a constant are the mosquitoes who make themselves present especially at night-time. I was bitten to blazes the first night since Freddy doesn’t use a mosquito net (they must be used to him); so, when they found that a gringo was sleeping in Freddy’s bed, a mosquito fiesta was declared and I lay awake till 3am getting bitten all over. I went to breakfast the next morning with my mouth all swollen up as a result of bites. One of the things that I constantly marvel about the people here is how they can live to old age having never flushed a toilet in their own house. That is the case with Freddy where the outside toilet is also where you wash/shower. Wanting to embrace the whole experience I went to the toilet on day one but, when I went in to do the toilet, I was immediately met by a very welcoming pig who wanted to share the experience with me. I told the pig (in a very nice way) no thanks and shooed him away! I got used to the pigs and the washing/showering experience. And one of the other aspects that was kind of novel for me was the presence of so many people in the house. Obviously living on my own, I get used to the silence etc but with Freddy’s Mum’s house right beside I spent quite a bit of time there talking with them, eating with them and sharing the whole experience. In their two-roomed house there are, at the moment, seven women – Freddy’s Mum, Freddy’s sister, Jessenia, and her two daughter’s, Freddy’s other sister and also his niece. The conversation was lively and I sometimes had to fight to get a word in!!!!!!!!! I went all week without luxury items – no phone calls (although ET did phone home to my Mum & Dad, no car, no internet. I am ashamed to say that it was the first time – after four years – that I have traveled right into the city centre on buses; I shall be doing it more frequently. A simpler lifestyle and I didn't come off any the worse for it. Having said all of that, I return to the fact that it was one of the best weeks I have spent here. I wanted to get to know in a closer way how people actually live and survive in their poverty – without the things that I, for one, take for granted – running water, flushing toilet and clean water. Freddy and his family gave me that opportunity and I will be for ever grateful. I remember meeting someone recently in the centre of the city whom I didn’t really know. When I told her that I was working in the ‘invasion areas’ of the city where the poor people live, she asked if they were as lazy as she thought. Lazy? I have never met a more determined bunch of people. People who really do want to lift themselves out of the poverty in which they find themselves. People, who this week, have shown me how to live! P.S. One of the side aspects of this week is that Freddy was in my house all week. The first thing was that he asked could Manuel share the house as well since he couldn’t contemplate living in a house all by himself – he has always shared a house with loads of folk. Freddy is a great person and, although we were living in different houses all week, there was a definite bond there and I really do thank him for the experience.

The big event of last week was my Mum’s 75th Birthday. Happy Birthday to you! I obviously wasn’t able to be home for that occasion but bizarrely the elderly couple, Jaime and Olga, who are the exact ages of my parents, were celebrating a birthday last week. So I managed to give my Mum a surrogate present by giving them flowers and some whisky. And I got it on camera which was then sent to Scotland. So happy 75th Birthday! Grant & Helen have now moved on to Peru as part of their Latin-American tour. As I said last week, you could tell that they were genuinely moved by what they saw and experienced in these days that they were with us. And I enjoyed their company – it was terrific to have them here. In the days before they left we had another stroll through the sector visiting families along the way. On Friday night, their final night here, we had Mass as usual at Narcisa chapel (in Reynaldo Quinones) and, as well as giving them a warm welcome, they gave them a farewell supper of rice and chicken! Of course, the thing that they will be remembered for is for thinking that I belonged to an older generation: having been in the house for two hours, Helen (I think) asked whether I was my Uncle Dan’s brother. I mean, he is 26 years older than me!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Liam Reilly has arrived back in Guayaquil having done some preaching in the States. You’ll remember Liam as being the priest I visited with Jamie up in the remote mountains of Azogues. Anyway, he has moved on to a new Mission in El Recreo, replacing Paul Sanders who is returning to work in England. The surprising news of his return, though, is the fact that his two German Shepherd dogs had nine puppies while he was away. He never even knew she was pregnant. In the school this week we are in exam week so there is a lot of sweating going on. It also means that I will not be having Masses there this week but I shall be going in to see how they are getting on. In any case, Monday and Tuesday of this week have been spent down at Ayangue on the coast where we go for a monthly retreat. Having said that numbers this month are severely depleted: only Liam, John Moriarty, the great Tom Oates and myself, with the others being away in the own countries preaching. The buildings of La Paz and Maestro are moving into their final stages (you’ll be saying I thought that should have finished a while ago). Only the painting and bell towers left to do. They should be ready any time now and we will move in there to have Masses with the official inaugurations taking place once I come back from Scotland in September and October. At the moment I have my eye on the next project which will be the building of the Medical Centre: it will be a two-storey building in the present site and will be able to cater in a better way and in a decent building for the 50/60 patients the Doctor gets every day. I managed to get a few house visits in this week and once again simply walking around the streets gets me into close contact with the people: you get invited into their homes and you see the very basic way they live their lives. Without water, sewerage and sometimes without food they make me feel truly humble. And it encourages me to go out and do more.

Well, now that we are into July, I can say ‘next month I am going home’. And I am really looking forward to it. I have my usual spreadsheet up and running and changing by the day although Andy says “it’s not worth the paper it’s written on”. I am home this time for a little shorter – the reason being that, when I come back, I will travel around (perhaps go up the jungle) for a week before getting stuck in again. This week’s building work goes on apace and we are moving into the final stages of both La Paz and Maestro chapels. Both are preparing their bell towers this week as well as putting on the undercoat for the painting. Both groups of workers have been great – slowly but surely moving ahead as with all the building projects. However, there is a difference in that Manuel, the ever-present foreman and foreman of Maestro build is much more outgoing than Christian, the La Paz foreman. So, when I take my bottle of cola and buns for the workers, in Maestro they stop and share the crack whereas in La Paz they just leave them till I go away and don’t stop for a chat. Do you think they don’t like me? At the Pastoral council last week we decided to leave the Inauguration of each chapel till I come back. That way there is no pressure to rush towards a finishing date. The National Youth day was fantastic last week. There were over three thousand people at each event. On Wednesday there was the opening service, March through the city centre and festival; then on Thursday there were prayer services and the Final Mass with the Roman Cardinal Re. Of course, I was involved in the accommodation process and it meant that we were up and running on the Wednesday from 5am and at it till the Festival finished making sure that each group had arrived at their Parish of accommodation. It was a sweat as numbers kept changing by the minute – literally till they arrived. Having said that, working with the other youth leaders was a great experience and bodes well for future enthusiasm in diocesan youth work. Also the phrase of the whole experience given to us by the Archbishop was ‘We should be the last people to lose our calm”! MY second cousin, Grant, and his girlfriend, Helen, are here staying for a week as part of their tour of South America. We have been involved in loads of things: we walked through the sector visiting some of the old folk; we have been down the Nursery; we have been at the school on various occasions (I left them there this morning so that they could be with Flor’s class all day); and have celebrated Mass in several chapels. I think, like most people, they have been stunned by what they have seen but genuinely appreciated the warmth of the friends around us. I have decided this week to undertake a new project and a personal one. I am going to do a house-swap for a week with Freddy. Why a house-swap? Well, for some time I have thought that my life here and my experience with the people would be better enhanced by living as the people here do, in their very poor houses. I hope that by living in a very basic house, I can get a better understanding of what it means to live a shanty life. Why Freddy? I have great confidence in him. I hope to do it before I come home to Scotland but, in any case, we will discuss it this afternoon …. In Freddy’s house!

So here we are at the night before the first ever National Youth Festival in Ecuador. It has been a lot of fretting getting to this stage. My part was to arrange the accommodation for 650 of the young people that are coming from all parts of the country. One of the phrases that has stuck with me was from the Archbishop at one of our many meetings – “there will be plenty of things going wrong at the last minute but we are the last people that should lose our cool!” I think it is a good phrase for so many moments of life. And, of course, it has helped me get through many phone calls with volunteers asking so many questions. In fact the only irate customer was Sister Cecilia from Guayaquil’s Schoenstatt who, when I asked her if everything was all right for her to receive her twenty-eight youth, she went into a bit of a tirade telling me how hard she works and she couldn’t possibly do any more. I kept my cool and told her that, yes, she was well known for being such a hard worker!!!!!!! So I hope it all goes well for tomorrow and Thursday. Ecuadorian bureaucracy came to the fore this morning as I went to get my car road tax sorted. Under the system here you need to get a tax disc for the current year but you can get it any time until the middle of the following year. So, although it was absolutely necessary, I decided the time was right. So I went with ‘my contact’ to the road tax offices where we were refused at lane 4, then again at lane 1, and then finally told to go home. We took a trip round the corner, came back, went to a new lane and then got the disc within minutes. Now I don’t know if they were friends that went back a long time or even that money did not pass hands, but I was certainly glad that I did not have return to this form of Ecuadorian bureaucracy. Oh and I had a new tax disc. One of the disturbing sights of the week happened when myself and Terry went to visit Pedro, a really nice old man who lives just down from the school. He is around 75 and lives in a bamboo hut with no proper bed or cooker. And he often doesn’t have money for food on a particular day. Anyway, we went to see him and he showed us a large cancerous growth on the underside of his arm. He was going into hospital to get it sorted so we shall be praying fro him these weeks until he comes.

And so it was time to say farewell to our good friend, Terry. Last week was taken up with a few farewells: at Maestro chapel with his workers where we prepared chicken and rice; at the school where we got – you guessed it – rice and chicken; and at the youth groups where there was sponge cake coming out your ears….literally. It was great to have Terry around and, as with all the guests that have been out here, he left a little bit of himself behind with us. And, with Terry working at Maestro chapel build, he will be remembered every time I look at the walls. Even the people at Maestro chapel (who are the poorest people in our area) gave him a presentation with a home-made photo frame. Thanks, Terry, muchas gracias!!!!