Bienvenidos a Iquitos!

Now we´ve spent our first week here in Iquitos and at La Restinga, and to be honest: It`s freakin´ warm, but we love it!

Iquitos is a larger than expected city in the middle of the Amazonas, where the heath at times is unbearable. According to Wikipedia there live about 371 000 people in Iquitos, but for example in the area of Belen there live "unregistered" families with a number of kids. (Just to mention, we`ve met persons with up to 8 siblings) The people finds us gringos exotic and different, and therefore do not only stare but whistle and yell. Believe us, before we came here we did not know how many different ways one can whistle! However, all the people we`ve gotten to know are friendly, caring and have made us feel welcome.

The transport in Iquitos is mainly motorbikes or motorcars ("motos"), but this does not make the traffic less loud or caotic, frankly the opposite. Iquitos has different districts, but we`ve mostly gotten to know "the central" parts and Belen where we work with La Restinga. (We`re going to write more about La Restinga, Belen and Crea Belen later!). There are no supermarkets as in Lima here, but small shops with groceries such as milk etc., and open markets where they sell the most wonderful fruits. As in many warm countries, a lot of people in Iquitos just "hang around" and do nothing at all. According to Dawn on the Amazon one can estimate that 65% of the inhabitants in Iquitos are without work. There are some tourists here, the majority are Amazon-peekers, but "the hippies" may outnumber them. For there are a lot of what one can qualify as hippies in Iquitos! The nightlife is fantastic as well if one likes move ones hips to the sound of southamerican rythms, and the food and juices - mmmm!

This week we`ve mostly gotten to know La Restinga, the people and how they work. We`ve participated in the activities, helped where we could and tried not to be a burden - which at times is difficult as a white, "nonfluent-spanish-speaking", sweaty norwegian! La Restinga and all the work is truely amazing, and we`re really looking forward to becoming a part of this. This week we also had a lot of preparations to the mothers-workshop on saturday. All the mothers involved in Crea Belen were invited to a workshop that focused on them as women: their senses, their body, their selfimage etc. This was done through games and tasks such as being blindfolded and using your senses, decorating mirrors and writing down goals. Our task was beeing nannies for some of the children with Paulita (a fantastic girl that participates in Crea Belen) so that the mothers could focus on themselves and each other. Afterwards we all had time to just enjoy ourselves with dancing, swiming in the pool, playing football etc.

This was very briefly. We`ll probably write more about everything mentioned when we know Iquitos better.

Abrazos de Maia y Ellen.