Carnival and Campamento!

Well, we’ve been busy in the past few weeks. The first week of February is traditionally time for Carnival in Bolivia which means that there are never ending parades and bands marching down the street at all times of the day and night. People throw water balloons at each other …. and some even tip whole buckets of water from their balconies onto people walking down the street.

Our church runs a camp at this time and we were asked to help organise the games, ice breakers and the “Olympics”. We formed a team of helpers and shared lots of ideas. Our Spanish just about held up … with a bit of help from Becky and Chris. We discovered that Bolivian’s are very competitive when it comes to scoring “points” and winning is very important to them. The atmosphere at the camp was very different to the kind of camp we would run in UK, but we learnt a lot about Bolivian culture and their way of thinking. Dean was asked to preach on “faith” via a translator and we were involved in various drama presentations.

One lovely Bolivian tradition is that the girls “chicas” go to the window of the boys bedroom and seranade them on the last but one night. On the last night the boys “chicos” return to the girls and sing for them. It was so lovely, lying in bed ( you’ve got to be really quiet and not get up) whilst there are people declaring their love and friendship for each other. Dean ( never the one to be shy ) decided to sing a solo version of Elvis Presley … Love me tender.