Lots happening, May 9

Today was a pretty busy day.  We were up and at 'em by 8. I know this is getting repetitious, but off to the packing house we went to, you guessed it, packing bags (again) for the trip to the barrios.  This time we split up into 4 groups two of which walked to their locations, and two hopped into the back of the pick ups to get a lift to the other side of town.

Waiting for the lift:

Once in this particular barrio, we quickly realized that it was a Saturday and the tone of the place was very different from our previous visit to the shanty town.

The houses are really run down, I actually thought this was a chicken coop as the chickens were running in and out under the door before it opened and I saw tables and chairs inside......unless, of course, those chicken were really well trained....

Other scenes:

On the other hand, the location was beautiful, with a wonderful view

Well, our experience was really different from our first visit to the barrios; this time there were a lot of people, especially kids.....of all ages......we were pretty much swarmed and they went to great lengths to try and steal things from our bags and even managed to unzip my backpack before I realized what was happening.

We each took turns hanging out in the street to lure the little devils away from the homes we were visiting.  Here they are swarming Zoe, one of our team.  The children were of all ages and there was a lot of heavy duty rough housing going on.....a little scary for the western sensibilities.

We did manage to extricate ourselves and get back by 1 pm to change and get set for international nurses week celebrations and also a min party for the translators, but that is anothe post! See you then!