Colombian games

Before I write about the the amazing things I have seen and experienced in Colombia this week, I wanted to share with you one of the best games i have played in a long time. Its called Tejos.

It is basically a Colombian version of Bowls or Petanque, except you throw lead discs into a square box of clay. The closest to the middle gets the points and if you get it in the centre ring, you get even more points. You play in pairs, and each throw two discs each. Simple…….

….except the difference is that they place explosives in the central ring, so the idea is to hit them and blow them up! Not too sure what this says about Colombians, but it makes for a bloody exhilarating game.

Me and LG were duly asked to join in and paired up with our colleagues. You could see us baulking and jumping every time a ‘tejos’ was thrown from miles off, much to everyone’s amusement. There was further amusement when I kindly declined their offer of taking a few lead discs and explosives home to teach young people in the UK! I duly pointed out that explaining to the security at Miami airport that “they were only explosives given to me by my Colombian friends…Its only a game, I promise” as they lead me off to Guantanemo Bay may not be the most water tight excuse.

As it happened I ended up blowing it up! Much to mine (and LGs considerable) surprise. I may now enquire if there is a local tejos club nearby…..it may just catch on

(You can see the small explosives in the clay behind the thrower – they have two’ ends’ like in Petanque, so you throw from in front of the other box of explosives!!)

Disorientate me

I sometimes get very confused and disorientated. I have just travelled through 4 Latin American cities in 5 hours, as we flew from Tegucigalpa, via San Jose and Panama City onto Bogota.  This on a day we had woken up in a rather ropey hotel room overlooking one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve seen after a ‘day off’ after a week of work.

Travel can really disorientate and confuse and I sometimes have to check myself in with where I actually am. I know it may seem glamorous, but it can sometimes be quite angst inducing.

Sitting in a vaguely confused state in Panama I realised with LG that the previous month, in the space of 4 days we been through 5 airports – Heathrow, Belfast City, Belfast International, Geneva and London City.

Having said all that, I love what I do and I won’t even mention the words carbon and footprint……

Not so smug…..

I’ve often written about how I can be a bit of a smug vegetarian when I travel. (Read ‘Smug Vegetarian’ and ‘back with a few things off my list‘).Well I have got my comeuppance on this visit. It seems impossible to be one here. Literally every meal has meat in it. Full stop. Firstly, people look very strangely at me when LG tells them i don’t eat meat, and then rather sweetly say that I can have the chicken then. Once we then explain i don’t eat that either, there is usually a shrug of the shoulder, a look of pity and i am served a meal, with the meat simply removed!!

 

Miami nights

There is an old tale that goes around NGO workers that if you fly to Latin America with work…if you are very lucky…you fly via Miami. If you are even luckier, your flight connections will mean you get the spend the night there. So I was lucky enough to find that was the case with my latest trip!

In a job where I feel we are made to consistenly feel guilty about taking time off and time for ´us´ when we are working , this was one of the few times when we could justify to oursleves a night out in Miami. An almost guilt free ´perk and ´us´time to relax. We weren´t choosing to do so oursleves, it just happened to work out that way.

The longer I do this job and the more time I spend with other Youth Workers and people in similar chairty jobs, the more I realise how all consuming it is, and the more I see how it is ingrained in us, in our training, to always self-reflect and constructivly criticise what we do.  This is great and makes us better youth workers. Yet the more I see of this, the more I can how damaging it can be, when it becomes a habit to always reflect on what we can do better . This escalates into almost consistent self-criticism. “We are good youth workers so we sit around and beat oursleves up about how bad we are at our job”. By focussing on the 10% that we can do better, we naturally overlook the 90% we have done well. This means we don´t ever think we have done a “good job” or take the pride, confidence and motivation from that, which we need as human beings to keep going.

I meet some unbelievably inspiring and talented youth workers on my travels and i just wish they´d realise that more and give themslves the hug and pat on the back they deserve.

I´m the worst at it, I know, but I did try to say to myself about Miami to just “enjoy myself”, and ”I did deserve a night on South Beach”. And that I certainly did. The late evening swim on the South Beach was awesome and we walked along the sea wake as the sun set. The bars were amazing, the crab dinner unbelievable and the dancing and club (where we go ID´d!! So happy!!) brilliant fun. Our “One night in Miami” was one to remember.

We then had to get up and fly off to Honduras and Colombia for some hard work. Should I feel guilty for having some fun? Am I beating myself up about it? …hmmm…..