Bird Flu

This past weekend was a full one. We hosted Jens, a state-side visitor from the organization HealtheChildren who came down to Ecuador to meet with Julia at Aliñambi about expanding the clinic there. Mark and Abbie (a recently departed, sorely missed 2007-08 MPIE founding member) have been working since April initiating, coordinating and nurturing a budding partnership between HealtheChildren and Aliñambi, and it was awesome to see months of emails, phone calls, and planning come together this weekend. After tomorrow mornings’ team meeting I will have a better idea of where the collaboration stands now, but we are, as Mark put it, “cautiously optimistic” about how things progress from here.

This weekend was also the close of the Sangolqui Corn Festival, and Saturday found Dunc, Jos, Serena and I watching an enormous parade of horses, searching for the much anticipated bulls, dancing on the sidewalks with questionably drunken Ecuadorians, and jostling our way through the throngs of people in an attempt to get to the “largest cake in Ecuador”. With Jos taking the initiative on that one, we got there pretty darn fast :)

We also added to our Manna family, but these little guys are a current point of house tension, so until tomorrow’s meeting I will refrain from posting anything more than just their pictures...


Holly