Wednesday 19 March 2008

Churches, HIV and Climbing in Cuenca

I got back to Ecuador last Weds (after spending 2 and a half weeks in Peru) and early on Thurs morning left Quito again for Cuenca to attend ´The First Latin American Ecumenical Meeting on HIV and AIDS'.


It was a new experience for me to be at an event where everythign is discusssed based on faith - I'm used to a very secular way of looking at the world. It was good to meet some religious leaders who are doing very progressive work on the issue, but depressing to hear some of the more conservative views of the past and present church hierarchies and some of the barriers priests and nuns and social pastorals on the ground face.


Two nuns who are doing great HIV prevention work with sex workers in Ecuador ( From Madres Adoratrices.

Have pasted below a short article I wrote on the event:
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Latin American Churches meet to discuss responses to HIV and AIDS

“Know the truth and it will set you free” (John 8:32) is the title and the thinking behind an event in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca which brought together diverse faith communities from across Latin America to discuss experiences and perspectives on HIV and AIDS.

The conference, which is the first of its kind in the country, was organised by the Social Pastoral of the Cuenca Archdiocese (a Progressio partner organisation) with the support of the Catholic Relief Service and Progressio.

On March 14-15th, Religious leaders working on HIV and AIDS in eight countries in Latin America presented their experiences to an audience of around 60 representatives from churches, faith-based organisations and social organisations including Anglican, Jewish, Methodist, Baptist, Evangelical, and Catholic churches. Development workers and staff from Progressio also took part.

The event was an opportunity for churches to share experiences and positions. The organisers were keen to open up an ecumenical dialogue on the topic because they recognise that whilst many churches have been very active in prevention, training and care of people living with HIV, others have been silent or indifferent to the problem.

The varied presentations and discussions at the event allowed participants to analyse HIV not just as a medical problem, but as an issue which causes rights violations, poverty, emotional trauma and damage to bodies and souls through discrimination and isolation.

The topics discussed included: churches’ responses to HIV and AIDS; experiences of working on sexuality and HIV AIDS; methods of working on HIV and AIDS; and how to work with vulnerable groups including LGBT, sex workers, drug users, prison populations, street children, teenagers, women and children. The event ended with an ecumenical celebration in the city cathedral

At the end of the event a joint declaration was drafted which is to be circulated to all the groups present to sign. The document affirms Christians’ and churches’ support, love and solidarity for all people living with HIV and AIDS and commitment to work on the theme. It takes a stand against moralistic or simplistic responses and the idea that HIV AIDS is a ‘punishment’ inflicted by God.

The Pastoral Social of Cuenca hopes that this first event will be the beginning of a process of joint learning amongst churches that will lead to further meetings and ecumenical working.
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Mark came down to join me in Cuenca so on Saturday we went to a big rocky outcrop called Cojitambo with Javier a climbing friend of his. He showed us all the climbing routes that he, his brother and friends have set up and we had a go at climbing and rapelling (my first time).

I am climbing not lying down but I can't turn the photo over...

Sunday 9 March 2008

Catching up - some photos

After a prolonged silence, some photos. In a slightly jumbled order...

Chimborazo
Mark at Chimborazo a few weekends ago. Chimborazo is behind him in the fog. We did a hard cold wet cycle from 4000m up to 4900m to the refuge. (Although I did more walking and complaining than cycling...)


Illegal logging and trip to Esmeraldas

I went with Luis to check out the location for a new development worker in Esmeraldas in the north west of Ecuador. I wanted to do some interviews with communites affected by illegal logging, but people were too scared to be seen talking to a strange foreigner and preferred to come to our office in Quito to talk. Took some photos of logging activites though...

Esmeraldas - the city:
Unplanned invasion housing:


Borbon:
San Lorenzo:

African palm plantations:

Huge areas of forest are being cut down and replaced with monoculture palm plantations

Logging




Bananas:


Photography class
Trip out to Plaza Foch: night photography







Mindo

Amazing lush leafyness and lots of rain
Mark climbing up very steep ladder (sideways - cant seem to turn it over)





Peru Development workers meeting on the beach

Last week was the DW meeting on a beautiful beach Punto Rocas about an hour south of Lima(It's a hard life)

The house:
The beach:

The meeting:
The sunsets:




Interviewing farmers in Huaral

I went to Huaral, a bizarre lush river valley in the middle of the desert to the north of Lima. A new Progressio development worker, Bruno started work there this month with our partner organisation Cepes. He'll be doing environmental work with the small scale farmers there.

Some of the ad-hoc housing in the desert (communities established through invasion/squatting of land with no planning and no services):




A tall white gringa with some farmers: (I was interviewing them about terminator technology, GM seeds and their own seedsaving or buying habits). None of them had heard of GM technology, some thought it sounded dangerous, others thought they would like to try it...


The view from my flat in Quito
by day...

and night:


Playa Escondida

For Carnaval, we went with the South American Explorers club to a beach in the north of Ecuador near Atacames. Beautiful with lots of cycling, eating, drinking and scrabble and not nearly as much rain as there might have been.




Paracas

Last weekend I went to Pisco to go and visit the nearby Paracas National Park and the Ballestras Islands. They are wierd desert islands totally covered in birds - in colonial times one of the main sources of Peru's income because the hot dry conditions mean that the bird dropping - guano - are preserved perfectly. It was collected in huge quantities and exported as fertiliser.

(The tiny black spots on top of the hill are thousands of birds and the white is all guano. Below on the beach are loads of sealions. The mother sealions were swimming around teaching the babies to swim. )



Lots of birds. Even though it is desert and really hot there are penguins because the humbolt current makes the sea very cold.



The lumps under the arch are sealions.

The candelabra (The guide didnt really explain what this is - its huge and he said it was either linked to the Nazca lines, or made by sailors as a compass/map, or an ancient holy symbol related to the halluconogenic cacti or made by aliens.)

Pelicans on the beach in Paracas




Pisco

Being in Picso was depressing. It was very near the epicentre of the earthquake in August and, six months on, looking at parts of the town, you'd think it had happened the day before.


Heaps of people's possession and furniture.

A service in the remains of the church which collapsed in the earthquake killing 200 people.