Me in Guatemala

Well as promised here are my pics form Guatemala.

Ok so above there is a picture of Gustavo. Gustavo is a 10-year-old child - yes he's 10 - and he's a sponsored through Compassion. He and his five sisters and mother and father all live in the one-room home. The home has a small front area protected by corrugated tin and held up by wood, where the kitchen is. Then inside is a dirt floor, a small room and more tin. The walls of course are not steady and the house structure is really a lean to.

Neither Gustavo nor his sisters attend school regularly. The only education they get is the education from the project. They all went to school until about second grade and then they had to drop out because Mom had some problems proving her citizenry and the family also has trouble with the $20 a month school fees. So Gustavo goes to the Compassion project and so does his sister. But his older sisters work at a bottle factory nearby. Washing and cleaning bottles.

When we went to the home Gustavo's father, Alfophonso, came to greet us. He had a shovel in his hand. He was out working the fields. Anyway he began telling to us but started to cry because he was so ashamed of his home and wished he could have a better place to live to offer us a place to sit and be hospitable.

It was so heart-wrenching because he didn't want a suburban home, with a cul de sac, white picket fence, two-car garage and back deck for his family but he wanted something better to entertain us. So selfless. So humble. So wonderful. The beauty and humility I experience when I travel to our field countries always overwhelms me and makes me just a little bit ashamed at the depth of shallowness that pervades my homeland.

Me being global: Guatemala

Me being global: Guatemala

Guatemala

Ok so I'm in Guatemala now. But I don't have pics yet. Still in the stone age with one-shot deal camera. So you'll have to wait until I get to Walgreens to see the pics.
So I met a little girl yesterday who was actually looming in a small courtyard inside the hotel where we're staying.
She was making a table runner. She had the loom outstretched, umbrella in her lap and colorful threadsthat she weaved in singsong motions. She was just beautiful her name was Nancy. She was 12 years old and had never been to school. She wants to study Pharmacy but she can't go to school because her family can't afford it - it costs about $20 a month for school fees so she works in the market looming arts and crafts goods for a madam art craftsman. Definitely child labor. If I ever saw it. But then I bought two purses from the madam and felt so guilty. Ugggh. I guess you can't do good all the time cause you'll never reach perfection. Is that just rationalization?

Me in Paris

This is me holding up the Louvre! Aren't I cool. Ok so you grow up and you hear about the greatest musem in the world - the Louvre and of course Da Vinci. But geez there were literally 10,000 people there. It was crazy. It was like being at Six Flags. Imagine trying to be inspired by Da Vinci when there are 400 crying babies, screaming teenagers and thousands of couples, strangers, people, moms and dads milling about.
This is me on the roof at the Museum d' Orsay the fabulous place where you don't see just one of the Impressionists you see them all and whole rooms full of them. So wonderful. Geez.


This is the entrance to the Louvre. So I got to stay at this fab bed and breakfast on the Louvre Rivoli and it was exactly two blocks away from the Louvre. I was only in Paris for four days and I saw 11 museums (the Louvre twice), ate at four fabulous restaurants, took a night dinner cruise on the Seine, hung out at a Jazz club, and bought my mom French perfume.


So this is me on the River Seine. Isn't it beautiful. I was so amazing to walk the same streets as Marie Antoinette and Napeolon and Picasso and all those famous cats who helped to change the world of culture, literature, politics and art. Plus I look fabulous and I loved speaking French!

Ovetta Goes Global

Now I know that this looks kind of staid but clean water is a big deal in a developing nation like Burkina Faso. One in seven people around the world doesn't have access to clean water. We turn on the faucet and take for granted that the water that comes out is safe to drink. In Burkina there is no faucet and the water could kill.

This is me at the Christian Mission Alliance Child Development Center, just south of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. I'm standing in front of a long, warehouse looking building with now window panes or doors. The children visit the center once a week where they receive food, Bible instruction, dance lessons, and tutoring among other things. The center is located on the grounds of a large church in the area. They're holding up the "thumbs up," sign because apparently Hollywood has exported American culture in such a compact way that everyone around the world associates us with positivity!
This is a little girl that I saw in a village in rural Burkina south of Ouagadougou. (Say that three time fast). She's wearing a pajama shirt that she's probably had since birth. She's playing with a flower which she later put in her hair. She vulnerable, yet determined.







OK so I took a year off triathlons because I was traveling for work. And here's a blog that shows me in West Africa and Paris and some other places. I know that since I'm a writer that people are expecting some great grandiose thoughts to fall into cyberspace but truth be told I'm exhausted from writing in a chop shop so you do your own interpretations.

If you didn't know I work at Compassion International - It's a Global Christian Ministry that serves about 830,000 children in 24 countries. I took this picture at one of our child development centers in Burkina Faso. This little boy was so sweet and he followed me around like a shadow the whole time I was at the center.

So these girls were standing in line before it was time to eat. And they were so beautiful I had to take a picture of them. Which of course made them get a bad case of the wiggles and giggles and they couldn't stand in line any more.

Even though I was thousands of miles away from the Chicago looking at these little girls was like looking into a mirror. The hair, the eyes, the smiles, they looked just like I did when I was that age. Weird huh?

These little girls are playing in a typical playground in Burkina Faso - a dirt road in the middle of a slum. Along the sides are typical houses in developing countries - unfinished, cement homes with no doors or windows - just curtains and drapes - and corrugated roofs etc.