4 days to go and I´m sad as can be...

We have four days left here in Iquitos and it´s so hard to say goodbye to everyone here. I keep hugging and kissing the kids and when they ask me to take them with me, that´s just what I feel like doing:) But this is their world, and I´m just happy that I have gotten to know it, and that I have the posibility to go back here. Hopefully soon. And one day I hope the world has changed enough to give them the posibility to travel as well, and follow whatever dreams they might have.

20 days to go; Am I making the world a better place, or is the world making me a better person?

A while ago a friend of mine wrote to me "it´s good that someone´s out there to make the world a better place¨. Later that day I started thinking, and I realised that, yes I might be here doing something good, something meaningful and yes, something important. But, I know that what I´ve seen, experienced and learned from the people here, no doubt has changed me and made me a better person, more so than whatever changes for the better my presence here has made. And now, the end of my stay here (for now) getting dreadfully close, I know I´ll be going home with new knowledge, contiuing my priveliged life in Norway, and everyone I know and care about here will continue with their struggles, in a country that needs years of change to give its people the security and service they need, deserve and are intitled to. This may sound pessimistic, but after living here, it feels unjust that I can just get on a plane and go home to my safe world.

Why can I study whatever I want when the mayority of young people in the world can´t?
Why can I travel wherever and whenever I want when the mayority in the world can´t even leave their homeplace, even less their country?
Why can I buy (almost) whatever I want when the mayority barely have money to put food on the table?
Why can I feel safe that if I get sick or injured, the system will take care of me when people are afraid to even find out if they have an illness because they can´t afford the treatment?

Living here these almost 7 months has given me a deeper understanding of what poverty is and it´s consequences, and how unjust it is that not averyone has the same posibilities . And it has made me even more sure that we have to keep on fighting it, keep on trying to make the world a better place, for everone.

Alone in the street at midnight...

It´s almost midnight and I´m sitting on our usual internet-café El Cyber right across from the plaza. Outside there are a coupple of 6-7 year old kids playing. A normal monday night here in Iquitos. I´ve gotten used to seeing kids in the streets at any hour of the day (or night) , but it still moves me. These are kids who are outside because their parents don´t care, because it´s better than staying at home with drunk parents or maybe no parents in the house, or kids who can´t go home before they have earned enough money. Kids who need someone who cares, someone who worries, gives limitations and who loves them. I always tell "my kids" to go home and go to bed when I meet them late at night, sometimes they nod and say they´ll be going home soon, but then I´ll see them again an hour later. For me who only have known these little angels 6 months and allready love them, it´s impossible to understand how their parents can be so, well I can´t find a suitable word to cover it...but imagine that you have a 5 year old kid, and you don´t care if she is alone in the street at 2 o´clock in the morning, you don´t worrie what can happen to her or what see might see. I always thought that the love parents have for their kids is the strongest kind of love, and something universal, no matter where you are from, and if you are rich or poor. But what I have seen here makes me question it. Can it be so that the poverty and all the social problems that comes with it destroyes this love? That the everyday problems takes the focus, and that everything else becomes less important and makes love and sentiments a luxury you can´t afford? If that even partly true, that´s one of the sadest consequenses of the worldwide unjustice called poverty.