Off on my travels again!

I’ll officially finish my Certificate in Intercultural Studies at Redcliffe tomorrow on 22nd June - it’s been a brilliant and useful year, with some hard work and some good friends.

Next week I'm going to South America for 5-6 weeks to visit two projects that I might work with longer term. I’ll spend 3 weeks in Abancay, Peru, visiting communities that have been asking for water projects, meeting the existing team and getting to know the area. There are existing missionary links, but no community development team, so I would be starting from scratch if I work here in the future - a big challenge that I'll need to decide whether I'm up to. Then I’ll spend 2 weeks in Potosí, Bolivia. I’ll stay with missionaries I met in Ecuador who have a community development team and would like to start bringing in engineers and builders for water projects. Both towns are in the mountains rather than the jungle - so colder than I have been used to (particularly Potosí), and a different culture and indigenous language. I’m sure there will be other differences too!

After I come back I'll need to decide between the projects! It will take me a few months to do all the support raising, fundraising and planning, but early 2014 I hope to start a longer-term (open-ended) position in Peru or Bolivia. More updates hopefully to follow along with photos from my trip...