Thursday, July 20, we had a celebration in Puka Urku. The reason was the long pending inauguration ceremony of the recently completed house of volunteers and at the same time the farewell party of us current volunteers. 

In the morning we, some students and the family of Manon, who was visiting, left for Puka Urku. From Misahualli, we went down the river by motorized canoe. Once we arrived, we quickly started cooking. Some of the women and we from the PAKASHKA-SACHA house prepared dinner together. Vegetables were cut, chicken plucked and cooked for about 50 people. The plan was to start the celebration around 5 p.m., typically everything was delayed a bit and we finally started the program at 7 p.m. that we had planned in consultation with the Comunidad in Pakashka. Nevertheless, we bridged the waiting time well with the last preparations. 

Shortly before the beginning of the celebration, Manon and Jakob became godparents of Jhonatan, a child of the Comunidad. The baptism went quickly. The child was given a name by each godparent and water was poured over him. After the ritual, the celebration began. Slowly all the people arrived and Denyce, one of the students of PAKASHKA-SACHA, opened the program. The president of the school, the vice president of the Comunidad and Byron, the manager of PAKASHKA-SACHA, gave a speech and the dance followed.

The dance began with a ritual: all dressed in traditional costume and with face paint knelt beside the bowl and Manon’s sister began pounding the yuka. The men with spears, the women with a bowl in their hands. The traditional costumes are part of the culture. Originally, the costumes were imposed on the indigenous people by the Spaniards so that they would not walk around naked. But over time, they have become an integral part of the culture and still are today. After the dance was performed, each of us participating asked one person from the audience to dance. Afterwards, we volunteers gave a farewell speech. At the end, we ate. A soup followed by a main course was served to those present. After the meal, the courtyard was cleared to make room for dances. With Kichwa music, the night was now ushered in and everyone felt free to dance, talk, enjoy themselves. This is how it went on all night. 

We are very grateful that we, the volunteers, could say goodbye to the Comunidad in this way. It touches us very much that we were included in the dance and thus were able to experience the culture up close. Through the baptism of Jonathan, something will always connect us from now on. That is a nice feeling. In summary, it was a great experience for us, a chance to say goodbye and to review our time together. In particular, we were impressed by the gratitude that was shown to us again that evening, in the form of speeches by the president and others. 

Thank you very much for everything Puka Urku. We hope to see us all again soon.