It is where the community comes together and works towards something, like fixing somebody’s roof, or building a new canoe… This is what the International English Minga is all about.

In a pilot project that will become a revolutionary tool of education, teachers from America, Asia, Africa and local Amazonian communities are spending time deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest – one that is under threat from its own government due to unsustainable methods of mining and logging.

These teachers are introducing the English language to an Amazonian community,  but not in a shove-it-down-your-throat kind of way. And not in a Stolen Generation kind of way either.

“Our immediate goal is to create an English language curriculum for Achuar students growing up in the heart of the Amazon. Doing so in a way that is divorced entirely from the historically colonizing force of European language.

“Our experience as students and teachers in Achuar territory has taught us that even in contested spaces such as the Amazonian frontier, where Indigenous leaders and their allies are standing up and demanding their rights to land and resources and way of life, the arrival of formal education has the potential to undermine all their efforts,” says co-founder of the project Kyle Solomon.

from ‘International English Minga’ on Facebook

“Imagine a diverse group of teachers coming together from America, Asia, Africa, and local Achuar communities to define what multicultural education means, how it works, and what it can do for humanity.

Imagine them gathered around a small fire at dawn in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest, envisioning a way to teach our children not only how to dream of a just and sustainable world, but how to create it.

As the sun rises up over the lush jungle canopy they collaboratively design and implement a cutting-edge methodology which puts the power squarely in the hands & hearts & minds of local elders and their sons, daughters and grandchildren.

Drawing on all available resources, from the latest innovations in information technology to ancient indigenous knowledge and wisdom, they reconcile two distinct worlds and conceive of a way to prepare the next generation for the complex challenges we are facing as a species.”

-taken from the website hyperlinked below.

For more information or to donate, visit them on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, read an article, or visit their website.

Wearing the red and yellow cap makes you responsible for those people in the water and on the beach.

72,000 volunteers make up Surf Lifesaving Australia, which is one of the largest volunteer movements in the country.

This season alone, there have been almost 7000 rescues and over 160,000 preventions.

This season is the first in about 12 years that I have not been proficient in the Pambula Surf Club. This means I have not updated my knowledge or paid my club membership. It means I can not patrol the beach, and I can not help with a rescue.

So the words, “rescue, rescue, rescue” while on patrol are one thing, but when the phone rings one sunny afternoon and mum tells the caller, “…but Kim isn’t proficient,” in a worried voice, I know its a rescue.

I mouth to her the word, “rescue”, and she nods.

My voice echoes through the house, “RESCUE!”

Then I remember it’s only me, mum and my 16-year-old cousin, Jack. Usually, I’m used to having dad and at least one sister in the house, which is usually why we get called first. We are all members, usually all proficient, and easily make up a rescue team with one phone call. Dad, mum myself and my two sister are all duck drivers, ARC (Advanced Resuscitation Certificate) holders and defibrillation operators. Jack is a crew person for the duck and has his Bronze Medallion.

Jack comes running, “Get your wetsuit,” I tell him.

“No, it’ll be fine. Lets go.” Bloody typical teenager.

I grab my wetsuit and chuck on some thongs. Mum is just getting off the phone and telling me I can’t go in the duck (aka inflatable rescue boat) as Jack and I are heading out the door.

“Two kids caught in a rip in Merimbula,” Mum fills us in. “Have you got the keys?” To the surf club, she means.

Good thinking mum. I run back in and grab the keys off their hook.

“Are you taking the car?” Mum asks, as she runs upstairs to grab her wettie.

“No, we’ll meet you down there,” I yell as I race out the door.

Jack is already running, and I sprint after him. The surf club is about a two minute walk from our house.

I get to the club and throw Jack the keys, he opens the door and hands them back. As Jack runs in to the gear shed to prepare the rubber duck, I am given the task of turning off the alarm.

I fail.

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

Shit! It is so loud I can’t even stay in the same room, I have to close the door. Jack comes running out a moment later, “WTF?!” he exclaims.

“I’M SORRY!” I yell, over the noise.

I quickly go back into the club and disarm the alarm.

Jack runs back to to his job of getting the duck ready, and I race after him.

A few moments later, mum turns up.

“Kim! You can not go. If you get hurt, you won’t have any cover. We have to wait until Jarryd* turns up!”

“Mum, if Jarryd doesn’t come soon, then i’m going!” I reply, frustrated.

We keep getting ready: Mum runs upstairs to get the radio, I open the garage door and start moving the car out, while Jack checks the engine of the rubber duck.

Another clubbie turns up and starts helping. The great thing about Surf Lifesaving Australia is that they are always improving.

Just a few years back, there would have been one member who got the rescue call from either SLSA or the emergency services, and they would tell a wife, husband or child who would have a list of numbers to call to get others involved.

These days, there is a list of people who simply get sent a text with all the details - and whoever are the quickest to respond prepare for the rescue.

We hoist the duck trailer on to the back of the car, and pull it out of the garage.

We are ready to go.

A phone rings.

“Stand down,” is the message.

The adrenaline racing through me comes to an abrupt halt, and I realise I’m sweating pretty bad.

Phew. The rescue is off. Someone must have already saved the two kids. I can’t help but think the call will definately come again, it is easter weekend in a tourist area, and I will not be able to help, once again.

I have all the knowledge, I have most of the experience, and yet here I am, preparing this blog, and writing a speech for the towns centenary about the benefits of rescue boats in Surf Lifesaving, when I can’t even be in the display.

*name changed.

Start of the day... before the drama began.

Nauseating fear. Every two minutes for about two hours, someone would yell,¨Lights up!¨and ten small torch lights would point to the mountain towering straight above us. The sound of rocks falling had started again, but luckily they were still twenty meters behind us.

The ordeal began earlier in the day, when crossing a raging river turned into a nightmare. An Fernando, an Argentinian boy, had to be rescued after slipping in. Antonio, one of our guides, ran down the bank of the river and, incredibly, lifted a log from in the water, and brought it slightly upstream to try and reach Fernando. Someone came running with the rope, and they were able to pull him in. Neyser, another guide, took back a small group who decided not to cross.

Building the bridge to cross the river, halfway between Santa Maria and Santa Teresa

Ricardo, crossing the river first.

It continued not long after when the track we were supposed to take had collapsed into the river. Antonio, said to me, ¨I am not going to risk your lives anymore.¨

After days of torrential rain, landslides had begun to carve up the mountains.

We took another track, directly up the mountain for about two hours, the darkness closing in around us. Luckily for us, we had two guides that knew the area like the back of their hand.

Reaching the main road, just as darkness falls

By six o´clock, we had reached the main road. We continued walking while Antonio tried to call for a vehicle to pick us up. That is when we found out the cars weren’t coming through. The road was blocked by a landslide.

The pace picked up. The supposed six-hour jungle trek that day had turned into twelve hours, and it wasn’t even close to being over.

Further along the road we came to the first landslide. The muddy ground and the sound of falling rocks brought the group to a halt.

Our guides went up ahead to have a look. When they came back, their words to the group were, ¨When I say run, you run. When I say stop, you stop.¨

Oh shit.

We were attempting to run through a landslide. That is when the overwhelming sense of fear set in. We tried to calm ourselves down, breathing deeply to catch our breaths before the running began, Jess and I holding hands so as not to lose each other in the dark.

¨RUN!¨ Yelled our guide. With our small packs banging against our backs, we ran. The rocks were falling around us, a giant boulder landed between two of the other Australians on the tour. We kept running.

There was no turning back at this point. It was chaotic. 21 people were running through muddy ground along a narrow stretch of road, all in one big group, dodging falling stones and boulders.

Then there was the call. ¨Stop!¨

We were back on to hard ground. We walked for another two minutes, thinking we were safe, but keeping watchful eyes on the mountain above us as the grinding of falling rocks continues.

We round another corner and the landslide must be enormous. We can hear the rocks falling, lots of them. It sounds a bit like thunder, but with a strange grinding sound mixed in.

¨Run!¨says our guide. We start running, more rocks falling now and our shoes are sinking into the soft ground. Jess and I let go hands, worried that we are going to twist one of our ankles on uneven, soft ground.

I breathlessly yell over and over, ¨Jess!¨, and Jess yells back in reply, ¨Im still here!¨

We slow down as we hear giant boulders thundering down ahead of us. ¨Stop! Run back!¨comes the call.

¨Run back?¨ I remember thinking, ¨to where?¨

We run back to the hard road in between the two landslides.

We wait there for a long two hours, with lights directed to the mountain above us. We do not think we are going to get out of this. Between the six Aussies, three of us throw around ideas like, ¨Call the Australian consulate, they should be able to get a helicopter.¨

One guide, Antonio, goes to get help. He goes straight down the steep hill, between the two landslides, and everytime we hear the thundering of rocks we hope to God that Antonio is ok and that he will come back for us.

When we see about five lights making their way back up the mountain through the darkness, a tiny little bit of relief overcomes some of the fear. That is until the sound of falling rocks begins again, and our lights go back to being directed at the mountain, everyones eyes watching for movement.

Ricardo, the guide staying with us, leads us down the first part of the mountain. The 60-degree incline is sometimes too steep to walk, so we have to slide. Other parts are too steep to even slide, so Ricardo jumps down first and points to a tree, or a piece of grass for us to hang on to and jump down.

We reach the rescuers coming up when we are about a quarter of the way down the mountain. Antonio takes one look at our faces and tells us he wouldnt leave us.

They are all wearing hard hats, and I burst in to tears, once again, when I see them. The fear is indescribable. We thought the mountain under our feet was going to collapse. Although the rain had eased, there was still the sound of falling rocks right beside us.

We abseiled down a seven-metre cliff, with a fraying piece of rope tied around our middle. The rope was not long enough to reach the bottom of the cliff, so we detached ourselves from the rope and were then passed between rescuers, who were holding on to trees on the side of the cliff, and they got us down the rest of the way.

From there, we walked for fifteen minutes until we reached the openness of the river valley.

We were helped again through torrents of mud and rocks from the multiple landslides until we reached the dirt road in to the small town of Santa Teresa. There, a police truck was waiting for us. With lights and sirens, we were taken to the medical centre and the main square. Luckily, no one suffered anything more than cuts and bruises, but the relief was washing through us as we huddled in a group in the square.

Sitting in the main square of Santa Teresa after the rescue mission, 1am

Applause broke out as our rescuers and guides arrived in the back of another truck. Antonio, Neyser, Ricardo, Chavo – words will never describe how incredibleand brave you are. We couldnt have made it out of there without you.

NOTE: The article written in El Commercio newspaper suggested that the Police rescued us. In fact, they met Chavo, one of the other guides, just as he came up the mountain to rescue us . They came with one cell phone that they were using as a torch. Chavo told them to F. Off. The only part they played was to take us in their car, with flashing lights, back to the town.

Siesta time. Coffee time for us.

We find a decent looking cafe, the coffee over here is terrible by the way, and ask for two takeaways. Then we make our way to the plaza.

Along with siesta time, every South American town or city that we´ve visited has a main plaza. The plaza is full of statues, trees, park benches and pigeons. And more often than not, lots of people.

We find a bench bathed in sunlight, sit down and take a sip of our coffee.

Not five minutes after we sit down, a young girl comes over selling pigeon food. She hangs around for a while, so with our basic spanish we find out she has seven siblings, is thirteen years old and her name is Anna-Marie.

Unfortunately for her, we hate pigeons. Instead, we give her some lollies, for which she smiles gratefully and leaves.

Another sip of coffee, and another woman approaches us. This one is somewhat older, carrying a baby, carefully wrapped in colourful material on her back. She is selling gum.

Unfortunately for this lady, I dont like gum either. Jess buys some, more out of pity than want, and the lady, after hanging around for a while watching us, eventually moves on to the next foreigners.

Next, a young woman also carrying a child on her back picks the area directly in front of us to adjust the unhappy baby, whilst staring at us drinking coffee and eating specialty chocolates.

Guiltily, we try to avoid her gaze, and together discuss the awkwardness of the situation…

Next, a little boy carrying a sleeve of bracelets and bagful of small pouches comes along. Nibbling an icecream, his red cheeks shining, he introduces himself and shows off what he is selling. After some contemplation about the over priced pouch, but feeling like we cant bargain with a 10-year-old, Jess purchases a colourful pouch for thirty bolivianos and the boy goes on his way with a big grin.

We dont even have time to take a sip of coffee before the next person comes along. Not in all our time in South America have we been approached by so many people in a plaza.

Our once steaming coffees sit beside us, willing us to take a sip but somehow we feel out of place.

Next comes Diego. He is also 10-years-old and speaks a little bit of english, he says, indicating the amount with his thumb and forefinger. He goes to school, and wants to polish our shoes for just three bolivianitos.

This would be fine, except we are wearing sandals. As we point this out, he motions to the scuff marks near the big toe. Nice try buddy!

Then, Diego holds up a piece of laminated paper.

The piece of paper tells us about the working children of sucre. As we read, Diego pulls out two small magazines.

If we purchase these magazines, says the paper, half the money goes to the child and his family, and the other half to creating the magazine. So we get two of the things and give him a bit of a tip. The adorable kid looks so pleased.

Another small boy joins Diego offering his shoe-shining services. We politely decline, feeling slightly overwhelmed now by all the attention. Then, an old man comes over, so now we are surrounded by two young boys and an older man.

He is selling beautifully crafted wall hangings. Behind him stands a woman, again with child on back, watching on.

Anna-Marie, with the pigeon food hovers nearby.

We skull our luke-warm coffees, continue to politely decline offers of shoeshining and handicrafts and try to ignore the attention.

As that idea fails, we pack up our gear, pick up our rubbish and decide its probably time to go back to the hostel.

Turn around, and all you can see is the flat plains of red desert sand, stretching for miles.

In the distance, snowcapped peaks make their mark against the afternoon sky.

We are atop a rocky knoll in the middle of the Bolivian desert. The Landrover sits below us, its tyre tracks showing the way we came.

Our driver, Juan, prepares lunch on the tray of the boot. Today, we are having chicken schnitzel, known as pollo milanesa over here. Yesterday, we ate llama steak with salad.

Australian music blares from Jess´ipod blares out across the plains, and our group of six enjoys the bright sunshine, and the cool breeze.

We trudge down the knoll when lunch is ready. Mayonaise is the condiment of choice, lathered over the milanesa, beans, carrots and pasta.

And, of course, Coca Cola to drink.

As we finish up lunch, the other girls keep chatting and I climb back up the rocky knoll to look out over the incredible surroundings.

I move a few rocks to sit down on a flat one, and I find a note.

Yep, a note. In the middle of the Bolivian desert, written on paper and hidden beneath two rocks.

It contains a letter, written in a different language, and an email address. On the front it reads in english, ¨If you find this, please leave it here and email me.¨

I havent emailed yet, but I will. What an interesting concept, to leave a piece of paper under rocks in the desert, and then for someone to actually find that piece of paper.

Anyway, back in the Landrover and we speed across the flat desert to our next destination.

Past more lagoons filled with flamingos, past more snow capped mountains and volcanoes and on to thermal hot springs, altitudes of more than 4200 metres, and red-wine fueled fun at hostels in the middle of the desert with no electricity.

Hence how I lost my passport, camera and wallet. But thats another story.

It´s not even the journey.

It´s not the 15kg bag you cart around. And it´s not the new food you try.

It may have something to do with the everchanging company, or the only constant throughout the trip – your travel buddy.

Mostly, it´s about the self-reflection.

Travel can be stressful, blissful, tiring, relaxing, annoying or just downright fun.

On all the bus trips, all the downtime spent in hostel courtyards, sitting in the park with that damn 15kg (that although you curse it actually contains your life for the next two months), the same one you use as a pillow when you arrive at a random bus terminal, in the middle of the desert, without booking accomodation first.

It´s these times when you see what travelling is really about.

Reflecting on all the other things you have seen, the people you have met along the way. It´s that moment that happens every so often when you find yourself thinking,

¨I feel like the luckiest person alive right now.¨

And knowing, quite possbily, that its true.

So as I sit here in the park with the only constant (shoutout to Jess!) and think back over the last two months, and often over the last 22 years, I cant help keeping the smile off my face.

I am the luckiest person in the world.
In this moment, having the trip of lifetime, with no responsibility (except to be on that bus we booked… that we just missed…), and no plans (the reason we ended up sleeping in the bus terminal).

Right at this moment, when I am definately not the richest person in the world.

Right at this moment, when I am definately not the most comfortable person in the world.

And right at this moment, when I have no idea where i´ll be tomorrow, or even this time next month…

I am the luckiest person alive.

Bottle of red wine in hand, we sit down under a tree to listen to two guys playing guitar. Not busking, just playing quietly to themselves.

We aren´t sitting far away from them, and after a few songs one of them turns to us.

¨If you want to keep listening, you´ll have to give us some of your wine,¨he says jokingly.

Happily we agree, we sit down next to them, we share wine, they share music.

We find out that they are from Mar Del Plata, which is south of Buenos Aires on the coast.

They also tell us about a festival next weekend, its up and coming bands from Mar Del Plata, the university town of La Plata, and a well-known band from Buenos Aires, the Biciletas.

Their band is also playing in the festival, which, as it turns out, they are the organisers of.

So our plans have changed. Instead of going from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama, and then into Bolivia, we are going back to Cordoba, Buenos Aires, La Plata and Mar Del Plata.  Then taking the train, 30 hours straight back up!

Our plans are constantly changing. The other night, we saw a poster for a Reggae Festival, four hours north of Salta in Maimara. It started at 5pm the next day, until 4am in the morning.

We asked our hostel owner to call the ticket people, and after a long discussion on the phone he said, well, we thought he said we could no longer get tickets.

After being in South America for two months you might think I know some spanish by now… But I dont. I know cerveza (beer), vino tinto (red wine) and some other important words…

Anyway, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren´t going. Then the next morning we decided to go visit the place where they sold the tickets, just in case!

It was a little skate shop and the lovely people working there (luckily for us) spoke very good english! They told us we could buy tickets at the door, and catch a private van up and back.

They organised the van for us, it was leaving in two hours, and we went back to the hostel to pack our stuff.

As it was after checkout, the hostel man was angry. But we offered to pay the night anyway, which, thankfully, he refused.

We took our bags to the hostel next door, booked in for the following night and left our valuables locked in the safe.

We met the van in the city (yes, we got into a white van with 15 strangers) and after bumping into the car in front of us (that did nothing for our confidence in the driver), we were on our way.

We drove through desert covered in cacti, and through mountains that were all sorts of colours.

We pulled up about an hour in to the drive at a corner store, where we bought two litres of beer that came in giant plastic cups, and two litres of red wine for later. All that cost us $8 Australian dollars!

So back on the bus and our next stop was a bathroom stop about two hours up the road. We hopped out of the van and looked around. A dusty truck stop, lined with palm trees… Hmm. As we were about to get back in to the van, a llama comes strutting out from a building.

Its shaggy coat was covered in dust, and standing behind it was a goat.

They both posed nicely for photos, and then we were back on our way.

We arrived at the festival at about 8pm. We organised a place to meet, and decided we should all stay together.

We bought tickets from a hole in the wall. Literally. One of the guys pointed and said thats where we get tickets, and we thought he was pointing to some dodgy looking people. Uh oh.

But no, the hole in the wall was legit, we paid our 80 pesos and in we went.

The festival was amazing, the atmosphere was great. There were tributes to Bob Marley all night, and apart from that everything was in spanish (funnily enough).

When the festival finished, we got choripan (chorizo in bread), and got back into the van at about 4.30 am.

Got back to Salta about 8am and headed slowly to our new hostel. The lovely cleaning lady let us in and fed us a breakfast of facturas (sweet crossaints) and cafe con leche (coffee with milk). We waited until 10am for our room to be ready and then we slept. All day.

A great South American experience. Flying by the seat of our pants seems to be working out for us. Fingers crossed the luck and lack of planning keeps working for us!

I look at the other girls, almost fed up with this trip that hasnt yet started.
There are people crowding around us, pushing past with cold drinks and we there is a smell of freshly cooked fish wafting around.

We walk up some stairs and peer around, hoping to find a nice spot in the shade but there is nothing left. Too many people!

Back downstairs we go and use our lack of language skills to pretend we´re a bit dim. We climb onto the small pillow-covered deck, there are more than twenty people laying on it already.

We squeeze in to the middle where there is a little bit of space left, and we sit cross-legged, giving the people around us apologetic we-dont-speak-portugese-and-there-really-is-nowhere-else-to-sit smiles.

For a few minutes, we sit in uncomfortable heat, our legs sticking to the plastic pillows covering the deck.

Music fills the air around us, and we peer back to see a man sitting down the back, guitar in hand. Instantly the trip got better.

As we relax into our small stolen spot, the engine roars to life and we are relieved from the heat by the cool ocean breeze.
The tourist boat pulls out of the dock and we are on our way to our first stop.

Everyone starts to move around and the boat feels less crowded. We claim our spot up the front, wind in our hair and sun on our bikini-clad, sunscreen-lathered bodies.

For the next few hours, we are mesmerised by the Brazilian jungle, the many islands and the brilliantly clear, warm water.

We snorkel, swim, dive and jump – becoming affectionately (or annoyingly) known as the Australian Diving Team.

We dock back at the beautiful port of Paraty and make our way through market stalls and bustling crowds of people, all the while stepping carefully to avoid tripping on the uneven cobblestones.

We arrive back at the hostel and book an extra two nights accomodation for Paraty.
Bye bye Australia, I think we´re all in love.

Especially Jess.

Santa Maria is a favela that is controlled by the police, one of the safer ones in the city. There is a school on the outskirts, a soccer field and a classroom inside, all subsided by the city to make the favelas a better place to live.

There is free satellite tv and free internet, and about 8000 people living squashed together in a city created by the residents.

The tall, three-storey houses sway in the wind, and looking under them there are only a few stilts still holding them up.

The rain water, which we got used to after the four hour tour, was running quickly down the hills, and made it easy to see how the somewhat common landslides occur.

Apart from the smells, a mix of sewerage, garbage, fresh rain and the occasional wiff of someone smoking pot, it really was a welcoming, colourful and friendly place to live.

Easy, really, to see why, when the government offered the people of the favelas a house outside of the city, they declined. It was clear that a strong, neighbourly community had already been formed. Living together as closely as one large family.

This film clip was filmed in the Santa Maria favela in Rio. There is now a statue and a colourful mosaic dedicated to Michael Jackon in the centre.