We are a group of friends, colleague students or Mattie’s..  who happen to study at the University of Applied sciences in Wageningen, The Netherlands.

The two studies, Regional Development and Innovation and Agri-system management which already has the new name of Fair Trade Management. Over the past 2 1/2 years we have prepared us to go abroad to get a good impression how development issues are tackled in the Netherlands and in development countries.

At this moment half of use is doing a placement and half is doing a minor, we spread out all over the world, From Hoorn to Utrecht and from Europe to USA to Africa and Asia… Do you want to read some funny stories from Bali .. visit Margot.. If you want to gain some experience on how life is in the outback of Nepal visit Malou..

This blog will give you an impression of all our adventures we will have during our internships, minors and thesis across the globe.

So enjoy our website

Ecuador and Peru

An internship is always a good moment to expand your knowledge and experience how things get done (or not) in the field which should prepare you as a student to be ready to become a professional once your finished.

Now that almost my work here in San Luis de pambil is done, and my girlfriend (Sarah) has crossed the ocean to study spanish and see South-America, it is time to start our travelling.

The idea is to start in San Luis de Pambil and travel through the coast of Ecuador down towards Peru to Lima and after that to the far southern point to end in the Inca capital, Cuzco to see the world famous Machu Pichu.

We try to regularly update our stories on my page together with photos.

Enjoy y saludos.

Vincent in San Luis enjoying the sun-set beside the river.

Man lots has happened the past few weeks in the tiny village of San Luis.

People fighting, cursing words all over the place and what not more. Probably half of what I just wrote truelly happened but still the village has too many conflicts that can bare this tiny place and no solutions in sight.

The same goes for my eco-community based tourism project. Many meetings with project proposals have been organised and often noone showed up for them.

To read more about my stories see my page for more juicy san luis gossiping.

Ecua volley like you don´t know it.

Ecuadorians like their sports. Not football like I thought they would all play, no it´s ecua volley.

This interesting spin-off from the European volleyball is a fast game that is played with two teams of three players each. The rules are, well, things that happen here would never be allowed in Europe. People holding the ball for like a second or two and it´s all allowed, it makes it accessible and fun for eveyone to play.

You wouldn´t imagine Ecuador being crazy about their volley. Don´t get me wrong, when the Ecuadorian football equipo is playing the whole country turns upside down. Preview of matches seriously start 2 weeks in advance and on the day itself they start broadcasting from 8:30 am how the team is eating, how to take a shit, how they go in the bus, how they drink their beverage in the bus, how they get out the bus etc…. Sometimes it gets a bit crazy.

Being here in San Luis de Pambil make me realise as well how fortunate we are in The Netherlands. The work that CRACYP is doing feels rewarding although at times it´s hard not to be in a professional atmosphere as CRACYP is just a 1 person NGO.

Click here for more sad stories about how difficult it is to organise community members.
Next post: My beautiful short weekend trip to crater Lake quilotoa including a five hour hike through the mountains.

Cascada (waterfall) we hiked up to for 2 hours.

Ecuador keeps on suprising me each day. This country has so much to offer and everywhere you go you will come across something that you haven’t experienced in any other town before.

Such a moment I had when I went to eat the famous ‘Cuy‘ (guinea pig). You are in Ecuador so you got to integrate, following the Dutch governance, I had to, I was forced by the Ecuadorian mind-blowing experiences that keep on pushing me to explore the unknown. This was def. the next step. I had to think twice to really sign up for the cuy-feast. For at least an hour I couldn’t get rid of these images of cute little guinea pigs dancing in front of my eyes.

The bosque Nublado is a good alternative to those who want to visit a selva (jungle) but cannot spend a whole week on such a trip. The bosque nublados are more convenient to hike through and climate-wise are perfect for long hikes as you don’t come out like you’ve just visited a finnish steam sauna. My language school decided to organise a 6 hour (yeah you read it very well my friend!) drive to Toisan for 2 days, in the north of Ecuador, to visit the cloud forests. Damn the six hours busride and waking up at 5am, it was damn worth it.

For more juicy details on me eating Cuy, forests and Guayasamin click!

Vincent on the pichincha mountain at 4300 meters altitude

So after taking care of all the stories of my classmates the past seven/eight months it was my turn to join the crazy train ride into the deep, that’s called: placement. From now on I will explore the beauty of Ecuador and its neighboring countries and share my stories with everyone.

I arranged my placement with an Ecuadorian Non-governmental-Organisation called CRACYP which is an English abbreviation for: Rural development and reforestation network. This small Ecuadorian organization works mainly with small-scale farmers and communities and tries to support them with technical assistance and helps to form associations.

CRACYP works with several projects that all vary from Cacao, Alcohol from sugar-cane, Coffee, Bananas, Cheese, and as well a community based Eco tourism projects which I will come back to that in my next story.

The first two weeks I followed an intensive spanish course to be able to communicate with my colleagues and with the community members.  Learning spanish sounds like fun but to listen and talk 6 hours a day to a teacher is quite exhausting.

Read my whole story for more inside Quito information.

yuusuf pumping the most essential thing in the human life.water

It has been a while since this site was updated and not for a reason.The summer was long and people finally started to become productive.

The summer was used by most explorers to boost up their productivity after all those travel weeks which definetely cut in their work-on-uni-schedules.  The explorers took the time off to travel and fly back home to Wageningen and work on their placement reports. Most explorers are as I type this busy with the annual Hutje op de hei week (Cabin on the pasture week)  aka Development week. actually this week is used by the explorers to share stories, drink all night long and celebrate the submitting  of the report.

Meanwhile most of the explorers have made it back home safe and sound. One of them is still working his ass off in Uganda. Yuusuf departed for Uganda a few weeks later therefore his late arrival the 29th of August.

Just before he is heading home he just got one final story that he wishes to share with everyone, including some pumping pictures.

Tall, blond and scary?

How can it be that such a friendly, sympathetic, over enthusiastic, with thoughts that are sometimes hard to get, Dutch girl be so scary?

I guess people in Guatamala aren’t used to the blond looking tree tall women that grow in these flatlands. Marlinde visited many rural communities to confince the women and kids in these areas that people tall, blond, overly excited people from The Netherlands are not that scary at all.

Marlinde wouldn’t be Marlinde if she had her own ways in going about, especially when it comes to integration. Activities such as knitting, making tortillas and talking Q’eqchi (or at least making an attempt to) are part of her daily routine.

Want to know if Marlinde got accepted by the local communities, see her page for more tall, blond and scary stories and pictures.

saludos

Rwanda Rainforest

As you might know, Rwanda is famous for its Mountain gorrillas. Niels our biggest monkey fan, and after Rwanda known as the son of Dian Fossy, of the class had the difficult decision if he would pay an enormous amount of money to see the few gorillas left or that he would use the money to find a room which has slightly more quality standards than his last room (at the Nude,Wageningen).

Determined as he is, Niels decided to use his smooth operator skills to talk his way into the park with a local resident permit. Rwandese people are not stupid and clearly saw from miles away that a umuzingu was approaching. At every step he took closer to the gates of the park, the price probably went up with 10%.

Want to read more about how Tina Turner became an important part of Niels’ life and if he managed to get in the park read his site for the latest Rwandese info.

Herman when it was still 'spring/summer'

Believe it or not, now that the first actual signs of the summer here in Wageningen are finally entering our petit country, some explorers do not enjoy the warm temperatures we do.

One of them, and I think by now the only one, is Herman.  He, the survival man he is did not wanted to enjoy warm jungle temperatures but ended up in the South of Argentina where the winter kicked in with temperatures below zero degrees.

This means finding your way to stay warm, well as a true Dutchman from Haarlem he knows damn well how to stay warm in those cold temperatures. This is when you still have a heater, which we are used to here in NL. But when you’re herman and staying in a room for a whole week without any gas, working at your placement becomes a whole different story. Surviving my friends.

Read Herman’s easy guide for dummies: How to stay warm during the Patagonian winter.

Including some pictures I borrowed (stole, Herman ) from his facebook page. I’m sure people who do not have access to this network site will gratefully thank me for this.

adios