Volunteering

I said I'd do it, and I did it: as of 4am, Monday morning, the Hampy web site is complete! After losing all of today to our visit of the Moray ruins and of the Salinas, I knew that it would take nothing less than an all-night coding marathon to get the site finished, launched, and 100% wrapped up, in time for leaving Cusco tomorrow. But it's done. And now I'm free. And the site looks good. And I'm feeling very happy.

After yet another day spent madly trying to finish the Hampy web site, this evening I went once again to the village of Chocco, to help celebrate Terese's despedida (lit: "farewell party"). Terese has been teaching English in Chocco (with Hampy) for the past two months or so (as well as partying and drinking like crazy every single night in Cusco, like a good Irish girl should); but now, she's finally finishing up and going back home. She will be sorely missed.

Since I last reported on the status of the new Hampy web site, there has been a lot of progress. I've been working on the site pretty much every day over the past week (apart from my three days of rafting), and the site is basically functioning, set up, and ready to go. However, more work is needed (particularly in the area of custom templating) before it's 100% good to launch. So it looks like I'll be hanging around for at least a few days after my jungle trip next week, to finish off the loose ends for the site.

Over the past three days, I've spent a lot of time working on the new English content for the Amigos web site. I've gotten a lot written, but there's still a fair bit more to do. However, I'm afraid that I won't be doing the rest. Due to an unexpected clash of personalities in the office, my time spent volunteering for Amigos has come to an end. I'm happy with what I've accomplished here, but I can do no more.

Stephan's a law graduate from Quebec, Canada, who's come down to Cusco to do some voluntary legal work with Hampy for a few months. As well as being a friendly guy, he's also an interesting conversationalist, and a keen and adventurous hiker. He has, on occasion, been known to drink more than he can handle, and to suffer the consequences. But generally speaking, he's pretty reliable and responsible.

It seems that working on one web site (during my "vacation" — which seems to be on hold for now in Cusco) simply isn't enough: as well as Hampy, I'm now also helping with the Amigos web site! That's right: Jesus has persuaded me to lend a hand with the effort to deliver Amigos a shiny new site. However, in the case of Amigos, Luis is taking care of all the design and development side of things (using Rails); so I'm just assisting with writing, improving and correcting the English-language content for the various pages.

Ashley is a Canadian girl with a marketing background, who's here in Cusco for about 2 months, helping Hampy with various aspects of their publicity. I first met Ashley about 2 weeks ago, on the Chocco and Hampy tour, and from now on I'm going to be working pretty closely with her on the new Hampy web site. She has a dry but witty sense of humour, and she can sure as hell let her hair down and party, when the occasion calls for it.

On Monday night, I started working on a completely new, completely better web web site for Hampy, a volunteer organisation that I kind of ran into here in Cusco. Between Monday and today, I've spent about 5 hours each night working on the site, over at Jorge's house (AKA "Hampy HQ), where I have access to his computer and Internet. And already, the new site is looking pretty good. Design basically done, rough navigation structure done, and a bit of the interactivity done.

It was delayed for the past week, due to Jorge and various other people going on a hike to Choquequirao, but now the work on the new Hampy web site has finally begun. Tonight, I completed the first humble steps, on the way to getting Hampy a new, stylish, Drupal-powered (naturally) web site. Hopefully the new site will be ready to go in the next week or two.

Jorge is the director of Hampy, an organisation (that I got introduced to today) that helps disadvantaged kids in the village of Chocco, near Cusco. Jorge's been working in Lima for the past few years, with the US government's Peace Corps; but now he's back with Hampy. He's a friendly and very passionate guy, and I'm glad that I'll be able to help him out a bit, over the next few weeks.