Trip to Morocco

Boonstra Family complete for the first time ever!

Morocco Trip
Because of all the amazing suprises in the past couple of weeks our trip to Morocco got a little on the background. But it actualy was a very interesting and most of all important time. Wich gives me more then enough motivation to bring it back into the spotlight. let me tell you about some of the things we did and the many things we experienced! Enjoy!

The maior reason why we were in Morocco was ofcourse the completely traditional wedding of my sister Corine! The wedding was held in the city Essouira that lays on the coast of Morocco, the city where Taoufik my new brother in law grew up lives and works. We stayed here for 4 days in total of wich the wedding took 2 days. The other days we were occupied by the camera crew who needed us to film their program "Top secret". They filmed the story of Denise and me, of my parents and of taoufik and Corine. Its not sure when it will be shown on dutch television but you will here about this later.

Denise en and my sisters were friends right away!

Ain Leuh
After Essouira we went to the house of my parents. They live in Ain Leuh a little mountain village in the north of Morocco. Here they work for a childrens village. They are the caretakers of 8 Morrocan children, my brothers and sisters! It was already two years ago since I had seen them and had been in Morocco. The last time i was there my brothers and sisters we're a lot smaller and i remember well that this was the still in the first month that i was dating with Denise! And now Denise is my wife and the mother of my child! Now my brothers and sisters suddenly had a new older sister! They had never met each other jet, had only seen each other on pictures... So again this was a very special moment in my family!

Harvesting grapes and take out the bad once.

Helping my parents
Because my parents took 8 Morrocan children into their house. They have a huge job to take care of them every day again. Becouse of this many times they don't have times and energy left to do little chores around the house. So Denise and I spend a part of our free time to help our parents with taking care of the children but especialy also to do these little chores that they dont get to manage but whom for us were actualy a nice, different and relaxing. So we for example harvested all the grapes from the vines that my parents have in their garden. They had so many delicious grapes while many of them were allready starting to rot. This was atracting many bees and wasps wich was dangerous for the kids. So Denise and I, while enjoying the lovely sunshine, nature and peace of the Morrocan inlands took all the grapes from the vines and sorted the bad once from the good. A nice job actualy!

Also we gave the car of my dad a huge cleaning job! This was extremely nescesary becouse with all the bussyness of the wedding and all the traveling through the country the car realy became a mess! Well, my father when he finaly has some free time absolutley needs this time to regain energy and doesn't seem to make it to clean the car. Normaly he would have asked his sons to clean the car for him but since the two oldest sons have grown up and the smaller sons are still to small there is nobody he can ask...
But now the oldest son was back for sometime and Denise en I thought that it would be nice to mess a little with water while enjoying the autumn sunshine. And we enjoyed it that we could be a helping hand!

New Photo Album!
But we also spend a lot of time relaxing, don't you worry about that! After almost one year working and living in a slum we badly needed some time to relax and regain our forces to keep a healthy state of mind. The slum and our work exausted us so much more than we had expected! So we had many days of sleeping many hours and just enjoying the peace. Also for two days we dhad a little tourist adventure in the big city's in the neighbourhood like Meknes and Fez. And ofcourse as usual we made many more pictures on our trip. Most of them you can find and see in the new photo album that I uploaded to the internet. This album you can find in the sidebar on the right side of my weblog under the head Photo Albums > Trip to Morocco. You could also use this link to go there right away!

Children watch the sunset and the tippical Morrocan vieuw.

Saying "Goodbye"
In short, we had a wonderful trip where we realy made the best of it! The most important was spending as much time as possible together with my family. Wich worked out very well! But its never enough... How hard it was to say goodbye once again. Especialy the last minute that we drove away from my parents house. I will always keep reminding the image of how i was looking out of the window in the back of the car where i could see my father and my brothers and sisters waving us goodbye untill the totaly last moment, until we couldn't see each other anymore! I had tears in my eyes and even now when i'm writing this i can't stop them from filling up eyes... We have no clew about when ever i will be able to go to Morocco again, it can take years... But well, God made it miraculously possible this time and again showed how faithful he always is. In the future he will also be faithful!

Back in Complexo do Alemao
We are back in the favella now, It was a huge shock in the beginning! In only a few hours we went from heavenly peace into the always anoying noice of the many different sound systems that we're booming loud all at the same time with many diferent songs all mixed through each other! Also the war between drugdealers and the police was realy heavy since the drugdealers has shot down a police helicopter and the police was searching for the criminals dad did it. After being back two weeks we could already use a new vacation!

The project is still continueing... But many things have changed drasticly. I am writing a newsletter to explain as good as possible the changes and the consequences of them. Soon i will send it to all that are listed. or interested!

Suprise!! (Part II) We're Pregnant!

on this picture already 10 weeks old

We're Pregnant!

Denise and I are honnered that we may bring you extremely good news! "We are expecting a baby! After being married for almost a year now we receive a special ribbon upon our relationship! Out of our love for each other came a real mirracle! An amazing creation that is still so small and fragile but in the nearby future we will be able to hold it in our arms! Our first child!

He or She?
The baby should be around 13 weeks already so it has to be possible to see if it is a boy or a girl. But since the first possible appointment in the hospital can only be next week. We still have to stay anxious for a little more... Denise would like to have a boy "becouse they are easyer" she sais. But critics already protested against this statement. To me a little girl would be very nice because those little brazilian girls are so extremely cute with their curly black hair! Ofcourse we will be extremely happy with what ever the litteral and figurative "outcome" will be!

D-day, Liberation day!
Ofcourse the proud dad whom is always trying to visualize the future already made a quick calculation of when the big day of party and happyness will be. Denise sees it more as D-Day! The day with the heaviest battle in a 9 moths war... And then you could also call it liberation day! "But what good is a liberation day if you're to tired to celebrate it!" How ever the day might go, for now it is planned somewhere in the middle of April 2010. Our first doctor had a real exact date. He said it would come on the 29th of April 2010 wich is Denise's own birthday! More reasons for celebrations! ("Well, Hooray..." Denise sais on a real sarcastic tone) But luckely this date has already been changed to the middle of april. But ofcourse it could still come late... But we'll see when its time!

Denise's Situation
For Denise ofcourse everything is very new and a little frightning! But fortunately she already passed the first three most dificult months and she isn't that naussious as she was in the beginning. Her belly is growing fast already and she sais that once in a while she experiences a feeling she never felt before inside of her. Is that the baby moving around? A lot of times she is realy tired and sleeps a lot extra. But luckely she isn't someone who feels sorry for herself! Ze tries to keep herself strong. And she keeps on saying that she always dreamd to get married and have a family. When she was little she always liked to play that she was pregnant putting a pillow underneath her shirt And now she realy is pregnant! She finds it a very special time and is already staring to love her baby a lot! We many times have conversations with the belly! Where our child can already here us!


Gymnastics
We already decided the child will be a pro in Gymnastics! And directly after the birth we will start training hard! If we force it enough it could still participate in the Olympic Games here in Rio de Janeiro in 2016! We ofcourse dont want to put to much pressure and expectations on him/her so a silver meddle would already be enough to please us! But if he/she realy wants to make us proud! No, ofcourse this is just making silly jokes about it! All we want is our baby to become happy like her father and mother are!

Secret
Becouse of the TV program and our free trip to Morocco we had to keep our pregnancy hidden for a while! It was supposed to happen like this... We would bring the good news to my parents through a video message. The camera crew would then record the response of my parents to the news. And it had to be the natural response so nobody could know about it jet that way it would be a total suprise! Therefor also none of you herd about it jet! In Brazil it was already known for some weeks! I am suprised that it didn't leak out to Europe since its such a small world with so many people who could accidently tell something they weren't supposed to! Now that our trip is over we are aloud to finaly shout the good news from the roof tops! Or use the more modern version: Upload the good news onto the internet! So therefor...
WE ARE PREGNANT!!! "SUPRISE!!!"

Suprise!! (Part1)

We're in Morocco!

Its a realy long story to explain everything but it is realy true! This message is writen in "Ain Leuh" a little mountain village in the north of Morocco. Denise are here becouse my parents have their house here and we're visiting them and my morrocan brothers and sisters.

Wedding of my sister.

The reason why we are in Morocco is the wedding of my younger sister Corine with the man of her dreams "Taoufik" (you can see them on the picture above) They got married in the little city Essouira on the coast of Morocco. The city where Taoufik grew up and lives and works together with his family. The wedding was totaly in traditional Morrocan style with Arabic music en everybody especialy the woman and bride and groom were dressed in traditional Morrocan colthes. It was a very beautiful and happy wedding where everybody realy celebrated abundently and we even danced! all together on the Morrocan rithems. It was realy a very special wedding and ofcourse the most important thing is that my sister was very beautiful in her 5 diferent weddingdresses and that she and my new brother in law were extremely happy and had the day of their lives! Denise and I realy shouldn't have missed out on this, we had to be there!

First time the whole family complete!
Many of you must know by now that my family is a bit complicated. First of all my parents don't live in the Netherlands but in Morocco. Then as the seccond reason: My parents have 13 children of whom only 4 are biological, one is a foster child and after that they adopted 8 Morrocan children. Knowing these facts you might understand that it in my family it is not that easy that we would all eat together every evening around the same table. Its even that complicated that until now we never managed it to get all the children and parents in the same place at the same time. Now on the wedding this would happen for the first time becouse everybody would come to Morroco. Everybody would be there! Everybody except for Wouter and Denise becouse they are way down in Brazil and they realy dont have the possibility to fly all the way to the other side of the ocean. But we had to be there! Otherwise it might happen that our family would never ever would be totaly complete!

But how did we manage to get to Morocco then?
Once in a conversation on Skype with my great friend Ben whom I already named a few times on this weblog. I mentioned that i would realy love to and actualy realy had to go to the wedding of my Sister in Morocco. But i already didn't have much faith that this would ever be possible! It was just way to dificult... As a reaction to this conversation Ben wrote an email to a Dutch TV program named "Top Secret" Asking them if they couldn't help me to go to my sisters wedding? With the result that the program thought it might be a realy interesting story and they wanted to film it! But then it all had to stay Top Secret that we would be going to Morocco. Therefor nobody of you could know or knew about out trip jet and it is a huge surprise to you all.

But for you guys the suprise wasn't even that big as it was for my parents and Sister! They realy believed that it absolutely impossible for Denise and me to go to the wedding and ofcourse they thought that we were in Brazil. But then suddenly I showed up right in front of them with a camera crew filming this moment of family reunion. You should have seen their faces! Which you will still be able to see since it was all filmed and in a few months it will be shown on dutch television. I will keep you all updated about when this will be and on wich channel. Also i will upload many pictures to this weblog so you can all live the story!

In two days we fly back to Rio de Janeiro. Where we expect to arrive on the 15th in the morning. Quickly after that i will start writing and transalating all storys that we lived in the last two weeks wich are many and their are still more suprsises that you dont want to mis! So thay tuned!

Moving towards our new building!!!

Our own building!
Finaly it is reality! We have our own building! Well it became a
different building then the one that we wanted to buy. But well it
turned out that a furniture store also was interested in the building
we we're using until now. And well they could offer a lot more
money then we could wich automaticly results in that we had to go
and find us a new building...

Luckely we found another person that wanted to sell his house
for almost the same amount of money we could afford. The building
is a bit small and its location also isn't as useful as the building we
had to leave... But well at least now it realy is our building! With the
big improvement that we never have to pay rent anymore! Wich
means that that part of our income we can now use realy improve
our building and make it a realy beautiful nice place for the children
and teenagers to study and enjoy themselves.

Improvements
Ofcourse many things still need to be improved. To be honoust i
would have liked it to close the project for a while so we could realy
improve the building once and for all. Doing all nescesary at once.
But this realy isn't possible... The childrens perfomence gets a lot
worse if they don't go to Project Patio after missing one week they
have to start all over! And well the brazilian school season is almost
to its end, wich means that the children will be tested to see if they
can pass on to the next year? If Patio stays open they have a fair
chance to make it but if we would close down. It will be a lot more
dificult for them. Therefor fixing up our building needs to be done
during the times the project isn't open..!
Moving
But first of all we had to move all our stuff from our old building to
the new one. Wich was a huge job! But luckely we have many hands
and together we moved everything to the the new Project Patio...
Soon I will make some fotos of our new building and put it online
here on this weblog.
Can you guys help us as well?
Ofcourse we could realy use a hand extra to improve our building.
With only a small amount of dollars we can do many things here...
Buy construction material, Buy paint to make it all look nice. Buy
shelves we can put on the walls or schoolboards so that we can
teach the children better, you name it! On the sidebar you can find
our account information. Together we can give the children,
teenagers and their parents a realy nice community center. Where
they can learn, play as much as they want or just simply relax with
their friends. Thank you very much for your help!

Botanical Gardens

This event was already a week ago but wouldn't want you to miss
knowing all the things that happened... Becouse once again we had
a realy succesful activity at Project Patio.

As you might have noticed already, we find it of extreme importance
to take the children of our project on trips to the huge adventurous
world outside of the slums. We want to give them the oportunity to
have a life that they could never have before. But think about this...
If the kids never got the chance to live these things, then what about
their parents? I guess they had a childhood even more dificult and
well now they are parents and grandparents already and no longer
have the time to do something they realy like, something relaxing.
The last couple of months we heard a lot of parents saying: "Why
dont we ever get to go on a trip to the outside world?"

So, we looked if we had the possibility to grant that wish. And it went well, we got the transport in a touring bus for free again. so we could go anywhere they wanted to go. They were surprised that they realy got to go and actualy hadn't figured out jet where they wanted to go. First they wanted to go to the beach. But well critics said that it's still to cold (28 Celsuis is cold in Brazil). Finaly they decided that we should go to the south side of Rio de Janeiro. To the Botanical Gardens to be precisely!

Only going to the south side of the city is already a huge adventure
for people from the slums. Southern Rio is where the rich people live
and tourists go. wich makes everything a lot nicer and especialy
cleaner if you compare it to the always extremely dirty North.
They even had sweeping trucks that cleaned the roads!
In all time i'm living in Rio de Janeiro this was the first time i saw
a sweeping truck. Well, where the rich and tourist are, ofcourse is
where the government wants to invest, you have to keep them
happy! The poor are mizerable already so let them clean their own
mess... (Not my way of thinking ofcourse)

We had a very nice day, even though not many of the parents
showed up. What realy was a pitty becouse many of them had
said they wanted and even had paid to go... And they have no clew
of what they missed out on. We even got the extra surprise that it
turned out to be the open house of the Botanical Garden and
therefor the entrance was for free! How lucky we we're (or should
i say blessed!) So finaly the whole event cost us nothing more then
buying drinks for everybody. The mothers had baked very good
pies and had brought them for us to eat! Hmmmm Delicious!

The woman realy got to have a nice and relaxing day where they
could discover a whole new world! Finaly something different then
the stinking dirty slums... They arived back home safely and
thankful. To bad their daily choars were already waiting for them
again and soon they were back in nomal live... But we will soon
organise another event so they can have their escape once more!

Not work related...

AUGUST
For me, the months August is one of the best months of the year!
When i was still living in the Netherlands it was always the month
that you came back from you're vacation and still had some time
free of your work or studies before everything started all over
again. Also i must mention that my Birthday is in the month of
August and well, i may not be someone that celebrates his birthday
abundently. But i love the extra attention! Thanks everybody for
the beautiful cards, everybody that congratulated me and all of the
best wishes for this coming year of life. Thanks everybody for the
love and friendship that i got to recieve! For me that was the real
message of all atention. I love you guys too!

MY PRESSENT
In all the time that i am living in Rio de Janeiro I always wished
that one day i would be able to go to a soccer match in the
worlds biggest soccer staduim "Maracana" not far from where i live.
I until now never got the possibilety to go there becouse it's kind
of expensive. But Denise thought that if she would give me tickets
for a game as my birthday pressent it would be worth the money.
So we started August extremely good! By going to the soccer match
Flamengo-Fluminense in Maracana.

THE GAME
We weren't realy lucky becouse it turned out that there weren't that many supporters as usualy, while Maracana is at it's best when it totaly sold out and packed. Also the teams hadden't put their best players like "Adriano" (ex inter milan) in the field and although there were many great chances, the game ended without goals 0-0. But i had a wonderful night that i will remember for all of my life! I am happy with my pressent! Denise found the game a lot less interesting then me... She kept on saying that she didn't like it that there wasn't any commentary during the game like they have on television. "Now, how am i supposed to know, who the player is that is having the ball. They all look the same? I love it when she makes me smile!

A CHIQUE RESTAURANT
On the 25th of Augustus the day before my birthday we officially
celebrated it by going togehter to a realy nice restaurant. Wow!
They had sooo much food so many different things that you could
choose from. They had about 25 meters of tables covered with
diffrent kind of excelent dishes and then i haven't even mentioned
all the extra spaces where they had salades, deserts and they even
had an open kitchen where you could name what ever you liked the
way you like it and they would instantly prepare it for you and all
this food for only paying an entrence fee! Man, I didn't know what
i was going to choose and hadn't got a clew where i should start...
We ate and ate and enjoyed a lot of quality time together until we
couldn't eat thing anymore. And the Bill wasn't even that high the
secret was hidden in the extremely expensive drinks and deserts
wich we luckely hardly used.

THANK YOU, SPONSORS!
This months I want to show special apreciation to our sponsors...
We were honnered to recieve the largest total amount of
sponsoring we ever recieved in a month. Wich has helped us so
much! To be honoust in the beginning of the month we were in
debt on my dutch bank account and we had dificulty in believing
that this would get better soon. But thanks to God and you guys
we are safely back on a healthy number and finaly we can live a
little more confortable in stead of always needing to think about
our tight budget. Wich is a great improvement for our
relationship since the small irritations and frustration have gotten
a lot less and we enjoy it much more We are happier at the
moment!

PEACE IN COMPLEXO DO ALEMAO
Finaly i would like to ask for extra attention on our prayer points. Especialy the one that sais - Peace in Complexo do Alemao. For the last 5 months we hardly had any trouble in the neighbourhood it was actualy realy peaceful. Well for as far as possible, Ofcourse every day there were hundreds of young guys walking around with heavy guns in my street. But at least they weren't shooting with the guns. But the last couple of days it has been realy tense. Every night we are woken by heavy shootings close to our house. When this happens we have to get out of bed to stay on the floor of our office. This is safest place in our house since there the walls are the thickest wich should keep the bullets from entering our house. We would realy like it a lot when the peace would come back... Can you please help us pray? Thanks!

The person in the picture is an actor in a scene of the film "Tropa de Elite" For my
own safety i can not make or publish pictures of real drugdealers in my street.
The picture above is not a real image but it gives a good example of the reality.

Project Patio goes to the Zoo

Quinta de Boa Vista
We, Project Patio and the kids had a wonderfull day far away from
the slums again! In the middle of Rio de Janeiro you can find a
large public park that lays around the old palace of Don Pedro II the
king of Portugal when Brazil was still a colony. The park is a place
with two faces, One one side it escpecialy it is a great place for
family entertainment especialy in the weekends its crowded by
families having picknicks all over the place. But then in the
evenings and on weekdays it is a hangout for druggangs and a
popular pick up place for prostitutes .

Most of the children have allready been to the park in their life
(during the weekend i hope) since it is not that far away from
Complexo do Alemao our slum. But on all the visits the kids
allready made none of their parents had taken them to the most
popular atraction op the park: The Zoo! Not that the parents are
against the zoo or animals in cages, its just that you need to pay
an entrence fee, wich is cheap, but still to expensive for the
large familys of our project.

Patio goes to the Zoo
Project Patio also wanted to have a nice activity with the kids
again since only studying every week isn't that much fun.
Children need to be able to play a lot and be entertained. So we
wanted to take the kids to the park of Don Pedro II "Quinta de
Boa Vista" and ofcourse we wanted to take the children to the
Zoo. But well since we haven't got much money we weren't sure
if we could realise this. Luckely we recieved the transport by bus
for free again but we stil had to pay the entrence fees. Wich
becomes a large number realy soon when you take 23 children and
7 leaders. I am the person responsible for the finances of Project
Patio so i finaly had to decide if we would go or not. Do i have
to dissapoint the children once again? Again they went to the
park and again didn't make it to go to the zoo. You know what...
It's just money we will get more later! God is faithful and he
loves his children!
Once again "the best day of their lives"
And so once again we were able to give the kids the best day of
their lives. What fun they had with the beautiful birds and those
funny pinguïns. They we're puching each other a little to all be able
to see the animals at the same time and it was hard to keep the
group together becouse they all went in every possible direction,
one wanted to see the elefant an other the lions and even an other
wanted to go to the girafs (whom look like Wouter, they say) But
most of the children wanted to see the sand throwing monkey again.

Yeah, that certanly was the funniest monkey of the whole zoo.
When the kids would jell at the animal it would run to a corner of
its cage to grab a hand full of sand, after that it would run towards
the watching people and throw sand towards them. Ofcourse the
kids had allready run away screaming when the monkey went to
get more sand so when it threw the sand it would hit people that
weren't paying attention. What a nice game, how much they
laughed! Again, again and once more.

I quickly understood that the monkey wasn't doing this becouse it
liked to play with the kids but bcouse it was iritated about all the
noise they made. So since i am such a friend of animals i tried to
help the monkey by ending the game and taking the kids away
from its cage. But what did i receive as a thanks? A hand full of
sand thrown all over me! Freaking animal! Ofcourse at this
moment the kids hardly coun't stop laughing anymore!

Playing in the park
Finaly we gave the children some time more to play in the park. Run around free, climb trees, perfoming dances or pretend to be one of the animals from the zoo. Totaly exausted the children arived back at home. Their parents must have been thankful! Another amazing day at Project Patio had passed!

If you would like to see more fotos of our trip to the zoo. Then look on the right side of my weblog in my fotoalbum for the album called "The Zoo". You could also use this direct link

Support Project Patio
If you would like to help us make more events like this one possible? Then please consider sponsoring Project Patio mothly or once in a while. With extra support we can give the children a good education and many more cultural activities. We can garantee these children of the slums the possibility to realy enjoy their childhood. Thank you very much!