Bubbles

Living life in bubbles. We all live in our bubbles, to an extent. I've been a little outside mine on this trip, but its an adventure, and my choice.

Most of us create some kind of space around us where the edges are very defined and familiar. We make patterns in home and work and relationships which are cyclicle - routines we like, that mostly we have chosen and developed. Even when a thing occurs that upsets the apple cart, enough stability exists elsewhere in the bubble to help us recover. Although we give them a bad name, bubbles can be helpful.

La Casa Del Buen Trato is a brilliant, necessary bubble. I visited on Friday and Saturday (that horrible night bus over the Andes with vomiting children and a giant snoring man) to make some photographs for them, and here my photography work really began.

La Casa del Buen Trato - The Home of Good Treatment - sits peacefully in the mountains, away over the peaks of the Andes north east of Lima. A huge contrast from the dusty, hectic streets of town, it really is a place of peace and rest, and safety. This is a shelter where women come to flee domestic violence, seeking solace with their kids. There are teenage mums who fell pregnant through rape and incest who need support raising their kids and also space to be kids. And there are a number of kids of all ages who have been abused and need protection. It is the only shelter of its kind in Peru.

There are a few female staff whom the children call 'mamita' - an affectionate term for mother. They are strong women, no joke. There is a great tenderness between the women and girls, comfort in identifying with each other, sometimes in hushed conversation but often silently and with no need for explanation.

The staff say that despite the robbing of life that has happened to these people, when they see the children laugh and play, that is the glint of life they are fighting for and it gives them strength to carry on their work.

This is a safe, necessary bubble.

I saw a couple of times a mamita sitting quietly with a girl in the garden, struck with the openness and gentleness of the place that these talks are able to happen so freely. No one interrupts, no one points, everyone understands. Everyone needs this.

At one point, I stood in the fierce altitude sun listening to the eerie noise the warm wind made rushing through pine trees high up there. All is being blown clean, a powerful force at work up there in a spectacular location with rich blue skys and pumped up white clouds.

This is a righteous bubble - the home of good treat - sitting on a high hillside, quietly and privately revolutionary. And it shines too, as all good bubbles do.


{Today's Soundtrack: Scott Matthews - Myself Again}