Loaves and Fishes

On Monday we celebrated International Women's Day with a cultural outing into the city. We visited various attractions and points of interest with the women. Some of the highlights were the botanical gardens, the various plazas, and an old slaughterhouse converted into a cultural center. Though many of them had visited these places before at each site there was at least one woman in the group that had never been there before. We wrapped up the day at the botanical gardens. I gave a little presentation on famous/influential women throughout history with an emphasis on the fact that these women accomplished great things but they were no different than any of us. That is what I tried to do anyway. After a day of running around the city there were a lot of blank stares. A new staff woman finished us off with a little workshop on self-esteem. All in all it was a pretty great day of relaxing and enjoying each other company while taking in what Cochabamba has to offer.
My favorite part of the day was lunchtime. Some scholars say that Jesus' miracle of feeding the multitudes was not that he was able to make five pieces of bread and two fish fill thousands of people. Rather, it was that everyone pooled what little they had brought for themselves and it was in the sharing that everyone was fed. While we had neither bread nor fish, when the time for lunch rolled around someone laid out a blanket on the concrete and opened their plate of food they had brought to eat. All the other women followed suit and there was quite a smorgasbord laid before us. There was more than enough for everyone even though some hadn't brought anything.
For those who are wondering the women that I presented, in chronological order, were:
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Jane Addams, Marie Curie, Mother Theresa, Rosa Parks, Indira Ghandi, Eva Peron, Wangari Maathai, Aung San Suu Kyi, and Rigoberta Menchu