BINGO!!!!!!

One of the first real friends that I made here in Bahia was Mario, a friend who taught me the importance of BINGO to your average Ecuadorian community. He threw the term, “bingera” out in conversation and in my usual response to ecua-vocabulary, wrinkled up my face not understanding the phrase, “la gente de Bahia son muy bingera” (the people of Bahia are very bingera). What could bingera possible mean!? That they LOVE BINGO! Of course they do!!! What could be more fun than filling BINGO cards with pieces of dried corn to win bottles of oil, bags of rice, glasses, produce, you name it, if its cheap then it is a viable prize!!!! I swear there is a BINGO event in the neighborhoods of Leonidas Plaza everyday of the week and ALL day Saturday and Sunday. You rent 2 tablas (cards) for $1 and play until all the prizes are gone. (how fun!!!!!!!) Most of the local BINGO events here are purely just something to do, but there are other events, BINGO Millionario and BINGO Solidario, are the two I have become familiar with, in order to raise funds. The BINGO Millionario involves more elaborate prizes, think blenders, toasters, dish sets, tables, etc, more complex BINGO moves (the L, T, X, blackouts, etc) and you buy your tabla per round; you pay more to win more, and the sponsor of the event makes more money in turn. The BINGO Solidario is played like the neighborhood games, but all the money goes to supporting a person in need, a group, a project, an event, etc. and the prizes are generally donated.
So how did I get to be such an expert in the world of Ecuadorian BINGO? Well I just can't get away from it! It's around every corner, I have numerous friends who “call” BINGO, a few more who rent out the game sets to groups, and well I helped plan and carry out a BINGO Solidario in November. The RBC project is broke, to put it simply. Of the four employees, two teachers and two madres comunitarias, the first are paid my a Spanish Foundation for disability, the later “paid” by INFA, and when I say “paid” by INFA I mean they are supposed to be paid, but INFA is about 4 months late in paying them...Transport to and from work is paid out of pocket, the foundation covers copies and office type supplies needed, four times a year there is an application to receive school/recreation supplies for the school and activities from INFA, but other than that, money is just not available. So in order to take the kids on small field trips and do fun things with them we needed to raise some funds. First we tried organizing some moms to sell snacks to the kids leaving their catechism classes, but the time they put in preparing and selling, was more than the money we recovered. We needed a way to get some real money! BINGO! And so we did...
Really, a BINGO is pretty easy to organize; you pick a date, rent (or in our case, borrow) the game set, print the tickets and sell them, buy/collect prizes, get a locale, and hold the event. It took all of a couple days to organize everything and we were set. Ours was a pretty small event, but also it was our first ever fundraiser and community-type event as RBC. Everyone and their mother (literally, the mothers sold the majority of the tickets...) sold about 125 tickets at a $1 a piece. Part of the trick of the BINGO Solidario is that you sell the tickets ahead of time as a fundraiser for the event, and people buy the tickets more to support the group than to come the event and play. For example, I sold a bunch of tickets here in Bahia to the “pelacones” (the term for the rich people of Ecuador) knowing that they would donate the dollar or two to the cause, but never make the trip out to the campo to actually play. We also organized all the moms of the kids to make treats to sell to the attendees and got a few other snacks and sodas donated. We had popsicles at 10 cents a piece, popcorn for 25 cents a bag, soda for 10 cents a cup, delitos (a strip of cheese or meat wrapped in dough and fried, delicious!) 3 for 25 cents, and empanadas 2 for 25 cents. During the event I was in charge of selling the snacks and I had too much fun with the microphone advertising the snacks, heckling the people to buy, sending out our youth volunteers to deliver the treats, and collecting the money! :D


(L:Natalia calling the BINGO round and Isidra, Special Needs Teacher, supervising; R: Raquel, RBC Madre Comunitaria, playing a round)

As far as the game actually went, each attendee received two tablas for each $1 ticket. The event went on for about 3 hours, until all of our prizes had been given away to winners, and I think that everyone left happy and content with the afternoon. I had a great time! All in all, we raised about $175 for the special needs school (which is a fortune for a school that has a budget of just about nothing!) As the afternoon wrapped up, we gave hugs and kisses to all of the moms for all of their hard work and dedication and invited them to join us for a “paseo” (field trip) with their kids. Thanks to their hard work, we raised enough money to cover the costs of kids and moms for our International Day of Disability field trip to Bahia, and per our calculations would still have some left over for future projects, paseos, etc.