Peru Day 11: Nico no es profesional

Today it’s my (Lauren’s) turn to blog, and I couldn’t have had a more exciting day to write about. In my opinion, today represents the climax of our two week trip.

This morning we woke up late with the anticipation of arriving to work late for our last day. Yesterday, Nico had told us that we would be leaving at 10 AM, rather than 9 AM. Thus, we were surprised to see Memo arrive to pick us up at our normal time, 9 AM. Once we got everyone up and going, and gave Nico a hard time for the false information (Nico no es profesional), we set off to the worksite.

The last task to complete the greenhouse was to put on a yellow plastic tarp roof. To do this we spread out the tarp, hoisted it on top of the roof, and held the tarp taught while standing on plastic buckets. The tarp was then secured with wooden planks and nails by the village men working on the roof.

As we were cleaning up, Jane and Selve, the founders of Peru’s Challenge arrived, followed by a group of about 15-20 village women and children, come to celebrate the project’s completion. All of us together, volunteers, Peru’s Challenge representatives, and villagers gathered in a circle in front of the completed greenhouse. In the circle, Jane, Selve, the family, and the community leader took turns expressing their appreciation for the work that we (the volunteers), and the village helpers, had completed. We then took turns stepping forward to receive a certificate and t-shirt from Jane. Afterwards, the family walked up to each of us, thanking us, hugging us, and placing a large handful of confetti on our heads. They were followed by the rest of the villagers, each hugging us and wrapping a streamers around our necks.

The final step was to inaugurate the greenhouse, which involved breaking a decorated champagne bottle hanging above the doorway using a decorated hammer that hung next to the doorway. When Jane asked for one male and one female volunteer, Sam and I stepped forward as site leads. Together we took the hammer and broke the champagne bottle.

Finally it was time to celebrate by eating potatoes, cheese, and chile that the female villagers had prepared. As a special treat they also prepared cuy (guinea pig) for us to try. As a whole, the Michigan group seemed to enjoy the flavor of the delicacy.

After enjoying the food and chatting for a bit, we bid farewell to the villagers that we had worked with, as well as the rest of the community. We took off our work clothes for the last time, hopped in the van and headed back to the volunteer house.

After rounding out our lunch with the sandwiches Ramiro had prepared for us, we set off with Nico to climb the mountain directly behind the volunteer house. Nico had said that he had climbed the mountain before, several years ago with another group. As it turned out, even with this experience, the trail proved to be difficult to traverse, and even harder to find. Under Nico’s direction (Nico no es profesional), we often had to backtrack, or push through dense brush to rediscover a path.

This was definitely one of the most difficult hikes I’ve ever done. The path up the mountain was quite steep (we took the straight way up, passing orthogonally the winding, switchbacks over and over) and we took it at a very brisk pace. We encountered prickly bushes that poked through clothing, near-vertical cliffs, and ashen hillsides. Throughout the hike, we felt the effects of altitude, even after having been in Cusco for 2 weeks. Personally, I felt like my heart rate was about double what it would have been on a similar hike at a lower altitude, just trying to deliver enough oxygen to my legs.

As we approached the top, Martha and I began counting steps to push ourselves onward. First 40 steps, then 30 at a time before a break. Lack of oxygen, rather than lack of strength seemed to be the primary difficulty.

Finally we reached the top, where a cross had been placed. The top was quite cold and windy, but the view of the villages on the other side of the mountain, Cusco, and the mountains beyond Cusco was absolutely amazing. Nico estimated that we had reached an altitude of about 3900 – 4000 meters.

As the sun set and the twilight approached we descended down the mountain, again losing and rediscovering the path a few times. Back in Santa Maria Ramiro was waiting with a welcome dinner of soup, lasagna, vegetables and rice. After dinner we collapsed into a satisfied, exhausted sleep.

Peru Day 4: Laying the Foundations

For our second day of constructing the greenhouse, Ramiro had prepared a breakfast of sunny-side eggs, pineapple, and fried plantains. A less sweet cousin of the banana, the plantain is a staple in the South American diet and a popular food item in Cusco. Following our hearty breakfast, the team gathered in the van for our scenic drive to the construction site in the village of Quillahuata.

Besides the breathtaking view of the pristine mountain ranges, the drive out to the construction site is interesting because of the long stretches of smoothly paved road. For a rural area like Quillahuata, one would imagine a majority of unpaved dirt road (of which there is some on our route). The fact that the roadways of a small village such as Quillahuata are developed reflects the gradually growing investment from the Peruvian government.

Upon arriving at the work site, we changed into our soiled work clothes and climbed up the hill to the greenhouse area. On the previous day, we had just finished digging out the space which would become the greenhouse foundation. This morning, the team set about breaking apart and transporting large rocks that would be placed inside the trench for the foundation. In conjunction with cement, which we would add later, the rocks help to strengthen the building. Many of us found the filling in portion of the job interesting since it resembled a game of Tetris as we tried to fit differently shaped and sized rocks into various crevices; others really enjoyed smashing the rocks with a sledgehammer.

We then broke for lunch with our guide Nico. As we sat around and ate our guacamole sandwiches (who would’ve known that bread and guac make a great combo), Nico gave us a brief historical overview of Peru. One of the topics we discussed was the Shining Path, a communist terrorist group in Peru, and its effect on the country. Founded in the 1960’s, the Shining Path detested the rampant corruption in the Peruvian government and sought to curb it. Unfortunately, their methods of achieving this goal were incredibly violent, to the point where members of the Shining Path would venture into villages and murder anyone who showed any support for the government (even purchasing crop seeds from the government was seen as a sign of support).

Nico also shared with us Peru’s current political situation. While the Shining Path is no longer as prevalent as before, we were all pretty shocked to hear of the problems still plaguing the Peruvian government. For instance, the majority of the candidates for the 2016 presidential election are former high ranking government officials, some of them even former presidents, all with very corrupt pasts.

Following our lunch and impromptu history lesson, we returned to work, this time transporting clay bricks that would be used for the walls of the greenhouse and making the mud that would glue the bricks together. As we wheelbarrowed back and forth, we felt a definite rapport developing between us and the other workers. Instead of thoroughly instructing us on what to do, they gave us greater responsibility by allowing us to decide how we would accomplish our tasks. Moreover, we began cracking jokes with them. For instance, every few minutes Pippen would holler, “Rapido, Nico!” (Hurry up, Nico), much to the delight of everyone, including Nico himself.

With a second day’s worth of work under our belts, we all left a little more sore and soiled, but more energized about the challenges and excitement ahead.

Peru Day 3: Peru’s Challenge

Peru’s challenge officially starts today! In the morning, we rolled out with Jane to tour Pumamarca…well once we gave a pushing start to the van for our morning breather. Then we were off to the hillsides of Cusco. Peru’s challenge has been working with the village of Pumamarca for a successful 8 years, as the villagers led the initiatives in this fourth project site of Peru’s Challenge. As we gazed over the fruits of the collaboration between Peru’s Challenge and villagers, we firsthand understood the impact we signed up to make and  Peru’s challenge model of sustainable projects to get Pumamarca, or soon for us Miskiumo, chiming on their own. These such villages among others initially were all very undeveloped with low average household incomes of 3 USD per week, no land entitlements, lack of clean water resources, lack of education, etc. During the past 15 years, Peru’s challenge has helped outlying local villages to Cusco significantly develop by bringing land rights, irrigation, small businesses, schools, and health projects to each village – while leaving locals to decide how they want to grow and shape the village since Peru’s Challenge transitions out after roughly 10 years. Now for example, Pumamarca families have become self-sufficient with access to clean water and a drastically improved weekly household income of 60 USD. Then for long term goals, children have access to excellent education opportunities ranking about 2nd across the board. All the while, Peru’s Challenge helps restore and maintain the integrity of the village culture once disrupted by past terrorism and Cusco tourism. In Pumamarca, we ran into the 18 year old daughter, Alexandria, of the family that the first EGL Peru VA built a greenhouse for. As Jane brought us to this invernadero, we found it relieving that although Maria and Jesus (parents of this family who passed away recently) the 3 children are doing well with income from these greenhouse flowers. Hearing such stories from Jane is really an eye-opening experience, especially the gratitude of the villagers shown through calling us amigos not gringos. Alas we comprehend the magnitude a simple helping hand brings to the families. These villagers have the knowledge, skills, and ambition, yet lack resources to pursue their ideas and small business. Projects like building a greenhouse gives families the opportunity to start these pursuits so as to eventually fulfill their vision with better lives.

After the lessons of Pumamarca, we stepped over (literally next door) to our site, Miskiumo, where in the next week and a half we will help a patient family build their greenhouse. The family welcomed us with words of gratitude and a Quechua tradition, sprinkling a handful of confetti on our heads with a warming hug. It is truly heartwarming for how appreciative and hospitable the family is, motivating us with the passion to take on Peru’s challenge.

For some of us, this is our first time building anything from ground up. Everything is a new insight, new experience, new memory. We arrived to a half laid out foundation from the family; thus today focused on finishing laying the rest of the foundation for the greenhouse. This foundation required a trench that is 40 cm deep and 40 cm wide, which would be filled with large rocks and later a rocky cement mix.

Time to break ground! We began with digging the trench using pickaxes and shovels – most of us have never done such intensive physical labor. Not to mention the high altitude definitely made it even more difficult. As we dug away, we slowly organized into 3 groups: digging, shoveling, and rock breaking. Through collaboration and encouragement, the team managed through physical exhaustion to finish our target within 4 hours! The best delight to this came with a surprise from the family. While laboring away, the family baked potatoes in earthen clay ovens through Quechua tradition to welcome us. It was fascinating learning this process of food prep by how these families build a new clay oven each time to then collapse heated clay on top of the food to complete the baking process.

Overall, this day was rewarding by the traditions learned and sights seen. After learning the true impact of Peru’s challenge and delving into our first construction experience, we’re excited to see what we can accomplish tomorrow!

Peru Day 2: Llamas, Alpacas, and Incan Ruins

Yusuf here trying my hand at this whole blogging thing. We survived our first night in Cuzco! It does get pretty cold at night but with 2 sweatpants, three t-shirts, a hoodie and 2 blankets I managed alright. I think we are all getting a little more accustomed to the altitude as well.

In the morning we went on a tour through the city of Cuzco and some of the surrounding Incan ruins. Our guide, Archie (okay that isn’t his real name) walked us through the city and pointed out all of the historic landmarks within the city and also took us to a local market where I tried a pepino dulce. It looked like a yellow, striped tomato and tasted like a cantaloupe. There were a bunch of other very interesting fruits that I didn’t get to try for lack of time and for fear of getting a stomach bug. From what I learned from Archie, much of the history within the city was centered around the Spanish conquistador’s attempts to stamp out Incan culture – all the major Incan temples (within the city and out) had been razed to the ground and replaced by Catholic Cathedrals. All that remained of the initial Incan structures were the stone foundations characterized by the irregular brick shape and lack of mortar holding it all together. Although I could still sense some historical resentment by the Peruvians for what the Spanish did, it was interesting to see the major impact the Spanish played on the formation of the modern city of Cuzco. I found the similarities between the Peruvian city of Cuzco and the southern Spanish city of Cordoba uncanny. Both cities have narrow, hilly, winding streets that usually led to large open plazas, and many of the houses had a similar architectural style characterized by a rectangular building with a large open courtyard in the middle. Not to mention that the Spanish converted the Mezquita of Cordoba and the Incan temples of Cuzco into Catholic cathedrals. But I digress.

At lunch we tried alpaca meatballs, a first for us all I’m assuming. Your’e probably wondering what it tastes like and the best answer I can give you is that it simply tastes like alpaca. After lunch we ascended 200 meters into the windswept hills northeast of Cuzco to check out the Incan ruins of Saksaywaman and Qénqo. Saksaywaman was a large temple dedicated to the gods of the sun, water, and lightning, among others. Qénqo was a smaller set of ruins that were carved into natural cave formations and was used as a place to leave offerings for the gods and carry out the process of mummification. I could go on and on about the amazing history of these ruins but I will save you the time and me the energy (check out Wikipedia if your’e really interested).

The entire day I was wearing Pippen’s GoPro on my hat and he was controlling the video recording with his phone. As a result, I never knew when he was recording and hopefully this leads to some good, candid video of the trip. I guess we will see when we compile our Peru montage…

The last thing we did after eating dinner that night was go out and look at the Southern night sky. I was expecting Cuzco to be a great star gazing spot but the city is much more brightly illuminated than I had initially thought. The first thing I noticed was that the moon was waxing and waning from the bottom to the top instead of from the right to the left like we are accustomed to in the northern hemisphere. Using an app we were able to locate the constellations of Scorpio, Libra, Lupus, and Sagittarius and that was pretty cool and a first for most of us. If you focused long enough on the night sky, you could see the faint glow of Milky Way in the middle of the night sky. A few of us were also fortunate enough to see a shooting star streak across the sky. I was especially excited because I had never seen one before. It was a little cloudy out so I’m hoping to go back out tomorrow and see if there were any other major constellations we missed. If I spot anything else I’ll make sure to fill you guys in.

-y

Peru Day 1: Welcome to Cusco!

Wow! We arrived at the guest house, Santa Maria, and were all blown away by how nice it was. The founder of Peru’s Challenge, Jane, joked that they give us nice conditions and feed us well so we’ll be able to work hard! It’s all about the work! Ramiro, the house chef, cooked us an amazing meal of Quinoa soup and chicken with vegetables and rice. We think he should open a restaurant since he’s such a good chef. We were all a little tired from our travels, but we were ready to go explore Cusco after lunch!

Santa Maria Guest House

Nico, our main guide for the week, showed us around downtown Cusco. On every bus there’s a person who stands in the doorway and yells out what stops the bus stops at. We think this might be because the bus companies are private and they’re trying to get people to get on their bus. The buses only cost 0.70 soles cents! That’s about $0.25. On the bus ride to downtown we noticed there was a “Chifa” restaurant on every other block. They looked like Chinese restaurants, but the word for China in Spanish is still “China”. We looked this up later and found out that it’s a word specifically used to refer to Chinese-Peruvian food. We ended up having Chifa beef and broccoli pasta for dinner! Walking around downtown we saw lots of people selling jewelry and other trinkets on the street. There were also women dressed in traditional Peruvian clothes holding what we thought were baby alpaca. They were there to charge tourists to take pictures with them. We later discovered these are not alpacas but just baby goats! We felt a little bit like stupid tourists after discovering this.

 

On our bus ride home there were two different people, one child and one adult, who jumped on the bus to play music or sing  for money. They were actually pretty good! The child rubbed a coin on a shell to make a beat, then sold candy when he was done. The man played a pan flute which sounded a bit like a Chinese flute. We got home and ate our fabulous Chifa meal cooked by Ramiro, then were all exhausted and crashed between 8:30 and 9:30pm! Sleeping 10 hours under the warm wool blankets was amazing and helped get us ready for our full day of exploring Cusco and the surrounding ruins!

Peru Day 0: Pre-Exploration and Arrival (8/16/15)

Hola from Team Peru! This post describes the first day that Daniel Pippen and I (Lauren Bilbo) spent in Lima, before continuing on to Cusco with the rest of group. This was the start to our Peruvian adventure, so we wanted to include it with the rest of the memories we will record here from the primary part of the trip in Cusco.

Our journey began in Lima began in the Pay Purix hostel, located just a few blocks from the Lima airport. For only 22 soles/night (approximately 7 USD), we found the hostel to be quite accommodating. The rooms were clean, and the staff was extremely friendly and helpful. A fresh and bountiful breakfast was served in a groovy common space with multicolored lights, high-backed benches with low tables, and upbeat club music.

Adrenaline coursing through our veins from excitement and fast-tempo music, we hopped in a taxi to go to the southwestern side of Lima near the cost – the Miraflores area. First we went to Parque Kennedy, a public park with statues, fountains, and a multitude of cats. Outside of the park we found a stage where a man was leading a group of people in dance.

From Parque Kennedy we walked down to the beach where we found el Parque de Amor. El Parque de Amor is a small park located scenically on the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. In the park were benches covered in ceramic tiles, inscribed with famous quotes of love. It was incredible to look over the cliff and see the ocean and surrounding cliffs, and the surfers far below.

We then continued walking along the ocean side, at the top of the cliff. We were interested to see that running, roller-blading, and biking were quite popular in this part of the city. We also noticed that dogs are common pets, and people love to dress their dogs.

Our next stop was Larcomar, a ritzy, outdoor mall set into the cliffside. After acknowledging the expensive, western-style shops, we continued inland until reaching Los Indios, which is a market where local handicrafts and goods are sold. There Pippen found a baby alpaca sweater, which proved valuable, as his luggage (and all of his warm clothing) had been delayed in arriving.

From los Indios we set off farther inland in the direction we believed would take us to El Olivar, another park. Unfortunately we walked entirely the wrong direction, and ended up having to ask the help of at least 5 police officers or locals (and spending an additional hour or two going the wrong way and then back-tracking). Along the way we walked up Arequipa Avenue, a pleasant main road with a grassy, tree-lined bike/walking lane in between the lanes of opposing traffic. It was especially peaceful on this day because the streets were blocked off for what seemed to be a bicycle race. We also saw many people rollerblading.

Finally we arrived at El Olivar, a beautiful park with olive trees. From there we began walking again, towards the city center. We stopped along the way for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. I was surprised that my two-course, tasty meal cost less than 4 USD!

After more walking and absorbing the city, as well as a short taxi lift, Pippen and I arrived at the Lima city center. The first stop was the cathedral of San Francisco. There we admired the inside of the cathedral, and then proceeded to the convent and catacombs. In the catacombs we saw thousands of femurs, tibias, humeruses, and skulls. There were estimated to be 25 thousand people left in the catacombs. In the convent we saw a beautiful library containing books from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries.

From there we found the Plaza de las Armas, the main square.

We were surprised to see that there was a stage set up and a concert happening! Highlights from the concert include a Spanish version of “Let it Go” from Frozen and a fun boy-band. Interestingly there was also a party happening in the cathedral on the plaza in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of San Juan Bosco.

After the plaza we walked along the streets leading away from the square. We were interested to see the similarities to Spanish cities in the way that the streets, lined with all kinds of shops, could only be traversed by foot. 

After another yummy two-course dinner (tried IncaCola – it was good!), we grabbed a taxi and headed back to the hostel. In total my phone registered 15 miles of walking for the day.

Later that evening and after a delayed flight, Pippen, Eric, Martha, Eleanore, and Yusuf rolled in from the airport (all in one taxi, with luggage) for a few hours of sleep before departing for Cusco.

One week to go! Can you believe it?

We are excited to share with you EGL’s brand new Volunteer Abroad blog site! This coming Sunday, three groups of EGL students will leave for New Delhi, India, Quito, Ecuador, and Cusco, Peru to participate in two-week service learning trips. During their trips, they will be sharing thoughts, stories, photos, and (hopefully!) videos documenting their experiences.

Did you know that EGL has organized volunteer abroad trips each summer since 2007? Check out this throwback to our trips to India in 2014 and Peru in 2013:

“Seeing the children’s smiles and passion for learning is something that will always stay with me. You would never believe they lived in such an impoverished area by their attitudes. My favorite part was definitely working with the children and watching them learn. I think about them every day, and I really hope the best for them.” -Nicole Rojas, India 2014

“We built a large greenhouse completely in 7 days, when it typically takes 3-4 weeks to build one. It was great seeing everyone work as a team to accomplish a common goal. The project was an extremely rewarding experience. The most eye-opening aspect of the trip was that the family we were building the greenhouse for worked along side us daily. Maria and her two children were out there carrying and lifting bricks, and teaching us skills needed in order to be successful.” -Melissa Sweeney, Peru 2013