Atancama

Another dental visit, and a village that AIDIA has not visited in the last few years.  We were VERY busy with patients all day, and I had to work hard to keep putting the instruments through the autoclave so they’d be sterilised by the time they were needed again.  I was impressed by the fact we can sterilise, take x-rays, develop the photos... it's got me thinking again of what equipment I might need, and the success we had with the DelAgua water testing kit in Ecuador - both for practical testing purposes and for showing and teaching.  There are a couple of visits planned in April when I have been asked to come as a translator (we have a team coming from the USA) so I have also been listening to learn some more technical dental Spanish.

The autoclave and camping stove which I use for sterilising

Brendan developing an x-ray in the "dark-room"

 

The literacy and orality teams came too, and we had good times talking with all the people who were waiting for their appointments.  I took down their details which led to a few simple conversations in Quechua - it was a big encouragement to be able to manage this! 

Trying out the tongue-twisters!

Noemi and her bookshop!

Because we were so busy, I didn’t get to nose around looking at the different water infrastructure, but asked a few questions.  We will be visiting again in a couple of months so I can find out more then.  Community development work is largely about building a good relationship, so I am happy with this progress.   

View down from the plaza

On a practical note, I made the important discovery that long sleeves, and leggings tucked into socks are successful in preventing insect bites!  Apart from one very determined fly that bit me through my sock.

Visit to Llactabamba

I visited Llactabamba in 2013, got taken to see their water source, and preached there about how Jesus gives us living water. It was great to go back there again.

We set off at 4am, which is when the “bus” leaves. It’s actually a normal car, but leaves at a scheduled time each day - and is the only one that goes to Llactabamba. There were 9 of us in it - 4 adults in the back, 2 passengers in the front with one tangled up in the gearstick, and 2 in the boot with all the luggage (the car also takes out supplies for the village shop which mostly seemed to consist of crates of coca cola - or was it beer?). At about 5.30 we stopped, still in the dark, to find there had been a landslide and the road was blocked.

These are quite a common event towards the end of the rainy season, so after it got a bit lighter we all got out and started clearing the soil with shovels and breaking up the huge boulder with picks. It took about an hour and a half to make it passable - and I was struck by how much a normal part of life it must be. There were lots of other places on the rest of the journey where I could see a slide had been cleared. 

Llactabamba was pretty much as I remembered it, but muddier and with maize growing all over the place - last time I visited in July which is very dry. One bonus is that the maize makes the lack of toilets slightly easier to handle - without it finding a private spot can be tricky!

Public toilets!

We visited the pastor and his wife, who gave us breakfast - corn on the cob (of course) and a soup with some unidentified but very strong flavoured meat in it. We chatted to them for a while about the village and their own history. Then we went on to visit another couple from the church who live next to the square, and on to visit and encourage other Christians. I found I could understand a bit of the conversational gist, enough to intersperse a remark in Spanish every now and again. And it was good for me to be in such a Quechua-speaking village - I used a lot of what I have learned but it still wasn’t much.

This again has brought home to me how much I’ve adjusted to Abancay which now feels like home. In contrast, I have a long way to go to learn about life in these small villages.

We had a bit of a rest in the afternoon, and a brief snooze on the hillside overlooking the canyon - down below is Pachachaka and the baths we walked to last week, and it was a stunning view. Lovely to lie in the sunshine as I had been cold all day from being shrouded in cloud.

In the evening I preached again in the church (I had been keen to go back as they had remembered me from before and asked me to come again). I talked about the imagery of bread throughout the Bible, and how having bread does us no good at all - unless we eat it we remain hungry. And we need to eat every day. It was an encouragement to read the Bible frequently and to spend time with Jesus rather than just knowing the truth. And afterwards they chose a song (in Quechua) about God’s word being like honey - it was such an encouragement that at least someone had got the point!

I stayed the night with a widowed lady from the church - sharing her double bed with her and the cat. I slept amazingly well but woke up with lots of flea bites - happily my sleeping bag liner protected most of me though.

As we were leaving, the pastor, who is also the head of the water committee, asked me to help with a water project. I had been asking lots of questions about the situation and how it had developed over the last 18 months, and had been surprised not to have been taken up on it. So I was pleased and will be looking to meet again with the whole village and see whether it looks like a good working relationship can form.

My first visitors!

My friend Lauren, who I knew from Cambridge, and her husband have been travelling in South America for the last few months and came to visit me on their way to Cusco. Ruth, my English friend in Curahuasi, also came to join us to have a rest from Spanish. It was great to have my first visitors. Abancay is starting to feel like home and it was very confidence-building to play the host and not the guest.

We visited Pachachaka and the little thermal pools (where I triumphantly remembered the way), and I subjected them to guinea pig for lunch - we were also eaten alive by many small flies but it was still a worthwhile meal. Never before have I been to a restaurant where the lady offers you insect repellent before taking your order!

They also came to my church, where I made my first attempt at simultaneous translation - I think I managed to pass on a bit more than half. We went out for dinner with my friends Sofia and Giancarlos - and with Justin’s travel-learned Spanish and Sofia’s rusty English they actually all managed to communicate quite well!

On Monday there was a strike in Abancay. It started last week in Andahuaylas over a dramatic rise in energy prices, but then came here. On Tuesday a big group from Andahuaylas also came here - because Abancay is the regional capital. But the Andahuaylinos are striking experts and didn’t think we were very enthusiastic - so the centre of town got a bit nasty, with people being threatened with knotted rope and made to join the strike, and some shops being looted. So we stayed away from the centre of town, and the main Lima-Cusco road (which was blocked). I talked to everyone we met to make sure we weren’t heading into trouble, and we had a lovely walk out past a smaller and peaceful roadblock and up the hill to the viewpoint over Abancay. We stopped on the way for lunch - fresh trout, caught while we watched - and came back down to Abancay in the late afternoon. On the way home we discovered tarantula number 3 in the middle of the path, and 2 girls who were so scared they wouldn't walk past it!

 

 

It was a lovely bonus day - they had been planning to leave but the strike meant there were no buses to Cusco. They managed to go with no problems on Wednesday.

Ocobamba #2

This time I joined the team as a dental assistant!  Well, not quite as qualified as that - but I dressed in scrubs, held the teaching material about dental hygiene while others explained it in Quechua, and sterilised the dental instruments in the autoclave so those who were qualified could keep on working.  It was a shame that the power was turned off early on, which meant they couldn’t do any fillings, which was what a lot of people needed - but there was still a lot that could be done.  It was nasty watching children have their teeth pulled out (although probably them being given the anaesthetic was worse) but afterwards they were given a latex glove blown up as a balloon, which seemed to compensate them quite well!

 I went back to visit the lady who lives next door to the church (which had been turned into a clinic for the day), to talk to her again and see whether I could help connect up her water supply to the lovely, new, but unused, flushing toilet she has.  It wasn’t as simple as that, partly because I tried first of all in Quechua which proved to be definitely not up to the task (but I was proud of myself for trying), but also because I discovered it’s part of a larger issue in the whole village, and decided that helping just one household would not be a wise approach.  So in breaks from helping the dental team I went to chat to other people in the village to find out a bit more - helped by 1-year-old Oliver who I looked after for a spell, and who very easily invites himself into people’s houses.

The village has a water system that was installed in 1994 and is still working despite some damage to the structures.  The local government has just completed a “drainage” project to address the health problems and high incidence of parasitic diseases in the village - so each house has been provided with a flushing toilet and connection to a new septic tank.  But the project only involved drainage - so it’s up to each household to provide the cistern needed for flushing their toilet and make their own connection to the clean water system.  Possibly something that might turn into an AIDIA project later of the village requests it, but a larger undertaking than I had originally thought.  There was also, helpfully, a big billboard proclaiming the completion of the recent project - so now I can go away and look it up!

 

On the way home we stopped off at a bridge made from palm leaves (it does have cables runnign underneath though as well).  Another highlight was a avocado tree - definitely something I love about Peru.

 

Hospitality and Chaos

Since I got back I’ve actually been feeling a lot more on-the-ball than I expected, which has been wonderful.  I’ve been doing a lot of hosting - helping me feel more settled in, building up relationships and starting some student work:

A pancake party (a week late but nonetheless satisfying)

A student “sleep”over - there was no sleeping involved - we cooked food, played charades, I introduced them to Mafia which went down very well at 4am, finished with a film and they all left about 8am.  It was made more challenging by 2 power cuts and the water being turned off at 10pm and not coming back on again!  Evening and morning photos - some difference in energy levels I think...

Then the next week friends from church came over for lasagne.  And finally I invited the family I stayed with in 2013 over for dinner.  I made very English pie and mash with gravy, and then we had some very tactical games of uno!  It was lovely to be able to thank them in this way.