A day out - Concacha and Saywite

A group of students from Lima came to AIDIA to visit the translation programme, and invited me to come with them on a day out.

We got a car to Concacha, where one of my colleagues lives, and visited him and his wife.  I helped prepare lunch (which was guinea pig, but sadly I was just helping with the salad) and managed a bit of conversation in Quechua - one of the students was learning it too so we both limped along together.

Then we walked down across a river and up the other side of the valley, to see the Inca ruins - as you do.

There were lots of of old stones - building foundations, bits of irrigation systems, rocks for sacrifices to the sun...

We arrived at the main ruins, which had HUGE stone steps, about as high as my shoulders.  There were normal-sized steps to one side, but I decided that would be no fun!

Finally we reached the roadside and the stone of Saywite - a famous monolith with carvings all over it.  Historians aren't sure what is represented although there are various theories - one says it's a map for a buried city which the locals can read but won't give up the secret.

Motorbikes and the effect of prayer

Yesterday a team from AIDIA went to Cachora to do a dental clinic at the children's home, and a talk about prevention of sexual abuse.  I went along with my usual aim of getting to know more villages and seeing how AIDIA works.  But I also, through my university Diploma contacts, arranged to spend most of the day collecting data to finish off the water system surveys that had been done in that area.  Slight hitch - it turned out that, despite arrangements, there was going to be no-one from the local office to take me around the systems, and no transport.

On Friday night, I was feeling very discouraged about this, very tired, and not looking forward to getting up at 4.30am for an unproductive day of hanging around.  I considered sending out a request for prayer, but didn't really want to as I was fairly sure nothing would happen, and I would be even more discouraged - now about prayer as well as ineffectiveness.  But, deciding this was no attitude for a missionary who trusts in God - I asked for prayer!

Arriving in Cachora, we discovered that Friday had been their patron saint celebrations, and so the village was sleeping and not much was to be hoped for.  The mayor was also off traveling, and the government office closed. After going down to help Noemí with her talk, I called my contact to check if he had somehow managed to set anything up since yesterday, but he hadn't.  He suggested my only option would be to find a motorbike to hire and go round independently.

Noemi and the group at the children's home

So I went back to the town centre with Noemí, expecting to get a bus back to Abancay with her when we found nothing.  I was feeling a bit fatalistic and fed up of not being able to get things done.
We had Noemi's cousin Joel with us, who had been helping out at the children's home, and he said his brother had a bike, but unfortunately it was in for repair.  We went down to talk to the repair man, who ended up hiring us his own bike for the very reasonable rate of £1 an hour.  He wasn't available to drive it though - but Joel agreed to give up his afternoon and help.

Negotiations

I had a list of 9 villages, for which we had to find the town centre and the reservoir.  Noemí helped me sort out a route (and eliminate the one that was 2 hours away!), and then we were off. Here's an example:

Pantipata Alta is a scattered group of houses, so defining the "centre" proved challenging, but we also had fun tracking down the reservoir. We asked a lady for directions - which were given partly in Quechua - “up there where the lorry is, by the tin roof. You go off to the right, it’s faaaar, round behind that hill - ask someone else when you get there”.

The next guy we asked turned out to be drunk and unable to make sense… but also reluctant to let us go away. Happily his friends came down from where they were working on the hillside and helped out.

The road wound its way up and round the hillside in a series of hairpin bends, past little houses with dogs that chased after the bike and snapped at our ankles (we slowed down if we realised in time, so the loud noise of the bike didn't attract them, but otherwise we had to keep our feet out of the way and fake occasional kicks without falling off) then got very steep and rutted. I had to keep getting off for steep bits, muddy bits, narrow planks across irrigation channels, and when we met a lorry.

We eventually located the reservoir (helpfully they are usually painted bright blue) a long way from the road - we had to climb down a steep dusty wooded slope, over a crumbling mud wall, across a river, avoiding the bull… but got there! This was definitely the hardest one to find.

Other parts of the day were like being on holiday - a beautiful road round the side of the hill, looking across over Cachora at the snow-covered mountains on the other side.

Noemí's family live in one of the villages we had to go to, so they gave us lunch.  Another little bonus miracle of the day was that I managed to eat all of my lunch - something that I always worry about because the platefuls are HUGE and not finishing is a mortal insult.  I really wanted to honour Noemí's Mum by finishing - and managed it.  It was also delicious.

And here's my chauffeur - without him I would have got nowhere, or been eaten by dogs, or fallen down the hill, or been threatened by an angry farmer... It was great to have somebody local who knows the unspoken rules about when you can and can't walk across somebody else's fields.

So God has provided, against all my expectations - I really need to start expecting more!  Part of the result was to make me more determined to find a solution - so much of the time there is so much inertia to work against, so many possibilities to try that even getting started is exhausting - but this time I had asked people at home to pray so I had to keep the effort up on my side too!  And God provided Noemí, Joel, and a motorbike to help sort out my problems.  So a very successful and encouraging day.

Useful work!

Peru is doing a Rural Sanitation Survey (which includes water systems), hopefully in every community of every district of every province of every... you get the idea.  Some are prioritised because of extreme poverty in those areas, so people are being specifically employed to do those.  But the others all need doing too - and the sooner they get done, the more likely those areas are to get a higher budget next year from an incentives scheme.

So partly through my diploma course, and partly through the government workshops I've been doing, I've got involved.  The local government people responsible often don't have the time or the equipment or the understanding of the survey... so I'm helping fill in the gaps.

This water source was collected in a covered tank - which was destroyed by a landslide in the rainy season

It's stunning countryside - here we are are walking back down from the water source

Asking the village water board about how they manage the system

Each family has one of these taps outside their house

President of the water board

On the way to another water source...

The whole village was working to repair the pipework the day we visited, and we were part of an impromptu meeting.  I talked about how water is necessary for life, health/cleanness, and growth - and how this can teach us about God, who also is the source of life, forgiveness, and growth.  I talked about the opportunities I hope this survey will provide in terms of projects to help with their water system.  I even managed to throw in a little bit of Quechua!

I did the surveys in Curahuasi and stayed with my friend Ruth - sadly she's just left so I think I might be the only Brit in Apurímac.

It feels amazing to be doing work that is genuinely needed.  So much of my time is spent learning and developing skills to build a good project in the future - but it's lovely to have a positive useful contribution to something that needs doing now!