It's quite a long way round because the bit in between has a lot of mountain and not a lot of road... So by bus it's about 25 hours (although I cheated and did the middle section by plane this time). But you can see it's actually not that far from Abancay, so although it's a different region the culture and language are quite similar.
Curahuasi is in a canyon - debatably the deepest in the world - and it's certainly beautiful.
It was great to spend time wht our 2 missionary families there who I usually only get to see once a year at our annual conference, and to meet some of their volunteers.
I listened to the radio they broadcast for 8 hours a day (the broadcasting not my listening), accompanied them on home visits, saw round their kitchen garden with llamas, tomatoes, lettuces, bananas... and visited various villages for church services and Bible studies.
Gender roles seem much more pronounced here - so I helped with the children's work while the men taught the adults and youth. It was fun to be asked to contribute as well as observe.
And it was VERY useful! I noticed they work just within one province, where there are about 40 villages and the furthest is only 3 hours away from the vilage where they live. Contrast this with AIDIA who have at times worked all over the region of ApurÃmac which has 7 provinces, and we are based in the capital. On my visit with them, I could do home visits in the morning, be at a different village for a Bible study in the afternoon, and go up the canyon side to a small village in the evening to help lead a church service. So I've been thinking about how to minimise my travelling while maximising my impact time by visiting a smaller number of villages which are close to each other, and perhaps trying to find myself a part-time home in one of them.
