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!

I have a degree!

After a very successful trip to Lima, I now have a Masters Degree!  Or at least, one that is officially valid in Peru.  My original degree certificate has grown to 6 sheets of paper and various ribbons and seals to show it's all present and correct.  I've been working on this ever since I first got here, so it's great to have it.  This now means I can put letters in front of my name - but more importantly it means that I can become a member of the Peruvian College of Engineers and officially sign-off on projects - which in turn means that AIDIA has the option of not only doing self-funded projects but also working with in-country funding making my Water projects ministry more sustainable long-term.  At least this is the plan...
It's not the end of the paperwork as the Abancay branch of the College doesn't quite know what to do with me because no foreigners have tried to register here before - so we will be working that out.  There is an official system - so somebody somewhere will know!

I also have my Peruvian driving licence, having provided a translation of my UK licence, passed the theory test, proved I can see and done a psychological assessment ("to what extent do you agree with the following statement: sometimes I see things that aren't there", etc.).  Again, I'm not planning on using this straight away, as I don't have a car at the moment, but am very glad to have it completed for the future when I might be transporting lots of construction materials to the villages.

Spring protections and project research in Curahuasi

I’ve just come back from a week in nearby Curahuasi, where I’ve really enjoyed seeing Bruce and Cherith Rydbeck again. They have worked in community development for about 35 years, and Bruce is a Civil Engineer who does water projects. I know them from my work in Ecuador, where they now work with a charity called Kawsaypak Yaku (Lifegiving Water). They brought a team from Calvin College in the USA to work with the local government on improvements to the water system in Curahuasi.

 
So it was great to meet Bruce and Cherith again, benefit from their wide experience, meet the team they brought, and join in some of the work they were doing.  For the first few days I stayed at the Diospi Suyana (we trust in God) missionary hospital in Curahuasi, and it was lovely to learn a bit more about their work.

Curahuasi has to ration its water, with different areas of the town getting water from as little as an hour a day. We were investigating ways to improve this quantity issue, as well as looking at possibilities for better chlorine dosing systems for water quality. A lot of what we did was survey work, as the group will continue to research and develop options when they’re back in the USA. I really enjoyed the practical outside work, and the detective work involved in figuring out ways to get the data we needed from minimal equipment and no drawings!  It turned out that I could do a lot to help - particularly as one of the professors was ill on the first day.

Students checking water depth. I wouldn't let them go inside to get a sample...

Meeting at the local government office to explain our work

I don't remember many sites with such a view in the UK!

Crossing over a river ravine - they've had to divert the river to a
more central channel to stop the supports being undercut.

I stayed on a couple of extra days to help finish up the protection of one of their springs, which they had been working on for the last couple of weeks. Again, it was great to be back in that practical environment, remembering old methods and learning new ones.

Driving up towards the spring (the first time, before we went
back for the forgotten bags of cement.

Lunch by the roadside - the spring is about 5 minutes' plunge
down the hill (up was rather more challenging).

Last week they covered over the spring area to protect it, and
modified the existing collector tank.  Today we were
connecting up the new pipework for the increased flows.

 

The plastic pipe being softened in order to bend it slightly:

 

I’ll be talking with AIDIA, with the Curahuasi local government, and with Bruce about how I, or the rest of the AIDIA team, might be able to carry on involvement with this project in the future.

And for a little treat - here's what we were watching while the pipework got loaded onto the truck:

Back to school

I’ve been studying a Diploma in “Integrated Management of Basic Environmental Sanitation” at one of the Abancay Universities.

 

It looks at the laws and procedures around water systems, the roles and technologies, training village water boards in the skills they need, and how to apply for government funding for projects. It’s every 2nd weekend for 6 months - so far it’s been hard work but very interesting and I am very glad I decided to take the course. There are some extra training events too for local water system managers, and I am taking the opportunity to learn everything I can. It’s a bit of a new way of doing university for me - last week we had 6 hours of class time without a break!

Not just listening... we have to present back to the rest.
So far my Spanish is functional but not professional!

It's also been great to meet the other students - both for developing new friendships and meeting others who work in the same areas as AIDIA.

 

Radicales Libres!

The church I have been going to has a youth group called "Radicales Libres" or "Free Radicals".  I think it's a pretty good name - because of Jesus we are free, we are called to live radically, and we - like free radicals - will be constantly affecting others who become free radicals too...

We went to a youth conference in Cusco (I should explain here that "youth" in Peru and generally Latin America seems to mean a slightly different age range to in the UK.  Roughly:

• 5-12: kids
• 13-17: adolescents (doesn't seem to have the awkward and embarrassing connotations that it has in English)
• 18-for as long as you're single: youth

The "youth" category seems quite flexible too - there were also young kids, and married couples on the weekend.  Anyway...

It was really good to be reminded in one of the workshops that we should go beyond our limitations.  We talked about grace - which we commonly think of as God forgiving us our sins.  Ok, but it was pointed out that grace is so much more than this.  It is God making up the difference, in everything every day, between what we can do and what he wants us to do.  God doesn't want us to say "yes, I understand your requirements, and I'll do it!" - he wants us to say "I know I can't do it - please help me".  So in a job where I constantly don't know what to do, or feel I can't do it - this is good news! 

It was great also to explore Cusco with my friends - and to see that Peruvians as well as foreigners want to hang out in the main plaza and eat ice-cream.  Oh, and also go to the mall, go to the cinema and eat pizza.  These are pretty rare treats.

We also tracked down a little go-karting track and spent a fun couple of hours alternately racing round it and getting stuck.  I am trying to track down some photos to show you.