I have written and deleted several first words here tonight. It´s clear that I don´t write often, and when I do, it´s because I am moved to. Both Friday and today have brought unspeakable tragedies to two families in two villages Intiwawa works with. On Friday, a little boy of just eight years old was playing on a slide in San Juan. The slide had been unattached from its original structure to be moved to another play area. Although unstable, the children played on it anyway. This little boy fell off the slide and hit his head on a rock, and the slide fell on top of him. The doctor´s told the community that they would have had just one hour to operate in order to save the boy had they been able to reach him in time. They are four hours from Arequipa, the nearest emergency care that may have been adequate. It tears me up inside to think of the what if´s.

Today, during tarea, in broad daylight, a fifteen year old girl was struck and killed in the road right in front of the community center. Hundreds of people walk back and forth across this main street, one that contains speed bumps to slow the many busses, taxis and construction vehicles that pass through every day. With the confusion of the event, my initial reaction was ¨I can´t do anything.¨ I thought someone had hit a car with their bike. When I heard what really happen, my instinct was to run to the scene. I knew she would be horribly injured, but I was prepared to help. I braced myself for what I thought would be the worst case scenario. Blood and broken bones. I can handle almost any injury, I tell myself. I am confident of this. There were fifty people lined up along the busy road, staring in disbelief. She had already been covered by a small green tarp, concealing only her torso. I thought she was a grown woman, and thought of her children. One of the volunteers, only his second day of helping, had gone to see what had happened. I came shortly after, tearing down the drive way, and he met me in the street. It was too late. I wanted desperately to make sure she was dead. I didn´t want to leave it to chance, but there was no way I would be allowed near the girl. I asked, and he told me he was sure there was no pulse, no breathing. She was gone.

No words can describe the despair this village must feel. The anger, the resentment towards the driver. The driver was driving one of the many construction trucks that normally carry bricks and sand. He was drunk. For more than two hours, this young girl lay in the street as the sun began to set. There was still an air of disbelief. A very sweet girl the same age, whom we work, was sobbing on an elder´s shoulder. The smallest children still played, clueless. A policeman stood near the young girl, guarding her body, waiting for an ambulance I suppose. She was later covered further only by poster sized advertisements from what looked like an ice cream brand. This isn´t the first time this has happened here. There are no side walks, only a V shaped gutter to walk along the busy truck ridden road. She was killed just feet from the cross walk. Little children of just 2 and 3 years old run through this street on their own. One of our young ones, probably about 7 or 8, had been struck once before, but made it out unharmed, this was referred to by Leonel, the president, as he said a few words about the danger of the road, and then a prayer like I have never heard before.

I must admit that the terror I felt subsided only a little by signing the cross and saying a short prayer. Perhaps I have gotten swept up in the incessant signings of the cross here in Peru, in which people sign at every hospital, church and cemetary very publicly. Or maybe this is what happens to people when death lies directly in front of you.