Puno

Forgive me for not writing!!!!!!!!! I am back home now, but I will attempt to write this collecting all that I can from my memory along the way. I will start with where I left off. I was heading to Puno on my own. After hearing on the news what was happening in that region, I decided on our first weekend off, I would go to Puno with clothes for the kids at the hospital. Puno is not only a city, where Lake Titicaca is located, but also a region. The region of Puno has seen some seriously high death rates, which repeats itself with out failure, every winter. Puno is high, and in the winter, it’s dry, and freaking cold. Generally all they raised up there, like in San Juan and Salinas, are llamas and alpacas. The vegetation is low to the ground, and there isn’t much to eat otherwise. The problem the people face there is sickness from the cold. I’m not a doctor, but the changes in temperature are pretty drastic from night to day, the cold can get really intense, like 18 below zero C, and the generally population in these areas is seriously under funded, and nearly forgotten. There is no insulation in the homes, they are made from dirt floors, thatched roofs, brick, and are generally windowless (well, yes, there are holes for windows, but no glass). So, I go to the used clothes market with Leonel, and we find fleeces for about 15 children, plus mittens, and whatever I can find in the box we keep in our house which is overflowing with clothing which will be donated during Christmas time. I fill a potato sack and a big shopping bag full, plus my belongings, and headed off to Puno at 7am on an 6 hour bus. I paid 5 dollars for the trip there, and it felt like I was riding first class in American Airlines. It was the nicest bus I’d been on. I curled up and slept well most of the way. I had only caught a few hours of sleep the night before.

I arrived in bright, “wow I am way overdressed for this sun,” Puno in early afternoon. First task, find a place to dump this immense amount of luggage and get something to eat. Went to an internet café, found a neat sounding hostel, lugged my stuff there, full. Walked around in circles, sweating to death, hungry, tired, and increasingly more frustrated and angry. Stopped in probably 5 hostels, too expensive...too fancy. Where is the cheap stuff? Oh, there it is. Let’s have a look. Oh god, no. Too cheap. I do not want to be the only person staying in this place, and it has shared bathroom stalls, no hot water. Please, this is my weekend off. Give me something! 150 places later, I found a cute little hotel type set up, not exceedingly nice, not terrible, reasonably price, friendly old man showed me the way. Door locks, hot water all the time, they even give you a towel. 10 bucks. Sold. Dump my stuff, and head back out to find some food. I didn’t get further than a block, found something interesting, one lonely tourist eating by himself in there...whatever. I am hungry. I order, oddly enough, coconut curry veggies and rice. It was amazing!!!! Fresh tea. Wow. I am in heaven. Leave there, roam around the touristy shops. Jesus, everything is so expensive. It seems worse than Arequipa, just smaller. I meet a nice girl in a shop who is struggling to communicate with the vendor lady, help her out with her expensive sweater situation, and we chat about what we are doing here by ourselves. She has a neat story to tell. She just quit her well paying job fixing the eyeballs of rich people. Literally, she is an optometrist. She says at first she is a doctor, but specializes in eyes. I don’t know their system, but I don’t bother to ask. We network a bit about INTIWAWA, and she promises she’ll contact us when she comes back to Peru. She’s traveling with a Peruvian guy she met in Mexico who has organized the whole trip. They are off the next day to check out the Islands in the lake. I have a tinge of “someday I am actually going to travel.” Whenever I meet tourists who are seeing everything, that tinge comes knocking on my door. I hate it. I love what I am doing, and I wouldn’t trader it for all the cheap hostels with hot water in the world. We part with smiles, and meet again 10 minutes later in another street looking at knitted hats. Finally we part for good. I manage to find my way to the lake as the sun is setting. It’s really big, but nothing terribly impressing. The good stuff is in the middle, away from all this algae and the taxi drivers and bicyclists.

I head back on foot, mostly to demonstrate to the taxi drivers that dammit, I can walk, even though I am white. I walk a few blocks, and here I am in another market. Fruits, veggies, rice, potatoes, shampoo, cheese, ceviche, raw meat, and lots of wide open eyes. I am the only white person here...I assume because it’s dark, and tourists have no need for these fresh food markets. They eat at restaurants. Alas, this time, I am essentially a tourist. I really don’t have any need for any of this. I buy only apples, avocado, and bread. Dinner. I head back home. It’s nearly 6. I should be in bed soon. I should be doing as much sleeping as possible on this trip to make up for lost time. I make avocado and apple sandwiches, after borrowing a butter knife from the front desk to make this situation a little easier, using newspaper as my plate, but still turns out to be a terribly unavoidable mess. Anyway, it was delicious. I surprisingly have a television in my room, and it has a remote. More than I could ask for. I flip through the excessive amount of stations a few times, get bored, and switch off the light. Here I am. Me and me, just hanging out for the night, and it’s probably 7pm. I am tired. I wake up the next morning, and decide to venture for a shower. I’ve noticed how awfully small the bathroom is. The whole thing is about as big as my bathtub at home, but also includes stand up shower, sink and toilet, all conveniently located in the same place...literally. The sink is actually in the shower...there is no tub. The entire room is tiled for protection. First, I have to shut the shower curtain, which now separates the toilet and the “shower.” Then, I have to stand on the toilet so I don’t soak myself or stand in the freezing cold water while it waits to warm up. I forgot to close the bathroom door, so water lakes out a bit into the bedroom. Tight quarters. wow. I finally manage myself into the shower, and the water is hot. This is the first hot shower I have had in a long time. Not to mention a shower. Excellent. I pack my stuff, and head out. I don’t have a lot of time to waste. I leave at 1pm for arequipa. 24 hours in Puno doesn’t seem like a lot, but it was packed with Amanda adventure. I walk out my hotel door, turn right onto a pedestrian/tourist only type street, walk a block, and find a moto taxi driver half asleep in his motorcycle. He pulls around, I load my stuff into the very back...and OH MY GOD he’s driving away!! Those things don’t go very fast, so I run to catch up with him and I’m there in just a few leaps, I’m banging on his door, “I am not inside!!!!!!!!!!!” “Oh oh, sorry sorry.” Idiot. He felt all the weight bear down in his taxi, and assumed I was in, too. This is really what happens when you assume. I get in, half freaked that he was actually trying to steal my stuff, and to the hospital we go. We arrive at the front entrance in a few minutes... “It’s closed, you know.” (Sunday). “Wow, REALLY?! You knew that before? You couldn’t have told me that before???” How the hell is a hospital closed? I think to myself. Okay, “So what if there is an emergency, what do people do?” “There’s an emergency entrance that’s open on the other side.” Then what the hell are we doing sitting at the closed front entrance if there is another entrance? This guy is killing me this morning. “Let’s go!” He drops my annoyed butt off, and all of my things, at the emergency entrance. There are people loafing around, as usual. But, they are very helpful, and one man offers to help carry my things, and escorts me around the hospital looking for where we need to go. After a few flights up and down the stairs (and it is really cold in the hospital stairwell), we arrive. The nurse’s are scampering around talking to parents and kids, making tea, preparing cotton balls by hand from a mountain of cotton...she’s brought clothes for the children, the man explains. They are very excited, and want me to wait here in their office/everything else room a minute while the visiting nurse finishes up. We are going to deliver the clothes personally to each child. Oh my. I was just thinking of dropping them off, I think to myself. Here we go. We separated the clothes into Mom size and baby size. Two nurses and I set off for all of the rooms. There are 30 children in total. All are under the age of 3, it seems. They are really tiny, all bundled up in these big beds. Three children to a room. Many of their mothers are their by their side. I feel very out of place here, like an intruder. The nurse’s take care of everything, explain what I am doing, take clothes out of my arms according to the size of the mom and child, toss it on the bed or to the mom, and off we go! Wow, this woman knows what she’s doing. Scarves, mittens, fleeces, and in minutes, our arms are nearly empty. One room is a steam room, it’s like 200 degrees in there and 99 percent humidity I think. Another room has two itty bitty infants sleeping. I ask how many months this one is, she looks at her chart, and says one year. Sepsis and pneumonia. I would have guessed 6 months old. She’s way too small. Sepsis is an infection in your blood, and a baby with pneumonia is never a good thing. She’s very sick, but she is sleeping pleasantly, and looks like a little doll baby. I choke back tears. Every one of these children is suffering from pneumonia or another cold weather related illness. We head back to the nurses’ station to wait for the visiting nurse to do her thing. After about an hour of waiting, we finally get to hang out the last of the clothes to the rest of the children. The mothers nod and smile in thanks, and I can’t say anything or I know I’ll cry. Despite the coughing and the crying, half the children are asleep, or are calmly lying in their beds with their mothers sitting in a chair next to the bed. They look at me in wonder.

While waiting with the nurses, we chatted about the health care system a bit. What happens if the families don’t have money?, I ask. They don’t come, she answers. They don’t receive treatment. No one? I clarify. Well, most people, no. You can petition the government, she explains, for help. Most people are lazy and stupid and don’t write to help themselves or their children, she explains resentfully. And the children here? Does the government help any of the children here? 25 of the 30 children here are here free, she tells me. I am shocked.

Most of the people I have talked to in Peru have no idea this is possible. They think there is no hope. These children don’t receive much here in the hospital, but at least they are in a warm bed, receiving fluids. The one’s who don’t receive any treatment out there in the cold are the one’s who don’t make it. This information has changed my life, and will soon change someone else’s. I leave sad and confused and sorry I couldn’t hang out with the kids and play with them. Back to Arequipa I go.

One month to go

I ran passed a hand painted rock wall this morning that said-

Vecinos, Juntos Somos Diferentes. Neighbors, Together we are Different.

(there was no sponsorship on the wall to be found)

There are some really crazy things happening in the world, as always. Together we strain to be different, to maintain our cultural and territorial dignity, as well as to remain united. Recently, the Prime Minister of Peru has said he will step down from his position because of his irresponsible actions-that of allowing the passing of legislation which will permit the degradation and separation of land in Northern Peru, the Amazon Jungle, from it´s indigenous inhabitants, without consulting them. After what has become a small war between the native people and the police fighting for the access to roads and water ways. The indigenous people want to close down access to areas the government wants to develop and exploit for it´s natural resources. The trouble is that Peru needs the money...but ironically, will sell this land to foreign companies.

Just a quick fact-From 2002 to June 2008, the portion of territory in Amazonas (north), San Martín (central) and Madre de Dios (east) granted to mining companies quadrupled, from 4.65 percent to 17.35 percent. Wow.

Friday I will travel to Puno, the site of Lake Titicaca. Yes, it does exist. It´s the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. I learned that in the Highlands in Puno, it gets to -18 Celcius, or 0 Fahrenheit. Mother of god. The trouble with cold like this is kids are catching pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses…dying from lack of medical treatment, oxygen, vaccines, warm clothes. My plan is to travel to the hospital and give whatever I can gather together from my neighbors and room mates that they no longer use. I am scared to arrive in a new place with no place to go with no real plan, as I am always scared to start something new. I will only stay the weekend, but I hope that I will be able to see some of what it´s really like there…

A briefing of last weekend…another in Coporaque. This time I was accompanied by a recent graduate of psychology, Renato. The first day, we directed the children to write instructions for games they play (other than soccer and volleyball). The trouble with writing with these kids is that half of them are really little, some don´t know how to write, and the few that do cannot necessarily be relied on. From what I can tell, these kids really lack a sense of creativity. It´s very hard to see a community full of children, and the majority of them either aren´t acquinted with INTIWAWA, or don´t have the time to come. Nearly all of the older boys, from age 11 to 13 could not make it one day because they had to collect the town garbage. The enormous truck drives around in the intense sun with 10 adolescent boys in the back…they are having a blast, and it is quite a sight…an older man walks along, grabbing the trash cans and passing them up to the boys to dump. After writing their ´traditional´ games, which the children have no idea what is traditional, what´s not…only, what it is that they do, and whether or not it´s fun. That is why I would prefer to work on cultural exploration with the older kids…but really, we had one older girl who was older than 13…and no boys…they are working on their farms, helping raise their younger siblings, washing clothes. It´s troublesome.

On Sunday, we cooked! This time, maz amorra de maiz…it´s a soup complete with really squishy potatoes that are dried, then soaked like beans, carrots, onions, alpaca meat, some peppery liquid, abas, kind of like huge lima beans, salt and powdered maiz. It was really good! It was cooked on a fire in a ceramic pot. I carried it up hill for quite a ways…it was very heavy, and lacks real handles (they are smaller than tea cup handles). The heat was so intense that we had trouble keeping the kids attention…but they did enjoy helping prepare the ingredients. I was hoping the kids would be excited about this dish as they were about the gelatin cake…but alas, they were not.

Saturday in Coporaque was another day of another Saint. That said...this one included a parade with a ridiculously shrouded box complete with garland of fruit and flowers...sitting a top was Senor Saint. After the parade, they had a mass, and then after that, the drinking began. I have never witnessed so many drunk people in my life. They had a good four hours of drinking before I joined the scene with Renato. The tradition it to go from house to house, eat, drink and be merry. It´s incredible, with what little some people have, they were feeding everyone full meals (two plates). People bring bags to take their left overs because it´s more than enough. They have a special drink called Chicha which is fermented corn juice, more or less. It didn´t have that great of a flavor...but apparently lots of people reeeallly like it. When we first joined the procession, it was just the stragglers in the back. Turned out to be Chocolate, the father who I went fishing with last weekend, and a few of his relatives, and a few other bizarre men. One woman was crying, falling over herself, and another very leathery man fitted with an enormous cowboy hat was hiding his teary eyes, tucking his chin to his chest...we finally made it to the actual party, the majority of the women are in their traditional beautiful dresses, the men casually dressed, ready to drink and fall down. There is a small brass band with a big bass drum....playing popular songs that are on the radio, not sure how old they are though. Those guys played for two straight days, starting early in the morning, around 8, playing late through the night, and were still playing when I left on Sunday at 2pm. Chicha must be some kind of energy drink...and apparently they make a lot of money. You can´t have a party without a live brass band! After this non sense, we headed back to our house, took a lap, ate half a dinner (tepid fish head flavored soup) and headed down to the river. I missed the hot springs like crazy but it is really quite an effort to get their and back.

Down their in the aguas calientes, the sky with lit up with stars. It was so bright you could see the silouhettes of the tips of the hills and trees. Like searching for figures in the clouds, Antonella and I passed the time making up what we thought the shadows were...animals, cowboys, families, tigers...it was really magical just flopping around in the hot water, pitch black besides the stars. The hour walk back was killer...everything is less defined now that all of the barley and corn have been harvested. It is a good thing I didn´t go down there just with Renato. I am sure we would have gotten lost.

Until next time!

Hecho con Manos

The last two weekends I have spent in Coporaque. I forgot to mention my fun farming experience. We made the slippery trek down to the river after working with the kiddos two Saturday´s ago...the sun was still strong and it felt good to be walking, free of worries. After finally reaching the little plot we were headed for (no one every says how long it will take to get somewhere) we find ourselves first in front of the borrows. They are being prepared to be loaded up with corn stalks and huge sacks filled with dried maize to carry back to the village. The weight is enormous, and takes 2, nearly three people to pick up the bag and heave it on to the back of the donky. None of the three donkeys is excited. After watching them pull the final donkey´s by the ears as hard as humanly possible into submission, loading this one up with less weight because he is in training, we went to the next little plot. There we met our enormous pile of recently cut corn stalks. They are all piled together like a sequoia. The task is to shuck the corn. The corn stalks are about 4 or 5 feet long, and lay in a pile (the system I chose, because you get to sit). You sit on the pile, and pull stalk after stalk out one at a time, find the corn cob, take it in one hand, use the little fat tool sharpened like a pen cil to pierce the top of the leaves, split it in half, rip the leaves off, then throw it in the pile. Most of the corn is semi dry. They harvest the corn much later than we do. What is really cool is that every cob is different. Some are purple, some are purple and white, some are orange, red, yellow or plain old white. My favorites, and of course the rarist, where the red ones. The next day, in the morning, we picked out the still fresh ones and pulled off all the kernels. The kernels were then boiled and we used them to make a delicious salad (nearly the same as a pasta salad, only with corn instead, flavored with cumin and black pepper, yum!)

I can´t remember the last time I was truly so content, sitting out their in the sun, chatting away with new friends, shucking corn. I surrounded by nothing but land, mountains and sky, with the river just a ways away. The only trouble I had was that I was wearing someone else´s shoes, which were entirely too small. Long story short, I brought only street shoes...and thought smaller sneakers would be safer than my clogs. I still can´t say what would have been better. Maybe bare feet.

AFter the long trek back up the mountain, and a long wait for our dinner, I had one of the best sleeps of my life. Nestled up in my sleeping bag, and piled on top of me was 5 or 6 more wool blankets, I didn´t want to leave my little nest the next morning.

My second experience, full of surprises, was fishing with the father and son of the family we stay with. Complete with a huge fishing net, a couple of sacks, and an truck tire inner tube. What the hell are we going to do, I wondered. This was after we walked an hour straight down the side of a mountain to get to the river...a different part of the river than I had been to before. This path is not nearly as...clear. I carefully made my way through many spiny plants...and shortly before arriving at the river, I slipped, fell on my ass, and caught myself on a cactus...just the left hand. OW not again, I thought. I looked, and there were just three or four 1.5 inch spines sticking out of my hand...I quickly ripped them out...whined for a bit...and then carried on. Now, we are at the river. We need to cross, they tell me. I look around, up and down stream...there´s not a really great place to cross rock hopping, I think to myself. Meanwhile, both father and son are rolling their pant legs up. They have sweatpants on, and sandals that stay on well, made of recycled tire rubber. I have my hiking boots on, and jeans. No matter how well prepared I am, I am never fully prepared. I can´t roll my pants like you, it doesn´t work, what can i do? I can´t soak my pants or I will freeze. Right...off with boots...and the pants. Here we go, holding hands with a grown man, father of 4, so I don´t slip on the river rocks...jeans and boots around my neck. I cannot believe my life, sometimes. It was cold, but not freezing...the freezing would come later.

So, we´re on the proper side of the river now...in a canyon. Cool. Ah, and windy. Here are some hot springs...very small. Might come in handy later. By now, its about 3 30pm. They lay out all the stuff we´re to use...including the net that looks like a tangled mess. The top half is connected with little white pieces of styrofoam. The bottom has litte rubber bands to tie to rocks so the net stays upright.

Christian, the son, who is 14, blows the inner tube up while we deal with the net. Then, he ties the two sides of the tube together to make it more oval shaped, puts a tarp on top, brings it to the waters edge, fully clothed, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, belly down on the make shift boat, and Chocolate, the dad´s nickname, as it were, shoves him off into the river. My god, I think, I Hope he knows how to swim. I do not want to go in there after him. The walk home would be horrible. So, little by little, we send off the net...one hour later of swimming and squirming arond in the river...still not sure exactly what he was doing moving up and down the river...one can only assume he was getting the net just right, he swims down stream (paddling with hands and forearms, rather) with the rope of the net in his mouth, makes a big circle, Dad grabs the net, and painfully slow, pulls the net in. During this time, helping, holding the wet rope, wet rocks, etc, my fingers are going numb. I watch him pull in the net, fetch what fish we have trapped (they are all tangled, yet relatively calm), and in the bag they go. 9 the first time. well, I think, at least I know there are enough fish to feed us all tonight. (4 family members, and me).

Half the reason we are even fishing is beccause Rosio, the mom, is in Lima, working on a artisan vending project...and Chocolate doesn´t know how to cook very well, he says.

So, I tell him I want to go home, because my hands are numb. Just 20 minutes...half hour more, he says. I know I can´t leave...I don´t know the way, and it´s getting dark. Dammit. Warm your hands in the hot spring, he says. Good idea. I do so, and a half an hour later, my hands are finally getting their feeling back...but they are still multi colored.

I go back during the second, faster round of netting the fish…4 more. Sweet…I have to say it was really exciting to see him pull the net in, little by little, to make sure they don´t escape. And just barely befote he pulls them to the beach, you can see their shiny silver skin. Trucha…Trout. They are spotted trout.

Quickly we gather our things…and set off, straight up the mountain. I asked if we were going to take the same route, because I know how hard it was comino down…literally sitting on your butt to asend various drop offs. He considered an alternate route, and decided it wasn´t worth the risk…there are bad dogs, he says. They are big, and bad. Oh Lord…I don´t know which is worse…the route we took, or the dogs. I had no choice. We took the same route back. It was really dark, but it was a full moon. I actually had to shield my eyes at times from the blinding Light. Despite being terrified I was going to grab on to a cactus, the walk home was incredibly beautiful. I will never forget it.

Devil´s Seat

This past weekend with the children of Coporaque, we prepared food together. It´s always a treat, of many of you know, to watch 20 children with knives, fruits or vegetables prepare what you are about to eat. He´s eating, her finger is bleeding, and this one is waving a knife around. Oddly enough, I ask far fewer questions here than I do at home. Often, it´s because I am too tired to care enough to think of how to say it in Spanish, or, more often, there really is no answer to be found, so why bother? I am learning a new kind of patience. Hours and days pass without realizing it. An hour bus ride half asleep, sweating, with my ass half asleep seems normal, though still a tad uncomfortable. Waiting at the dentist for 3 and a half hours with the kids also seems trivial as time passes. I did escape the dentist for a little while to write this and check my email.

Back to last weekend...it has to be one of the best weekends of my life. We pulled off both days of working with the kids with out to many problems, none of which were serious. After working on Saturday, I played with our host family´s kids. We all piled into my and my room mate´s bedroom, starving, freezing, but content. The quick dinner we were told to expect came over two hours later...and I ate two full plates of rice, salad and chicken and two mugs of tea. Wow. After a meal like that you can do nothing more than sleep. We all crawled into our cold beds, and I slept soundly for what felt like a century. After working with the kids on Sunday, we departed Coporaque for Chivay to send off our friend in the bus...we had decided to wait for the 1 am bus so we could go to the hot springs. This time, the hot springs were more of a public pool situation, and not in the river like the one´s in Coporaque. The benefit to these is that the walk there isn´t nearly as treacherous (but perhaps more beautiful and longer). We walked there as the sun was setting, along Colca River, watching the light change the forms of the massive rocky plateaus and mountains. After two hours of prune-ating in the hot water (which was deep enough to swim around and play in!!!!) we were rushed out as the last taxi was about to depart (we were planning on walking back, and didn´t get what the rush was...then i realized, it´s the last taxi for the workers too...oops). We walked back, the moon half full, lighting up the road, making crazy shadows. Earlier, I was told about the Devil´s Seat (in the light) centered in a big rock slab, where a cross now sits, and when we passed it on the way back, I admit I was a little freaked out. Later, we decided to take a rest on the side of the road and stare up at the stars. You can see the milky way...Via Lactia...so clearly. As I am enjoying the view, I hear a rustling in the bush right next to me, and look over...I see a small black form...oh god, I think, an animal! I picture it getting freaked out, jumping on me, screaming, and me losing my mind. I froze...said to Leonel, what is that!!?? I cautiously took the flashlight, and shone it on the mystery object...a black plastic bag rustling in the wind. I hate that I am so freaked out about potential animals now after that damn dog in San Isidro. I think what I need is another attack, only this time, I win, and I scare the thing away. Merely to regain my confidence.

This weekend, I will be returning to Coporaque, but solo. We will have an extreme drought of volunteers, and we have to change things around. Our volunteer who has been switching every other weekend in our two sites (like me, but opposites places) cannot do it on Saturday´s because he has to take classes. Crap, one Peruano down. Anyway, I am familiar with Coporaque, so it won´t be too much of a stress...and I won´t have Leonel to tell me, Amanda, tell the kids a story. Sing them a song. People, I need time to prepare. Give me a minute. I am good, but not that good.

i miss you

extrañar

1. to surprise (sorprender)

• me extraña (que digas esto) -> I'm surprised (that you should say that)


• no me extraña nada que no haya venido -> I'm not in the least surprised he hasn't come

2. to miss (echar de menos)

• extraña mucho a sus amigos -> she misses her friends a lot

3. to find strange, not to be used to (encontrar extraño)

· he dormido mal porque extraño la cama -> I slept badly because I'm not used to the bed

4. to banish (desterrar)

Isn´t it interesting how vast the differences there are in definitions of the same word. Surprise. Yearning. Unaccustomed. Hm.

Every day I feel a little more anxiety towards leaving Peru because with each passing day, I learn more about San Isidro, about the children, about their families. Faces and names are becoming friends and family. It’s a real community with normal community problems…grudges, lies, suspicions, nut cases, and biting dogs (more later) just like any other. It’s nice to be a part of it. Being so young, it’s difficult to compare it to another time in my life, when I was part of community, because for the past 5 or so years, my community has changed by semester and with the seasons. Now, as an adult, I am working with parents to organize various activities. It´s with their permission and their help that we can function in San Isidro. The children have so much more responsibility than I think we give our children at home. They are far more independent in many ways, and to remember a simple dentist appointment is an enormous task for anyone under 12, but many of them pull it off.

One of my main concerns here is- are the children going to their appointments at the right time, the right place, with the right person? Most of the time, the answer seems to be no. My thought process- Someone´s missing. Someone´s incredibly late. Someone forgot. Dammit. I forgot my jacket, and now I am going to freeze. I am starving, again. Do I have enough change to get home and buy something to eat? Is there enough time to go home, relax, do my laundry, sleep, hang out with friends, go out, call home, write emails, organize appointments, pick up the bread, and the yogurt, and make it on time to the dentist? Somehow, that answer has been yes. Minus the sleep. I am forever tired, and falling asleep on the bus. It´s a terrible place to try to sleep. I am always at the point of closing my eyes, wow this is so nice…and asleep for 5 seconds before my chin reaches my chest and I am jolted awake by my own body torturing me. One of these days, I will fall asleep, and I will miss my stop. I did it more than once in San Jose on the train. It´s much more comfortable to sleep on a train than a bus, I have to admit.

Speaking of the lack of sleep, I will depart for Coporaque once again at 3 30am…the four hour drive will get us there just in time to freeze our asses off in the rising sun, sit for another 45 minutes in a combi (plus the time waiting for the combi to depart, full, unless you want to pay the extra 2 dollars) and then when we arrive in Coporaque, eat some bread and butter, and off to rally children. The good news is, lunch will be delicious, and we end around 1. After, there is time to relax, and we generally go to sleep around 6 to make up for lost time, plus there is nothing to do in Coporaque at night. This weekend, we might go to Chivay, where we catch the combi to go to Coporaque, which is where the bus station is, and lots of shops, restaurants and a few bars. If that´s the case. I will be ridiculously tired. I can sleep when I am dead, right?

So, back to the biting dog, which I am sure you are curious. As always, I was waiting for two kids at the regular meeting spot, when I became a little impatient and decided to go see where the kids were and if they had left their school or not. So, I take off down a semi-populated dirt road towards the school, right next to the prison. What a nice scene. Anyway, I spoke with a few adults and children about when the kids get out of school, and did they know so and so, and did they know where they were. Without finding the kids, I returned back to the meeting spot, along the same, now deserted road in the middle of the bright, hot dry day. This time, accompanied first only by a truly disturbed man wearing two pairs of pants, the second layer of which was open completely, as he mumbled and stumbled to himself. Odd, I thought. I continue on, and then my new favorite friend, a standard San Isidro dog, starts barking at me and running towards me…I have had very good luck in general with the dogs, read, none of them have attacked me…most of them are nice, or only bark and don´t chase, or are asleep or dead, the later two of which are preferential, honestly. Not this time. I was a bit worried, since the road was completely deserted, but I stayed as calm as I could (truly, they can smell fear) and talked calmly to it (in Spanish, to be sure he understood) and walked away slowly and meekly. It didn´t work, he continued to bark, take a few steps toward, than back, over and over, until I really did get scared, and he ran up to me, and bit me in the side of my thigh. Well, he made his point. I won´t ever go back on that road. I was too afraid to even pick up a rock to scare him off. He was close enough more than once for me to kick him, but I was terrified it would make him angry and then he would tear my leg off, which is really want I was trying to avoid. No, I don´t have rabies, he thankfully did not break the skin. But, he did break my faith in those stupid dogs. I really hate them even more now. I know it’s not their fault they keep having millions of babies every few months, and that they are all starving and stealing food from children’s hands if they can…but really, we have to have exceed some capacity. But who is going to fix the dogs? And feed and care for the ones that are injured? Nobody has the money for that.

Nuestra cancion

This is likely the strongest emotional attachment I have ever had to a song. I hope it finds a place in your soul too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbKDUPh-IFI

INTIWAWA:Ninos del Sol:Children of the Sun

INTIWAWA has a very special place in my heart, and I have only been here for two months. As you know, working with any group of children will change you. I am learning how necessary it is sometimes to step aside from your own desires to make way for the needs of someone else, especially children. We work with over 130 children in three locations. Our everyday site, San Isidro, is where we are most active. We provide breakfast two about 35 children every morning in a kindergarten and primary school. Of all of the children we tested for nutritional deficiencies in San Isidro, every single one of them is clinically considered malnourished. They have high sugar, high protein, high starch diets. Very little vegetables, fruit or dairy are consumed on a daily or weekly basis. We have a very special woman who lives in San Isidro and who has two young boys, 13 and 6 approximately, who volunteers her time on a daily basis, often all of her time. She prepares breakfast and lunch for the children, goes shopping for the weeks amenities in the town center with one of our volunteers, as well as picks up whole wheat bread (an incredibly difficult task in itself to organize!!) and her modest home is essentially of a hub of compassion in San Isidro. She is currently the only parent in San Isidro that has committed more than a few days.

The lunch we provide is what I would call snack, but is actually referred to as lunch, is for about an equal number of students that are in primary and secondary school who choose to come to homework help Monday through Thursday. We work in the community center, which is shared by many other activities, has no running water, a toilet, nor much storage space for our modest library and school supplies. The children work on their home work alone, in partners or groups, or with a volunteer and are rewarded with lunch which includes includes some calcium, and as of just last week, now will include some vegetables. The children are as rambunctious as any other group despite their situation.

The gravest situation of the children of San Isidro is perhaps their home life. 45% of the children interviewed in San Isidro experience domestic abuse-mostly at the hands of an alcoholic father. Currently on hold, we have a group of psychologists who come to homework help to meet in small, private groups with the children to work on boosting self esteem as well as discussing their home life. The psychologists work for free.

In San Isidro, we are planning to construct a home for INTIWAWA. We currently have no united space where we can store all of our belongings for the children and for our projects. We store things in the home of our San Isidro volunteer, some in the community center, and most of it in our apartment, an hour away from the children. We have had a lot of complications with sharing the community center, as there is a lot of suspicion amongst the community as to why we are even in San Isidro. We continue to have meetings, and try our best to keep the communication lines open, but many parents have expressed their dissatisfaction and suspicion. I hope to be a part of a change here in communication lines. We want nothing more than to support their children, but even in our own lives, when we incite help, we often feel others are judging us. The violence in the homes, the poor diets, as well as the 100% of children tested who tested positive for parasites. This are all very intimate subjects.

We also have a large project running for the children of San Isidro to take them to the dentist. Most of the children need to visit at least four times, often much more, for various treatments. Tooth removal and cavity fillings being the most prevalent. We pay for the materials required to work on their teeth. We have yet another heroin, our dentist. She has committed to start and finish the project, alone. An enormous task.

Most of the children have rotting teeth due to the high sugar content of their diet. It could be that a lack of calcium is weakening their teeth as well. We just started to buy water for the children of our homework help project to wash their hands before they eat. There is no running water in homes, and the assumption is that they are still drinking water containing parasites. It has been suggested by the doctors that they are reinfecting themselves because of their dirty fingernails. With the threat of the swine flu tearing through a third world country, we are trying to be more careful. Children without good nutrition have difficult resisting illness that the rest of us could survive, nor can they afford the treatment if they were to become ill.

In addition to these projects solely existing in San Isidro, we have our intercultural project, which spans across our three sites. This involves recognizing the beauty in ones village, the differences that exist, the traditions, histories, songs, food, etc. and sharing them with other children. Once a year, we have a congress for the children. It is a big event, bringing 120 or more children together in one place to share their culture. The three sites that are several hours away from the city are indigenous communities, and there is often racism towards these groups. Part of the idea is to raise consciousness that it is okay to live in an indigenous community, and that is something to take pride in. Little by little, indigenous communities are disappearing. As I look out the window, travelling to three communities, I can see empty villages, homes without roofes, and nothing left but weeds.

I know we are all facing difficult times financially, and I am the last persons to solicit donations from anyone, but my heart has found a home for now, and I would love to see INTIWAWA in your heart as well. If you can find the time, I would ask you to send this to others whom might find our story interesting, and if you can find a little extra money four INTIWAWA, we would be eternally grateful. You are welcome to use the website to donate money. There are no administrative fees in INTIWAWA.

Please feel free to view our website at http://www.intiwawa.com/ in English Spanish and German! The English version has much less information than in Spanish, unfortunately. Please feel free to email me with questions at abarker1006@gmail.com. Thank you for your patience and interest in reading about INTIWAWA.

My Best,

Amanda Barker