The streets of the prosperous, buzzing city of New York, characterised by shining glass pannelled skyscrapers, neon lights, Prada, Gucci, Broadway and Yellow taxis couldnt be more different to the Peruvian village I have been living in the past couple f weeks. The skyscrapers have been replaced by small ing mud huts, Prada and Gucci by local markets selling chillies and chickens (i wasnt so tempted to buy one after i saw the only method the vendor had to keep the many flies of them was a leafy branch which she waved around occasionally..!), Broadway by the one local bar which closes at 9.30pm and yellow taxis by random cows and stray dogs roaming the cobbled streets. This little ´pueblo´ called Marcara is situated in the most beautiful of surroundings. At 2700 meters it lies amongst luscious green hills on which giant cactus plants and other exotic flora phenomena grow, and rising high above these his are the towering snow capped peaks of the Andes of which Huascaran, at well over 6700 meters is the highest. From the top of one of these snowy peaks a huge glacier slides its way down the moutain eventually turning into a river which flows down and through the village. With the sun rising behind these mountains, the view I wake up to every morning is phenomenal.
Getting to this village from the dirty, ugly, machine that is Lima was a story in itself. Having been briefed by my Godfather´s friend Renzo on the many and lucrative theives of Lima, i went to the big bus station and waited for my bus nervously hugging my bag seeing everybody who walked past as a thief or kidnapper. It turned out that the only harrassment i received was from a very misguided peruvian chap who moved his move his seat number on the bus so he could come and sit next to me and make pathetic wooing attempts certain that i would fall madly in love with him, that is until I very pointedly stated that i really was fine travelling by myself and that he could go back to his seat!
The journey to the Huaraz took us through some fantastic landscapes. Starting out from Lima we passed through the most barren and vast of deserts with large sand dunes rising on either side of the road, occasionally passing a small hut made of metal panels outside of which was a sea of bright oranges, red and yellow chillies, plaved out in the sun by this deserts inhabitants to dry. Gradually as we started to climb the landscape evolved into green planes with wild horses galloping accross and high mountains as a background, the road became windier and windier as I started to nervously look down the steep cliff that fell away from our narrow road. Seeing a truck turned upside down at the bottom didnt do too much for the vertigo! Refusing to take a taxi from Huaraz to this village i walked around till I found a Combi, a small minibus headed in this direction and clambered in feeling like a giant in respect to the small peruvian lady sitting beside me. We waited until the bus reached its full capacity of 17 people and set of on our way stopping to cram in other people along the way until we all sat cramped up against one another smiling and giggling..using the small amount of movement I could make with my head i looked around to count a total of 30 people plus my big backpack in th bus!
My reason for coming here was to take part in a project run my the italian organisation called Mato Grosso. I had been told that a group of extremely skilled mountain guides they had been teaching with needed to learn english in order to gain their certificate as a qualified guide and thus be able to work. One of the Lima organisers had therefore asked me to come and teach them english in this designated school. However I arrived in Marcara to find that the school was closed and my prospective pupils where scattered somewhere in the mountains at an altitude of around 5000 meters! However although I havent been teaching some of the experiences Ive had here are of the kind I will hold precious for the rest of my life. Instead of teaching i was told I could work with Rosaura, one of the Peruvian volunteers who´s mission is to go and visit villagers who we have heard are living in extreme poverty or are ill and try to decide whether they´re condition is bad enough to necesitate Mato Grosso´s aid. Given that nearly all the villagers live in severe poverty surviving on 5 to 10 soles (50pence to 1 pound) a day and there is no healthcare system this is no easy task.
Rising at 7am our first stop was to visit an ´abuelita´ (old lady) who we had been told by villagers was unwell. We climbed higher up the mountain until we reached her house, a small mud hut of 2 rooms. I think its difficult to really gain an understanding of what poverty means until you see it. We entered her house to find a small very old lady lying on the mud floor (she didnt have a bed or any other furniture) propped up against the wall with some wooden planks and a dirty series of blankets covering her. She said her entire body ached, Rosaura (who is a nurse) diagnosed extreme arthritis as one of the problems, she suffered from so much malnutrition that her sight had severly deteriorated, with nothing but some blankets to cover her she was very cold and severely dehydrated. Although she had sons and daughters (everyone has at least 6 here) she said they didnt visit and she lived on her own. A neighbour occasionally brought her some food when they had some to spare, every 2 days or so. The only remedy she had to calm the severe headaches and body aches were some leaves taken from a nearby tree and said to have healing powers, she placed these on her cheeks and under the hat on her head. When I asked her how long she´d been living on her own and ill like this she said 2 to 3 months. We washed her spare blankets and clothes in the nearby stream and made her some hot tea and promised to come back with medicines and other help. Next we visited a lady whose house didnt even have electricity or water pipes. She lived with her elderly mother and worked to try and support her mother, herself and her 6 children, one of whom at 15 was already pregnant. She said her husband came and went as he pleased, having nothing to do with the family only visiting for a few nights when he felt like it. She said she was having a problem with her house and showed us one of the 2 rooms, the entire wall had caved in leaving a huge mound of mud in the centre of the room and a large airy gap. She said the whole family slept cramped on the floor in the other room. These are just to cases of the many people we´ve been visiting who need help. What makes the situation even more sad is that these are not rare cases but two of hundreds in this area alone. There is a severe problem of unenployment here, with no industry to speak of people live off the precarious crops they create, many travel to Lima in hope of finding work only to encounter the same problems if not worse. Whereas here people still trade in objects ie. 2 chickens for a large amount of gas, those who have no money to buy things with money in Lima barely stand a chance at survival.
On our rounds I heard that a group of Canadian opthalmologists, dermatologists and dentists had come to the village to give free consultations, glasses and medicines to patients but as most only spoke french or english and little to know spanish they were having some communication problems with the locals. Although my spanish is far from perfect I decided to go down and see if I could act as translator. It turned out that I was of quite some use to them and so i spent the next four days working with them doing my best to understand the needs of the patients to the doctors and visa versa. Though tiring and at times frustrating (we saw and average of 630 patients per day in the optician department alone but there are always more patients than time) it was highly rewarding work. One little who had down syndrome, couldnt see more than 3 feet in front of her until we put glasses on her and she burst out laughing, looking around and gave the doctor and i huge hugs. For many people the ability to see well is essential to their livelyhood, many of the women survive by knitting or sowing clothes which they cant do with bad eyes. Unfortunately the sun especially strong at this altitude and very few people can afford sun glasses so most people had some form of sun damage to their eyes. The long queues to see the specialists was testimony to how important their work was here..the lines went all the way tound the health centre, twice, and many people waited from 10pm the night before, a total of over 18 hours, to see a doctor. Working with this group allowed me to get closer to Peruvian culture and gain a better understanding of the Peruvian people than i could ever get as an independant traveller. Nearly all the female patients were donned in the colourful peruvian traditional dress; large flowing multilayered skirts, blouses covered by a vibrantly coloured jumper, and a large almost cowboy style hat decorated with flowers or embroidered patterns. An almost uniformly worn addition to this outfit is a large multicoloured peice of cloth draped accross their shoulders in such a way that it acts as a rucksack allowing them to carry their possessions, which are at timess intriguing on their back. One day a lady walked in to the clinic donned in this traditional dress and sat down in the patients chair, she had a particularly large lump covered by her colourful cloth and the doctor and i couldnt help but notice a strong, very strange small. Not wishing to be rude the doctor said nothng and carried on with the consultation, gradually the lump started moving and a sheeps head suddenly popped its head out of the cloth and bleated at me. It turned out that this was quite a regular occurance, throughout the course of the day i came accross a number of women who had felt the need to take their agricultural animals with them when visiting the doctor!
Tommorow the doctors leave to fly home and I will continue to work here in Marcara with Mato Grosso for a week or so before spending the rest of my 2 months here doing some independant travel around Peru. With this weeks vibrant introduction to the country I am increasingly excited about what lies ahead.
I want to say a HUGGE GOOD LUCK to all of you currently undergoing exams/revision..sorry if this e-mail doesnt help too much, but dont worry i´ll be slogging away just like you all next year only with all of my years of study ahead of me unlike you all!
Take care and good luck,
love Ruth
P.S. Jamie and Ruth Keenan- thanks for the great e-mails, im sorry i havent got back to replying yet, im such an inexcusably lazy bugger. E-mail is meant to help people communicate faster but with my speed at replying old fashioned letters would probably be the same speed! I will e-mail you both soon. Also I have been thinking of having a bit of a steiner gathering this summer.. what do you guys think? It would be great to catch up with everyone properly after such a ong time.
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