¿Iman sutiki?

Azul Wasi is the blue building! We are in a field walking back from the football match...

23.10.2010

Hi everyone, England and beyond, missing you all so, so much, and especially English food! However, this week arrived for me 5 parcels (on the same day! It felt like Christmas) along with three new teeny kittens (almost completely white. The boys have named one so far, Nevado which means snowy) and twenty ducklings, who are hilarious, jumping and splashing around and live in the old guinea pig hut.


I will pull out some memories from the past three weeks; sorry it has been a while since posts, I have not really got the hang of this blogging business yet. I put off writing as the post would have been rather pessimistic but I am much happier now so let’s give it a go.


A few weeks ago I was diagnosed after some lovely lab tests with severe stage Giardia, a parasite that lives in your small intestine and is really quite common for travelers in Peru, only most do not have it for six weeks before going to the clinic... Tanya and I trundled in after a nights of throwing up, stomach pain, headaches, tiredness and lack of appetite feeling a bit guilty for being there, only to find we did have a reason to be! We were given some #name of pill# and hopped back to Azul Wasi. Unfortunately after a few days (during which we had the amazing T’anta Raymi!) mine came back worse than before. It was the worst few days I have experienced in my so far sheltered life, just a real emotional and physical challenge and test of myself and reserve. I rang my parents at one point and they were so supportive, but ultimately I wondered why the hell I was 18 years old, thousands of miles away from home, very thin and very ill with ten months to go. Why hadn’t I waited till after University to take on something this big? I wasn’t ready and wasn’t strong enough. We both lost a lot of weight (over a stone) but this has a happy ending, no fear, together we have pulled through - yesterday I ate a magnificent tuna and tomato pasta WITH papas fritas, and today a lot of chicken and more chips and a salad at a restaurant in Cusco (more below) so things really are looking up. After the second bout, which involved little sleep and little food – a typical night would be to start by uncontrollably throwing up over the balcony as couldn’t reach the loo in time at 1 am, then get up at 4.30 before all the boys to clear it away in the light only to find the water would still be frozen. Then you get a sudden bout of diarrhea and to top it all off, the loo roll has run out. I literally just cried and begged to be on the plane above me in the morning sunrise sky, anywhere but here. Couple this with being told you aren’t doing enough with the boys, organizing enough activities and being compared to the short term volunteers who come with tones of money to build a dining room, it really wasn’t a happy soul-lifting time - we went back to the Prado Clinica ten days after the first visit and the doctor said my tablets hadn’t been strong enough to wash out the giardia last time, so off I went with six times the dose, diet restrictments and 2 other pills, one pink and one white to take each three times a day. Tanya and I used the kick up the backside with regards to the boys as constructive critiscm, and have sincerely taken it on board organizing English lessons for the afternoons, twister, Uno, films, and have started a (big) garden of radishes and carrots with the boys – so much so that after nine days 24/7 without a break we were told to slow it down a bit… the balance is difficult!! The English lessons consist of Simon Says, group races to stick names on the board, drawing and lots more, but are sadly yet to begin because the Prophet of the home sets the boys extra lines once they have finished their homework. And not just a few lines, normally six pages of a print book that is impossible to finish so they work from lunch straight till dinner. How can we then impose a lesson, no matter how fun we try and make it to be it is still English, when they have only 2 hours free time till bed. They need to play and watch telly, be free and young, not tied to a table - plenty of time for that later in life. Tanya and I have had some support from Fran from LAFF about this and are going to talk to Alcides about setting a couple of afternoons a week aside from lines for constructive games and the English. Fingers crossed it works and we can get that going.


The pills have worked though! I finished the 6 days a few days ago and really feel back to normal and am beginning to love Peru, and love the boys we work with. The T’anta Raymi festival of Oropesa (self proclaimed bread capital of Peru…) on the 10th of October was amazing, both of us feeling well and happy, and free to take a few hours break from AW, we ate all sorts from alpaca heart kebabs to local Chicharron (pork, mint, raw onion and fried potato varieties), plus we had a Cusqueña cerveza to celebrate the day. The bread was absolutely stunning, everything you could imagine from dolls in robes of bread with edible sparkles to donkey shapes and the large round pan with messages, flower shapes or “Tanta Raymi” printed on. The square is bordered by the mountains on all sides and the heavy Quechuan influence made it feel very Andean and indigenous. There were tourists from Lima and Cusco but we were the only gringas in sight all day. The best part were the dances – Tanya and I sat with the Azul Wasi dogs and a jelly each to watch the beautiful clothes swing round and round, up, over and through the plaza to the live pipe and drum band. There was torta (cake) of which the Peruvians are proud of, the three milk and piña we can recommend  The boys have been many times before but it felt weird not to bring them (due to money).


Another great moment was the trip to the lavandería, which Tanya and I used to wash our big things: my white towel for instance, what on earth was I thinking bringing a WHITE towel to Peru, it was not white anymore, no matter how hard I hand-scrub it so some drastic measure had to be taken. When we went to pick it up we spotted some guinea pigs in the yard. Nelly (the owner) offered if we would like to see them up close, of course!, so we followed her into an outhouse no bigger than your average bathroom. There were more than 300 cuy in there, and when she fed them they went wild! Some were fat, some were babies, some were thin, some were really, really, really fat “mega gordos”, some white, brown, black, a mix. Just so, so many. Apparently restaurant owners from all over the area come and take their pick. If Azul Wasi wanted to start up some more sustainability measures and get going with their guinea pig farming, which Fran has mentioned, we should definitely go speak to Nelly as she knows exactly what she is doing!

Valerio's 9th birthday

Cuy

Cuy

This morning Tanya, Neptali, Carmen Rosa, Anastasia and I all took the bus to San Jeronimo market to buy the weeks supplies. The districts of Cusco are all huge but San Jeronmino is particularly spectacular with its crawling uphill houses and winding streets, busy roads full of cabbages rolling between the cars, fire stations and street sellers, even at just gone 8 in the morning it is brimming. The market itself is huge, far bigger and cheaper than Wanchaq, we didn’t know what we were missing! There were even some medical students dressed up as spiderman doing a demonstration on hand washing. The rows and rows of vegetable and fruit sellers provide highly competitive prices. There is meat, fish, clothes, bean stalls, rope sellers – just everything you could imagine, Tanya and I loved it and are going back on Monday with small cameras to take some sneaky snaps. We will also hopefully get a skirt and apron Peruvian style for helping in AW kitchen, maybe some sock legging things the women wear too, who knows…






After San Jeronimo market (where we met up with Fran) Tanya, Fran and I headed to Plaza Tupac Amaru, a bit further into town to wait for the boys to arrive at 12 having done their weekly clothes wash with Alcides to watch a football match. At 1.30 we got a call to say they had arrived and we headed to the stadium, which had an immense atmosphere. Whenever the other team had the ball our side yelled “Borracho!!!”, there was so much diving and limping and rolling on the floor but it was great fun to watch, especially as the Cusqueñan Cinciano team won 3-0 over the Chiclayans. Woo! The boys were thrilled and in such a good mood afterwards, Alcides took us all to a chicken restaurant called, in English, “The Donkey” which was slightly bizarre but yum! On the bus home the boys played a very loud game of “zapatito!” where you score different points for different coloured Beetle cars in the street, then promptly fell asleep which was really cute. We jumped off before Oropesa, at the puente, and crossed the fields and creeks back to Azul Wasi under the mountains and sunset.

So a typical week day for Tanya and I now involves two mornings at the school helping with English. We stopped the nursery as it was essentially just stressful and not much fun, plus for recovering it is the perfect place to pick up germs. Maybe we will start when things settle down at Azul Wasi but at the moment the school is fun and we feel much more useful there. The nursery involves sharpening a million pencils with a craft knife, which hurts after 3 hours. We get up between 5.30 and 6, occasionally earlier! The earliest has been 4.45, to help the boys with their morning chores: cleaning the loos, litter picking the home (none of the rooms are connected, the outside is the landing and hallways here!), cleaning the pans, washing and scrubbing floors, tending to the animals and so on. Then at 7.30 after some bread and tea it is time for school, or sometimes not (these days we nip to Cusco to take out money, or write the blogs or diary, or do tasks with Neptali and new Edwin who do not go to school. At least once a week we get to the cake shop in Oropesa for a slice or two. Recently we have both had a strange growing interest in the bible. It is so important here, the boys ask questions about it at lunch and I wish I knew more. Hopefully next Sunday we will start church as have been invited by the cake lady, Maritza which shows our level of acquaintance!). Tanya and I come back from school before 11 and start helping with the lunch, which is a sneaky method to try and prevent Giardia re-infection… The boys trickle home and we eat in the comedor between 2 and 2.30, then start the afternoons homework in the green room. Lunch is always a salty potato or rice soup, followed by rice, potatoes of some form or variety, maybe pasta and some meat or fish. Tanya ate some fish eyes the other day… I have limits. Homework time goes so quickly! The boys get lots and work hard, though Ivan especially is soooooo slow because he is so meticulous in his letras. Suddenly it is 7pm and time for dinner, bread and tea. After the boys watch Naruto till “Al Fondo Hay Sitio”, a telenovela here, comes on at 8ish, then bed at 9 for all.


24.10.2010


Today we began by leaving at just gone 7 with Alcides, Bele (his 6 year old daughter), Fran, Tanya and I for Urubamba. The climate there is just few degrees warmer at night, a few degrees cooler by ay but this means fruit trees and guinea pigs grow in abundance there. We went to visit our holidaying guinea pigs who have gone from 6 in number to 9! The babies are three days old and so cute! I don’t feel so bad about eating them though, they’re tasty. They are staying at Washington’s house, a boy who used to be at Azul Wasi until his parents were located. His story is really sad – at 10 he was kidnapped and sold by a neighbour to work in a coffee/gold plantation in the jungle town of Ollaybamba. He ran away and was picked up by the police and taken to Lucre police-run orphanage where he met Alcides. When Azul Wasi began Washi was one of the first boys to come. While searching for his birth certificates in national records to obtain an ID card, a legality for Peruvians at the age of 13, they found record of his parents and were able to locate them. At his family home now then, the guineas are thriving and they run a really successful brick-making business, and have pigs. We sat in their adobe kitchen for a breakfast of local variety potatoes and cheese, which was so yum! They grew the potatoes themselves, and the cheese we bought from Urubamba’s bustling market beforehand, though had a goose-chase to find the store holder before just finding another store, obtaining grenadines (like passion fruits) in the middle. There were three tiny kittens of the strangest colours: beige, grey and cream. It was a great day and we were back before 11 to play some intense Uno and have lunch with the boys.


I will write up more adventures soon but essentially I am alive and (now) happy, and hope you are all too!


- Rach xxxx


p.s. If anybody fancied sending me a Cuppa Soup it would be appreciated SO unbelievably much 