Sand, the sea and slums.
Yesterday we visited a potential new project in Pachacutec, Ventanilla, Callao with Ruth and some organisers of the charity /student group Intej, and for about the third or fourth time this year we both got a wave of culture shock, only this was the biggest I have ever felt. Pachacutec is a very very big town within a huge town, Ventanilla, within a city, Callao (itself only a district of the capital, Lima). And it is completely slums.
Imagine a massive beach completely covered with beach huts. Some are nice and painted but every roof is made of corrugated iron and the walls are wood sheets. For every one nice one there are three ramshackle heaps that constitutes some living quarters. The church is the only building above one story, there are no roads between this, albiet organised, beach town, just dusty bits, and no bricks in sight. The huts stretch right back up the dune mountains (which are impressive!), it´s in the thousands. Tanya and I are used to poverty but MOUNTAIN poverty where the population have space and live sparsely, farming to stay alive and eating. Ventanilla has no cars, just mototaxis and micros. The idea of living there was a hugely daunting thought. I spent the whole journey home thinking I just wanted to get back to England as fast as I could, how I had to have creature comforts having been in Lima for a week or two and got used to them again. I hated the sea, the cities, the mountains, the huts - everything about Peru. This felt like another country AGAIN. Another continent. It was a lot to deal with moving from England to Oropesa, Oropesa to Miraflores, but Miraflores to Pachcutec was undoable. I would get ill again, hate the dry heat, ruin my feet/face/clothes, not make any friends, not be able to eat the food, fail at the work... I dunno, anything and everything bad went through my mind. This massive over-reaction was the culture shock.
So the work would be 5 mornings a week going into the houses (huts) and teaching the mothers the importance of cleaning, child care, taking rubbish out - something Tanya and I are extrememly apprehensive about. This is community work is in a community we know nothing about, the women might have 5 children and we are two teenagers that only learnt in the last 5 months how to look after OURSELVES. We can´t go round telling them how to live surely? If I were them I´d think who is this little what's her face who thinks she can tell me how to run my house, so use of tact will be really important...! Argh. We would be working with one or two houses for the whole three months, not a different one every day. It could develop into looking after the 5 or more children for the morning so the mother has time to clean and look after the house. This would be till March and then the nursery opens which sounds big with baby development classes and a soup kitchen-type set up and we´d move to there to work.
In the afternoons then we would basically be running a community centre... Again, hugely daunting. They started off saying they wanted 4 hours of activities every afternoon from Monday till Friday but that would be a huge amount to plan for weeks and weeks on end so we have resolved it, kind of. Tanya and I will do an hour and a half activity each per day. It could be dance, football, "bring homework from school and we´ll help you", English, arts, Quechua (?) or all sorts. One of the main problems we will face with this though is RESOURCES. The room we could use has been built by previous volunteers that have come and has nothing inside it but, currently, a little bit of rubbish. There are no tables, chairs, paper, white/black board, anything. Completely from scratch. Also, there is another community-based centre (by the way, centre here just means a big beach-hut room) with a time-table that opens every day and does activities. We don´t want to compete for their kids. Lots of thinking to do.
Tanya and I would be living with host families, potentially different ones, and the houses we saw were nice. Still lacking a loo seat on the loo but perfectly liveable, especially compared to what we are used to with Azul Wasi. One house even had sofas. The most exciting thing is that we will get weekends off. YEAHHH. Completely ours. There is the beach and the sea just at the bottom of the settlement, then a gym, supermarkets and restaurants all in Ventanilla. We have made really good friends with Ruth from the British Chamber while we have been working here and she only lives on the right side of Lima, so about an hour and a half to two hours away by micro. Also being so involved in the community there will always be lots to fill our time (I´m thinking baptisms, weddings, birthdays...).
If this project goes ahead then, which is looking likely, we would begin on February 20th so still have a while in Lima to get our heads round it and to prepare (i.e. seek out resources). The idea of going back into living in poverty after this short stint in the luxurious Miraflores, Lima, did not fill me with joy but I think more because I associate it with being ill (the giardia). Hopefully here that won´t apply and we can enjoy it more. It will be sad not to see Ruth every day. She came with us to see the houses and work and projects and we aren´t really that far.
At the end of the day it´s already February. We start travelling at the beginning of July and have a Shakira concert and VISA run (Ecuador) in the meantime, which only leaves 4 and a half months. For the last three years, although has finished now, volunteers from the USA have come for 10 week bursts to do construction. If they can do it, we can.
- Rach X
Imagine a massive beach completely covered with beach huts. Some are nice and painted but every roof is made of corrugated iron and the walls are wood sheets. For every one nice one there are three ramshackle heaps that constitutes some living quarters. The church is the only building above one story, there are no roads between this, albiet organised, beach town, just dusty bits, and no bricks in sight. The huts stretch right back up the dune mountains (which are impressive!), it´s in the thousands. Tanya and I are used to poverty but MOUNTAIN poverty where the population have space and live sparsely, farming to stay alive and eating. Ventanilla has no cars, just mototaxis and micros. The idea of living there was a hugely daunting thought. I spent the whole journey home thinking I just wanted to get back to England as fast as I could, how I had to have creature comforts having been in Lima for a week or two and got used to them again. I hated the sea, the cities, the mountains, the huts - everything about Peru. This felt like another country AGAIN. Another continent. It was a lot to deal with moving from England to Oropesa, Oropesa to Miraflores, but Miraflores to Pachcutec was undoable. I would get ill again, hate the dry heat, ruin my feet/face/clothes, not make any friends, not be able to eat the food, fail at the work... I dunno, anything and everything bad went through my mind. This massive over-reaction was the culture shock.
So the work would be 5 mornings a week going into the houses (huts) and teaching the mothers the importance of cleaning, child care, taking rubbish out - something Tanya and I are extrememly apprehensive about. This is community work is in a community we know nothing about, the women might have 5 children and we are two teenagers that only learnt in the last 5 months how to look after OURSELVES. We can´t go round telling them how to live surely? If I were them I´d think who is this little what's her face who thinks she can tell me how to run my house, so use of tact will be really important...! Argh. We would be working with one or two houses for the whole three months, not a different one every day. It could develop into looking after the 5 or more children for the morning so the mother has time to clean and look after the house. This would be till March and then the nursery opens which sounds big with baby development classes and a soup kitchen-type set up and we´d move to there to work.
In the afternoons then we would basically be running a community centre... Again, hugely daunting. They started off saying they wanted 4 hours of activities every afternoon from Monday till Friday but that would be a huge amount to plan for weeks and weeks on end so we have resolved it, kind of. Tanya and I will do an hour and a half activity each per day. It could be dance, football, "bring homework from school and we´ll help you", English, arts, Quechua (?) or all sorts. One of the main problems we will face with this though is RESOURCES. The room we could use has been built by previous volunteers that have come and has nothing inside it but, currently, a little bit of rubbish. There are no tables, chairs, paper, white/black board, anything. Completely from scratch. Also, there is another community-based centre (by the way, centre here just means a big beach-hut room) with a time-table that opens every day and does activities. We don´t want to compete for their kids. Lots of thinking to do.
Tanya and I would be living with host families, potentially different ones, and the houses we saw were nice. Still lacking a loo seat on the loo but perfectly liveable, especially compared to what we are used to with Azul Wasi. One house even had sofas. The most exciting thing is that we will get weekends off. YEAHHH. Completely ours. There is the beach and the sea just at the bottom of the settlement, then a gym, supermarkets and restaurants all in Ventanilla. We have made really good friends with Ruth from the British Chamber while we have been working here and she only lives on the right side of Lima, so about an hour and a half to two hours away by micro. Also being so involved in the community there will always be lots to fill our time (I´m thinking baptisms, weddings, birthdays...).
If this project goes ahead then, which is looking likely, we would begin on February 20th so still have a while in Lima to get our heads round it and to prepare (i.e. seek out resources). The idea of going back into living in poverty after this short stint in the luxurious Miraflores, Lima, did not fill me with joy but I think more because I associate it with being ill (the giardia). Hopefully here that won´t apply and we can enjoy it more. It will be sad not to see Ruth every day. She came with us to see the houses and work and projects and we aren´t really that far.
At the end of the day it´s already February. We start travelling at the beginning of July and have a Shakira concert and VISA run (Ecuador) in the meantime, which only leaves 4 and a half months. For the last three years, although has finished now, volunteers from the USA have come for 10 week bursts to do construction. If they can do it, we can.
- Rach X
posted by Rachel at
07:50
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