Program Visits – Day 1

Sarah’s note: The specific descriptions of World Neighbors programs were culled from handout information that Chris gave us as well as from interview questions that I had posed to Julio and whose answers were translated by Chris.

Today is our first day of visiting some of the programs that World Neighbors has in this area. We are going into the Cocharcas district. We woke up early, had breakfast and started off in our van.

There is a fair amount of traveling to do to get to the programs and once again, we found ourselves relying on our skilled driver Uri, as he negotiated the narrow, dusty winding roads we needed to take to get to our destination. One false move and over a one thousand foot cliff we would go. No guard rails out here! As if to underscore this point, as we approached our first village, seen from above, a passing truck stopped us and warned us that we would not be able to get through because up ahead a truck has blown a tire and was broken down in the middle of the road. Sure enough, as we turned a corner, there it was. A number of people were trying to tip it over into a ditch on the hill side on the right so that it wouldn’t be an obstacle to any other vehicles trying to get in or out of the village.

Uri stopped and we all got out and Chris, Julio and David joined the men attempting to tip the truck. I documented the event. After several futile minutes of this, they gave up and instead, decided that there was enough room for our van to squeeze by (on the cliff side, mind you!).

Uri told us to get out of the van and walk past the truck. He didn’t have to tell us – I most certainly would have done so anyway. Very slowly, he inched his way past the truck coming very close to the cliff (just the other side of the scruffy bushes in the photo). But he made it and we were not deterred, we drove on down the mountain to Coay, where we would meet out first promoter.

Promoters are those in a community who were the first to accept the World Neighbors program into their community and they are examples of the successes of the program. In the beginning of the process of setting up the collaboration, World Neighbors tries to identify who the community leaders are and invites them to be the first to try out the program. When others in the community see the successes of the promoters, they want to join in. As the promoters are leaders, they are also good at teaching to others the skills they learn.

The World Neighbors programs in this area of Peru are run in conjunction with the Apurimac Integrated Development Program and it is Julio’s responsibility to negotiate with local governments and oversee the overall running of these programs. We were told that the goal of the program is to develop the capacity of communities to create locally led organizations that will be able to sustainably increase their income and food security in order to improve the overall quality of life. Specifically, a key component to helping families increase their income is locally controlled savings and credit. All loans are approved by the local organization which sets the interest rate and collects the loans. The farmers receive credit at 1 percent interest per month that they pay back in monthly installments over the course of six to 12 months. Once the loans are repaid, this capital is used to make loans to new farmers. This goes on until everyone in the community has a chance to make an investment (via credit) and pay it back. (We later learned that some communities allow the original farmers to take out greater loans and to continue to expand their livelihood as long as they pay back one loan completely before they take out another).

With the poorest, the farmers are given livestock and they pay back the credit by passing along the baby animals to other farmers. The first loans are for animals. Then, by decision of the local group, the credit can be expanded to include seeds, tools, healthcare, education and community priorities. Though World Neighbors also assists in providing various types of trainings and education, the priorities of the savings and credit groups are set by the communities. What is really significant here is that these programs give the poorest communities a chance to build themselves up and out of extreme poverty. These communities would never be eligible for bank loans and, as I mentioned before, they are too remote for NGOs.

We arrived in Coay and met the community leaders (pictured left) who were waiting for us. We were welcomed and each one gave a speech. They all spoke about how grateful they were to have World Neighbors come into their community and they explained how the savings and credit program has worked for them.

The treasurer told us: “I never knew I could do something like be a treasurer and keep the books for a program like this, but World Neighbors taught me how to do this and now I am a treasurer.”

He then showed us his meticulously kept books with each farmer’s name and signature for each paid back installment. They told us that they, the community leaders, decide who is eligible for a loan and who might not be able to pay back a loan before they give one out. I asked them what they do for the people they turn down. There was a bit of hesitation before they answered; “Well, actually we haven’t turned down anyone.” The success of this project was apparent. In one year, they went from having a credit banking of 3864 soles (Peruvian money) to 50,000 soles.

One way a nearby community used their excess money was to sort out a difficult problem: vampire bats were attacking and killing their cattle. They were able to use their money to buy materials to capture the bats and to treat their cattle.

We met promoter Tomasai Yanez (pictured on the left of photo). She proudly showed us her store which she was able to create through this program. She started with animals, but did not know how to raise animals. She received training, and with the money she received from her business with animals, she was able to put up enough money to get a matching loan and buy and stock her store. Her store serves her community and neighboring communities. Tomasai and her husband also have a garden and sell what is extra from the harvest. She said that she and her husband now have enough money to buy their son’s school supplies.

We next visited a pig and chicken farm. The farmers there also grew corn. These farmers told us they first started out with beehives, but sadly, the pesticides their neighbor up the hill was using on his crops killed most of their bees. So they switched to raising pigs and they have a vision for the future to get more pigs to take to market. They have taken training courses from World Neighbors on how to raise pigs, including lessons on pig hygiene, what to feed pigs so they can be healthy. Pigs reproduce quickly, so they can have 3-4 litters per year. They also have loaned one of their healthy male pigs to other farmers for reproduction who paid them with the first born of the litter rather than with money.

Up, Up and Away

Travel day to the highlands! Chris, David and I met Carlos at the Lima airport very early and got ready to take our very small propeller plane to the Andahuaylas Airport in the Department of Apurimac which is in south central Peru. Today’s travels began the program visiting part of our trip but today was primarily a travel day.

We flew to an elevation of about 13,500 ft. All of the programs are in this general area and we will be at this elevation or just a little lower for the duration of the program. We are high up in the Andes Mountains. I was somewhat nervous because I have had problems with altitude before, but I have brought a number of remedies to deal with this. Those who traveled with me on the World Neighbors trip to Ecuador two years ago might remember my hands turning purple - I think everyone on the trip took a photo of that phenomenon!

The plane we took was tiny! I think this is why we were told to only bring a carry on size bag for the trip. This plane was only slightly larger than the bush plane I used to take to get to my Peace Corps post in Africa years ago. On board, we were given a boxed snack and a pair of ear plugs. Chris said we would need the ear plugs. He was right; the propellers were quite noisy. Memories of bush plane flights flooded back as we took off and in a matter of moments I noticed that our pilot (who was sitting about 5 feet away from me) was using his feet and pedals to fly the plane.

The views outside the windows changed from seaside vegetation to arid hills. It is now the dry season (May-August) and we have learned that one of the problems for the farmers we will be visiting is the lack of water and the need for irrigation. Many of them have only been able to grow one crop a year during the rainy season. With irrigation, they could have two crops and this would allow their families to have better nutrition all year as well as provide them with a source of additional income.

We landed at the airport and could immediately feel the altitude: Just a slight sense of a lack of enough oxygen to breathe deeply and difficulty at any type of exertion. Julio and our driver Uri were waiting for us and we started our long drive from Andahuyalas to Chincheros.

Another challenge for you readers: Looking at the photo of the area near the airport – can you guess what the red crop in the photo is? Hint: A staple crop of Peru. If you cannot guess, I will tell you in a later blog posting.

The drive took the rest of the day because the families and the communities we will be visiting live in extremely remote areas of Peru. On the way, we stopped at a town square which had a fountain consisting of statuary of several pumas surrounding the chief of the Chancas. The Chancas were the rival tribe of the Incas and pumas are symbols of strength and power. We also stopped for lunch at a nice outdoor restaurant, Puma de Piedra, and I learned my first Spanish food word in Peru: “trucha” (trout). My second Peruvian culinary name to learn that day was “chicha morada” which is a non-alcoholic dark purple drink made from corn, pineapple and cloves. It was sweet and quite good.

After lunch, we stopped at the beautiful Pachucha Lagoon (pictured right). and then at the nearby Ruins of the Chancas of Sandor. The Chancas were fierce warriors and there were many battles between them and the Incas.

The road soon became a small dirt-gravel road and as we started to climb higher, it also became a series of many switch-backs with sharp turns. We soon began to appreciate Uri’s driving skills as he negotiated these turns. This drive is not for the faint-of-heart: a glance out the window and straight down awarded us with a view of a several thousand feet drop in many places as we were traveling deep within the mountain ranges. Indeed, the view was breath-taking. This part of the drive was about 80 kilometers and took the rest of the day.

We began to really appreciate the magnitude of the work that World Neighbors has been doing in this region since the 1960’s as we could see for ourselves why the remote and arid nature of this area contributed to the extreme poverty of the people who reside here. The Departments of Apurimac (where we are), Ayacucho and Huancavalika are collectively known as the “trapezoid of poverty.”

World Neighbors goes into areas such as this: they identify which areas have the most extreme poverty and need and they go in where the NGOs (Non Government Organizations) won’t even go. As we were to learn later, our visit would be the first that these communities would have ever had from the outside world.

As if the severity of nature weren’t enough, the area we are going deep into is also an area which was heavily infiltrated by the Sendero Luminoso, or “Shining Path.” This was the Maoist guerilla movement who, for over 10 years, terrorized these populations and there were many Sendero cells hidden in these mountains. The increasing conflict between the Sendero and the government military of Peru between the 1980’s to early 90’s forced World Neighbors to leave as the violence increased. It is estimated that three quarters of the indigenous people of this region died as a result of this conflict. World Neighbors returned to Peru in 2007 and our journey is the first since their return.

We finally reached Chinceros in the early evening, and stopped at our small hotel. A quick dinner and off to bed as our schedule of program-visiting is a full one.

Who's Who

Sarah’s note: For those of you who may be checking these blogs posts while we are traveling I am sorry for the silence. Unfortunately, though we thought we would have access to the internet while we were in the field, this did not happen, so I had to wait to post to this blog when we could get to a place with internet access.


Before I continue with a description of our journey, I thought I might introduce the people who will travel with us. You have already met our guide Carlos. And you’ve met me (Sarah). Our little group also consists of my husband, David Bearden, who is currently the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of World Neighbors. David and I have been married for almost 29 years and we have traveled together for even longer than that. We met in the Peace Corps in Zaire, Africa (now the Congo). David retired from a 20 year career with Morgan Stanley and now divides his time between volunteer service, landscape gardening at home and practicing Tai Chi and Chi Gong. David speaks Japanese, French and Spanish and is looking forward to practicing his Spanish on this trip. The Bearden Family has been involved with World Neighbors since its beginning and David’s cousin, Carol Blackwood, served as Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Chris Price is on the staff of World Neighbors and has an impressive background working with non-profit and community based organizations. He has worked in partnership with these organizations as well as public sector agencies in 15 countries. Chris also started off as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Costa Rica. Chris has an M.A. in International Affairs and is fluent in Spanish. In addition to his work with World Neighbors, on this trip he will be our translator. I will be the only non-Spanish speaker.

Chris (pictured left), Carlos, David and I will be flying from Lima to Andahuaylas on a very small propeller plane. Once there, we will be met by Julio Beingolea (pictured right) who is also on the staff of World Neighbors and who has more than 30 years of experience in community and agricultural development. Julio was a professor of agronomy for 15 years and directed the World Neighbors Program in Ecuador where he pioneered the integrated health-agriculture design of rural development programs as a means to alleviate poverty, reduce population growth and protect the environment of rural Ecuador. This development model has been replicated throughout the Ecuadorean highlands as well as with World Neighbors current work in Bolivia and Peru.

We will also meet Angel (pictured right) and Dennis in the field, who work directly with the farmers and the communities. They are both former World Neighbors staff and currently work for Las Chancas, the savings and credit cooperative we will learn more about.

Our driver, and the man who will negotiate the rather treacherous narrow winding roads for us is Uri. Uri is a law student and has his own chauffer business. He drives during school holidays.

David and I will be the only non-World Neighbors staff who will be traveling on this trip. Sadly, Tommy and Nancy Barrow were supposed to join us but had a last minute family emergency. We wish them the very best and we send our thoughts and prayers to their family.

As I write this, I realize that I will be the only woman on this trip!

The Lures of Lima

Today we ventured out into our Lima environs. We awoke to the cacophony of drilling, hammering and jack hammering from the construction project across the street from our hotel, but never mind; it was time for us to get up and they didn’t start working until well after daylight. David and I went downstairs to our hotel’s dining room for the included breakfast which consisted of a variety of cut fruit, ham slices, cheeses and Danish. Wonderful!

We took a walk and completed a few mundane activities such as changing money: we discovered that the official money changers in bright green vests who stand outside the banks and change money on the sidewalk give as good if not better rates than the banks. A few more business activities accomplished and it was definitely time to side at a sidewalk café and have a hot drink. We both chose hot chocolate. One of my ways of testing the quality of a place that serves hot drinks is how good their hot chocolate is: Do they make it properly or is it just chocolate syrup dumped into milk and stirred? (Much the way Mothers have served Nestle’s Quick or some other such instant concoction for years). Well this place gets a big “Yay!” as the chocolate was very good and had that deep rich earth flavor that I have only previously experienced in places that serve Mexican chocolate. (No high fructose corn syrup with chocolate fake flavoring here). If you see a hint of a smile on my face in my introduction photo, it is because that is where I was sitting when David took my picture.

Maybe it was the lure of the fabulous chocolate or maybe we were just a little goofy at the time, but while sitting there, we came up with a challenge for all you gentle readers out there: the challenge is this: Lima Peru: can you think of another capital city + country name in the world that has as few letters (8 total) as this combination? Please feel free to respond to this challenge by commenting to this blog entry…..

Back at our hotel, we met Chris Price (Vice President Field Support for World Neighbors) who went over our itinerary for the next part of our journey. We learned that tomorrow we will be flying to Andahuaylas which will be a rather large jump from sea level up to about 10,000 feet. We’ll be there for several days and this will be our base from which we will do day tours to see the World Neighbors projects in the area. Chris is going to be a wonderful guide to have with us. You will learn more about our itinerary as we live it so watch this space – it promises to be amazing and very educational.

The three of us were met by Carlos Medina of Wari Tours who will be our guide for the day. He has a plan which will introduce us to more of Lima’s Lures. We started off with lunch at the restaurant which has an expansive buffet of both Asian foods and Creole foods. This is also here David had his first Pisco Sour in Peru. Pisco Sour is the country’s national drink dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. It is made with Pisco (grape brandy and grape must), lime juice, sugar syrup and egg white with Angostura bitters added at the end. This is Peru’s national drink and they are very proud of it. In fact there is a bitter argument between Chile and Peru as to who first invented Pisco (the brandy-must combination). Sadly, I am allergic to grapes so no Pisco Sour for me.

After our wonderful meal, Carlos took us to the Franciscan Monastery of San Francisco. This complex comprises a church, a convent, chapels and catacombs. There, we were guided by Victoria, who gave us a very informative tour. Unfortunately, gentle readers, I cannot provide you with photos here as we were not allowed to take any. I can only describe. One of the most striking pieces of information about this complex was that much of it was destroyed by the great earthquake of 1746. We were first shown an intricate wooden lattice ceiling that was an example of the Moorish influence that prevailed at the time. I had not expected to see a Moorish influence in Peru! As we passed under this magnificent ceiling, Victoria told us to watch our heads. Not sure as to why this would be as the ceiling was quite high above us, she then said “sometimes the bats drop guano on people”. It was then that I noticed that there was indeed a little squeeking going on high above us. We left the area with heads down.

From there, Victoria took us to the library which was breathtaking! I say this because what we first saw when we entered the room were two massive illuminated books of music open and displayed before us. I am talking about “illumination” in the medieval sense. My first thought was “How can these ancient books be displayed and open in front of us like this”? I then took in the rest of the room and saw a massive number of what must be ancient books just stacked in shelves like a regular library. We asked Victoria who might ever have access to these books and why they aren’t preserved? She said “visiting scholars” and then some very sad words: “no money”. There is no money to preserve these ancient texts.

We were also shown some of the other highlights of this site: one was a 1656 “Last Supper” painting done by a Flemish artist who was given a Peruvian name and though the painting looked to be very western, the supper foods included Peruvian fruits and Qui (guinea pig). But we were then taken down into the catacombs. It’s hard to even describe this experience. There were thousands of people buried in these catacombs and we saw the bones of many. As Victoria told us, Spanish, Franciscans and indigenous people are all buried there. What was also impressive was the structure of the catacombs. I have to admit that after being told about devastating earthquakes in the history of Lima, I was not exactly comfortable about going down into the catacombs (after all, I am from the other San Francisco that is in an earthquake zone), but then she pointed out the bricks that made up the structure of the catacombs and therefore also held up the church above us and more specifically, she pointed out the very special feature of the mortar between the bricks. This she called “calicanto” and she said it consisted of sand, water, limestone and the special added ingredient: the egg whites from seagull eggs. This, apparently, is what makes the mortar so strong - it has held up against other earthquakes!

So these were some of the highlights of the lures of this site of Lima. There are many more, but you may just have to come and see them for yourselves. Stay tuned for Part 2 of our Lima experience.

Anticipation

Today is May 2, 2010. This weekend in May is celebrated by many cultural traditions around the world acknowledging and honoring the beginning of Spring. In the Celtic tradition, it is Beltane, a celebration of Spring and the greening of the Earth. Elsewhere in the world there are maypole dances and other activities that celebrate the awakening of Earth from the slumber of Winter and a venture into the fertility of Spring.

For me, this evening marks the culmination of preparations for our trip to Peru with World Neighbors. The last few days have been spent in mundane activities such as packing and planning and getting ready for our travels, but once we arrive in Lima, what lies ahead is what I suspect will be life changing for us all.

I have always wanted to visit Peru: the culture has intrigued me and Peru's spirituality has touched my heart through the research and reading I have done in the past. Because of our previous travels, I am not unfamiliar with some of the world's most challenging jungles and remote mountainous areas but I sense that there is something uniquely special about Peru.

So I am simultaneously excited, awestruck, exhilarated and a little anxious that tomorrow morning (very early) David and I will board a plane to Houston and then another one to Lima to begin our trip to a destination I have previously only dreamed about. What will we experience there?

I love World Neighbors. The motto says it all: "Inspiring people, strengthening communities." As a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can relate to an organization that does not just march into a country and begin to tell the indigenous population what to do. For me, it is imperative that such an organization be culturally sensitive towards the countries they are operating in. So, when I learned that World Neighbors has specifically targeted aid to some of the poorest Andean communities in Peru, I wanted to go and see for myself what has been accomplished and what the challenges are. I hope we travelers will be able to provide you readers with an almost real time accounting of what we discover on our journey so that you can experience a little of what we are experiencing.

But back to the beginning of this blog entry: Let me introduce myself. I am Sarah (pictured front right), a nutritionist, nutrition teacher and chef by profession, and I design programs for my clients which incorporate whole foods, herbal medicine and natural remedies into their programs. Some of the natural remedies I have used include foods, teas and herbal remedies from Peru. So on this trip, I am also hoping I might see some of the "tools" in the toolkit of my profession living in their natural state. It would seem that though we may be south of the equator, and therefore not in the throes of Spring as mentioned in the first paragraph, we will nonetheless be immersed in nature in a very profound way. And this makes me smile.

The Power of Peru

For the next two weeks, several World Neighbors supporters and staff will experience a remarkable journey that promises to be life changing and eye opening...visiting firsthand the work of World Neighbors in Peru.

Peru is a nation of dramatic history, indigenous culture and great contrasts – from the lush Amazon region to the breath-taking but often stark Andes.

During this World Neighbors Journey experience, our travelers will visit communities in the Apurímac region of the Andes that suffered dramatically during the “Shining Path” conflict of the 1980s and early 1990s and today is slowly recovering from years of great hardship as indigenous communities work with World Neighbors to forge a more promising future.

This blog will feaure and document our travelers' personal experiences, every step of the way.