After working at the school on painting the new cucina we walked to a neighboring village called Quiahuata. It was the first time we had been to this village, but we knew many kids as they walk to Puma Marca for school. Quiahuata has only 400 residents but they have a new beautiful community center that they just finished building (it looks rather out of place in such a poor community). We were invited to the village to join in an Easter celebration (which meant no one knew what would happen).


Iris (pronounced Eris) is a social worker for Peru’s Challenge and she was there. She is not one to be messed with (she reminds me of Simon Says, only substitute Iris for Simon). One of the first stories we were told after arriving in Cusco was of a landside that blocked her cambi (small bus) while traveling on the road leading to Quihuata. Iris jumped out of the cambi and yelled
S. O. S. at the top of her lungs (which is extremely loud) and several kids immediately came running with shovels to aid her. She is a force in the community.



The women began arriving at the community center, each with a bag of vegetables wrapped in blankets that they carry on their backs. They sat in groups and chatted, and peeled their papas (potatoes), and chatted, and peeled their abas (beans), and chatted, and diced. The children were too idle so Iris sent them to gather eucalyptus leaves for the fire that would heat the enormous caldrons for soup.




The volunteers (consisting of me, the kids and Genny from Canada) were sent inside to eat some choclo (enormous kernels of corn on the cob). It was very satisfying because it was so cold outside and the choclo was fresh and warm. After eating, we were told (by Iris) that we were going to help wash the 12 children that Iris had chosen to play Jesus's disciples. We figured it would be the usual procedure- give the children a little squirt of soap in their palms, hold the towel for them to dry, give them some cream for chapped faces, and voila!, clean, happy children.

As we approached the little seated line-up of children with our wash basin it became clear this was something different. The first kid who was just a little boy of maybe 4 let his rainboots drop to the ground. It was going to be feet. He hid his head in the towel that was draped over his head (disciple style). Sinclaire and I who were the soap dispensers tried to encourage him to hold out his palm an get some soap to wash his feet. He sat there completely paralyzed as his feet barely touched the water. Sinclaire was so brave when she realized that it was up to her or nothing would happen. I elevated the bucket under his tiny, filthy feet and Sinclaire washed them.


I have never washed anyone’s feet before. Today I washed about 28 of the dirtiest feet I have ever seen in my life. Feet covered in ground-in dirt, callouses, warts and cracked skin.


The amazing thing that happened for me was seeing the fear and intimidation on the kids faces turn to pleasure and laughter as their feet were being touched, cleaned, massaged and even tickled. It was such a remarkable connection- I realized these kids have never been touched this way before and I got past my fear. I was really touching these kids, and I felt very humble before them. They have so little and today we gave them a little bit of dignity and pleasure. I looked in their eyes as I touched their feet and they looked back at me and smiled.

Restless Nights

The nights here are anything but quiet. It’s the dogs mostly, but also the car horns that are used to warn or cajole. They usually taper off at about midnight. The dogs however, are vocal all night. For the most part there is noisy harmony, but occasionally it is raucous chaos that shoots adrenaline through my body as I listen for the inevitable high pitched whimper as one or more dogs gets attacked.

The dogs are in fairly good shape as dogs go in developing countries. Most of them have collars which means they are owned, but not fed. There seems to be a genuine love for the dogs, but the love stops at a collar and a place to come home to. They are like wild street kids running in odd packs. Down the street there is a group of little fuzzy dogs that hang with an enormous scruffy dog. Size and type don’t seem to dictate the gangs- it must be smell.

The main street that leads all the way to Cusco is two blocks below us. It is a busy 4-lane road (which translates to an amorphic 6 to 8 land road). There are occasional intersections with red lights to allow cross traffic to enter the busy road. These red lights also mean Go-Dog-Go. And they do. Either the dogs in Peru are born smart or the dumb ones don’t last long. I am constantly cringing as we drive all too rapidly down narrow streets with dogs every 30 or 40 feet. But they seem to dodge our every attempt to eliminate them. I don’t believe the drivers really want to hit the dogs but they certainly can’t be bothered with trying to avoid them.

Amiga, they call out and I remember seeing how they live and I’m heartbroken. They walk to school away from their houses made out of dirt, their days filled with work in the fields. They leave their hard lives and walk to school with their heads up ready to start a new life. They call with all their hearts asking for help. They call to come play, but most of all for friendship. They don’t care if you’re dirty, they don’t care if you’re beautiful, they look straight into your heart and accept you for who you are.

They walk home to maybe their alcoholic mother and sick farther, but still their heads are high. I realize this is a helping hand for them not so much an opportunity for us, and I turn around and run in their direction.

By Sinclaire

Gole! They scream and it starts all over again. Run, trip, goal, win, and lose. I walk to the field and they shout, "Sincliare, come play soccer!" (but in Spanish of course). So I run into the pattern of goals and tripping and cheating.

We really are in Peru! We survived our first two weeks with a few cases of giardia and salmonella but we seem to be on the mend.

The boring background...

We live in a volunteer house in the neighborhood of Larapa which is about 15 minutes by taxi from Cusco. We live with one other volunteer who is a lovely woman from Canada.




We have been extremely busy with our volunteer work with Peru's Challenge and it has been amazing. Peru's Challenge is a non-profit organization that works with local communities on education and improvements. They have been working in the poor, agricultural community of Puma Marca for 5 years and have had a remarkable impact. When they started working with the community, there were only a handful of students attending a very small school. Now there are over 100 lively kids that attend a beautiful community built school. They also started a successful women's handy-craft collective and helped sponsor many children to attend high school in Cusco.

















Five days a week we take a small van up to the school which is about 20 minutes from our house. There are about 100 of the cutest kids you have ever seen that attend the school. Two days a week we go to the school to work in the garden or do construction work- we are building a new room for the school kitchen and a new classroom. The kids get a snack and a hot meal at school, which for some, is all the food they get in the day.
























Three days a week we go to the school to teach art, computers, English, hygiene, and physical education (all in Spanish- which is quite challenging since none of us speak the language!). We are taking Spanish lessons and are learning at a rapid pace, but being proficient at ordering lunch and teaching a class are very different things. We spend a lot of time preparing for these lessons, but no amount of preparation can control what happens when 33 Spanish speaking kids realize that your Spanish is limited to a few sentences written down from spanishdict.com. In a word, chaos. But fun chaos.





Sinclaire and Elena are in charge of hygiene which involves encouraging the kids to wash their hands and face with soap, dry with the towel, put on face cream and get a snack.