¡Vaya con Dios, amigos!

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We were blessed with warm sun during our three days at the beach and enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with each another, sharing stories about new friends and host families, service work, and other adventures. We also took some time to consider the fast-approaching return to the United States—both the excitement of homecoming, and the phenomenon of reverse culture shock.

We also spent a day hearing about the SSTers final projects, which covered a wide range of issues:

• The effects of the 1970 Ancash earthquake
• Exploring the myth of El Dorado
• Motherhood in a machista culture
• Past and present inhabitants of Huacarpay
• Quechua: The history, development, and etymology of an Andean language
• Causes of poverty in Huaraz and the effect of comedors
• Reforestation in Peru
• Organic crop and food production
• Health in the Yanesha community of Azulis
• Music education in Peru
• Yanesha: An illiterate’s guide

We returned to Lima to spend a few last hours in the city before leaving for the airport.

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helping out at the free clinic

Kim, Erin, and Mike have been in the Cusco region for their service. They got to know the area (and even their host families) back in September, when the whole SST group visited Machu Picchu. All three were happy to return to this beautiful part of Peru and have the opportunity to go deeper into the community and culture there.

Erin and Kim live just south of Cusco, in the district of San Jerónimo, and Mike a bit further, in Huacarpay (“walker-pie”). Erin has been working at Promesa, a bilingual school run by the Mennonite Church in Peru, where she has been teaching English and helping the students and the regular teachers however she can. The day before we visited her at home, Erin became a “host aunt”—her pregnant host sister had a baby boy. Understandably, nearly all of the family was at the hospital meeting the new niño, so we don’t have a complete family photo from our visit.

Kim and Mike have also helped out at Promesa, but Kim has spent more time working at La Fuente, a local health care organization. The week we visited, all three SSTers were helping out with a free clinic being offered by volunteer doctors, nurses, and other health professionals (mainly from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania).

Mike has also helped with some rebuilding projects following the destruction caused by heavy rains last January and February.

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on the bridge to Azulis

It’s a rustic six weeks of service for SSTers Nate and Serena, who are living about as far off the grid (no phone, no Internet, no electricity, no road access) as they can in Azulis, a community of about 30 Yanesha families in the department of Pasco. Azulis is about a 2-hour drive from Villa Rica, the nearest town, and then another 50 minutes of walking through the jungle. Nate and Serena packed in their mosquito nets, knee-high rubber boots, and can-do attitude for their stay in this rainforest community.

Serena has been working with the Instituto Etnobotanico Yanesha, where she has been helping to identify medicinal plants, protect forest resources, and promote sustainable development. She works at her family’s chakra (family garden) in the foothills a half mile from her house. In her spare time she has been making straw escobas (brooms) with her host mother, Dominga.

Nate has been working at the community school, where he has been teaching English to students between the ages of 7 and 11. He’s also learning some Yanesha, the indiginous language, and planning to do his final project on the relationship between the Yanesha and Spanish languages. In his leisure time, Nate has enjoyed hiking in the jungle and fishing in the nearby river (at last report he had caught seven fish).

Not only is the river a major source of food for Azulis residents, it’s also where community members, including Nate and Serena, wash their laundry.

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La Merced (pop. approx. 50,000) is the provincial capital of the Chanchamayo region, which is blessed with warm weather, waterfalls, and superb coffee and fruit production (think bananas, pineapple, citrus fruits, and avocados). Two of our SSTers, Sara and Caleb, are experiencing that agricultural sector firsthand for six weeks.

Sara is at Chanchamayo Highland Coffee, an organization that works with local farmers to produce and sell fair-trade, organic coffee, fruits, nuts, juices, and other foods. Caleb is working at a family farm outside of La Merced, where he is learning how to grow coffee and helping to plant native trees as part of a reforestation project.

In the nearby town of San Ramon, Hannah is working at INABIF (Programa Integral Nacional para el Bienestar Familiar, or the National Comprehensive Program for the Wellbeing of Families), a state-sponsored center where she assists preschoolers in their classroom and during mealtime, as well as helping older children with their homework.

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At the comedor

Our travel schedule has kept us from posting lately, so apologies for the delayed update. Kevin, Heather, and sus hijos visited Huaraz at the end of October to check in with Lauren, Derek, and Paul, who are doing service in this mountain community.

Huaraz (pop. 120,000) is about 260 miles from Lima and is the capital of the state of Ancash. The city itself is more than 10,000 feet above sea level, and the surrounding mountains rise far higher, making for spectacular scenery. (Peru’s highest peak, the nearby Huascarán, is over 22,000 feet—nearly 2,000 feet above North America’s highest, Alaska’s Denali). Today the area around Huaraz is known for outdoorsy activities like mountain biking and climbing, but perhaps it’s better known for the 7.8 earthquake that decimated the city in 1970.

Derek is working with World Vision International, where he is assisting the staff at their office in the nearby town of Tarica and venturing out to village schools to help present workshops to teachers and students on physical, social, and mental health.

Lauren is at Asociacion Alli Willaqui (AWI/the Good News Association) where she is, among other things, putting her filmmaking skills to use. The day after we visited she was directing a video (in Quechua!)  that was scheduled to appear on AWI’s weekend TV program.

Paul is working in a church-run comedor that helps address the problem of child malnutrition by providing lunch to dozens of low-income kids six days a week. He is also working one-on-one several days a week with a special-needs student, helping him learn colors, numbers, and letters.

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Contigo Peru

The SSTers’ farewell to Lima was, as several commented, “sappy”—a mix of sad and happy. Sad to say goodbye to our gracious host families here, our Goshen friends, an exciting city, and the first half of our semester in Peru–but happy to go explore new places, meet new people, and find out what the “service” part of the term has in store.

We celebrated our host families, language instructors, and several others at our going-away party, the despedida. Each student demonstrated exceptional skill at public speaking in Spanish with a short tribute to his or her host family, and the SSTers (who early on were convinced this group was “not really musical”) treated everyone to some excellent music, including a cajon recital by Paul, Derek, Caleb, Mike, and their maestro, Camilo; a trumpet solo by Derek; an a cappella duet by Serena and Erin; an original song written by Nate in honor of his Lima neighborhood and performed by Nate, Mike, Derek, and Caleb. The entire group performed “As I went down to the river” and “Contigo Peru”—making the case that they are indeed “really musical.”

We presented our host families with friendship bracelets made by Kim and Serena, took lots of photos of our Lima family and friends, and finished off the evening with some delicious desserts created by Serena, Sara, Hannah, and Lauren.

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Our hosts for the night were our friend Alicia and her family, who directed us right away to a dusty soccer field around the corner from their house. SSTers joined in the game or spectated on the sidelines. Afterwards we attended a birthday party for Alicia’s nephew, who was celebrating his third birthday.

We spent the next day in two of the district’s biohuertos, or community gardens. We first visited Niño Jesús, a garden started almost three years ago and tended by local families. Gregoria, the program’s coordinator, told us how the biohuerto project improves food security and nutrition among local children and older adults. She showed us how the gardeners developed a drip system for irrigation and talked about how their round-the-clock schedule helps protect the garden from would-be vegetable poachers. The project has had help from the local power company—it donated the land underneath electrical towers for the gardens—as well as the local community and an international NGO. The area gets just 25 mm of rain a year and has extremely sandy soil, but somehow the gardeners manage to produce beautiful lettuce, sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, onion, squash, and tomatoes (among others!)

The second garden, Biohuerto Sacsayhuaman, was in expansion mode when we visited. We spent the morning helping to prepare a new plot for planting—which meant sifting through sandy topsoil to remove rocks and garbage. As we worked, several things became clear: no one would be picking up this garbage to take to a landfill; other trash heaps near the garden attracted a steady stream of people, who came by to see if they contained anything usable; and the need for produce from this garden was very, very acute. While the garden provides food for local families, it gave us food for thought.

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The stories behind that spectacular growth are sometimes tragic: earthquakes and floods that decimated communities drove people into Lima, as did the terrorism perpetrated by the Shining Path and other radical groups in smaller cities and villages in the 1980s and ‘90s. But many migration stories are hopeful: People move from the countryside to Lima in pursuit of education, employment, and a better life.

Unfortunately, that pursuit is typically difficult and dangerous. One of the main challenges is a lack of affordable housing. In the 1970s, the shantytowns where many migrants made their homes began to be called pueblos jóvenes (young towns). While immigration has slowed in the last decade, the population is still increasing, and many migrants now raise their families in the same pueblo jóven where they originally settled.

Gustavo Riofrío’s “The Case of Lima, Peru” provides a succinct description of these low-income settlements and explains that Lima’s population growth has been concentrated in these zones for the past 50-plus years: “The barriadas [shantytowns] housed 10 percent of the population of Lima in 1955, 25 percent in 1970, and probably house 35 percent of the population today.”

Our SST group recently became acquainted with two of these settlements in the southern part of Lima: Villa El Salvador and Villa Maria del Triunfo. In Villa Salvador, we visited Chavin de Huantar, a very young pueblo jóven, where we met Corpusa, a mother of three who moved from her village in Peru’s highlands when she was a teenager. She welcomed us into her home and told us about her neighborhood.

Ten years ago, Corpusa was one of 2,000 people who “invaded” an empty, privately owned lot—not an uncommon strategy for those in need of housing–that was slated to become a grocery store. Little by little, after many struggles with police, the community began to take shape. The settlement still lacks water and electrical service (although illegal wires provide energy to many of the homes) and stray dogs roam the dirt roads.

Riofrío’s report provides big-picture statistics on southern Lima that echo Corpusa’s story: “Approximately 33,250 plots built up between 1992 and 2001, in very steep areas, with great problems for construction. About 60 percent of these already have property titles. However, the percentage of plots with potable water is less than 5 percent.”

Corpusa and her neighbors—who are fortunate to be on relatively flat ground–wait for trucks to deliver water to the large barrels outside each home. At a cost of 1.5-2 soles per barrel (between 50-75 cents) the water they buy is typically more expensive than what’s available to Limeños with regular water service. For $54 we were able to hire two water trucks to come with us, and the SSTers spent the morning refilling many empty barrels (and getting pretty wet in the process).

We’ll share about our experience in Villa Maria in the next post.

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We recently were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at (and taste of) two of the county’s most distinctive dishes: ceviche and panchamanca.

Ceviche is fish that’s been “cooked” in lime juice rather than with heat and seasoned with ají (Peruvian hot peppers), onion, and cilantro. Our guest chef, Glicerio, showed us how to cut the fish, how long to mix it with lime juice (1 minute for rare; 5 minutes for well done), and how to properly garnish it with sweet potatoes, lettuce, and corn. Then the SSTers stepped up to the cutting board to prepare lunch for themselves. The results were gobbled down with gusto, and followed up with a tasty “refresco” of homemade maracuya (passionfruit) juice.

While ceviche is part of the coastal cuisine, pachamanca come from the highlands. The dish of meat and vegetables is cooked underground with heated rocks. Our pachamanca team was headed by Alicia Taipe Tello, who was assisted by her husband, Oswaldo, daughter Sara, and granddaughter Natalie. They prepared a feast of chicken, pork, potatoes, sweet potatoes, lima beans, and sweet corn tamales. We watched as they dug a pit, built a fire, heated rocks, then arranged the food on top. The “oven” was insulated with herbs, corn husks, a tarp, and finally, completely covered in dirt. After an hour, they unearthed a surprisingly tender and well seasoned lunch, and the group spent most of mealtime plotting and planning to recreate their pachamanca experience once they return to Goshen.

Peruvian ceviche
1 serving

• use either swordfish or halibut, not previously frozen, if possible
• cut about ¼ lb. of fish into small, 1/2” piece cubes
• place cut-up fish into a small bowl and sprinkle with a pinch of  salt, white pepper, and a small handful cilantro
• blend small amount of hot pepper (ají) and add to fish mixture (more for spicier ceviche).
• squeeze 4 (or more) key limes over fish mixture
• add a few tablespoons of water
• mix well; continue mixing for several minutes (5 minutes is well done).

Garnish with:

• thinly cut ¼ of medium red onion, rinsed several times in water

Presentation:

• on a small plate, mound  “cooked” fish on lettuce leaf  in center
• add strips of onion on top/to side
• add two slices of boiled sweet potato
• add 1/4 cup corn kernels (lightly boiled)
• add 1 strip hot pepper

Enjoy!

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