There was joy mixed with sadness — excitement to reunite with family and friends, and the reality of saying goodbye to the people they have lived, worked, studied and played with in Peru.

God bless each of you.  Safe travels!

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• Ají Peppers
• The Day of the Dead
• The Hearing Impaired in Peru
• The Exciting World of Ceramics
• Food and Culture in the Rain Forest
• An Exercise in Dialect
• All Saints Day
• Cuy, What?
• Water, Water, Water
• The Earthquake in Yungay — 1970
• The Ashaninkas

On Sunday we worshipped, discussed each student’s service assignment and relaxed on the beach.  On our last day we talked about re-entry into North American culture.  Afterward we returned to Lima for one last evening before heading home.

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The students are thankful for many things:  new direction in life, a stronger relationship with God, safety, opportunity, Lima, the United States of America, their host families, discovery of self, reordering of priorities and relationships with Peruvian friends.

We celebrated Thanksgiving Peruvian-style with a Pachamanca dinner, an ancient dish prepared in the mountains during harvest time.  Alicia and her family were gracious hosts.  They prepared a meal of turkey (our request), potatoes, yams, broad beans and sweet tamales roasted over a bed of hot stones in the garden beside their home.

Thanks be to God.

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Joshua came to Acopia with the understanding that he would continue the tree-planting project as well as teach environmental education to children in the local primary and secondary schools.  As it turned out, this spring season has been unusually dry — there was no significant rainfall for over a month after Joshua arrived.  Some locals blame climate change.  Others gather frogs to take to the top of the hill so they can call for rain.  In any case, the tree planting has been postponed until wet weather arrives.

In the meantime, Joshua has given talks on water quality and trash cleanup to large groups of children while assembled first thing each morning in the elementary school playground.  Later he visits the secondary school where he speaks to individual classes on the same topics.  And when he is not in school Joshua spends time with his host family — moving animals to pasture, cutting alfalfa for the guinea pigs and playing with his two-year old sister, Maya.

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Ashley is volunteering at a school for special needs children called San Manuelito in the small city of San Ramon.  She assists with a class of 5 and 6-year-old children, several of which are hearing impaired.  She also helps the physical therapist who works with physically-disabled children.

Jana works at a children’s center called INABIF in the same city.  This is a place where children from low-income families come either before or after school to work on their homework, eat one or two meals and play.  Most of their families are at work during the day and many cannot afford to feed them.

Kelly helps out at a clinic in San Ramon.  Patients come here from all over the region for medical attention.  She assists by mixing solutions for IVs, cleaning wounds and other tasks.  She has witnessed several surgeries and is benefiting from the chance to apply what she has learned in the nursing program at Goshen College.

Michael is volunteering in a native tree planting project at a family-owned coffee farm in the mountains high above the city.  He helps to collect seeds, plant them in small bags, stake out the locations for planting, and transplant the seedlings into the ground.  He has also had opportunities to accompany his host uncle and tour guide, Moises, on several tours of the area, accompanying groups of visitors on hikes to waterfalls and other places of interest.

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Marta is volunteering at Vidas Health Clinic and Preschool.  The clinic serves people with limited means who live on the outskirts of the historic city of Ayacucho.  Marta helps out in a variety of ways, registering patients, taking blood pressure, assisting with treatment and providing encouragement.  Several days a week she teaches English to preschool children.  On the weekends she travels with her host mother and father, Raquel and Max, to Quinua, a picturesque town known for its ceramics that is also home to a sister clinic.  On the day we visited, Marta showed us how she helps with the medical testing done to detect blood sugar levels, urinary infections and pregnancy. When she is not working in one of the clinics or at the school, Marta participates in church activities, plants vegetables in the garden and helps gather honey from several hives on the roof of her home.

Caitlin has her hands full, both at school and at home.  She volunteers at William Thomson primary school, teaching both English and physical education in each grade level.  On the day we visited she was busy preparing materials to teach basic English vocabulary to children in the first grade.  The teachers appreciate her assistance in the classroom and the students have learned to respect her abilities on the soccer field.  When she is not at school Caitlin is engaged in the life of her host family.  Her host father and mother, Pastor Dionisio and Elizabeth, have five children and Caitlin is often called upon to take care of the younger girls or hang out with the older boys.  As busy as she is, her experience has been very rewarding and is surely a blessing to her family and the students she interacts with each day.

Si is volunteering at a leadership school founded by his host father, Samuel Alcarraz.  His skills in computer science are the perfect match for this growing organization.  Si spends each morning entering the school’s student data into a database he designed soon after his arrival.  In the afternoons and evenings he assists his supervisor, Samuel, in a variety of capacities, accompanying him at workshops, events and meetings with local officials.  On the day we visited Si showed us the new website he is designing for the organization.  Later, Samuel invited his leadership team to meet us and hear our insights about leadership.  The team ranged in age from 5 to 70-something, reflecting Samuel’s belief that it is never to early, nor too late, to become a leader rooted in Christian values.  The organization’s founder appreciates Si’s ability to live out his values, providing an example to the leadership team.  Samuel has high hopes for developing people’s capacity to lead in his hometown of Ayacucho and Si has offered his talent and time in a selfless way — mornings, afternoons, evenings and weekends — to this worthy task.

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We visited Samuel and Hannah at the World Vision office in Tarica and learned about the project to which they were assigned.  World Vision is an international, non-denominational organization dedicated to children’s health and well-being (www.worldvision.org).  The staff in Huaraz are gearing up for a campaign to bring about awareness of HIV/AIDS and to promote self-esteem among the children living in villages in the “alturas” (heights) above the valley where Tarica sits.  The campaign will shift into high gear in December and Samuel and Hannah have been asked to assist by developing posters and powerpoint presentations that staff will use when they visit the communities.  The students have also had several opportunities to accompany World Vision staff on visits to villages an hour or more drive from their office.

Benjamin is volunteering at AWI, the Quechua acronym for The Good News Association, part of the Summer Institute of Linguistics funded by the Wycliffe Bible Translators group.  The staff at AWI have recently begun broadcasting weekly Quechua language radio and television shows via their website (www.awiperu.org) and Benjamin has been asked to help improve the lighting, sound and other technical aspects of their programs.  Good thing that Benjamin is majoring in broadcasting.  His experience at the Goshen College radio station WGCS — recently awarded the title “number one college radio station in the nation” —  will come in handy over the next few weeks.

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Camilo Ballumbrosio is a well-known musician with afro-peruvian roots and a favorite SST workshop leader.  He described how the slaves brought here from Africa several centuries ago were initially prohibited from drumming and dancing.  The cajon, a rectangular wooden instrument that resembles a box, was adapted from the packing crates common on the plantations and was less conspicuous than a typical drum.  In the 1950s descendents of these slaves began popularizing this percussion instrument, straddling it like a horse and playing it with open hands.  Camilo’s enthusiasm for making music was contagious as he invited small groups of students to give the instrument a try.

In past semesters we have visited the southern and eastern cones, the local names for the recently-constructed settlements that surround the city of Lima.  But, as far as we know, Goshen College students have never ventured into the Northern Cone … until now.  Jherlly Acosta, our service coordinator, arranged a visit for us to a children’s center supported by the Anglican Church in the seventh zone of the district of Comas, about an hour and a half from our program’s headquarters.  The name of the neighborhood, Colli, is derived from a Quechua word meaning, “suffered much, but survived.”

Jherlly’s mother, Edith, directs an educational program at the children’s center that provides activities — lunch, Bible stories, help with homework — to children whose parents are too busy or impoverished to take care of them after school.  Our visit began with a riveting talk by Jherlly’s father, Jerry, about the rise of the Shining Path terrorist movement in his hometown of Tingo Maria, deep in the mountains, in the 1980s.

The talk was followed with a chance for us to assist with several renovation projects, including fixing a roof, repairing a set of tables and painting the meeting hall.  The day ended with the arrival of a group of school children, one last chance for the students to interact with young, eager children before leaving Lima for their six-week service assignments.

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After our return from the Andes, the students enjoyed a series of lectures, workshops and field trips to the outskirts of the city.  Father Eduardo Arens captivated us with his account of how Jesus used humor to engage his listeners and urged us to embrace our  humanity when meeting people of other backgrounds during the rest of our time in Peru.

Lupe Guinand spoke about the environment, showing photos from a recent visit to the Madre de Dios river where unauthorized gold mining is wreaking havoc on the upper reaches of the rainforest.  She described her hope that education, among adults and children alike, can help bring about economic development that is appropriate and sustainable.

Lectures are often followed by workshops, a chance to interact with Peruvians who have a particular artistic talent.  One of our favorite workshop leaders is Pedro Farias, an accomplished dancer who taught us traditional dances from the three regions of Peru:  Coast, Mountains and Rainforest.  Pedro helped the students get their feet moving and hearts pumping during his two-hour session.

Field trips have given us many opportunities to see what life is like beyond the neighborhoods where the students spend most of their time.  We spent an afternoon visiting a highly-respected private school at the edge of Lima that prides itself in educating tomorrow’s leaders.  Colegio de la Inmaculada (School of the Immaculate Conception) was founded by Jesuits over a century ago and was relocated to its present location in Surco in 1956.  The 29 hectare (72 acre) campus is impressive, in particular the three grass soccer fields where children learn to play Peru’s favorite sport.

Water is expensive in Lima, and the cost of keeping the fields green with would be prohibitive if it were not for the water reclamation system the school developed several decades ago.  After touring this impressive project, we climbed back down the hill to discover a zoo of sorts, a collection of animals native to Peru which have been donated by alumni over the years — lions (pumas) and tigers (tigrillos) and bears (spectacled), oh my!

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