We got checked in for the flight, said our goodbyes and took one last group photo.  Travel well!

One student summed up the experience with a poem:  “Tell Me About Peru SST”

A llama with thick, matted fur and glazy blue eyes,

On a lonely mountainside … spits.

A miniature red and white moto-taxi revs its miniature engine.

Cuy, your dinner, stares at you.

Combate – teams red, green – combat from six to eight.

A thick glass bottle of yellow bubble gum Inka Kola…

Into the first Peru SST 2012 we delve.

The smell of a rain in Cusco still lingers,

A time when we hurled imaginary rocks at dangerous dogs.

There were other rocks too, larger,

Ruins with ancient stories from an ancient people.

The trees planted, the hundreds of trees planted,

All done wrong according to Luis Delgado.

Peruvian boys gawking at gringa girls

Wanting to be enamorados.

Surrounded by gorgeous mountains

While gorging on mounds of rice.

(Does Oswaldo know he has sunscreen on his face?!)

¡Pasaje!  ¡Pasaje!  ¡Baja!  ¡Baja!

The pale evening city sky, muted by pollution,

Holds us in its spans as we ride in public transit

From a day of lectures, workshops, Castellano, to adopted homes.

To mom, to dad, to a house dog that does not require the harsh discipline of an imaginary rock.

A place where the rain does not come.

Minutes morphed into months until we left city days behind,

Waving from oversized rectangular buses,

Pulling off to the destination of far, far away.

[Now is the time for individual, personal reflection,

for I can’t write this poem about your individual,

personal service experiences…]

<pause 10 seconds>

…There.  Now you have processed the past six weeks.  Good.

All throughout this time in Peru,

We’ve paid pasajes:

          micros,

          buses,

          motos.

Now we have airplane ticket pasajes

That will carry us to a different far, far away.

We will leave with Amish beards and too many souvenirs.

The matted fur, blue-eyed llama with spittle will be suddenly endearing.

We’ll leave our three new homes for our originals,

Reunited with our camas.

And as the North American stars sparkle above our roofs,

We will toss and turn, finally getting up to pee,

And toss

          the TP

                    in

                              the

                                        trash.

Annabeth Tucker

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• Medicinal Plants
• Terrorism
• Cremoladas
• Physical Therapy
• Fruit
• Life of the Chicken and How to Kill a Rooster
• Pishtacos and Other Superstitions
• Traditional Quechua Clothes
• Life of Piurian Women
• The Culture of Food
• Pan of Ayacucho
• Leadership
• Playing Carnival
• Adobe Homes
• San Miguel
• Weddings
• Coastal Food and Culture of Eating
• Popular Brands of Shoes
• Oral Stories of Piura
• Coffee
• Advertising and Brand Awareness
• Ecosystems of the Selva
• The Life/Role of Dogs in Ayacucho

We followed the presentations with a service debriefing for each organization where the students volunteered:  What changes in the lives of Peruvians are they trying to make?

On Sunday morning — Palm Sunday — we worshiped within view of hundreds of palm trees, singing favorites from Sing the Journey, reading Psalms and reflecting on our time in Peru.

We finished the students’ last full day in Peru with a talk about re-entering North American culture.  Some call it reverse culture shock.  Afterward we took a group photo on the beach and boarded the bus for Lima.

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A Christian physician named Maria Jesus Hernandez visited two decades ago from her native Spain and decided to relocate here for her life’s work:  caring for children without homes and with little hope.  She founded an organization called Turmanye in the local Quechua language or Arco Iris in Spanish –  in English the name is “Rainbow”.

Three students volunteered with Maria Jesus’ organization.  Emily and Jordan spent each day in rural communities far above the city.  Traveling about an hour each way with organization staff in colectivo taxis, they arrived each morning at newly-formed schools started here to bring education to children with illiterate parents.  The schools are in places the government has so far ignored, placed here in hope that the authorities will soon recognize the severe needs and commit public resources and personnel.  Jordan and Emily assisted teachers with a variety of tasks — getting the classrooms ready for the beginning of the school year, making home visits to encourage parents to enroll their children and assisting teachers in the classroom.

Corine volunteered at another Arco Iris center in a residential neighborhood in the city of Huaraz, an orphanage that is home to two dozen children ranging in age from one month to eighteen years.  Corine worked both morning shifts and evening shifts, depending on the day of the week, accompanying children through their daily routines and helping lighten the load for the staff that manage the home.  She helped teenage girls with their homework, played with younger children in the playground or at a local park, pushed a wheelchair-bound boy to school and helped care for twin babies who had been abandoned at the orphanage door.

Michelle’s assignment was in a section of Huaraz referred to as Independencia.  She volunteered for World Vision, an international nonprofit organization that channels funding from high-income countries into development projects focused on bettering the lives of children in rural communities all over the world.  Michelle worked with World Vision staff both in the office and in the field.  She began by filing documents for the 2,000 children served in this region, then soon re-organized the filing system to make it more efficient.   She had an opportunity to translate for an English-speaking sponsor visiting from Australia.  And she accompanied staff on trips to communities far outside the city, meeting with children and their parents to promote education, nutrition and health care in places that, until now, have been off the map.

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Niles is volunteering for a fair-trade company that sells coffee and fruit products grown by local farmers and women’s cooperatives.  He is helping to market Chanchamayo Highland Product’s organic coffee, fruit juices and preserves to buyers in Europe and North America.  In April the company plans to introduce its products at a specialty coffee trade show in Portland, Oregon and Niles is putting together materials that describe how fair-trade practices and biodynamic production techniques benefit the communities where the coffee is grown and processed.

Alisha and Rafael spend each afternoon at CEDIF, a government-operated after-school center for disadvantaged children from the city of San Ramon.  They assist with education programs and tutor children whose parents are unable or unavailable to help with their homework.  The children look up to the students and enjoy chatting and playing games with them after their school work is finished.

Annabeth and Eric volunteer a few blocks away at a school for children with special needs, Colegio San Manuelito.  Children with a variety of disabilities — Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, hearing impairment and others — attend school here each day in a facility suited to their needs.  The students assist teachers at several grade levels and often help with physical therapy sessions.  The children enjoy the chance to interact with the students and the staff appreciates having their loads lightened by the presence of the volunteers.

Dana serves at Clinica Elera, a private medical clinic that provides the only 24-hour emergency service in the city of San Ramon.  A nursing major, Dana spends each morning assisting clinic staff with a variety of activities, such as preparing medical supplies.  Shortly before our visit she was asked to help clean an infected wound on an injured patient.  On another day she had the opportunity to accompany the physician and staff in the operating room to witness a caesarean section.

Erich volunteers at Fundo Almorique, a coffee farm and reforestation project located in the hills far above the city of La Merced, near the headwaters of the river that provides water to the urban residents below.  Moises Rodenas Gerbi and his uncles grow coffee, bananas and other crops here.  Moises believes that massive tree cutting in this area has harmed the watershed and reduced the supply of water in the local rivers.  He has established a reforestation program to bring back native trees such as cedar and diablo fuerte.  Erich assists by marking the locations for the new trees and transplanting seedlings on the steep hillsides.

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Grace and Hannah are living in the city of Piura and volunteering at a Mennonite Brethren Church called Iglesia Comunidad Familiar de Adoracion (Family Community Church of Worship).  They teach English to community members, accompany the pastor on home visits and assist with youth and other programs.

Allison and Chelsea live an hour away in the small city of Chulucanas.  They volunteer at Rehabilitacion Basada en la Comunidad (Community-Based Rehabilitation, or RBC), a faith-based center for children and adults.  They have learned the basics of physical therapy and assist the staff who provide treatment for people suffering from cerebral palsy and other physical disabilities.

Abbie and Kristina are located farther north, near the Ecuador border, in the city of Tumbes.  They are volunteering for Mecanismos de Desarollo Alternos (Alternative Development Mechanisms, or MDA), an organization founded with the help of MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates) of North America.  MDA is contracted with the Peruvian national park system to manage Los Manglares (the Mangroves) National Sanctuary, promoting ecotourism and sustainable fishing practices.  Abbie is designing a book with photos and text showcasing the mangrove sanctuary and the work of the organization while Kristina writes a marketing plan to attract international visitors.

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Jeffrey is living and working at a Presbyterian Church and School established several years ago in a poor neighborhood perched above the city.  He teaches English classes to neighborhood children and is preparing for the beginning of the school year.

Mark is volunteering at CEDIF, an after school program started by a government ministry for disadvantaged children.  Mark assists one of the teachers and spends his days interacting with children.  They love when he throws them up in the air and catches them on the descent.

Will is lending his computer skills to the Leadership School, an organization founded to teach leadership principles based on sound values to adults as well as children in the surrounding community.  He has been asked to create a newsletter from scratch, learning new software and helping the School’s director communicate with a wider audience.

Nikki is serving at William Thomson School on the other side of Ayacucho.  This private, Christian school serves children in one of many humble neighborhoods in an area called San Juan Bautista.  She has helped the staff get ready for the beginning of the school year and is preparing to teach English when the students arrive.

Jordan lives and works at Vida (Life) Clinic and Preschool.  His hosts have kept him busy doing a variety of tasks in preparation for the new school year.  He also had a chance to build a concrete walkway, with help from Mark, for a teenage boy who suffers from paralysis in a rural area near Quinua.

Anne is volunteering at a social service center in the town of Huanta, about an hour away.  During her first weekend she had the opportunity to participate in a community-wide celebration of the anniversary of the center, including dancing and other festivities.  She also assisted with Vacation Bible School at a Presbyterian Church near her home.

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By the time seven o’clock rolled around, we were ready to go.  Each host family was invited to sit at a table and play Uno or Dutch Blitz with their student as we waited for the rest of the guests to arrive.  We served sandwiches and fresh fruit.  Then the show began.

The directors opened with a welcome to all, a special thank you to the new host families and a slide show featuring highlights from six weeks of study:  our adventure in the Andes and our discoveries in Lima.  The students, all 23 of them, performed Ollantay with energy and enthusiasm.  Love stories can be funny.

Each student presented a thank you card to his or her family.  Then came more entertainment — a skit about an American student taking his first bus ride during Lima’s rush hour, live renditions of “Imagine” and “Over the Rainbow” and a baseball skit featuring “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

What a fun and entertaining way to bring our time in Lima to a close!

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The Instituto de Educación Superior Tecnológico Privado (INTAP) trains people from all over the country in the art and science of horse rearing (www.intaplurin.edu.pe).  Our tour included a variety of animals, some familiar and others foreign.  At day’s end we had the pleasure of witnessing a riding demonstration by two young and accomplished horsemen.

Our study time in Lima was brought to a close with a focus on art.  We learned how to make bracelets and necklaces from rain forest seeds and other natural materials with Eliana and Ricardo Mauriola Carrasco.  Then we visited the home and studio of Victor Delfin, a master of many media who shared a bit of his life philosophy as well as his recent work during our visit.

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Jerry Acosta is an economist and former banker who described his family’s struggles during the time of terrorism in his native city of Tingo Maria.  Mr. Acosta explained how the members of the Shining Path gradually infiltrated the schools, the army, even the church.  He described the evolution of the terrorists’ tactics and the government’s response to the crisis.  Mr. Acosta himself narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by a teenage boy equipped with a hand grenade.  Like hundreds of thousands of people living in the provinces, he finally moved his family to Lima in search of safety and the chance for a new life.

Camilo Ballumbrosio is an afro-peruvian musician who was raised in the coastal city of Chincha.  He described how slave traders brought the first Africans to Peru to work in the mines and, later, the plantations carved out of the fertile coastal valleys.  His ancestors picked cotton and cut sugar cane.  African music was forbidden by their masters, so the slaves developed drums that were easily disguised.  One was the calabaza (pumpkin) and another was the cajon, a wooden box shaped like a packing crate.  Today the cajon has emerged as a percussion instrument with a distinct sound and a growing following.

We spent a morning visiting Pachacamac, an archaeological site south of Lima.  Four cultures inhabited this area — the Lima, Wari, Ychsma and Inca.  Each culture built structures here, most of them sacred or ceremonial.  After our visit we drove a short distance to an orphanage where we spent the night.  Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II is a children’s home begun by a catholic priest named Father Joe.  Each child lives in a family group with seven other kids and a married couple.  We spent several hours working with them to clean up the playground areas at the public schools they attend.  And then we played, played and played some more — teeter totter, soccer, volley ball, games.  What fun!

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What is life like in a pueblo joven?  We organized a two-day visit to Villa Maria with our program assistant, Alicia, to find out.  Alicia settled here in 1979 — she, her husband and infant son “invaded” a vacant area with hundreds of other families in a desperate attempt to make a new life for themselves.  They first built a shack made of esteras (woven reed mats).  They soon replaced the mats with plywood.  Later, as they were able to save money, they replaced the plywood with cement blocks and a tin roof.  It took years until the local government granted them title to the property and, eventually, basic services like water, sewer and electric lines were installed.

We learned about all this by spending time in Alicia’s home and hearing her story.   Her sisters, Martha and Carmen, and daughters, Janeth and Sara, opened up their homes to us, providing meals and places to spend the night.  Her son-in-law, Glicerio, taught us how to prepare lomo saltado — he’s a chef at the Marriot Hotel in Miraflores.   Her husband, Oswaldo, hearing of our desire to see a younger version of a pueblo joven, organized a convoy of moto-taxis to take us to a four-year old settlement where their son, Richard, has worked to level a piece of the hillside and construct a home for his young family.  And Alicia’s grandchildren hosted us to games of soccer and volleyball after the temperature cooled off later in the afternoon.

The next day we met Senora Gregoria, an expert gardener, at a community gardening project to volunteer our services.  We learned how the vacant land under the power lines was transformed into growing space in a partnership between the municipal government, the electric company, a nonprofit organization and the families that live in this part of Villa Maria.  Then she explained our service project:  building two large “hot-beds”.  The idea was to install a plastic liner, laced with holes, a half meter below the surface to help retain water and fertilizer in this sandy soil.  We accepted the challenge, enjoying a few hours in the hot sun, getting some exercise and doing our small part to help the ten families that garden here grow healthy food for their children and generate a little income from selling the surplus.

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