My volunteer job for the next 3 months

For the next three months I will be starting my own preschool class for 13 1-3 year old kids who are currently living with their mothers in prison. In Peru, if you are a suspect for a crime you are put in jail while they are investigating and conducting your trail. Then if you are found guilty, the time that you have already spend in jail counts towards you sentence. It is also allowed for kids under the age of 4 to live with their mothers in jail.

The inmates must pay for their rent in the jail; and if they do not pay, time is added to their sentence. The way that inmates make their money is the male prisoners weave Mantas (Peruvian blankets) while the women embellish them with embroidery, then they are sold and the inmates use the money they make to pay their rent. Most of the inmates are in prison for drug trafficking (as there are huge Coca fields on the other side of the mountains from here that supply the European market.) I have been told that most of the women in jail are not able to feed their families, so they knowingly take the risk of trafficking drugs once to be able to feed their families. The drug traffickers usually carry around 10 kilos of Cocaine on their backs and walk to the drop off point. The drug lords then call the authorities to alert them that someone will be trafficking drugs. When the police are busy with the people who have 10 kilos, a larger trafficker drives through undetected. It is a sad situation, that these women see drug trafficking as the only way to feed their families, when they are all so talented in making the typical handicrafts of the region.

The 13 kids that are living with their moms in prison, have never had any formal education, or any structured setting at that. The kids usually just run around the courtyard, while their mothers are working on their mantas or other task for the day.

For the next three months I will be gladly getting my prison tats(see picture to right) 4 days a week, in lieu of a full body search to enter the prison. I will collect the kids from the women's section of the prison and take them to another area called La Cuna. La Cuna is a very old concrete 3 room area that has been dedicated to the children of the prison. However, no one has used the Cuna in quite a while. The most recent poster that I saw in the room was 2006. The floor is half tiled and half sub-flooring showing. There are 3 or 4 bookcases that line one wall but not a book in sight. We have a slide with a broken step (it has already chalked up a bloody nose from one of the kids trying to get to the top to slide down) and a few chairs. I walk in with the kids and nothing that I have set up the day before remains, so the kids help mop up the water that is left on the floor, then we set up our chairs in a circle and start our morning.

I am still not sure what I will be doing with these kids. I planned a whole day on my first day then took one look at them staring at me blankly and threw all my lesson plans out the window. I just knew that we would be no where near learning the names of our basic body parts well enough to fill out a poster I had made and play Simon says as well as attempt Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes in Spanish.

Let the games begin... I am sure I will have plenty of funny stories that will come up in the next few months with these kids.

Llama Trekking to El Pueblo Rosas Pampa

The people of Rosas Pampa

The lake that we hiked to for lunch.

The gang in front of the one of the waterfalls we hiked too.

Muchas llamas

Saturday our one of our staff members Alejo and his son Jason took all of us girls on a Llama Trek up into the mountains. We left at 7am and drove up into the mountains armed with bread and candy for the village kids. Our first stop was in a little town called Santa Fe. We got out at what looked like a deserted town, however once one kid came and saw us he must of called the troops because all of a sudden like 15 people came to greet us. The moms of the town all had hand knitted hats and coin purses that we could buy, I got an authentic peruvian hat with earflaps! We passed out some bread and candies to our new friends and loaded back in the van and continued up into the mountains. We drove to the town of Rosas Pampa. This town is about 2 hours away from Ayacucho, and is very isolated. We brought them bread and candy, since they do not have access to stores to get it on a regular basis. The town itself is made up of around 300 people and about 250 of them are kids. Alejo explained to us that it was common to have 7 or 8 kids in this town, because there is no TV there.

After getting a little bit acclimated and enjoying some Coca tea, to help with the altitude sickness. We started our trek up into the mountains from this pueblo. We walked for 2 hours to a beautiful lake where we at our lunch. The lake was breathtakingly beautiful! We were surrounded by lush green landscape and snowcapped mountains off in the distance. After lunch we continued further up the mountain to our highest point of 15,600 ft into the Andes. Once at the top Alejo and the van were waiting for us. On the way back down the mountain we stopped to visit this really sweet old lady who was kind enough to show us how they lived in the mountains. It is customary to have 3 itty bitty houses per family. One house is where the family sleeps. Another for the kitchen and a final house is off in distance is another one that is used to store llama poop. That is right, a house just for poop. Since they live above the tree line, there is no firewood to start fires, so they use llama poop. We left what bread we had left with her. She was the sweetest little old lady, who was so friendly but only spoke Quecha. I felt so bad that I couldn't communicate with her without the help of our guides.

It was a lovely day with all the girls in the house going on this beautiful and fun Llama Trek.

My new home in Ayaucho, Peru

My new home until June

It has been a week, a very busy week at that, since I arrived in Ayacucho. I got here last Sunday and we have been going non-stop since. All the volunteers are really nice and I am having a great time getting to know all of them. We have quite a mix of cultures in the house, American, Canadian, English and Australian. All together we have 11 girls living in the "Gringo" house. The first week we got city tours and a tour of a mountain town an hour out of Ayacucho. We also spent our week helping at the prison with festivities for International Woman's Day. (It sounds a lot scarier that it is, so don't worry) Our first day of volunteering (Tuesday) all the volunteers went to the prison to watch a talent show that the women had prepared. Most of the talents included dancing, singing or skits. Wednesday, I went with a few other girls to a youth drop in center at a market just up the street from my house. The center is for the kids who either work in the market or their parents work in the market. It is a place for them to come and just be a kid. It was a lot of fun hanging out with them for the morning. Except, I don't think that they have ever seen a redhead before. I made the mistake of wearing my hair down that day and the kids decided that they wanted a strand as a souvenir, so they kept try snatching a piece from my head, a little painful and awkward. The next two days I went back to the prison to help with the conclusion of the week of festivities. I spent most of my time with kids coloring and reading Goodnight, Moon a million times in Spanish.

Paragliding in Lima

When we got back to Lima on our to do list was paragliding off a cliff in Miraflores. After trekking a canyon why not run off a cliff with a strange man attached to your back, right? Friday morning after breakfast Angie and I walked to the Park of Love, where they do the paragliding and grilled the owner about all the risks and exactly what would happen during the flight. After watching a larger grown man take off and not crash we decided that it would be safe and we signed on the dotted lines. Then got strapped into the parachute and pilot and ran off the cliff. Once we were in the air and I realized that I would be okay I started to relax and enjoy my 10 minute ride high above a busy street, cliffs, shopping mall and beach.

At one point my pilot was talking to me and said that we might need to land on the beach. I was thinking that he was trying to scare me and it was just a joke, so I brushed it off and laughed a little. A minute or so later we turned around to start heading back to the park and he told me, “Look down there the white went down. They were the ones that took off after us.” And sure enough I looked down and saw a white parachute on the ground in between the cliffs and the road. I guess the wind had changed directions while we were flying and we had a hard time getting high enough to clear the cliffs. That is when the pilot said that we might be landing on the beach (so it wasn’t a joke). He was able to get us high enough to be flying safely but the white parachute wasn’t as lucky. They landed safely but had to then pack up the parachute and catch a cab back up to the top of the cliffs.

I had a blast paragliding. When it was over I was joking with the owner that next time I wanted them to do tricks while I was up there. Then we got to talking and he said that he would be coming to Ayacucho in a few weeks and that he had pilots here that paraglide. So who knows more paragliding might be in my future.

Arequipa and Cañón del Colca

Our original plan was to visit Manchu Picchu together, but the rainstorms and mudslides changed our plans. Instead we flew an hour south of Lima to Arequipa. Arequipa is nicknamed the “White City” as it is surrounded by mountains; however if you visit in the summer (like we did) the mountains are not full of snow, and it doesn’t look like a white city. It was a beautiful city. When we got in we talked to the hostel about different options we had on visiting the Cañón del Colca. The Cañón del Colca is the world’s deepest canyon. Our hostel explained that there were two options on seeing the canyon; one was to take a bus tour and sit in the bus all day just getting out at picture taking viewpoints. The other option was to trek the canyon. The hostel people said that this was the best option, because you get to go down into the canyon and see how the locals live there. That sounded fun, but hiking down the world’s deepest canyon seemed a little difficult. After chatting some more with the hostel workers they told us that it was just a 4 hour hike down then we would be staying in bungalows and able to hangout at the swimming pools and enjoy the scenery. Since we knew we were getting picked up at 4 am we figured that was so that we wouldn’t be hiking in the heat of the day and get to spend the afternoon at the pool.

Boy, were we wrong. We got picked up at 4 am and loaded a bus to drive 4 hours to the canyon. Once we were there we stopped at Cruz del Cóndor, this is the highest point in the canyon and the best spot to see the enormous 3 meter condors flying overhead. After a bit of bird watching, we drove farther down the road to meet our canyon guide. For our 2-day trek, Angie and I trekked with girls from Ireland, Belgium, Italy and our Peruvian guide. Once we were at the top of the canyon looking down and l was listening as our guided explained where we would be hiking to I noticed she said it was a 4 hour hike to the 1^st town. In this town we will be having lunch then continuing for another 3 hours where we will spend the night. The next day it would be a 3 hour hike straight up the mountain to catch the bus back to the city. Whoa! What happened to the short 4 hour hike to the pools? This tour is the Peruvian version of Gilligan’s Island. We thought we signed up for a 4 hour hike and it was really a 11 hours hiking in total and 9 miles over two days of walking up and down the world’s deepest canyon.

All in all it was an amazing trip and I loved it, once I was safely at the top on the 2^nd day. I would not recommend just decided to hike a canyon one day with out training at least a little bit. Next time I will also get hiking boots, Angie and I learned really fast the tennis shoes are not quite appropriate for hiking steep gravel paths, as we fell a few times on the way down. Thankfully we were with a group of girls who had just about as much hiking experience as we did, next to nothing.

Now that I have hiked the Cañón del Colca, I guess the Grand Canyon should be nothing in comparison. Maybe that will be Angie and my next adventure…. we will see once the soreness of this trek wears off.

I love visitors!

I successfully talked one of my college friends, Angie, to fly down to Peru and travel with me for a little over a week. I was so excited to see her and travel around with her. For those of you who know Angie and I, we are probably 2 of the loudest Americans and stand out like a sore thumb in Peru, since blonde and redheads are not very common down here. We were told we are very exotic looking, which is funny to me. Since blending was going to be an obvious issue for us, we embraced the stares and cat calls that came from every corner of the streets and had quite an adventure. We could not walk down the streets without everyone one staring at the blonde and the red head. I have been told that I am as red as a crab by a little boy in the airport, his mother then tried to convince me that I am allergic to the sun and should try to not go outside as much as possible (for the record, I thought that I only had a little healthy glow. It is just my healthy glow is a little redder than the Peruvians caramel coloring.) I was told that my hair looks like it is on fire, while Angie looks like Brittany Spears. The two of us caused a ruckus everywhere we went. We have been asked out and proposed too more in the week we were together, than I think even pop-stars have been asked. But don’t worry Mom, Dad and Erik so far the offers haven’t been all that tempting, at least not yet.

We spent our first weekend in Lima, hanging out on the beach, eating wonderful ceviche, learning to salsa from locals and catching up. On Monday we flew to Arequipa in the south of Peru. We stayed in the white city until Thursday when we made our way back to Lima for one last weekend of funJ

Nazca, Peru

The trip to Nazca started off with a bang, literally. On the bus ride from Ica to Nazca the bus blew a tire. So after a 30 minute pit stop on the side of the highway a few locals had changed the tire and we were back on our way to Nazca. After getting off the bus I went straight to the airport to board an itty bitty 4 seater plane to fly over the Nazca lines. I had been warned that the ride was really ruff so I shouldn't eat anything before I went and to only look at the lines when the pilot tells you too then look back at the horizon so I didn't get motion sickness. I was trying to remember all of this as we were in the air bouncing up and down and taking extremely tight turns so that we could see the lines from both windows. After the first couple of turns my stomach was not longer living in my throat and I was feeling much better. I loved seeing the lines and pondering how they were made so perfect when you can barley tell what they are from ground level. You have to be above the lines to see what they are meant to be. When I was flying I did not think that any of my pictures would turn out because the ride was so bouncy, but luckily a few of the hundreds I took did.

The next day I went on a tour of the Cementerio de Chauchilla and to see a potter and gold miner workshop. The cemetery was interesting, for being a cemetery. It was were the ancient Nazca civilization buried their elders. They mummified them and archeologist are in the works of digging them up to study and restore them. I am not a fan of cemeteries so the flight over the Nazca lines took the cake for this stop on the trip.

I do have to thank God, count my lucky stars, or do what ever it is you believe in that I took my flight on Wednesday. Thursday one of the tourist planes crashed on a sightseeing tour full of tourists. No one made it out of the plane alive. I took a bus back to Lima that night and you could see the plane crash from the road, surrounded by reports and investigators.