Peregira Pampa

So because I am intensely lazy person, and Emily has already spent the 3 hours necessary to write about our adventures for the last two weeks, I decided I would just steal her post and embrace the lovely policy that our highschool teachers spend at least half of their time discouraging- plaigarism!

So yes the following is the Wonderful Adventures in the Village of Peregira Pampa set forth faithfully by Emily Tredger, with minor editations (is that a word, because if not, it is now) by Antonia Sappong...

Wednesday morning, we met Felipe and started out. First in order was food. How much food was confusing, because we might have been buying food for the teachers as well, who would take the food and cook us meals as well, or just ourselves, but anyways we bought lots to be on the safe side. We bought pasta, rice, potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, garlic, apples, oranges, butter, sugar, salt, oregano, oil, tomatoes, peas, oatmeal, yougurt, and bread. Previously we had bought some juice, canned fruit, and chocolate. It was rather fun. It ended up working out to about $30 US for all that. Expensive life we´re living.
Then Felipe drove with us to our new home, Peregira Pampa. It was way up in the Andes, in the middle of nowhere basically. I think it´s about at the same altitude as Potosi, maybe a little higher, but not too much lower, based on how I feel now getting back to Potosi.
To describe the landscape, both desolate and beautiful would apply. There is so little vegetation, only scrub bushes here and there. I think I saw a total of 10 trees in all my wandering. Some of the slopes are terraced into fields, though it still utterly baffles me how they manage to grow anything at all. The rest are steep rocky slopes, broken by gullies and gourges. Despite the lack of vegetation, the variety of colours are amazing. All the shades of yellows, browns, greys, and red are there. Every slope seems to be a different colour.
And the mountains dont´seem to follow ranges, with lines of mountains and lines of valleys. Instead, it´s like a mountain forest, as if they all just sprouted up.
Perigira Pampa is where PAIS is funding the construction of bathrooms for the schools. This was supposed to start when we arrived (we took a bunch of supplies) but it turned out they were still missing some things, so that didn´t start for about another week.
Anyways, we arrived at a school on the side of the road. We were taken in to the school. The school is a walled compound (everything is walled here) with various buildings around a courtyard - two classrooms, two other rooms which don´t seem to be used on a daily basis but host special events I think, and the teachers residence. Behind the buildings, inside the walls, are a chicken coop, a cooking space with an oven, and a spot where the teachers park their car.
There are two teachers, a couple, who teach. We were introduced to them, and two other women who only spoke Quechua, Lorenza and Maxina, and a bewildering conversation of Quechua mixed with Spanish followed. Toni and I observed in a bit of a daze. I eventually established I could tell whether Felipe was speaking Quechau or Spanish based on what it sounded like, but that didn´t apply to the rest of the time, and even when it was Spanish I really couldn´t understand, and sometimes I would have been concentratedly listenign for a while only to realize it was Quechua, or zoning out and it turned out I was expected to have been listening. Everey so often Felipe would turn to us and specifically direct comments. For a while it seemed that we were going to be staying in a house that was a 3 hour hike away. (Eventually it turned out that if we wanted, we could go stay at this place for a day).
Around the walled complex are a number of other buildings. One is where Maxina and Lorenza (who cook snacks and lunches for the school kids) do their cooking and spend the day, one is a green house, and one is the building where we stayed.
Our house (room? it was something in between, I´ll call it our home I guess) was about 9 x 15 feet. It had a cement floor, and four walls that were, clay maybe? some sort of mud type thing. The front one was whitewashed which filled in all the cracks (though the cracks did not go all the way through). There was a window, which Felipe and the people setting us up nailed paper over, for warmth I think. The glass was not by any means air tight, really it was panes of glass held in by nails. The door was a little tricky, it took us a while to get the knack of forcing it shut over the floor without taking out chips of the whitewash. There was a little table and a few chairs. There was a so called double bed for the two of us, which was in fact just larger than a twin. Also one of the more uncomfortable beds I have slept in, even if it was just one person and you did not need to lie on the hard side bit. It was my least favorite part of the house.
But I dont´ mean to make it sound unflattering, I loved our home it was cute and lovely and really very nice.
Anyways, so Felipe and us and the teachers, and a few other people, including a man named Juan who was the village authority, stood around conversing. Some of it seemed to be about us, specifically how we were going to eat. We could cook with the teachers, but they went to Potosi for the weekends. There was a fireplace out back, which we were happy with but we needed to borrow a pot. We did our best to convey this (which involved using the dictionary for the word pot) but it was all really very ambigous. Lorenza and Maxina were going to bring us some meals, for which we agreed to give them 10 bolivians per meal, and possibly bring us a pot also. We arranged with the teachers that we would start music in the school the next morning.
Felipe was helping us get settled and gave us a little padlock for the door. I promptly managed to break it, the top round part of the lock came off of the bottom square bit. Felipe tried to fix it, with the result that when the key was turned, the top round part when shooting across the room with a springing sound. Fortunately he found this as hilarious as we did. Eventually we decided it worked just fine, you just had to be ready to catch the top bit as it went flying. (After a day or so, Toni managed to break it a little further so that it did not spring, just disconnected, which was actually an improvment in fuctionallity, if less exciting).
Anyways, after Felipe left, we collapsed in a state of mental exaustion and worn out ness.
Around 5, one of the teachers came to get us. It appeared we were to cook with them. He instructed us to bring rice, a potoato, and two eggs. We followed him to the kitchen he and his wife used. They gave us specific instructions regarding how to cook, which mostly confused us. For example, it was very important that we toast the rice. We were also a little unsure what exactly one cooked with rice, potato, and egg. This led to them concluding that we did not know how to cook, despite our explaining that we did, just in a different style. Part of the problem is that we just couldn´t seem to communicate with them. Neither of us could understand the other´s spanish. Anyways, we got them to write down some Quechua words for us. This didn´t in the end do us any good, because no one can understand our prounouciatiosn of any of the words except ¨imansutikki¨ which means what is your name. This, combined with ¨takinini¨ you sing, and ´imata¨ (what) and sometimes yaku (water ) reamins all the quechua I can communicate.
We went for a short walk around. Possibly through some potato fields by accident (it´s equally dry, rocky, barren looking ground as all the rest) though we later were reassured they were not yet planted. We met a man named Natalyo. For whatever reason, we could communicate with him in Spanish quite clearly, which was a nice relief.
There were some of the most consistently beautiful sunsets I have ever seen in that place. So many colours, every single night. Then, it gets dark at 7, and I mean dark. We lit a candle in our room and tried to learn some Quechua. And then did our best to fall asleep on our bed. What a day!

Our first muisc class was quite a success. We taught Skinnimerinkidinkidink, though we subsituted zapa zapa zuba for the verse, with different actions, which I think is a great improvement on the original actually. This song became a hit. The kids regualrly request it, and we hear them singing it all the time, even in class (I´m not sure if this is appreciated by the teachers). At first we were quite daunted, because the kids wouldn´t sing! They were too in awe I think. But once we got them to echo the first note, that was the biggest battle. They adore songs with actions, and remember them much better. Ram sam sam was also a big hit. They struggled with Shalom at first, but once they got it, they quite enjoyed it too. Alloutte, they loved the actions, though I´m not really sure they understood how to sing the whole thing. In short, the music classes were great. We taught them for about 45 minutes each morning at 9.

The first few days were really just a whirl of ´what on earth will happen next´.

Thursday afternoon, Juan came by. He took us to visit a nearby house, but that was quite a fail. We instead decided to ask him what he thought about health in the village. Initially he did not think there were any health problems, but with further questions, we found out lots of things that we thought were problems (such as children who die of sicknesses every year). What was really interesting was how he thought about it, which was echoed in the answers we got from other people. Despite that there is rampant chronic diahorea among the children, no one really thinks of it as a health problem. I think it might be similar to Canada, where (at least until recently) probably most people wouldn´t have listed colds as a health problem.

Anyways, we got back to our home, and it turned out that the teachers had left for Potosi while we´d been out with Juan, firmly locking the school behind them. I guess they don´t teach on Fridays. This was a problem, because a) we had been planning to borrow a pot from them, and b) the water tap was inside the school. We tried to bring these up with Juan, but it was so very difficult to communicate. We only got gists of things. Most questions such as ¨Can you repeat that¨ or ¨where can we get water¨ were answere with ´yes.´. So when he left, we were not optomistic about pots or water appearig. So, first we climbed the fence into the compound to acquire water. This was really quite easy. The tricky part was we weren´t sure how people would feel about this and we certainly didn´t want to give the kids ideas, so we did our best to scan in all directions before embarking, though people have a remarkable ability to pop up unexpectedly on the horizon with a herd of goats. Then, for the pot, we went to visit Natalyo. We met him in the field and he enthusiastically urged us to go get a pot from his wife. This was a little trickier, because she didn´t seem to speak any spanish or respond to our attempts at Quechua. So we stood in their yard for a bit. Then she gave us a bowl of boiled potatos (this is what happens when you visit any house. We were told it is very rude to refuse, so even if you are very full it is necessary to eat potatos. If you don´t finish the bowl by the time you leave, you take the rest with you. This led to a large surplus of boiled potatos in our house. Eventually we started mashing them for variety). Anyways, then Natalyo and a bunch of his kids showed up. I never managed to pin down how many kids he had or which ones, because there were different ones each time we visited. I don´t think they were all his, but it was a little hard to say. We chatted with him for a while, borrowed the pot for the week, did our best to thank his wife who was very reserved, and agreed to come back the next night with the guitar.


Friday, we were a little at loose ends. Given our disastorous attempt to visit houses with health information, we decided to do some brainstorming and goal planning. Our eventual plan became
a) wash hands conspicously whenever we eat. (We did our best to do this. It was tricky because there was only water intermittently, but we usually would carry a waterbottle. People mostly thought we were insane, and possibly a little rude because we did not immediatley dig into the offered potatos but instead stopped for this aparantly pointless excercise. Nevertheless.)
b) try to find out what we could about health in the village, and what people thought about it. I still think this is extremely important because why would they bother trying to fix things they didn´t think were problems?
c) try to share a bit of information.
So we drew some stories of kids with diareah, one who got lots of water and got better, and one who didn´t and didn´t. This was before we realized that this was not something they really considered a problem.

Our next plan was to hike around until we found a house. Here I should mention that this was not a village in the sense of streets and buildings. All along the sides of the mountains were scattered houses surrounded by their fields. Each was anywhere from 10 minutes to 45 minutes from the next. Houses as far away as 3 hours were considered part of the village. (The poor kids getting to school). Then, we would sit within hearing distance of the house, and sing and play the guitar. The guitar was very interesting to people generally. They didn´t seem to have any in the village. Basically the point of this was to give people the opportunity to invite us in. If they did, great. If not, that´s fine too, and we´d wander on. Our idea was that once we were invited in, we could play them some songs, visit as best we could, and perhaps show them some of our health pictures.

This was a nice idea. It never quite worked out like we intended, but it generally did work out. For example, one day, we met Alejandro, who had been mentioned to us as the village health worker. He was a great source of information on the village. The next day, he dropped by just as we were making supper with a pot of boiled potatos for us, some delicious salsa, and some fanstastic fried bread. We gave him a bowl of pasta. Another day, we met a fantastic little old lady. She spoke not a word of anything we spoke, but still bobbed up and down enthusiastically and gestured in all directions while she spoke rapidly in Quechau. She requested some songs on the guitar and seemed to thorougly enjoy them. Meanwhile, a young girl with her was in utter awe of us, and hid behind nearby rocks and hullucks. Occassionally, she´d peep over the edge but if she saw us looking would duck back down again. The old lady would urge her over, but to no avail.

Anyways, we never got bored. We usually went to bed shortly after the sun went down. Friday night, about 8, we were just about to blow out the candle when there was a knock at the door. Rather surprised, we answere the door and there was a woman we´d briefly earlier in the day. Her name was Esperanza, and she taught at a school farther along the road. We understood that her car had broken down and it was quite cold outside. We brought her in and gave her a blanket. We were unable to ascertain when she could catch the next shared car bus thing. After about half an hour started to wonder if she was staying the night. We didn´t mind, we just had absolutely nowhere for her to sleep. Right about then, there came another knock on the door. This time it was a man, who we did not recognize. He set about conversing with Esperanza, while Toni and I watched in baffelement. Eventually Esperanza translated into Spanish that he was the school guard, and he spent the nights in the school while the teachers were gone. Eventually he left. We went back to chatting with Esperanza, growing more and more tired, when there was yet another knock. What a night. It was the guard again. He had brought us a blanket, and this time came right into the house, and continued to chat with Esperanza. By this time Toni and I were getting very tired. We sat on the bed wondering what on earth was going on, why this man was in our house in the middle of the night, how long they were both staying (were they planning on sleeping in the house? we certainly hoped not and were not sure this was appropriate) when they both got up. Esperanza said the guard was going to sleep in teh school, and she would go sleep in there with him. This seemed like a good solution to us, so we bid them good night, and finally got to sleep. What a night! They were both gone in the morning.

One of the reasons we went to bed so early, is that at about 7 in the morning, people started dropping by. They might knock, and say good morning. Or they might just stare in through the window. This would continue all through the day. Lorenza dropped by at random with meals, which might be a bowl of soup or a pot full of boiled potatos. This only lasted for Friday, but left us continually uncertain about whether we should cook or not. One man dropped by, who spoke entirely in ´ha´s while gesturing to us, our house, himself, and the surrouding areas. ¨Ha ha, ha ha HA ha, ha, ha Ha, HA, ha ha ha.¨ Not like laughing has, these had much more emphasis. Not really sure how to respond, eventually I started saying ¨Ha ha, ha HA¨¨ in agreeing tones at what seemed like approprate times. Friday morning, we were awoken at 7 by knocking at the door. At first we thought we would ignore this ( we were still in bed) but it conitinued. So I eventually opened the door, bleary eyed in pajamas, and Lorenza was there with breakfast. She´d just left, and we were sitting there contemplating our bowls, when there was another knock. A man, his wife, and child were there. He managed to communicate that he would take us to the school to get water. So Toni grabbed a pair of shoes, the pot, and an empty bottle and went with him. Turned out he thought we had the key (he did not have one). How this made sense, I´m not entirely sure. But anyways. After that we started getting up and dressed earlier.

Water was a continual challenge. We finally came to the conclusion that it is only on every other day. Saturday, we cooked ourselves scrambled eggs and bread for breakfast. When we finished there was no water, so we left the dishes and went out. When we got back, still no water. AFter hiking in the sun, this was a bit of a problem. I decided I was not going back out into the sun until we got more water. About 5, still no water. At this point, we had to make supper. What to make without water? Lentils, pasta, and rice were out. Potoatos, turnips and carrots could be peeled, but wouldn´t cook this century without water. (Seeing as all the wood is from little bushes, and about the size of my pinky at best, it is hard to maintain a fire for long.) Tomatos? couldn´t be washed. Applesauce? No water to make sauce. That left us with bread, eggs, and onions. Same as breakfast. I have to admit frying the eggs on top of the blackened egg residue of the morning was not overly appetizing, but theydidn´t turn out too badly. Then we decided that this was the time to break into our stocks of chocolate.
Sunday morning, there was still no water. Problem. We languished for a while, climbing the wall periodically to check for more water, until about 10 when Hallelujah! There was water. We decided the advantage to the water being inside a walled compound was that we could have baths at the tap, which we did. I´m not sure I´ve ever had a bath quite that cold. We came out shivering and aching, but soon the sun warmed us up. (At this point Em speaks for herself- I have never had either my wrists or ankles that cold before. They hurt to turn them!!! I eventually realized that rather than parading around naked while trying to wash myself, I could wash half my body at a time, while keeping the other half firmly ensconced in many layers- so much more effective!)

People were continually coming through with herds of goats, sheep, and a few very large cows. Sometimes the herds came through all by themselves. This conveniently meant we could throw our compost outside and they would come get rid of it for us. Once, we had a visiting herd of goats sans herder, and I thought this would be an ideal chance to get rid of some of our older extra boiled potatos. I grabbed the bag and went out to start distributing. I tried to feed some to the very cute baby goats. While I was doing this, behind me a few clever sheep started exploring our house. Toni luckily noticed and started scrambling about chasing them out. Meanwhile, the rest of the herd had figured out that I was distributing exciting food, and started mobbing me. This got really out of hand really fast. I beat a hasty retreat to the house, where I had to force the door shut on the heads of the goats determined to follow me in to the potatos. That was the last time I fed the goats.

Everything went on in this vein until Thursday, the day we left. We packed up our things, gave away our leftover food, and taught music class. Just before we left, I went out of our house to take some left over food to the teachers, and figure out what to do with the coca. The group of workmen, sitting on a hill 100 m away, somehow recognized the coca bag for what it was, and began yelling and waving me over and holding out their hats. I certainly did not have enough coca to give to all of them (given that they happily chew about a 1/4 bag at a time) so I pretended not to know what they were on about, and proceded into the school. Lorenza was there, so I gave her the bag of coca, which she seemed to appreciate. I gave the food to the teachers and went back to my house. Natalyo came running over, and started asking if I had some ¨cocita¨(a little coca) I could give the ¨compañeros¨. I could honestly say I did not, but he continued to press me, until finally he was convinced. I concluded I really do not understand the role of coca in their culture. These are people who would barely accept gifts of food, have never asked for a thing. To get them to agree to accept the payment for food that we had agreed on at the beginning was like pulling teeth. But with coca, they will readily accept, ask, even press you for it.
Anyways, after saying goodbye to various people, we headed off with the teachers. It only took us an 1 and 1/2 hours to get back to Potosi. It always takes so long to get anywhere with Felipe in comparison, but it´s because he´s always stopping for this or that, to pick up materials or to show us something delicious and Bolivian, or to pour water on to the engine so that it might run for the next bit, and he´s such good company that it´s more fun anyways.

All in all, it was quite the 9 days. Really a wonderful experience all round. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly and generous and patient, despite our lack of language or awareness of anything that was going on.

Toni´s editations:
At one point during our stay another volunteer from a different organization came to teach the women about hygiene and nutrition (In Quechua- much more effective), which then led to an increase in vegetables being cooked the next day. Rather than just rice and potatoes and beans, there was now lettuce! At first Emily and I were very excited by the prospects of green things, until we realized that it was possible to ruin lettuce! They somehow managed to drown it until all crispness had run out of it, and then they proceeded to pour at least half a cup of salt all over it. It was kind of similar to seeweed, except saltier and slimier. Good times- we now understand why they don´t eat vegetables on a regular basis. We are thinking that we might bring supplies to make a yummy salad for the kids next time we´re there.

What we learned about the state of health in the community:
1. 3-4 kids die every year from respiratory illnesses
2. There are very few, if any, people trained in first aid, not to mention there are no first aid kits.
3. The nearest clinic that stocks any antibiotics is in Tacobamba (about an 8 hour walk), meaning that when infection sets in it is very dangerous
4. Dental hygiene is non-existent, meaning that by the age of 40 no one has many teeth left
5. It is difficult to grow anything other than potatoes and onions, making vegetables rather difficult to acquire
6. There are a lot of eye infections that I believe lead to blindness over time
7. People wash themselves approximately once a week.
8. There are rarely enough blankets for everyone in the family, leading to run down immune systems.

One day, during our wanderings, we met a young girl of 12. Her name was Rose. Her mother had died (unsure how), leaving her with 4 (?) younger siblings to look after. Her father works hard to provide for them, leaving her to act as the mother to the rest of her siblings. As a result, she no longer goes to school, but instead takes care of the laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. She came to the workshop on hygiene & nutrition with the other mothers. It was a sobering experience for both Em and I. She is just so young! I admire her strength.

Note to all travellers in Bolivia- when you are shopping for tomato sauce for spaghetti, do not trust that the red can with tomatoes on it contains tomatoes. We learned, upon opening it, that it instead contains sardines in a tomato sauce. Emily was not impressed with this at all! I actually thought it wasn´t too bad. Furthermore, if you bring along canned peaches, make sure you open them as far away from you as possible. If not, they have the unfortunate tendency to semi-explode, dousing you, the floor, and the blanket with sweet, syrupy stuff that is impossible to remove, thus leading to an accumulation of dust unprecendented by any other experience of dust.
...................................................................

So yes, thus ends the tale of our first volunteer experience. We are not at all sure we are being of any use to anyone, but we are learning a lot, and the kids are having fun, so we shall see. The communication barriers alone make it very difficult to get to know the other people in the village. But we will continue to try :)

At the moment, I am off to the salt flats of Uyuni. Google them- they look pretty insane. Should be good!

Cheers,
Toni