Los Hornos ~ Scavenger Hunt 2.0 ~ Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ~ A Baby Shower ~ & lots of tearful Goodbyes
Day 1:
Monday, we headed to Aco for a full day of working on “los hornos” the stoves. Helen and I headed to Mary Lou’s house, where we started the base of her oven. Santi, Mary Lou’s older son was helping us the whole time. It was hard work mixing cement, lifting bricks, making sure they were straight. Helen, Santi and I were working on one side of the oven, while Josep and Mary Lou’s brother worked on the other side. At one point I looked over at there side and I realized that we hadn’t staggered the bricks on one of the rows so we had to lift off some bricks and rearrange it. Whoops! It was a learning process... but hey we have an excuse, it was our first time!
When we had finished, we returned to the other house to check the progress of Señora Felicita's stove. We found the three local men were leveling, measuring, and creating precise lines of bricks. They were only on the fourth level of bricks. When I saw this, I realized just how bad our walls at Mary Lou’s house were. Whoops!
We ate lunch at a little restaurant in Aco. It was a nice break from the gloominess of the day. In the afternoon we headed to another home to start our third base, there were nine total bases to start, I doubted we would even finish the third one. The same three men who had worked on Señora Felicita’s house worked at this house.
There wasn’t anything we could really help with because there were so many of us at one house, but apparently none of the other houses were ready to start. So other than the occasional soaking of bricks in water (apparently that helps them stick together better), I just played with Juan Carlos. We played makeshift baseball with a stick and plastic ball he had laying around the house, we made waterfalls with a big stick and cans of water that he fills with rain water, and then he discovered a passion for photography after I took a break from playing to snap a picture of the progress on the stove. He walked around his house taking pictures of beads and strawberries, he loved it! I was just walking around making sure he didn’t drop the camera, as he hopped around from place to place.
Check out Juan Carlos's pictures, pretty good right?
At one point, Yuli joked that we were going to stay until all 9 of the stove’s bases were complete- I responded that we would probably be here until Wednesday then! ;)
Day 2:
At the Portawawa group this week we talked about presenting symptoms of pregnancy, such as nausea, vomiting, breast tenderness. Marcia had a huge poster with pictures of the signs and she and I just went through each of the pictures and asked the woman what they thought it meant. We then had the women break up into groups and talk about their own experiences.
Tuesday afternoon, Helen and I planed our event for tomorrow at the FIMRC office! Helen and I thought it was funny that at one point we were looking over the station’s list and Helen was assigned to a station that A) we had not come up with and B) we had no idea what it meant in English. Uhh Ohhh! All it said was “Barras” we looked it up in the dictionary and it said “French Baguette.” Lol…. obviously that didn’t help us figure out what it meant at all. Thank goodness, they decided to switch that one so that Yuli could do it, but it was concerning there for a minute. (Apparently, “barra” means motto so the teenagers were supposed to create a team motto that would be inspirational/motivating and describe them as a group).
Day 3:
We headed to El Rosario, where we would have our Scavenger Hunt, like we had done at Castilla y Leon last week. I got to do the same to stations that I did last week, the Future and the Five Senses with the group of younger kids. Helen was working the nutrition station with the teenagers. It was a really fun day, even though there was a few difficulties getting everything set up with two different sets of groups going on at the same time… but we worked it out. Also, the teenagers loved their motto station (aka French Baquettes), we heard them chanting them from across the courtyard.
In the afternoon we headed to Aco, where Yuli had prepared a general introductory lesson on anemia for the mom’s. We left the office a little late, so Helen and I were blowing up red balloons and taping them to a white poster board while Pedrito was driving. It was quite the experience as Pedrito’s driving on a regular day is pretty quick well today Yuli described it as “Fast and Furious!” We made it in one piece, exactly on time! :)
Yuli had us fill the red balloons with white pieces of paper that said “Hemoglobin”, she then proceeded to pop the balloons to show that anemia is the lack of functional red blood cells, so they can’t carry oxygen to your body. Yuli asked the mom’s such insightful questions, that were simple but really got down to the core of what anemia was. She made the mother’s feel like they knew everything they needed to know already, but in a way that she was also teaching them. It was so amazing to see how she does it! I love her teaching style and hope to emulate it in any kind of patient education I do in the future.
Day 4: Valentine’s Day in Peru! <3
Today we went to Castilla y Leon and taught the kids “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in Spanish, while Lucero and Pablo had another group of kids and were doing an initial evaluation for the Dale La Mano program. Our first group of kids were between 5-6-year-old, the second group were ages 7-12. The 5-year olds were more than willing to listen to us teach the English version of a song they knew in Spanish fairly well. At one-point Shayna looked over at me and said “we are losing them” so I made them all stand up and we joined hands and went around in a circling singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. They caught on pretty quickly, which was nice to see. Pablo even came out to check on our progress and was pleasantly surprised at how well they were doing. Guess we were pretty good teachers! :)
Then we switched and got the older kids, who sat for a little while and quickly learned the lyrics of the song. We started to break down each word of the song and had them directly translate words, which a few of the girls were interested in learning, but the rest of the kids were distracted playing in the courtyard. At one point I had to break up a fight over a blanket! I didn’t know what to do so I had the two boys sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star by themselves to calm them down! Lol… they rolled their eyes the whole time. Not sure that was the most effective disciplinary action but it worked, they stopped fighting. The kids then got distracted with taking pictures on Helen’s cell phone and my camera. Overall, it was a good little activity to keep them busy for a while.
In the afternoon, we were putting finishing touches on the Amanacer Baby Shower... I was looking forward to it for weeks! I pinned 60 pictures on Pinterest (if you know me at all you know that I'm huge on party planning). In the morning we washed fruit and made a baby carriage out of a watermelon. I sent Marcia games we could play, a word search, word scramble and a “Wishes for my baby” worksheet. We were even putting together paper flowers in the car on the way to their home for the instagram frame!
I didn’t realize as I was making it yesterday just how impactful the "Wishes for my baby" activity would be, but it turned out to be my favorite part of the day! The girls read their wishes for their baby’s out loud and it was incredible to be a part of. This moment I realized that these girls, were not just young ladies but they were moms with deep, meaningful and powerful desires for their babies. They wished them to know the love of their mom forever and the wished only the best for their future. It showed me that even though these girls were 14-16 years old they had an unconditional love for their babies.
Before we left, I handed out the word clouds that I had made for each of them personally. These were their hearts, their words, things that were important to them, and I think that made them feel important and cared for to see their words in art.
As we drove home Helen said that this was the best baby shower she had ever been to, and I 100% agreed, I left a piece of my heart with those girls today and even though it hurt so much to say goodbye I truly hope that one day I’ll get to see their smiling faces again. I’m so proud of the mother’s that they are and know that their futures will be bright because of their resilience and undeniable strength.
Day 5:
We headed to a health campaign in Chongos Bajo, this was our first time in this city so it was interesting to see a different area.
Friday afternoon, we headed Castilla y Leon for the first of the parent’s meetings for the Dale la Mano program. We had met with these parents for an introductory meeting a few weeks ago, but this was the first monthly meeting for the program. During the session today the parent’s took an initial assessment about healthy habits, nutrition, emotional wellbeing, and first aid. Shayna and I helped a few of the mother’s who were having a hard time understanding the questions, to be honest it was a pretty long assessment. They had to draw out a well-balanced meal that they would serve their kids listing each ingredient, that was a hard one to explain. The majority of the participants were females but there was one dad who was very excited to be involved, we thought that was a good thing!
Day 6:
On Saturday we took Shayna and Dexter to Identity Park. This would be my fourth time at the park and I felt like a real tour guide as I was going around telling them the history of the park and pointing out flowers and statues that I had learned about.
Then we headed to Chupaca, a smaller town outside of Huancayo. We ended up a a beautiful restaurant called Hacienda Morro. Dexter commented that it reminded him of vineyards in Napa, it was a beautiful white building with the red terracotta roof. Before ordering, our waiter asked for a last name for our order. We didn’t really know why he would be asking for a name so I just said Azul. He looked at me like I was crazy… we rationalized that a lot of people think my last name is Blue in English so in Spanish it was Azul, he smiled and walked away. I'm pretty sure he thought we were crazy!
We had an amazing lunch of Pachamanca a traditional Peruvian dish, that is made with hot stones and covered with grass and earth and cooked outside for hours, leading to a very flavorful dish. It usually a combination of lamb, pork, chicken, and cuy. On the side there are potatoes, lima beans, sweet potatoes and humitas (a sweet tamale). So good! Lucero and her friend joined us for lunch and we walked around the restaurant for a little while after eating. There was a little play area of old tires, a vintage tractor and a stable with horses!
After that we headed back to the center of the city to get a taxi to drive us back to Huancayo. The taxi driver that got actually had a song playing in his car about driving back to Huancayo… Shayna and I found this hilarious, because it played the entire 30 minutes back to the city. We ended up by Constitution Plaza, where we went to the Casa del Artesano so Dexter could see it and then we went to Café Paris, to see if today they would have some coffee (remember last weekend they didn’t).
Helen and I smiled as the same waiter as last week walked over to our table. Surprise, surprise the espresso machine was broken and so they only had Café Pasada. With only two days left in Huancayo I officially gave up on getting a good cup of coffee. We spent three hours drinking “coffee” and eating desert, and talking about life in general. It was an great time!
Day 7:
Our last Sunday in Huancayo, we spent some time just enjoying the morning off. We headed to OPEN plaza mall to get some last minute gifts from Peru for our families. I finally bought a gift for my brothers and bought some snacks to take home for everyone to try.
We also got introduced to Susan who was a new volunteer coming to Huancayo for the week. It would be her birthday tomorrow so Manouche planned a going away/ Birthday dinner for us.
Week 7
Day 1 :
We spent our last day in Huancayo, working on the Artisan stoves in Aco. Shayna and I had a great time working with a group of three men from Aco with some background in construction. Shayna and I carried bricks, made barro (a mixture of dirt and water that becomes really stiff and we put between the bricks), and smashed cactus for the jelly like substance that would dry as hard as rock. Our stove was so large by the end of the day, that the guys had to climb on make shift step ladder of bricks to reach the top of the oven.
In general I was reflecting on the fact that they were using the natural resources of their community to create something that will hopefully help the women become economically independent. Our day was much warmer than the previous week so that was good, and I felt slightly more helpful, even though sometimes I wasn’t sure if they had just given me something to do to stay busy.
At one point, we tried to use bamboo shoots to make the dome of our oven, so Shayna and I used a hammer to make the bamboo a little more pliable, however when we men had used 20 sticks to make the dome, they decided that it was too hard to put the barro over it and keep it sturdy so we scrapped that idea and they instead filled the inside of the oven with bags of sand and covered it with more dirt that they would remove once the covering had dried by next week. It was a really interesting process. I’m really sad that we weren’t able to see the completion of the stoves, but I appreciate the fact that we played a small part in their creation.
After a full day in Aco, we were quite muddy and tired, Rojitas drove us home and we managed to get dressed up in 30 minutes to head to a farewell dinner/ birthday party we were going to. Susan hadn’t come with us to Aco, and instead said that she had a great time at the Carrion hospital for rotations on the trauma floor, and orientation with Lucero and Pablo.
Before we headed to the restaurant Mateo, Senora Elena’s brother stopped us to say a final goodbye. He had tears in his eyes as he told us to take care of ourselves, and how great we had been during our time in Huancayo. He said that he really appreciated the fact that we ate all of the food Senora Elena prepared for us. :)
We went to Detras de al Catedral for dinner and had a great time just hanging out with everyone. I felt bad for Susan who had just met us and had to listen to all these stories and memories that she had not been a part of. We went around the table and said our goodbyes and thank you's to everyone, it was bittersweet! After 2 months with everyone I felt so sad to be leaving. One thing that Yuli said really stuck with me she said that she saw in us a desire to serve, and that she hoped we enjoyed the moments that we were here because the only thing you have left is your memories! Ahhh... my heart! After some tearful goodbyes, Helen and I went back to Señora Elena's to do some last minute packing!
Day 2:
We left Huancayo at 6 am on Tuesday morning. I had all of five minutes to tell Señora Elena just how special she is and how much I appreciated her cooking, cleaning and watching over us from a distance during our two months in Huancayo. I wish I would have planned that goodbye out a little better. With my Spanish 5 minutes felt like 1 because I barely got out a thank you for everything before I heard the horn honking to let us know that we were already running late. I couldn’t believe that after two months this was it.
We rushed out and the door closed behind us, (I almost ran back because I thought I forgot my phone but after 10 seconds of frantic searching it was in my backpack pocket.) And that was it. Two months and that’s all. It almost didn’t feel real.
Rojitas drove us to the airport in Jaujau, and waited with us as we got our bags checked by security, and then we said our final goodbye, and walked through the security check point.
When we arrived in Lima, we had an entire day to explore. My dad had met a great tour guide when he was in Lima the week before, so we contacted Jose and he took us on a tour of Lima. We had a great time learning about the 43 districts of Lima. We first went to Mira Flores, which we had gone to when we first got to Peru, it kinda felt like we had come full circle. We went to Barranco, which had some amazing murals. We went to the Basilica y Convento de San Francisco de Lima, where we got to walk through catacombs. We saw the Government Palace and walked through the Historic Center of Lima. We ended the night at a restaurant that we had loved when we stopped in Lima on our way back to Señora Elena’s from Cusco- Pardo’s. They have this garlic sauce that is AMAZING!!! We headed back to the airport hotel and slept for a few hours before our flight home!
That's all folks! I have one more post after this that will be a final reflection on our trip as a whole! I hope you enjoyed reading about our adventures, as much as I enjoyed writing about them!
Chau,
~Maria