High Altitude Cupcakes ~ A Visitor from the US~ Rompecabezas ~ A Robbery & A Birthday!
It was a busy week in Huancayo to say the least! We had lots of planning to do, lots of activities, and my Dad came for a visit for my birthday!
Day 1:
Today we prepared for the Women’s Empowerment group first meeting! Helen, Shayna and I searched for some inspiration and we came up with six questions and four quotes for the ladies to discuss. You can read them below.
Nadie puede hacerte sentir inferior sin tu permiso.
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Detrás de cada mujer exitosa hay un grupo de otras mujeres exitosas que la apoyan.
*Behind every successful woman there is a group of other successful women supporting her.
La educación es el arma mas poderosa que puedes usar para cambiar el mundo.
Education is the most powerful weapon that you can use to change the world.
Una mujer exitosa es aquella que puede construir una base firme con los ladrillos que otras le dan.
**A successful women is one that can build a firm foundation with the bricks others give her.
¿Cuáles son los roles de la mujer?
What are the roles of a woman?
Una mujer independiente es…
An Independent woman is….
¿Cuáles son tus sueños?
What are your dreams?
¿Qué significa una mujer fuerte?
What does it mean to be a strong woman?
¿Cuál es el futuro que imaginas para tu hija o hijo?
What future do you imagine for your son or daughter?
¿Qué es lo que mas amas de ti mismo?
What do you love most about yourself?
*Originally the quote is “Behind every successful woman there’s a tribe of other successful women who have her back.” We found this a little hard to translate, and when we asked how to say tribe in Spanish... Yuli laughed at us and told us to just use another word because it didn’t translate well. Lol!
**This was another one that was hard to translate- originally it was supposed to be “A successful woman is one that can build a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at her.” Yuli said they would take this too literally and that we should probably avoid the violent connotation.
Day 2:
Tuesday at Portawawa, it was just Helen, Shayna, Marcia and me. We were talking to the women about changes in pregnancy and had made the women do the same activity that we had done with the girls at Amanacer last week. The drawings this week were much more detailed than they were last week, all the woman seemed to want to contribute to their drawings and make them as realistic as possible. They were really concerned about getting the picture anatomically correct, they kept asking us to draw what different organs looked liked so they could draw it correctly. It was a really fun activity, I’m glad Helen found it a few weeks ago.
In the afternoon we made the cupcakes for Aco. I brought two boxes of cupcake mix and frosting from the States, and we finally got to use one of them! However, we forgot that in Huancayo we are exactly 10,692 ft above sea level and there is a handy dandy note on the cupcake box that has a correction for High Altitude Areas. I only remembered this AFTER I saw how the cupcakes turned out. Whoops! So, the cupcakes were quite bubbly and didn’t look the greatest but at least they tasted pretty good!
Once we got to Aco, I had the pleasure of entertaining the kiddos while Helen and Shayna participated in the woman’s empowerment group. They said that they were inspired by the responses of the woman and were so happy to hear the moms speak about their dreams and hopes for themselves and their children. They were especially impressed by a specific mom who after the majority of woman had spoken about what they felt were the roles of a woman (cooking, cleaning, laundry, raising children, etc) she stated “Actually, those are tasks not roles. The roles of a woman are to be a mother, a doctor, a teacher…” She wasn’t saying that the tasks aren’t an important part of life in general but who they are isn’t defined by tasks but instead roles that they choose to take on. I thought that was such an important distinction to make. Tasks often feel daunting and annoying, but those don’t define us.
While the women were discussing, I was coloring with kids and keeping them entertained. That lasted for maybe 20 minutes, before the boys wanted to go outside and play soccer. We headed outside, and I watched them play some soccer, and I played with a bouncy ball with some of the girls. We talked about their lives, their dogs, school, what they wanted to be when they grew up.
After the women’s empowerment session, there was a short meeting about the stove project to see how far along they were in getting the supplies they needed for the stoves. During this conversation Shayna and Helen had gone outside to join the kids playing soccer, they came back laughing at how badly they got beat by the boys. Apparently when they told one of the boys that they were tired, he said “How can you guys be tired? We have been out here playing since 8 this morning and you guys just got here.” It’s the altitude, always the altitude!
Day 3:
Helen and I spent the morning at Carrion Hospital doing rotations on the trauma floor with Pablo and Marcia while Shayna went to Surgery. Rotations are always interesting, because you get to hear so many different stories from the patients and how they ended up in the hospital, and what has happened since they got there. Often times I think they are just happy to have someone listen to them, we couldn’t really give advice or answer their questions, but we could listen and make them feel heard.
In the afternoon, we headed back to Aco for the Cuy Project. Before our session, the Doctor of Aco gave the moms a talk about different types of cancer. I think I talked about it before, but I think it’s cool that there is a big focus on patient education and disease prevention in the community. The doctor is taking time out of his day to teach community members, which is something that we don’t always see in the United States.
Day 4:
On Thursday we did a health campaign in the morning in Sapallanga. There was a market going on so after the health campaign we got to explore that a little bit. I once again asked for the prices of the traditional skirts and the vendor told me 1,000 soles. Shayna asked about a different skirt 30 seconds later and she said 300 soles. I was right there! The vendor tried to justify it and say that the one I had pointed to was hand sewn versus the one Shayna pointed to was made with a machine, but they looked identical to me. I guess that’s what I get for being a Gringa! :)
In the afternoon we prepped for our activity at Castilla y Leon. We had decided to make ten stations with the weekly health themes that they would go over this year. We wanted the kids to have an incentive to get through all the stations so we went home that night and cut out big poster papers with puzzle pieces, so the kids would get one piece per station and in the end, it would spell out the name of the program “Dale la Mano”.
Here’s a list of the stations we created:
1) Your Future: The kids got to write what they wanted to be when they grow up. Then we put them all up on a big poster.
2) First Aid: How do you treat a deep cut? We had gauze, band-aids, alcohol swabs, and funny looking fake hands.
3) The Five Senses: We had little boxes each filled with different things. For sight we had the kids spot 9 differences between two pictures. For smell, I sprayed perfume in the air, and they had to tell me what sense they used and what it smelled like. For taste, I handed out grapes. For hearing, I put coins in the box and had the kids close their eyes and shook the box and they had to tell me what sense they were using and what was inside. For touch, we had craft feathers, and handed them out and had them guess what it was.
4) Self-esteem: We wrote phrases on mirrors and had the kids look in the mirrors and read the phrases.
5) Nutrition: We had the kids sort out foods and put them in the respective categories (Grains, Vegetables, Fruits, Protein).
6) Values: There were good and bad actions and the kids had to sort through them.
7) Environment: We had two baskets one for recycling and one for trash, and we had the kids sort through some things to see what can and cannot be recycled.
8) Hand Washing: This one is self-explanatory.
9) My Rights and Responsibilities: Children have the right to love, respect, to be heard, to medical attention, to safety, freedom of expression and religion, and the right to education. For responsibilities they should show love and respect to others, to listen to others, to take care of myself, to not bully or harm others, to respect other people’s thoughts and religion, to learn as much as they can and help others learn.
10) Types of Violence: This was a hard one, we thought it was a little dark but didn’t want to exclude the theme. We had the kids list out types of violence and how it impacted the people around them.
Day 5:
Friday morning, I woke up early to go pick up my dad from the airport in Jaujau! He came to Peru for the weekend just for my birthday! My dad is quite the traveler, so I think he jumped on the opportunity to hop on a plane to Peru when he knew I wasn’t going to be home for my birthday. He is the sweetest! I was really excited to have him come but didn’t really know what we would end up doing for the weekend.
After picking him up we headed straight to the office where Shayna and Helen were putting the finishing touches on our puzzle pieces and ten stations for Castilla y Leon. Then we headed out for the day!
To start off the celebration, we had all the kids get into a big circle and we threw yarn around and introduced ourselves, in the end we had a web of string symbolizing how we are all connected! It was a really cute! The kids then made name tags for themselves, and we put them in four groups, each with a different color that matched the color of the puzzle pieces they would get at each station. We had a great time doing the activity with the kids, they loved going around to all the stations and the big puzzle at the end. It took a lot of effort to get it all organized but the smiles on their faces while they were at our stations was more than worth it!
After the celebration, we headed to Leopardo’s for my birthday lunch. The restaurant actually owned buildings on three of the four street corners, so we picked one and walked in. We sat down and got ready to order.
*Fun fact: In Huancayo the word “menu” doesn’t mean the list of foods that the restaurant has, it actually means “special” . It took us a long time to figure out this distinction. If you want to order off the “menu” they call it the “carta” if you want to order a special it’s called the “menu.” It took us a few restaurant meals, and a really patient Venezuelan waiter to help us figure this out. *
After we ordered our food, Rojitas walked outside, which I thought was strange but I didn’t think much of it until he came back asking if anyone had left a purse or bag in the car. I remember seeing a bag on the seat as we walked out, but I wasn’t sure if someone had brought it inside or not. Unfortunately, it turned out that it was stolen from the car, in plain sight of the security guard at the restaurant, and poor Rojitas car door was twisted open with a screwdriver and he would have to replace the lock for the door to close properly. I was so disappointed, literally the security guard was right there, why didn’t he do anything? It really put a damper on the rest of the meal. The restaurant owner asked if we would like to take a look at the security camera footage they had. It showed that there was a man and a woman who had circled the car a few times, but the camera footage didn’t show them breaking the door or grabbing the purse, so it wasn’t very useful.
There wasn’t much we could do at that moment, so we ate and Manouche brought out a beautiful mocha chocolate Birthday Cake. Everyone sang happy birthday and I got quite a bit of frosting on my face, it’s a Peruvian tradition apparently.
After lunch we headed to Amancer, were we talked about contraception. Marcia had a cool wheel that had different forms of contraception on them. We had the girls spin the wheel and we talked about each of the different forms of contraception. At the end I took one picture of each of the girls with their babies with my polaroid camera, but only if they answered a question about contraception correctly! Learning can be fun guys! :)
Day 6:
On Saturday we got to explore Huancayo for a little bit. My dad and I set off on a 20 minute walk to the Parque de la Identidad in the morning, I had probably been to this park three times at this point, but every time I feel like you get to appreciate something slightly different about the park. My dad picked up on how they covered the roots of the trees with stones, to show the intricate system of roots that plants the tree stumps into the ground. There was a photoshoot going on with a big brass band at the park, so we enjoyed watching them pose with all their instruments.
After the park we headed to Senora Elena’s, so I could show him where I have been living for the past five weeks. When we got there, we were locked out. I had given my keys to Helen the night before, so she could get in the building and Shayna had headed off to Cusco to meet her boyfriend who was going visit Machu Picchu with her, so I was outside the door for about 10 minutes. My dad proceeded to walk to the middle of the street and he saw Helen washing her clothes on the roof, so he waved her down and she came and opened the door for us. Senora Elena’s brother was outside so he was able to meet my dad, and I introduced him to Senora Elena as well, then I gave him a quick tour of the house and we headed to first eat, then to the mall then we finally made it to Constitution Plaza (what we came to consider as downtown- although I’m sure the locals would not).
I had wanted to go to a coffee shop after lunch, so we stopped into a café that Manouche has suggested, but after waiting 10 minutes, the waiter told us that they didn’t have a coffee available today. I thought this was strange since they had a whole list of coffee on their menu, but ok I guess it happens. After that disappointment, we headed to the Casa de la Artesano, and walked around for a little bit to show my dad all the souvenir shops. Then we went upstairs to the little coffee shop- they actually had coffee! Yay!
As we were walking around town, a police officer stopped Helen and asked her name. We thought this was weird as she responded, then the officer said ok and turned around. We didn’t think to ask why at that moment we were just confused. Strange right?
We bought Senora Elena a bouquet of flowers and went to mass at the Cathedral Huancayo. After mass, it was raining so we took a Taxi home to Senora Elena and presented her with the flowers. I think she got worried that we were going to eat dinner, but she quickly realized that we were there just to give her the flowers and thank her for all the hard work she puts into making us feel comfortable. After that we went to dinner at a pizza parlor… very Peruvian right?
Day 7:
It's my birthday! We spent the day driving around to different tourist destinations with Pedrito. We stopped at a touristic park, a artesian workshop (where we were taught how to identify true llama fur products from synthetics the llama fur has a very distinct smell when put to a flame, so you’re supposed to take pinch of fibers from the product and light it on fire and smell- interesting right?), then we headed to Laguna de Paca (a lake that legend says has a town underneath it that was flooded due to the cruelty of the people), the Convento de Ocopa (where there is a cemetery from the late 1800’s, and a famous catholic priest is buried), the city of Ingenio where there is a Truca fishery (this was my dad’s favorite stop), and the Virgen de Concepcion.
I promise I tried to make this as short as possible, but I wanted to make sure you guys got a good idea of everything that we did this week! Hope you enjoyed the read!
Chau,
~ Maria