Rumi Rumi

Wednesday 7^th July – Andahualyas

I sit in 'our' casa writing on my laptop with the intent to copy and post on my blog in good time. The past few days have been interesting, we have found somewhere to help and we have other options on the horizon. We are spending our mornings, from around 8am to 1pm, at a kindergarden that is about to have it's first year aniversary. The area is called Rumi Rumi and I think that this is one of the poorest areas in town as the children have signs of malnutrition and they are fed during the morning. I find it hard to see the children looking so sleepy when they arrive and then see them bounce back from a quick trip to the cociner (kitchen) for some milk. We sit with the children during class and hep out where we can, which we are finding a little hard due to our lacking in the mastering of their language. Interestingly the children have Quetchua as their home language and spanish as their school language, I think they find it strange that we are not able to understand them or communicate like their teacher. We help out with getting the food and we wash up the dishes there are about 28 in the class but we only ever see about 25 at a time. Today we managed to communcate our request to make lunch for the children tomorrow, so we went to the local market and picked up heaps of vegetables that we will cook with some mince meat and serve as sandwiches. Our plan is to pump some vitimens into the little blighters, as their teacher explained to us theri general diet is maize, potatoe, rice and some other basic food that I cannot recall (remember, it is all spanish here). NOTE some of the photo's in this blog are from us helping with the food. The ninos were most confused about what to do with so many veggies, we were told they are not used to having them at all.

Tomorrow we will be planting some plants to help keep the hill, next to the fence, from erroding. I have also managed to communicate that I'd like to make their path in the play yard a little better by cementing it. The path at the moment is boardered by large rocks and then has smaller rocks as the path, rocks are plenty here as that is what the area's name means (Rumi = rock, in quetchua). Anyway, the path (rocks) is currently quite rough and I am sure if we cement it then the kiddies will have no trouble walking along it. NOTE: again "tomorrow's" shots are below (I wrote this blog last night and have uploaded today, hope you're still with me)

The teacher, profesora, has been teching the children how it is important to clean themselves and also to keep the environment clean. On our first day we walked down the street and collected heaps of rubish from the street. The streets have rubbish everywhere, however there are no bins on the street to put the rubbish. The current situation is not sustainable, so I can understand why the teacher has this as a push. Some of the children might arrive, still a little dirty, and the teacher will speak with their older sister/brother and explain how they must clean themselves at home. One child was dirty on Monday and his sister was given the stern words, she was also not clean. This child arrived clean today and it is just amazing to see the difference the teacher is making.

I purchased an Aussie Rules footy for the trip over and have left it at the kindy for the children, they have not got the concept of Australian rules and watching them kick it around like a soccer ball just makes me smile. Still, they are happy to play with it and, I think, enjoy something different.

I write with a fire in the corner of the room, music from my computer and a hot meal on it's way. I know that a hot shower is available and that I have all the comforts that I need, something that I am understanding not everyone has. The children are remarkably strong, thanks to Rumi Rumi and the Profesora.

Andahuaylas - 1

Photo´s from Cusco

The Inca Story

Tres Cruses

Monday 28th June – Andahuaylas

It has been a long while since I have “blogged”, the main reason has been time but this is no longer going to be an excuse as I feel the next 5 weeks will lend me enough time to keep this up to date. Prue and I are in Andahuaylas now, we arrived on Saturday night from Cusco on a 12 hour bus ride. The views were absolutely amazing, however I was not able to capture any with my camera as I felt it was not a good idea to get my 'toys' out, opening myself up to robbery. In hindsight this may not have been a necessary conclusion but I guess the old 'better to be safe than sorry' rules.

Cusco was fun, we stayed there for one week and managed to fiesta with the locals and check out some of the things Cusco has to offer. We were recommended to see Tres Cruses and the opportunity literally landed on our laps. Sitting in the middle of Plaza de Armas next to some crazy looking dude with his dog, and he stops a young lady to chat. She was handing out flyers on the next few events they were promoting and one was Tres Cruses. The flyer was then given to me and once I read it I enquired more, anyway we ended up on a very small mini bus for a 6 hour journey north of Cusco. We arrived at the sight around 3am and it was as cold as I had been warned, bloody freezing actually! Preparation was a little on our side as we purchased a rug made from alpaca, we wrapped ourselves in this and waited for the sun. There were a fair few people there as it was a special celebration for them, loads of drums and sounds from the conch and, of course, the sound pipes. The pictures below show some of the sights. We were sitting on top of the world and it is amazing to see the sun rising from underneath you, the blanket of cloud and the mountains were just too beautiful to explain. The colours changed so quickly and when the sun finally showed itself to us the drums sounded fast, the chants were heightened and the energy was magnificent.

TRES CRUSES

Back in Cusco we arranged some lessons in Spanish as we knew that this town (Andahuaylas) has no or very little English. This we have found to be true. The lessons were hard as they were one on one and day one was 3 hours, day two 3 hours and day three 4 hours. I learnt a lot but was also very frustrated by how basic my grasp is of this language.

We also arranged some time in the jungle for August, I met a lad from Australia on the flight over that is involved in volunteering in the jungle and he gave me the details. We are going to spend 10 days in the jungle doing some sort of volunteering work, what exactly is unknown now but I'll be sure to post something from this as it sounds like the jungle is a special place to see.

Here are some shots from a nigh out in Cusco, there were heaps of street marching etc.

Street Tucker

Legs eleven

Mixing up some ´´juice´´ for the night

Yesterday we spent most of our time at the markets here in Andahualyas, and as there are no tourists here I was getting a lot of attention from the locals. For a start I have never felt so tall, I think that I would have been the tallest at the markets. Plus I have no hair, and I do not have brown eyes. The kids were looking at me in amazement and then laughing or gasping as they try to get their mother's attention. I would say “Hola” to them and this was enough for them to break out into laughter.

Here are some shots of the markets. As the markets are a weekly event, I plan on taking more next Sunday.




Today we caught up with Señor Roberto who is Luis' uncle and is the Director of the local hospital. We went to the hospital to see if he was there, ready to report for duty but were given directions to his house. Arriving at his house we introduced ourselves and were invited in, he had been expecting us. We were invited for lunch and luckily we were taught how to cook the meal. It was interesting to spend the hour or two in the kitchen with Roberto's wife, Rosareo, as it was all spanish and we both gave a helping hand. The children found I a little strange as we could not understand their language but they were also sweet in getting books that explained words to us. Today and tomorrow is a holiday here in Peru so Wednesday we will start our work which looks like it could be helping the orphan children in the country. As we are still not 100% with the language (not even close!) we will wait until Wednesday to discover if this is what we will be doing.

Well that is a quick wrap up on where we are and what has happened getting here, I'll be sure to post more from now on.

30 June 2010
Well today we were meant to start work at an Orphanage but somehow we were stood up, I think that our spanish is the biggest problem we have but we are working on this every day and I am sure that with practice we will improve.

TC