Snows and Alpaca Deaths in the Andes

23 April 2017

Today we have been serving for 3 months (which means we have finished 1/6 of our 18-month mission). We have never been more busy in our lives - the time has flown by.

Humanitarian Work

From the relative comfort of Lima, it is sometimes hard to imagine how hard life can be in remote parts of the country. With needs always greater than the resources we can provide, we have to pass along many of these requests for help to our leaders who have to decide where our aid will go.

Alpacas Wiped out in the Andes

Friday, a young mayor from a tiny village in Huancavelica district high in Andes mountains came to our office asking for help. His village, situated above 15,000 ft elevation, had been hit by the same storms that recently caused flooding throughout Peru. However, these storms had brought snow to the high Andes, which covered the ground and caused many of their alpaca herds to die of starvation (the animals couldn't find forage in the grasslands that were frozen over).

News photo showing some of the many alpacas that died from starvation high in the Andes this year. 

Estimates show that throughout Peru this year, 180,000 alpacas have died of starvation due to untimely snow storms. Many remote villages depend almost entirely on their herds of alpaca for their livelihood, and it takes years to rebound from losses like this.

News photo showing devastation from loss of  alpaca herds throughout the Andes this year.

The mayor from this mountain village in Huancavelica that appealed for help said they were in need of food, warm clothes, and roofing material to repair buildings that collapsed - it was so sad to see the dire need in this village.  Anyway, this village's request for help gets added to the list of other areas suffering from similar needs, and local leaders in our area office have some tough decisions to make on where to send our aid.

Vision Projects

Last year's vision project in Arequipa provided a host of vision surgeries and donated ophthalmology equipment.  In addition, 2,200 glasses were donated to needy children in the area. 

  

This week we worked to collect the many missing invoices for the glasses from the supplier (we have paid them only half of the total bill because, due to continuing problems with their accounting system, they can't seem to get their invoices to us). Six months after the project delivery, we are still trying to get them to bill us. We held a meeting with this supplier in our office this week and told them we can't proceed with future projects using them until they get this straightened out. That hopefully got their attention.

This year's vision project is providing a similar level of aid up north in the city of Tarapoto. With the aid contract now signed (took 4 months and multiple revisions with attorneys), we are now ready to order the surgical equipment we are donating, along with another 2,000 sets of glasses for needy children. We hope to have this all ready to go in the next two months.

Parque El Olivar (Lima's Olive Grove)

On our preparation day (Saturday), we rented bikes and visited Lima's 450-year-old olive grove. The trees, orignally planted by the Spanish royalty in the 1560s, are still producing olives. About 1,700 of these olive trees remain and have now been declared a national monument in Peru.

Parque El Olivar, an oasis of calm in Lima.

Some of the trees in the park are the originals planted in the 1560s by the Spanish. They still produce olives. A few lagoons of water, plus charming flower beds, add to the quiet ambiance of this island of calm in the middle of Lima.

It seemed strange to be in the middle of this crazy city and find this extensive olive grove, a reminder of past days when Lima was on the edge of the Spanish conquest of the new world.

Parque El Olivar, a quiet place to reflect among some very old olive trees. Last year, they harvested almost 2 tons of olives from this grove of 1,700 trees in the middle of the city.

Our bike journey through the park was almost a reverent experience, being in the presence of such an ancient grove of trees.

Journey along the Coast and to the Cliffside Parque de Amor

We continued our Saturday biking journey, which was a good diversion from the super-busy weeks that we spend doing humanitarian work. Our 15-kilometer (9 mile) ride took us from the center of the Miraflores area of Lima, through the city, and then along the coast.

Biking along the cliffs overlooking Lima's coast. Fresh ocean breezes suggest our super-hot summer has finally come to an end.

A famous site along the trip was the Parque del Amor (Park of Love). Known for its beautiful architecture and sculptures, it sits on the edge of cliffs that drop into the Pacific Ocean.

The  Park of Love is filled with flowing ceramic mosaic walls that draw lovers and families into this cheery place near the sea.

Gigantic sculpture in the middle of the Park of Love. Note the paraglider in the background. The cliffs of Miraflores provide a constant updraft from the ocean. Paragliders in the air every time we come to Miraflores. 

Mission Training Center

We walk about a kilometer every day to get to the area office. On the way we pass the church's Peru Mission Training Center (MTC), better known as the Centro de Capacitación Misional. This is where young missionaries go through 3 to 6 six weeks of training as they begin their full-time mission service in either Peru or Bolivia. Every other Wednesday we get to see a new batch of young men and women missionaries being dropped off, and we see the tears of separation along with the smiles of joy as parents and families say their goodbyes.

Families saying their goodbyes to young missionaries entering the Centro de Capacitación Misional.

About 150 missionaries are in the Centro de Capacitación Misional at any time. Spanish-speaking local missionaries spend 3 weeks here; foreign missionaries spend 6 weeks, which includes intensive language training.

Chocolate in Peru

Peru grows about 4 percent of the world's cacao, the key ingredient in chocolate. We love dark chocolate, and they have some really good bars here in Peru. A day without a little dark chocolate is an empty, sad experience, so we always make sure we have some of our favorites each day.

Some of our favorite dark chocolate here in Peru. Chocolate originally came from the Americas, so eating a little every day is part of our Peruvian cultural experience.

We found a chocolate museum in the center of Lima celebrating this country's place in the world of chocolate. You could smell the incredible aroma, and then buy luscious chocolate goodies. We bought some delicious brownies; not your typical treat here in Peru, but it brought back memories of home.

Peruvian cacao beans I got to sift through at the Lima Chocolate Museum. The shells of these beans are removed as part of the chocolate preparation process. We bought a bag of just the shells which we can make into an incredible chocolate-flavored tea. 

Ugly Dogs - Peruvian Hairless

We have seen some ugly dogs, but by far the ugliest are a breed of dog known as the Peruvian Hairless. You see them all around the country. They are an ancient breed that were already here long before the Spanish arrived. Usually black with sometimes a little fluff on the top of their head, they just seem really strange in their hairless state.  We try to avoid them as they are very protective of the human families and their territory.

Peruvian Hairless - A popular (and ugly) breed throughout Peru. This dog calmly let me take his picture, then the next day followed me down the street while trying to bite me. 

Andean Tapestry

A man came to our door selling tapestries made by family members high in the Andes. One piece caught my eye, a piece the man said took a month to make. His family takes raw sheep wool, cleans it and cards it, turns it into yarn and dyes it with natural colors from plants and insects, then weaves it into amazing tapestries. I ended getting this piece. It looks like a tapestry woven onto another tapestry, with fringes sticking out in the middle of the tapestry to make it appear even more three-dimensional. It was an interesting fusion of styles - traditional and modern - all on one piece of cloth a yard wide. What creative crafts - all made from scratch!

Three-dimensional tapestry from Andean weavers. It looks as though there is a multi-colored belt suspended in the air on a black background, but this is all just woven on one piece of cloth.

So, with a good, relaxing weekend under our belt, we return to our humanitarian work on Monday. This service is a very intense experience, a greater adventure than we have ever experienced. We're glad we are here.

Easter Week - Trip to Pachacamac and Magic Waters

16 April 2017

We returned to Lima after a few weeks in the jungle and high in the Andes Mountains working on our wheelchair project. Easter Week (Semana Santa) is huge throughout Peru with religious events, fairs, and celebrations. Thursday and Friday were national holidays, and our offices were closed so we had a few days off to explore.

Humanitarian Work

Our work plate is getting more and more full. In addition to the vision project in Tarapoto (cataract surgeries, 2,000 glasses for impoverished children, donation of ophthalmology surgical equipment, etc.), we also have pending projects in Cerro de Pasco and Arequipa to donate ultrasound equipment to remote medical clinics.

Damage from the devastating floods this year will require years to repair.  The rains, which dumped 10 times normal precipitation in some areas, wiped out roads and submerged dozens of towns all over the country. Our office has been working overtime keeping up with the emergencies, both here and in Colombia.

News shot from Huachipa, east of Lima. Damages from the massive Peruvian floods will take years to repair.

Massive appeals have come into the church to help out with the recovery. One appeal is for help to replace the complete loss of school furniture and desks in devastated cities up north like in Piura. Responding to these requests will be a major undertaking for us in the coming weeks.

Trip to Pachacamac

Due to the Easter celebration, our offices were closed two days this week, which gave us a chance to visit Pachacamac, a massive pre-Columbian temple complex on the Pacific Ocean about an hour south of here.

Everyone knows of Machu Picchu, but few people outside Peru realize the many civilizations besides the Incas that have existed in Peru. Pachacamac was a central temple complex used for over a thousand years as a center of worship by four civilizations, including the Inca.

Pachacamac - Massive complex with more that 15 temple pyramids

The highest point in Pachacamac, the Temple of the Sun, faces the Pacific Ocean. What a view!

The Pachacamac temple complex, about the size of 50 football fields, is sliced through the center by a main north-south corridor.

Although most of the pyramids are made of adobe bricks, many stones were brought in from distant locations in the Andes Mountains. Worshipers came from locations as far away as present-day Ecuador and Chile.

Worshipers entered the Pachacamac complex along this road only after fasting and cleansing for 28 days

Ramped temple entries lead to the top of these adobe pyramids. This is one of about 15 temple pyramids that were built  over a thousand-year period. 

An estimated 50,000 to 80,000 graves are on site at Pachacamac, many of which were looted by locals over the past five centuries to recover gold and silver. However, more graves are discovered as excavation continues, and archaeologists continue to recover more artifacts and treasures. Many of these were on display in the Visitor Center.

Golden image recovered from one of the excavated graves at Pachacamac.

Part of the ceramic treasures unearthed, many of which were found in graves.

Close up of a ceramic image from Pachacamac.

Silver spoons that nobles used for preparing coca leaves, which they made into a tea and drank in times past instead of Red Bull and other high-energy drinks!

Wooden image of Pachacamac recovered in 1939. This image was considered so sacred that no one was allowed to look at it except the high priest.

The temples at Pachacamac are massive structures, built by hand from individual adobe bricks. Note the comparitive size of the people walking up to the Temple of the Sun. Thousands of graves are in the foreground under layers of sand. The dead are buried vertically rather than horizontally.

Entry into the Temple of the Sun

The adobe walls were originally plastered and then painted either red or yellow.  This must have made the site very impressive to pilgrims coming from distant lands. While most of the plaster and paint have dissolved with time, a few spots have remained intact as shown here. Archaeologists now cover up buildings with sand after completing an excavation in order to preserve these fragile buildings. 

Our guide, along with other senior missionaries [the Joneses (left), the Asays (middle), and Sandy] looking at the scale model of this massive site in the Visitor Center. 

The final stop - Marshall and Sandy at the Temple of the Moon

Temple of the Moon is the most  restored of all the temples at Pachacamac. It was reserved for women who were sacrificed at this site. This barbaric practice, abhorrent in our day, was apparently viewed as an honor in past ages (at least according to the records kept by the Spanish chroniclers who interviewed the native priests at the time of the conquest).

Pachacamac is on the tentative list for inclusion as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (along with Machu Picchu and several other sites in Peru).

Pachacamac was amazing place, although we were glad we came in the early autumn (in the Southern Hemisphere) rather than in the middle of the blazing summer. 

Circuito Magico (Magic Waters)

Saturday night (part of our normal preparation day) we went to the Parque de la Reserva to visit the Magic Waters. About a dozen exquisite fountains fill this park, many of which you can walk through or run through. The place comes alive after dark when lights transform this into a magical place of mystical colors and water.

Crowds fill the park after sunset to watch the show. This is one of about a dozen fountains located throughout the park.

Entering the tunnel of water and light - an amazing experience at night. I was a little drippy wet by the time I exited.

Many fountains let you experience the water and light first-hand. You need to change your clothes after experiencing this fountain!

For this fountain, try to find a safe spot before hand and then . . .

. . . they turn on the water and you are bound to get soaked. Listening to the screams was half the fun of this park.

Magic Waters was an appropriate name for this park, especially after dark when the lights turned this into a mystical spot of wonder and color. (And, it only cost $1.30 to get in - what a bargain!)

More Peruvian Food

We thought we would suffer here in Peru from the lack of Mexican food. But the local cuisine continues to surprise us, especially when it comes to spicy and sweet treats.

Picarones are yummy little treats, deep-fat fried and shaped like donuts.  They are made from a batter that includes squash and sweet potatoes. Ah, a treat that is actually good and healthy (sort of).

Order up some of these picarones and you find they come smothered in molasses syrup - delicious but maybe not so good for you to eat in mass quantities.

Aji (ah-HEE) and Rocoto are incredibly hot and spicy chiles found throughout Peru. You can get these two salsas at any restaurant in the country. Both have excellent flavor, but the Rocoto can be like eating a firecracker - it is hotter than the jalapeno chiles we love in the USA. We keep both of these salsas in our refrigerator and put the salsas on everything.

Aji chili is available to put on your hamburgers and pizzas, as well as everything else. We prefer it now instead of ketchup on our fries.  We will certainly miss Aji chili when we return home next year.

And so our leisurely 4-day weekend comes to an end. It was a good rest, but we are ready to dive back into the humanitarian work that we came here to perform.

Inca Empire - Cusco and Wheelchairs

9 April 2017

Our work this week took us to Cusco, the capital of the Inca Empire until the Spaniards arrived 500 years ago. Cusco sits high in the Andes at 12,000-feet elevation, and it is the gateway to Machu Picchu (one of the best-known sights in the world). But our journey here was not for sight-seeing. Rather, we came to participate in a wheelchair donation and evaluator-maintainer training.

Sitting high in the Andes Mountains in the south-central part of Peru, Cusco was the seat of power for the Incas, who ruled most of Peru, Ecuador, Chile, and beyond.

Around Cusco

We were happy to arrive in Cusco for this humanitarian event. Temperatures here in the mountains were cool to cold, a welcome relief from the heat of the jungle where we spent the previous week.

The Incas made Cusco their capital from which they ruled their vast empire. After the conquest, the Spanish tore down much of the Inca city and built their own churches on top of former Inca temples.

Surrounded by mountains, Cusco is both ancient and modern. The city is filled with buildings built by the Spaniards after the 1530s, many of which sit on top of Inca foundations. 

Traditional Spanish balconies and columns in the Plaza de Armas hark back to colonial days. Note that everyone wears jackets at this altitude, even though fall has just barely begun in the Southern Hemisphere.

Cusco's Plaza de Armas - Spanish influence high in the Andes.

All around the Plaza de Armas in Cusco feels like being in Spain, only at much higher altitude.

Descendants of the Inca

Where did the Incas go? They stayed in the Andes and maintained their language and much of their culture. Quechua (KAY-chwa) was the language for the Inca, and it was spoken throughout the Andes from Chile on the south to Ecuador on the north. The language lives on, and more than 4 million Peruvians (plus an additional 6 million in the other countries) still speak Quechua as their first language (although most are now equally bilingual in Spanish).

Here is a traditional Andean woman from near Cusco who spoke no Spanish, only Quechua.

Traditional Quechua-speaking woman.

With 90 percent of the population in Cusco being native Quechua speakers, it was no surprise that all the participants in our wheelchair evaluator and maintainer course spoke Quechua at home (although they were also fluent in Spanish). The two languages share nothing in common, and Quechua is vastly more difficult to master than Spanish.

During the wheelchair donation, we needed translation when dealing with this older group who could only speak their native Quechua.

Peruvians say that those who speak Quechua are true descendants of the Inca. Quechua is now taught in schools, but until very recently, Quechua was only learned at home from parents and grandparents.

Traditional Andean musicians perform in almost every restaurant in Cusco. This group was playing their traditional Kena (flute of the Inca), charango (small stringed instrument like a mandolin), and guitar.  While everyone in this group sang in Spanish, they were all native Quechua speakers.

Traditional Peruvian woman with her pet llama. I snapped this shot as we drove by. She charges tourists a few Peruvian Soles ($0.50 to $1.00) for a photo op with her cute little pet. (I think she hid the face from me as we drove by because we were not paying customers.)

While the Inca had no written language, they were a very advanced civilization that quickly crumbled under the guns and germs brought in from Europe. However, these people have assimilated into western culture while still maintaining their culture. Note the very modern equipment used by these descendants of the Inca in a regional bike race that was underway when we arrived in Cusco.

A bike race underway when we arrived - at 12,000-feet elevation on wet cobblestone streets. As one local told us - 'In Peru, anything is possible!'

Wheelchair Donation in the Andes

The main purpose of our trip was to assist our partner from Lima, the National Institute of Rehabilitation (Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitación - INR), with a donation of wheelchairs this week. The church and the INR have been working together for the past several years to enable our donations to reach further into the Peruvian countryside where there exists tremendous needs. Of the 1,100 wheelchairs donated by the church this year in Peru, 100 were earmarked for Cusco.

Part of our donation of 100 wheelchairs setup in the city coliseum for the public handover. 

Part of the masses of disabled people who showed up in the morning to pick their wheelchairs.

Crowds started arriving long before the handovery ceremony.

View from the stage in the coliseum with crowds of recipients starting to arrive. Wheelchairs were lined up in front.

The handover ceremony was a big deal, with local government and civic officials, two brass bands, banners, a radio announcer (also in a wheelchair), and news coverage from all the local TV and radio stations. I  got pulled (reluctantly) onto the stage and ended up addressing the crowd in Spanish. We also had a local church Stake President and High Councilor speak. When the exhausting 1-1/2 hour ceremony finally ended, the wheelchair handover began.

At the handover ceremony. I  was the only American on the stage. Two other local church leaders from the Inti Raymi Stake sat to his right and also spoke along with him.

Recipients of the chairs were pre-screened to verify their true level of need (poverty) and disability. This earlier evaluation enabled the handover to go more quickly than it might have gone otherwise.

Traditional grandmother who received a wheelchair. As we adjusted her chair, her daughter had to help translate our Spanish into Quechua, the only language the grandmother understood.

The mayor of Ollantaytambo (standing next to Marshall) brought in this group of disabled seniors from his village near Machu Picchu. Some received the standard wheelchair while others got the 'rough rider' that can traverse harsher terrain.  All of these recipients only spoke Quechua, so the mayor had to translate.

Each recipient was evaluated to determine the correct chair and the adjustments required. The serial number of each chair was recorded, along with the recipient's personal data, to allow follow-up later and ensure the chairs would be used for their intended purpose rather than being sold later on the open market. (They even fingerprinted the recipients to ensure they were who they said they were).

Of the 100 wheelchairs available, most recipients had been evaluated previously so the handover was supposed to go smoothly. However, more people showed up than what there were chairs to accommodate. That is always disappointing to people who waited for half a day, hoping to get a wheelchair. We hope there might by a second phase to this project in the future to take care of the needs that still exist.

Evaluators and Maintainers for the Future

The handover was on Wednesday, but the other four days of the week were devoted to training a local group of students in techniques for evaluating wheelchair recipients to make sure they get the correctly sized and adjusted wheelchair. Along with this course was taught repair techniques to maintain and repair wheelchairs. The church provided a host of repair/replacement parts, and the course focused on the fact that repairing is a much more sustainable approach than continuing to purchase new chairs.

Evaluators/maintainers busy at work restoring a worn-out, broken-down wheelchair.

The course participants were from the Municipal Office for the Attention of Persons with Disabilities (Oficina Municipal de Atención a la Persona con Discapacidad - OMAPED) in Cusco. This is the first time in this city that they have attempted anything like this - repairing and maintaining broken wheelchairs as well as handing over the new chairs we provided.

Nothing is more fun than making an old and broken wheelchair new again.

We had asked people to bring broken chairs to the class. During this part of the training, we fixed 10 broken wheelchairs, all of which were returned to service for disabled people.

Group of repaired chairs. Can you pick out the only new one in the bunch? (Hint: it is on the end)

Course graduates displaying some of their fully restored wheelchairs.

We provided the new wheelchairs, tools, repair parts, and training (through our INR partner). OMAPED (the local Cusco group) provided the people to attend the course. They also coordinated the new wheelchair handover and also were in charge of all transportation charges to get the two truckloads of wheelchairs, tools, and repair parts sent on the 18-hour journey to Cusco.

This is the way we foster self-reliance, and we hope this project can continue into the future. Locals are empowered to grow and help themselves. When this happens, we count this as a long-term success.

Elder David and Sherri Jones (wheelchair specialists from Texas, back left), Elder Marshall and Sandy Henrie (next to the Joneses), the four instructors from INR in Lima, and the rest of the course of graduates from OMAPED celebrated a successful beginning to a future of help for the desperately poor and disabled persons in Cusco, Peru.

Final shot from Cusco - the sun sets high in the mountains of this ancient city.

As we leave Cusco, we pray that our labors here in this ancient city will bear fruit and provide a long-term solution to the desperately poor who are often times forgotten and invisible in their home-bound state.

Would Jesus have been doing something other than this?