Donations to the Needy and Chinese-Peruvian Chifas

25 June 2017

Everyday is a surprise for us here in Peru - our humanitarian work involves something new all the time. We love what we are doing, and we can never guess what is right around the corner for us.

Donations: Organizations that Support the Needy

This week we coordinated donations of surplus items to organizations that support the needy and disabled. We worked through the office of a Peruvian congressman to locate organizations that could benefit from the donation of more than 400 items stored in our warehouse in central Lima, including washers, dryers, televisions, furniture, etc., that had been accumulating for some time.

More than 400 items we donated this week to help a host of charitable institutions, such as the Saint Vincent de Paul geriatric center, the Confederation of Disabled People, and the Canevaro Senior Residential Center.

We had to catalog all of the donations, which took days to complete, then spent two half-days coordinating the pickup. We probably had 20 trucks loading up these donations for the charitable institutions we helped.

The congressman we often work through to coordinate these donations is Kenji Fujimori who is serving his second term in  Peru's congress.  His father, Alberto Fujimori, was the Peruvian president back in the 1980s who helped defeat the 'Sendero Luminoso' terrorists in Peru. Kenji's sister almost won the presidency last year. Meanwhile, Kenji's office has been instrumental in helping us connect with a host of organizations to make our donations of all our surplus items.

Previously, we made a donation of 10 surplus IPADs to the National School for the Blind (a host of apps on the IPAD help blind people more easily adapt to a sighted world) and to the Albert Einstein Institute of Science. The delivery ceremony (always a ceremony here in Peru) took place in the congressman's offices.

Donation Day. Congressman Kenji Fujimori (center) at the donation ceremony in his office. We donated 10 IPADs to the National School for the Blind and the Albert Einstein Institute of Science.

Kenji Fujimori graduated from the University of Kansas and spent time at Utah State University, so he speaks perfect English and has been an ally for us in helping us carryout our donations.

Other Projects in the Works

We continued to work a host of other projects throughout Peru this week, including two clean-water well projects, two projects donating medical ultrasound equipment to remote clinics where they continue to lose mothers and newborns, wheelchair projects, and two vision projects. Our most recent project will be conducting training in northern Peru in a few months with US doctors who will present maternal and newborn care training to reduce mortality levels in poor regions of the country.

More about Food

Food here in Peru is excellent. Every day we find more and more good things to eat. And restaurants are so inexpensive, it costs about the same as eating at home.

Chifas - Peruvian/Chinese Fusion Restaurants

Right from the start of our mission, we have been amazed at the number of 'Chifa' restaurants throughout Peru. Over the past century, hundreds of thousands of Chinese immigrated to Peru and opened restaurants all over the country. These restaurants are called Chifas, and they aren't exactly Chinese restaurants - they are a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian cuisines. Chifas are found every where you go throughout Peru.

In Lima, there are over 6,000 Chifas. You are never more than a block or two from a Chifa!

One of the thousands of Chifas found throughout Peru.

Chifas come in all shapes and sizes, and the food is good and usually inexpensive. We eat at our favorite one for about $12 total for two people, including soft drinks and tip.

Limon Kay (lemon chicken) from our favorite chifa: Bu Bu Gau. A powerfully sweet lemon chicken flavor that seems like it could glow in the dark, plus a large mound of fried rice molded into a half-sphere.

There are so many Chifas, you lose track of them. There are about 10 Chifas within a few minutes walk of our apartment.

For lunch or dinner, Chifa's serve a lot of food for not much money.

We found one Chifa where the waitress only spoke Chinese. We had to speak with her granddaughter in Spanish to get her to translate for us.

Chifas are not really Chinese restaurants. Rather, they serve a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian foods.

You can get Peruvian Lomo Saltado along with Chinese wanton soup in these fusion restaurants. 

It is hard to tell where Peru ends and China begins in these Chifas.

Potato Land

Potatoes originally came from the Andes Mountains of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Chile. They are now a staple eaten around the world. However, while the rest of the world enjoys a half dozen varieties of potatoes, there are thousands of varieties available here. Locals tell us there are 3,000 documented varieties of potatoes in Peru.

Just a sample of the incredible varieties of potatoes available in Peru.

No Peruvian meal is complete without potatoes. Even if the dish includes rice, it will also include at least one and sometimes several types of potatoes. They come in all sizes and colors: white, yellow, gray, even light purple.

Peruvians even have a national holiday to celebrate the potato - Dia de la Papa. But, this is not to be confused with another national holiday which honors the Pope (Dia del Papa). The word for potato and the word for Pope are the same, only the article is different ('la papa' is a potato, 'el Papa' is the Pope).

Really Big Food

Peru has lots of really big foods in sizes we had never seen until coming here.

While Peruvians eat normal size avocados, we stumbled across this monster-size variety. The photo may not do it justice, but it seemed as big as a cantaloupe. Its flavor was the best we had ever eaten. Of course, given its size, it took us three meals to finally finish it off.

Gigantic Avocado - it took days to finally finish eating this one.

Peruvians love a type of gigantic corn that the locals call 'Cancha Dulce' or sweet dried corn. They puff it up and sell it in gallon-size bags for about $0.30. You eat it like a snack, but whenever we buy a bag, we want to rush home and pour it into a bowl with milk because it reminds us of a breakfast cereal.

Gigantic corn turned into a snack called Cancha Dulce.

A Real Find - Chocolate Tea

We stumbled across something interesting - chocolate tea. When producing cocoa beans, they remove the shell from the bean. While most people would think the shell is just waste, the shell actually makes a really delicious tea when you soak it in hot water. You can buy cocoa bean shells in certain markets, and they are super cheap. We bought a gallon-size bag of the cocoa bean shells for about $0.50. What a find!

A gallon-size bag of cocoa bean shells - we have enough to make a cup a day for years to come.

Home Sweet Home - Inside our Apartment

We live in a very comfortable apartment on the 3rd floor of a small 4-story building. This is our cozy little home until July 2018. We, like all the senior missionaries here, pay $825/month, which includes utilities. There are about 10 other senior missionary couples who work out of the area office like us who have similar apartments.

A comfy living room

Sandy in our small (but adequate) kitchen

The only issue we have with living in this part of Lima is the fine black powder dirt that constantly blows in. During the summer, we had to sweep every other day or our bare feet turn black as we walked around the apartment. Now it is winter, so we keep the windows closed and the dirt blowing in is less.

Peruvian Friends

Miguel Hurtado is a good friend at the Area Office in the Purchasing Department.  He and his wife Miriam have taught us so many things about how to enjoy life in Peru. They drove us all around Lima for hours on Saturday, showing us lots of markets, paid for our lunch, and finally ended our trip in Callao on the ocean. They are our best friends here in Peru.

Our Peruvian friends, Miguel and Miriam Hurtado, with us near the ocean in Callao.  Miguel often takes us on 'field trips' around Lima as we leave the office to go on shopping trips for our projects.

Living in Peru is a good experience for us. We enjoy the opportunity to serve, and being immersed in this culture is such a great adventure.

Feeding the Poor - Soup Kitchens in Arequipa

19 June 2017

Project - Help Feed the Poor in Arequipa

The poor here in Peru often eat in soup kitchens (or 'comedores populares' in Spanish). Local governments subsidize the cost of the meals so the poor can eat. For one or two soles (about $0.30 to $0.60), they can get an inexpensive meal, maybe their only cooked meal of the day.

Humble soup kitchens like this one take care of feeding many of the poorest of the poor in Peru.

Recently, the city of Arequipa came to us, asking for help with their soup kitchens. Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru, needed help with their 225 soup kitchens to improve the quality of the food being offered to the poor.  Since the city is subsidizing the meals, they wanted to help ensure consistent and nutritious food. The small soup kitchens, typically run by poor people themselves from humble little houses throughout the city, each feed several dozen families every day. The city is mounting a campaign to teach the people running the soup kitchens how to prepare better food.

Inside one of the humble little soup kitchens.

The woven bamboo-mat walls of this soup kitchen promote good air circulation but are perhaps not the most sanitary places for food preparation.

Thousands of poor people in Arequipa depend on these 'Comedores Populares' to provide probably the only cooked meal of the day.

The city asked us to help with this project to improve the soup kitchens by donating pots, pans, plates, utensils, and blenders. We reviewed this request and got it approved by our Area Welfare Committee, so our work began by ordering the supplies.  We will help all 225 soup kitchens with a donation of 900 pots, thousands of plates and utensils, and other goods.

In Search of Pots for Soup Kitchens

Our job was to review the pots we are donating to the soup kitchens to ensure we are getting things that will last. Our journey this week was to accompany the church purchasing agent, Miguel Hurtado, to review the quality of products offered by vendors throughout Lima.

We thought we would travel from showroom to showroom, reviewing what vendors had to offer. What came next was a huge surprise for us.

Miguel Hurtado, church purchasing agent, with us and some of the 900 pots we will purchase. It looks like we are in a showroom, but we were actually in the factory where the pots were being made just a few feet away.

The showrooms we thought we were visiting turned out to be factories where they made the pots out of aluminum sheets or disks the size of large pizzas. We examined the final products right in the factories.

Sheets of aluminum are stamped out to create disks the size of a large pizza that are turned into the pots.

An aluminum disk is put into a spinning lathe and is bent around a wooden form to create the pot. The four factories we visited were loud, dirty places.

This worker just finished making the small aluminum pot that he is touching with his left hand. When finished, he would pull the pot off the lathe, toss it into the pile of pots behind him, and insert the next disk. Time from start to finish - about 2 minutes.

There were no safety precautions in any of these sweat-shop factories. If someone fell into their equipment - too bad. A belt wrapped around each worker to help hold him close to the lathe so he could use his body weight to help shape each pot. Also, note that no one wore face protection, hearing protection, or masks to protect from all the aluminum dust in the air.

A unique-shaped pot (although we weren't buying these, they were cool looking). This size pot took about 3 minutes to shape using an assortment of metal tools seen beneath the lathe. Note the large pizza-sized aluminum disks sitting on the floor to the left from which the pots were made.

I covered my eyes in these factories, fearing a piece of aluminum would fly through the air and blind me.

Some pots were huge. We joked that the biggest pots could hold a few people and were a popular item to ship to certain areas of Africa!

The largest pots take two people to make. Both of these workers held the metal shaping tool that bent the large aluminum disk into a pot as it spun on the lathe.

An order for 900 pots would take only about 2 weeks for any of these factories to crank out (with shifts working around the clock).

The finished product looks nice and hopefully will last under the heavy abuse of the soup kitchens. (Sandy was a little overdressed in this beautiful skirt and heels in these dirty factories. However, the assignment to visit the factories was thrown on us at the last minute after we got to the office that day, so we went from place to place in our nice clothing).

The donations we are making for this project will hopefully make a difference in many lives. This project also involves the city of Arequipa training all of the workers in the soup kitchens in hygiene and nutrition. This partnership between us and the city is the type of project we like to pursue because it involves more than just a handout. It leads to growth of everyone involved and blesses the lives of those that could not do something for themselves without some help.

More of What We Do

Most of our days are spent in the office, managing the many humanitarian projects we have in the works.

Working in our office, managing the many projects we have running simultaneously here in Peru.

The variety of tasks we perform is at times staggering. One day I kept track of things I worked on (Sandy has a similarly complex list).

--  Translated emergency status document into English describing Venezuelan refugees in Brazil to send to church leaders in Salt Lake City. 

--   Revised a video presentation of humanitarian projects in Riberalta, Bolivia, for final production. This video goes to the Area Welfare Committee to approve projects. 

--   Worked an international shipping issue in Lima to locate an original customs document required to release 300 wheelchairs from Peruvian customs. This required multiple calls to the church International Shipping Department in Salt Lake City and the National Rehabilitation Institute here in Lima. 

--   Confirmed with Finance Department that payment is being made for the doors and stairs a vendor supplied for the 18 clean-water wells we are providing in Monsefú. We needed to expedite the payment to the vendor because his wife is in the hospital and he needed to pay for the surgery. 

--   Worked with our supplier of ultrasound medical devices for our donations in Cerro de Pasco and Cayma. These donations to remote medical clinics will hopefully reduce maternal and newborn deaths in these poor and isolated regions. 

--   Reviewed and revised a video for the 50 wells the church has provided in the jungles of Ucayali. Only 25% of the people in this region have clean, potable water. This video now goes to the Area Welfare Committee. 

--   Translated a second Venezuelan emergency status document into English to send to church leaders in Salt Lake City. This document seeks an additional $1.5 million in emergency humanitarian aid to help with the desperate political situation in Venezuela that is causing starvation and large numbers of refugees fleeing the country. 

We love the work we are doing, but at times it makes our heads spin with the variety of assignments we are juggling.

Sandy keeping her fingers on the multiple humanitarian projects she touches every day.

Journey to Plaza Josfel

Saturday is our day off (our preparation day), so we try to unwind a little. This week we discovered a new place to shop (called Plaza Josfel) located a few miles from us. The plaza was enormous - more than 1,500 stores - and sells everything you could dream of. This place is where real Peruvians shop at a host of little mom-and-pop stores.

Unassuming on the outside, the Plaza Josfel held over 1,500 stores.

Hundreds of shoe stores, clothing stores, hardware stores, meat markets, etc., filled this place. Prices were rock bottom. We found things here we never could have bought at the fancy malls.

We spent hours in this place among the many, many stores and good deals. Sandy bought skirts and a sweater; I bought sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, and a hat. There were no tourists here, only real Peruvians.

Hundreds of shops selling all kinds of meat. If you touched these chickens and they were still warm, it meant that they were fresh!

Typical of the myriad shops, most of the owners were small business owners selling anything they could think to sell.  This shop sold nothing but salsas. 

More than a hundred beauty salons and barber shops filled the plaza.

Everything you could dream of under one roof. We and the other senior couple with us were the only non-Peruvians in the place.

Plaza Josfel - what a find. Every day is an adventure here in Peru!

And so our work goes on in ways that we never imagined. What a blessing this mission continues to be for us (and hopefully for the people we serve).

Arequipa Vision Project and around Lima - Gamara and Pachacamac

11 June 2017

Our daily task of managing a host of humanitarian projects continues. We are currently managing about 25 projects located throughout the country.

Vision Project in Arequipa - Final Wrap Up

The vision project in Arequipa was started last year by our predecessors, Rob and Mary Merrill, and is approaching completion. It was a success and helped improve the vision of thousands of disadvantaged in Arequipa. Most of the work was completed last year, but it has taken until now to wrap things up and get the final bills paid so the project can move to closure.

A major part of this project (besides the donation of medical equipment and training local doctors) included a donation of 2,200 eye glasses to disadvantaged children and teens in Arequipa.  A doctor in Arequipa helping with this part of the project just sent a report to us on the donation, including the following photos.

The donation included prescriptions from eye doctors who came to the schools to measure the students

Children were given a variety of frames from which to choose. From past vision projects, we learned that if the kids pick their own frames, they are more likely to wear their glasses.

Notice all the girls in this school choose pink frames while the boys went with blue.

Parents of families living with scarce means seldom have money to pay for "luxuries" such as eye glasses, so children often go without. Without the ability to see the chalkboard, children with poor vision fall behind in school, leading to an increase in dropouts.

Some of the 2,200 recipients of the eyeglass donation.

The children (along with their parents) were given special training in how to handle their glasses so they would last. Notice this group all excitedly holding up their lens cases.

The schools were put in charge of maintaining records of the children and doing follow ups to ensure the vision program continues to provide good vision to these children.

Children who received the lens donations with thank you signs that translate as follows: "Thank you for caring for our little eyes" and  "Thank you for our little glasses".

The final report from Arequipa was a sweet conclusion to the project.

And now, we are moving forward on another similar vision project to help the disadvantaged up north in Tarapoto. We just put in the order for the medical equipment we will be donating as part of that project.

Where are our projects located?

Our area welfare specialist, Alex Principe, works with the Area Welfare Committee for the Northwest Area of South America to propose and approve projects.  Right now we have about 25 active projects scattered around Peru.

In deciding where to provide humanitarian aid, Alex and others often consult this 'poverty map' that hangs prominently in our office.

Poverty map of Peru.

The poverty map shows that the poorest regions of Peru are typically high mountain regions in the Andes (similar to some areas in Appalachia in the USA). Poverty levels can often approach 50% of the population in these regions.

Poverty here means something different than in the USA. Poverty here means a family of four may be living on something like $70 per month in a homemade shack with no running water.

While we are not here to solve poverty by giving handouts, we try help improve life by encouraging others to be more self-reliant. We make donations of items the people would never be able to get on their own (glasses for children, surgeries, wheelchairs, etc.). However, all of our projects have, at their core, the goal of developing skills in recipients and helping them move along the path of being able to care for themselves into the future.

Journey to Ruins at Pachacamac

Shaun Belliston, a law student intern from BYU who is here for a month, is leaving this coming week. Before he left, we decided to make a trip on our day off to a massive ruin called Pachacamac in a suburb south of Lima. (Sandy decided this was her Saturday to stay home for a change and get things done, so she missed the adventure). We had visited Pachacamac previously during the summer when it was really hot, and we decided to come again when things cooled off to spend more time.

Shaun and I made the 1-1/2 hour journey using city bus, metro train, and two separate combi busses that cost us only $1.60 to get there. The combi busses are private bus lines, usually mini-vans, that are crammed with more than 20 people (which only adds to the sense of adventure and 3rd-world charm).

Pachacamac was a major worship center for almost 1,500 years for a variety of civilizations (Lima, Wari, Ischmay, and Inca). This is a massive site encompassing 17 temples.

Stone stairs leading into Pachacamac. The mountain in the back is the Temple of the Sun, built by the Inca. Most of the temple is still buried under sand.

The site is massive and is on a tentative list to become a UNESCO World Heritage site (similar to Machu Picchu).

Temple of the Sun which overlooks the ocean. Excavation is still ongoing.

The Temple of the Moon, built by the Incas, housed a group called the 'chosen woman' who spun tapestries and were often sacrificed.

The city of Pachacamac (a suburb of Lima) grew right up to the border of the archaeological ruins. 

A museum located on site includes a host of artifacts recovered over the past 100 years. Many of the artifacts have been recovered from the estimated 80,000 graves on site. The dead were bundled up in sacks along with valuables and were buried vertically.

Ceremonial drinking cup recovered from one of the many burials on site.

Ceremonial pitcher recovered from a grave. Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from this site.

Miniature golden burial offering complete with tiny clothing and carrying case. Gold that was buried with the dead was not stolen by the Spaniards conquistadors - they didn't have the patience to dig.

We enjoyed the few hours we spent on site during our day off. There are so many archaeological sites here in Peru, we will never run out of things to see.

Around Lima - Gamara

Also on Saturday (our day off), Shaun (the BYU law student intern) and I made a journey to Gamara, a massive shopping area in Lima.

The trip to Gamara felt just like being in overwhelming and crowded sites we have visited in India or China.

Gamara - Super-crowded (and a little overwhelming)

Wall-to-wall people filled the streets, and music blared from most of the shops. This was really a case of sensory overload.

Gamara is beyond where we normally travel in Lima, based on safety concerns and the shear press of humanity in this crowded place. While not the safest of neighborhoods, I was glad Shaun was with me (rather than Sandy) for this adventure on our free day.

We found a group of street musicians playing cajons while people danced. The cajon (caw-HONE) is the favorite percussion instrument in Peru. It consists of a wooden box you sit on while you beat on the front of the box. The cajon can be super loud and usually requires no amplification. We have seen cajons like these being played in almost every city we have been to.

Street musicians in Gamara playing the cajons and bongos.

Of the thousands of people crammed into Gamara, we were the only non-Peruvians that we saw during the entire trip - not your typical tourist hangout!

Into Gamara. Shaun, the BYU intern, is the white American on the right.

Note how almost everyone is wearing a coat. We are in the late fall here in Peru and temperatures are in the 60s. However, this is considered really cold weather by the locals who are accustomed to really hot and muggy weather. Cooler temperatures, which feel comfortable to us, are painful to the locals.

I may come back to Gamara in the future to see a really strange place that others call 'Voodoo Alley' where local shamans sell things like llama and alpaca heads on stakes that you can put in your yard to ward of evil spirits. Sounds bizarre!

And so, with our weekend over, we return to the office to coordinate a host of projects. The days are long, but this humanitarian work is good. Serving here is a joy.