High Altitude Projects, Wheelchair Shipment, and More Exotic Fruit

4 February 2018

It's official - we have now spent over a year living south of the equator. And, except for a few more grey hairs and bug bites, this has been a very interesting, often intense, and rewarding adventure.

More Projects at High Altitude - Huancavelica

The region of Huancavelica sits in a remote area high in the Andes Mountains. The region is poor with most families earning their meager income raising alpaca. Most of the residents speak Quechua as their native language, and they live in one of the most isolated regions of Peru.

Our job in the coming months will include visiting many of these locations at the request of local officials who have asked for our help. We hope to make an impact on the lives of the poorest of the poor in this region.

Most residents of the region of Huancavelica live above 10,000 elevation in small villages accessible only by dirt road.

Even the capital (and largest city) of the region is isolated - there are no airports in Huancavelica.

Small villages like this one in Huancavelica are hard to get to, and health care is limited. When women in the mountains go into labor, they usually have to walk several hours just to get to the village health centers in order to have their babies. If there are complications with the delivery, the results are often fatal because the nearest hospital may be hours away on dirt roads.

Soup Kitchens in Huancavelica

Regional leaders have asked us to help with improving the care they provide at their soup kitchens in the poor province of Angaraes. The poor can eat one meal a day in the soup kitchens (called 'comedores populares') for about $0.50. The government supplements the cost of the meals, which thousands of people depend on to keep alive. Many residents in this province suffer from malnutrition and anemia, which would be worse without the current help from the soup kitchens.

There are 125 soup kitchens in Angaraes that could benefit from improved care, The regional government sent us these shots of places we plan to visit as we investigate ways we might help.

This is a typical soup kitchen in Angaraes. Up to 20 to 30 families might depend on this soup kitchen each day for food to survive.

This is a lucky soup kitchen - they actually have three propane burners and two main pots. Many soup kitchens have less than that.

Soup kitchens are often housed, like this one, in old adobe buildings with the stucco pealing from the walls.

This soup kitchen, Comedor Virgen Dolorosa, in the district of Huancahuanca (WAN-ka-WAN-ka) shows the people that are typically helped. Note the pot outdoors on the open fire they sometimes use to cook the food.

Villages often build the soup kitchens to help the poor using the only materials they have on hand - typically adobe bricks made from mud and rocks. These humble eateries keep the poorest of the poor alive with one meal a day.

We helped with a similar project last year in the region of Arequipa. We worked hand-in-hand with their regional government on a project to lift the standard of food provided in the soup kitchens through better equipment and training. We are hoping for something similar in the region of Huancavelica.

Helping Schools in Huancavelica

A focus of our area initiatives in Peru is improving education, especially in poor regions. The local school officials in Huancavelica sent us requests for help with their infrastructure. They sent these shots showing what conditions are like in many of their remote schools. We will visit many of these places and investigate if we can assist.

Old two-room school houses like this one are scattered in the mountains throughout Huancavelica. Conditions inside the schools are often sad.

It is a good thing they found the buckets to help keep this teacher desk from falling to the floor.

These are typical of the student chairs in these remote schools. Imagine sitting on these chairs all day.

We have helped with other school projects around Peru by supplying desks and chairs. Improving conditions in the schools has been shown to help reduce the school dropout rates in these remote places. Our job will be to investigate and suggest ways we might help.

Our trip into Huancavelica will be another adventure at high altitude. As long as we dose up on Excedrin and coca tea, we hope to minimize the affects of the altitude sickness that always seems to hit us.

Wheelchairs Arrive in Peru

Our latest donation of over 350 wheelchairs arrived by ship this week. This shipment started at a factory in China, then the wheelchairs were boxed up, loaded into a shipping container, and sent by ship across the Pacific Ocean.

The shipment brings the donation on this current project to close to 1,200 wheelchairs. (Since 2009, the total number of wheelchairs donated is over 4,500).

This shipping container with over 350 boxed up wheelchairs arrived in Peru last week. After clearing customs, it was delivered to our partner.

We donate these wheelchairs through our long-term partner, the National Rehabilitation Institute (Instituto Nacional de Rehabilitacion - INR). The INR then works with local health agencies around Peru to evaluate the needy recipients and ensure they get fitted for a chair that will end up changing their lives. All donations of wheelchairs are completely free to those most in need.

Boxes of wheelchairs stacked outside at INR, ready to put into their warehouse for donation around Peru in the coming months.

This latest shipment includes a new design requiring many more adjustments than the previous wheelchairs. We have church wheelchair specialists from the USA coming to Peru in 2 weeks to conduct training with INR, and we will part of that training. Later that same week, we will travel with INR to the jungle city of Iquitos to oversee the delivery and adjustment of the first batch of these new chairs.

More Exotic Fruits of Peru

Here in Peru, we can easily get all the fruit we used to get back home. But, because of our proximity to the equator, we find lots of tropical fruits that we had never seen before. Most of these fruits never leave the country because they are so perishable or they are so different tasting that there is no foreign market for them, yet.

Mamey

Mamey is found throughout Peru, and we first tried it a few months ago in the high jungle city of Tarapoto. A big fruit, weighing almost 2 pounds, Mamey looks about the size of a coconut with a rough brown exterior. Inside, however, is the bright orange meat. It tastes like a really tart peach. This fruit costs about $3 USD, very expensive by Peruvian standards. 

Mamey - brown on the outside, bright orange inside. They grow this in the jungles.

Lúcuma

Lúcuma fruit is about the size of a plum and is grown throughout Peru. Neighbors here in Lima grow it in their yard, and it is sold in many grocery stores.  Lúcuma is not very sweet and it is fairly dry (not juicy). Eating it reminds us of what a sweet potato tastes like after it is cooked, with a slight butterscotch flavor. It is best combined with something else to make it easier to consume (although many people do eat the fruit by itself). Peruvians often combine it into ice cream, which makes it more palatable.

Lúcuma is another favorite all over Peru.

Green in the Desert

All of coastal Peru (including Lima) is located in one of the driest deserts in the world. However, we have green trees and plants all along the roads and highways. The only way everything stays green is because the plants are watered constantly by water trucks. As shown here, an army of water trucks throughout the cities and countryside make sure that plants get enough to keep alive. A few feet away from where the plants are watered, everything here is just dirt and sand.

The many, many water trucks we have in Peru are the only things that keep the plants and trees alive that are along the roadways.

So, this week we return to the office and further execute our projects: writing and signing contracts for another vision project in the jungle and maternal/newborn health training course, ordering equipment for more wells for clean water projects up north on the coast, organizing followup interviews with recipients of our wheelchair donations, arranging travel to Huancavelica to create other projects to lift those in need, etc. This is a very busy life for us.