February has arrived and along with it the torrential rains that mark Summer here. I think we were going on 27 straight days of rain when finally the sun came out for a few precious days. Along with the rain, our power and phone service has been intermittent as well as our ability to travel out of La Jalca as mudslides blocked most of the roads and the Utcubamba River overflowed its banks. People here are saying it’s the worst rain they’ve seen in years. They are also saying March is much worse!
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| Losing a boot in the mud |
On the bright side…our Environmental Club is awesome. We went to the museum in Leymebamba last week and because the electricity was out all over the region, we were the only visitors that day and got VIP treatment. We got to go inside a climate controlled room where archaeologists are doing research on 300 mummies unearthed from the Laguna de los Condors nearby. The mummies were buried with their possessions inside large statues carved into the cliff sides. It’s one of the most abundant, intact archaeological finds in this region so far which remains largely unexplored. Afterwards we visited a native tree reforestation area and a fish farm. So that was pretty cool for us and the students. Another week we made popcorn and showed the Planet Earth Fresh Water movie with Spanish subtitles and the community authorities came and watched. This week, the students wrote letters to kids in the States and it was so much fun. Translating their letters before sending off was illuminating. Every single student wrote about their dreams, what they want to be when they ‘grow up’: Doctor, policewoman, astronaut, lawyer, agro-industrial engineer, civil engineer. Now is their summer vacation but every one of them goes to their families chacra’s (farms) at the crack of dawn to work in the fields. They all said they didn’t like it because it was back breaking work but it was a way to help their parents, who are all subsistence farmers, and a motivator to study hard and do well in school. I hope they all get the chance to go to University after they finish high school. One student wrote about how much she loves books. She said “Books are my life”. It’s a real challenge to find books in Spanish here and they are unbelievably expensive. There’s no library in this region, which has gotten me thinking about another future project…
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| Brian and I with some of the Environment Club in Leymebamba |
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Our plans over the next few weeks are to finish up our community diagnostics to present to our Directors and the community and to do some traveling over the Semana Santa holiday at the beginning of March. I’ve been collecting hundreds of seeds and saplings for the tree nursery and we’re planning a community seed gathering day for March. Hopefully we can really get the nursery up and running soon. Brian is doing his thing and charming, ahem, educating, the whole town into wanting to chlorinate their water. Poco a poco, or little by little, good things are ahead.
Thank you to everyone sending notes, emails and care packages our way. We can’t tell you how much we appreciate reading news from home and all the tasty treats.
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| With our host family at Danny's 16th birthday party |
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