a journey to peru > a reflection on Peru...

It wasn’t until I arrived at Lima airport the enormity of what I was about to do hit me. Moving through Customs, not having any idea of what was being asked of me (simply because I didn’t speak any Spanish) was a rather scary experience. When I reached the safety of my hotel room for the night, all I could do was break down and cry! And that was before I had even stepped foot in Cusco. That night I wondered to myself if I was really capable of living in a non-English speaking country. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but the confidence I had before I left Australia, the excitement of immersing myself in a completely different culture, simply disappeared as soon as I landed in Peru.

The next day I had a flight to Cusco, and I again had to face the International Airport scene. I don’t even recall if I slept that night, for fear of what I was going to see and be committed to the very next day. This time however, I knew my coordinator would be waiting for me, to be my guide in this strange, different city.

With my bags loaded in the van, we made tracks for the hostel I would be calling home for the next 3 months. I’d never been in a 3rd world country before, this was my very first experience of extreme poverty and I was shocked as we travelled down roads lined with unfinished buildings, advertisements plastered to their mud brick walls, being informed that these were liveable quarters!

Life in Cusco is simple. Even though the temperature falls below zero, only the expensive hotels supply heating. Hot water is limited and the people seem to make do with what they have. They work hard, sons and daughters of the families helping in the running of the small businesses they have been able to acquire. Everywhere you walk, the locals ask you to buy their hand made products – these including finger puppets, postcards, dolls, bags, jewellery and young boys offering to shine your shoes.

Young children are carried on their mother’s back and the older ones wander a little out of view. At first I found this very difficult to deal with, these young children of 2 or 3 being allowed to stray from their parent’s side. The streets in Cusco are busy, taxis roaring around every corner almost every second of the day and I feared for these children running on the streets. Surprisingly, in my whole 3 months of living there, I never saw a single child do so! The simply knew not to.

But as darkness falls, that’s the time my heart would break. Mothers and their children huddled in doorways, young children of only 10 years of age wandering the streets selling cigarettes and chewing gum to the tourists who crowd the nightclubs. They were lovely kids, many of whom I became friends with, and it’s them I often think about now that I am no longer living there.

I had the opportunity to complete a 5 day trek to Machu Picchu, visit and trek in the Colca Canyon and to spend some time also in Bolivia. The scenery in that part of the world is simply amazing! Mountains larger than life, tracks and trails more dangerous than anything you would see in the Western world without signing a limited liability document, wild life and flora that was so different to anything I had ever seen before. It simply took my breath away!

I spent my days volunteering in an orphanage – San Judas Chicos. The girls there come from different backgrounds, some with no family (Karen and Paloma – sisters who don’t even have a record of their birthdays!), some with brothers living in the related orphanage for boys (devastating to know that they are separated from their only family!), and others with mothers who simply could not afford to look after them. Visiting days on Sundays for family and friends were always very special.

In my final week, I visited a small village about an hour out of Cusco called Huerta. A friend of mine was volunteering there and wanted to introduce me to the beautiful children who attended the local kindergarten. After a couple of hours with those kids, I knew what we needed to do. Their teacher was unqualified, and the children’s standard of education was far below those of the girls from San Judas Chicos. The village has the infrastructure for a school to be created – the only problem being the lack of funding. And so begins the next stage of my Peruvian experience – EDUCATING THE CHILDREN OF HUERTA!