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After arriving at the People of Peru Project AV compound we were greeted with a delicious breakfast of a sort of fried flat bread (like elephant ears at the fair), fruit, and coffee with condensed milk. We met Paul the man who runs the People of Peru Project and lives at the compound as well a group of nursing students from Idaho. The students told us of the flooding of the town - with raw sewage- as there an inadequate sewage system and not enough water flow from the rivers to wash it out of town. So, the town is literally sitting in stagnant sewage water. Paul gave us fair warning about not putting any inorganic waste in the toilet (tissue papers) as it will just sit in the city……this was the first lesson that I learned the hard way….leading to my next lesson, HAND SANITIZER STAYS IN MY POCKET!!!! We settled into our rooms. Six in each. My roomies are Yulia, Tavifa, Olga, Liliya, and Becky.
Everyone was exhausted from the near 24hours of travel so we slept until about 1pm and then had a lunch of rice, beans, potato/apple salad, and chicken.We also had a sweet drink made of purple corn called "Chicha Micada". Next we rode in three wheeled motor cars (the city's main transportation) along the Quinones highway to Belen, a city in the middle of three rivers (the Itaya, the Nanay, and the Amazon). None of these rivers however flushed the city of the feet upon feet of sewage water. "It is the highest it has been in 10-15 years" says one of the guides.I have never seen anything like I saw in that town. The streets were covered with sewage and wastes, dogs and vultures picking through the piles of trash. People crammed into every nook and cranny, selling food (mostly fish and bananas), tobacco, and traditional medicines like "dragon oil". I did not know how to take in what I saw. My initial feeling was sadness that these people lived in such poverty and unsanitary conditions but when I looked at their faces, I did not see despair, I saw smiles. The children especially loved smiling and waving to us.Maybe the simplicity of life and not being obsessed with soap, water, and material things leaves people with few things to worry about.Another interesting sight was the skilled craftsmen working alongside the street.There were shoe smiths, mechanics, and electricians working on projects. It was a scene from what I imagined life to have been like in early America.
We rode the motor cars back to the compound and had a dinner of potatoes, chicken, and fruit along with an orange/banana juice. I broke my camera today but the other students kindly allowed me to copy photos from their memory cards in the evening.
Buenos Noches!
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