It's been an interesting week. On Monday, we got a taste of the water filter-building process when we spent the morning in the ProWorld workshop with Mercedes. We carefully measured out ground clay and sifted sawdust, then mixed them together with water. After kneading the mixture by hand, we stomped around in the mud for a long while (my favorite part!) to bring it to an even consistency. Eventually, when we got the okay from Mercedes, we used a press to shape the clay into filter form (comparable to a medium-sized bucket). Once the filter is properly baked in the kiln, it will be coated with colloidal silver. This ensures that the filter serves its purpose and provides its family with 100% clean water for two years.
On Wednesday, we experienced another aspect of the filters project; we went with Mercedes to the market where we set up an information booth and tried to garner interest. Personally, I was pretty nervous to approach people at first, especially because I had to speak Spanish. But suddenly I found myself telling more and more people about the benefits of filters (as opposed to boiled or bottled water), and many were very interested. The filters project happens to be my service placement for the next two months, and I'm looking forward to learning more about its various aspects.
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| Mmm, brownies! |
In Media Luna, we met in a meeting room with some community leaders and discussed, quite methodically, our plans for the coming week. The leaders gave us a little introduction to the community, as well as some ideas for projects. In general, it was a seemingly normal meeting, and we left with a better idea of what we are going to be doing.
The next day, we got up early, as walking to Chicon from Urubamba is a bit of a hike. When we finally made it to the town, we were informed that the community president wasn't around! But since Steph had already befriended two very friendly Chiconians on a previous visit, we instead decided to spend some time with them, and hiked up a bit further. To be honest, it was a pretty difficult, uphill journey, but we did see some interesting things, including 1.) two cows charge THROUGH a barbed wire fence 2.) extraordinary views of the mountains. Fiiiiiinally we reached the abandoned ProWorld casita that used to be an overnight haven for hikers. We all had a great time lazing in the sun and chatting with our Chiconian friends. It got even better when one of them, Ower, introduced us to his entire family on our way back down. We met his wife and daughter and sister and mother and grandmother and a ton of others. It certainly wasn't the meeting we'd been expecting, but it felt pretty "legit" to be shooting the breeze in the countryside with some real Peruvians. (and we even tried chicha, the famous corn beer of Peru!)
I think that's enough blogging for now. Sorry I'm still holding off on the pictures...the photo-uploader is so slow and I'm sleepy!
Peace.
you're my hero.
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