Ayacucho: Revisited

Back to my home away from home, although this time in a different house to accomodate our girth of 15 people. The work at the orphganage has been more like work, with all the kids back from break and going to school, we need to plan more educational activities and do a bunch of chores all the time. And this time around it´s really becoming apparent that most of the administration don´t give a hootinanny about the kids, so we´re on our own trying to get them to do homework, take showers, etc. Today I almost lost it when six kids and I wasted two and a half hours waiting for this pottery class that didn´t happen for the second time, due to the director having a certain part of his body stuck up another, if you catch my drift. Enough about that.

Most of the new crew, 12 gals, 3 guys. If you think that sounds nice, think again.

We´ve been doing the same things on the weekends as I did the first time, but there´s been a couple of new experiences. Getting bucked off a horse for example. We were taking horses to a waterfall nearby, and at one point I decided to open her up a bit and bring my steed to a gallop. That went fine, boosting my confidence to the point of getting a bigger faster horse and taking off like a gunshot. In was a mere ten seconds after this that I was going so fast that time slowed down, and my ´Whoa Nelly´s´ were lost to the wind. Jessie, if you´re reading this, I could really have used some pointers. I slid a bit sideways on the saddle, and knew I was doomed. Two more strides and my face was planted in thankfully well-maintained grass. A scrape on my arm, a nasty bruise on my hip, but I suppose it was all worth it for the marvelous first impression I made, right?

The first milder ride

Visiting the Wari ruins again.

A mountain donkey

Vinchos, the destination of a two hour hike

A girl and her sister at the trout farm we had lunch at

Another new thing we´re doing this time around is volunteering with Ayacucho´s association of disabled people every saturday in the mountains. I´ve only been once, but what we did was taxi up nearby this tiny town called yanama, to a gathering in a field of about a dozen squat mud buildings. Every weekend about a hundred disabled people and their families gather there and have meetings, play volleyball, etc. The disabled are really discriminated against in Peru, and organizations like this one and new and rare. Anyways, my job with two other girls was to prepare an english class, which we did containing a couple songs, diagrams, and games to teach about 15 kids their numbers, colors, and basic introductory english. It started slow, partly because of my poor spanish and partly because we were in the middle of a windy field, but the kids were eager and we got cookin near the end. Some of the other volunteers prepared an ecological course about littering (also a huge problem in peru) and general sanitation and health. It went extremely well, all the adults seemed to be really absorbed, and it all ended with us helping them clean up their field that was covered in a thin layer of trash. It was a success and a nice way to spend a Saturday morning. Too bad I forgot my camera.