Calara

I love going to the countryside and getting to spend time in fresh air, listening to the sounds of the breeze rustling the trees, donkeys hee-hawing; tasting fruits plucked fresh from the trees like guava, plums, passion fruit, bananas and pomegranates; smelling and touching the dirt in the fields when walking across them or digging.  It gives me a sense of peace and home away from the honking cars and mototaxis, endless piles of trash and sidewalks and barricades buildings of Chiclayo. 

This last week, I got to return to Calara, where CIPDES is working on the asparagus project by helping to provide the local farmers with supplies and knowledge.  The drip-irrigation system is being constructed entirely of plastic PVC pipes and thin tubes.  CIPDES provides engineers who offer guidance, while the local farmers are expected to provide most of the labor: digging the trenches for the pipe, carrying the pipes, sawing the pipes to the right size, using sandpaper or files to rough them up and gluing the pieces themselves.  In this way, they must have an investment in their own systems as well as are learning how it works so that if they need to make any repairs in the future, they are capable of doing so.

Several times each hour, I saw a donkey pulling a cart either loaded with harvested goods or passengers.  It’s ironic sometimes to think about this entirely different world.  Back home I think of little girls giggling as they play with their dolls or paint each others’ fingernails or play t-ball/soft-ball.  Here they are laugh together as they drive donkey-drawn buggies or help their younger siblings bathe in the water spewed from a cracked irrigation pipe.  Two little boys (probably about 8 years old) had a ball as they got to play with the elbows and other connecting pieces for the irrigation system making towers and spy-glasses while their fathers dug trenches.   Another interesting sight was seeing several men work together to lift a mototaxi and pass it over the trench across the road so that the passengers could continue on their journey.  (Mototaxis resemble Tuktuks).   

As much as I enjoy it, there are awkward moments.  When lunch time came around, I was served a pile of rice with an entire roasted guinea pig piled on top.  The guinea pig, known as cuy here, lay on its back staring up at me with its mouth open.  I had to kindly thank the Señora, but request that she bring me an empty plate upon which I put the rodent and returned it to the kitchen.  The four men at the table all devoured their critters and rice.  What a day. 

It is a beautiful area and I feel blessed to be able to go there surrounded by rocky mountains (cerros) on all sides in the middle of what will soon be an oasis in the desert.

(I picked some of these guavas from atop CIPDES’s pickup, then climbed the tree to get more for the engineers). You don't eat the seeds...just the sweet white cotton-like flesh.