Bonds of Solidarity

This week, I was asked by the Fulbright commission to define my supplementary project in 100-200 words.   As a Fulbright grantee, I am required to dedicate 20 hours a week to a project of my choice in addition to the hours I put in to fulfill the grant that I received (in my case teaching English at UNPRG.  The project is about as open as possible.  It can be anything from doing research towards a master’s thesis or collecting folktales from local populations to compile a book or coaching kids’ sports.  In February when I met the commission in Lima along with the other 3 grantees to Peru, we were told our project could be anything we wanted to dedicate our time to, as long as we could have a sense of accomplishment and success.  They simply want us to be “successful.”  

I gave it some thought and ended up deciding to partner with a local NGO.  “How do I explain my project so succinctly?”  I asked myself.  “Do I even have a ‘project’?”  With the reassurance of the dictionary’s definition of a project, I began to write.  Titling my project Bonds of Solidarity, I ended with:

With the aim to learn more about life in rural Peru, to serve and connect with others and to gain a better understanding of how non-governmental organizations function, I decided to partner with  Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Desarrollo Sostenible (CIPDES) an NGO based out of Chiclayo.

With this organization, I travel to rural areas of the department at least two days a week to help with projects such as installing drip irrigation systems to increase crop yields for local farmers and to bring water to homes that previously had no running water and identifying families with children in need of improved homes or kitchens to improve their health and quality of life.  For such families it may mean working with several institutions to help get them water, a toilet or a stove to contain their firewood so that they do not have to breathe in smoke all day as food is cooking.  I began a small project of offering help with homework for children in the village of Eten a few hours a week. 

Partnering with CIPDES is proving to be rewarding and challenging, helping me to grow both personally and professionally.  

Several of these parts of my project have already been mentioned in previous posts, but new developments are always unfolding. 

Last weekend I had the opportunity to help with and support two different health workshops.  On Friday, CIPDES held a seminar for people from many of Peru’s departments to explain the positive experiences that they have had with two mobile clinics in this province.  CIPDES will be turning over their two semi-truck polyclinics to the government soon since the government is better equipped to finance the project.  The mobile clinics are taken to underdeveloped rural areas in which no medical services are available and numerous specialists travel voluntarily to spend up to 10 days in a location treating the local population, be it dental care, delivering babies, performing surgeries or simply doing routine examinations.   The following day, I collaborated with 8 nursing students from a private university in Chiclayo to explain common health related issues in homes to women and elderly individuals in Ciudad Eten and to identify problems that they have in their homes.  Able to relate to several of their situations after my time in Kenya, I feel compelled to continue with the project and hope that we are able to improve the quality of life for some of these women and their children.  Most of them are cooking with firewood on the ground, meaning that it is not good for their backs, that they are breathing in smoke all day (and so are their children) and their eyes are also being damaged by the smoke.  Additionally, several of them do not have water in their homes (and therefore only pit latrines).  One of the mothers doesn’t even have a latrine in her home!  This week, I also got to visit the rural community of Valle Hermoso, to see the small cabinet that holds all the medical treatment available to the local residents and learned about the anthrax problems that struck the community a few months back as the virus is always living in the soil and can infect livestock (and subsequently people) under certain conditions. 

Additionally, CIPDES provides support to several rural schools, as it sees education as an integral part of helping people to move out of poverty, improving their quality of life.  On Thursday afternoons, I help children with homework or teach small English lessons to children in Eten.  This week on Friday, I got the chance to accompany one of CIPDES’s employees to distribute toys and educational materials that the NGO had purchased for some of the schools that they support.  Seeing the children and teacher’s excitement and curiosity was rewarding and reminded me of how blessed I am.

CIPDES also works in the environmental sector supporting conservation projects.  Last weekend, I had the opportunity to go to Media Luna, a beach reached only by climbing a large rocky hill and descending the other side.  The cliffs near Media Luna are one of the world’s largest resting places for pelicans as well as home to blue-footed birds and the Humbolt penguin which is nearly extinct. 

We got to take a tour of the conservation site, learned about how they are running their programs and also learned about the injustice of rock collecting.  There are so many things that we do not think about and take for granted.  When we see rocks on a playground in the USA, I doubt many of us stop to wonder where they came from and the work that it took to get them there.  As it turns out, there are several people working near this beach, barely making enough money to put food into their stomachs.  Unfortunately these men are being exploited by some American companies, being forced to run heavy bags of rocks up the steep sandy slopes of the coast to a place where a truck can access them to be transported to the USA as cheap materials.  It makes me so sad to see people being exploited in such a manner, especially when they are doing work much harder than most people I’ve met!

Today, I went to Tierra Blanca (near Chongoyape) where a peace corps volunteer from Maryland is working to build Peru’s first “eco-library.”  This building will have a neat design, if the funds are found to finish the project.  All is ready except for having the necessary cement.  Instead of using bricks of adobe to fill the insides of the walls, plastic bottles stuffed with other non-degradable plastic trash will be used.  The community members have collected and stuffed over 7000 bottles.   

After helping a bit lugging rocks for the base this morning, I went with a few other individuals to Chaparrí, a conservation reserve and home to the “spectacled bear.”  We did see one.  

I also met the director of the reserve who turns out to be Heinz Plenge, a world-renowned photographer for Discovery Channel and National Geographic!  (If you want to check out some of his amazing photography see http://www.plenge.com). The dry forest is home to many types of unique birds that are found nowhere else in the world. 

                Many times I feel as though I am not serving others nearly as much as they are serving me.  I am constantly learning about the fascinating world around us.  By working together, by sharing information, joys and struggles, by trying to lift one another up, we can all be part of a better world through bonds of solidarity.