Volunteer Project

Whew ok where do I begin...admittedly I've been slacking a bit on writing my next blog entry because well...my days are quite full. Yo tengo Spanish classes every morning from 9-11, then I leave to my volunteer project in the afternoons at 2:30. In between I work on my Spanish with a tandem partner, or try and schedule the weekend treks outside of town. My volunteer project via Maximo Nivel worked out to be the perfect fit for me. I am really lucky. I really love the kids and the project director Williar is quite a character.

The project is Wara Associan and originally revolved around Futebol. It has since taken on a bit of a different form in that we work with the kids on their homework after school, teach them a bit of English, and then play Futebol until the sun goes down. I have a bit of experience working with kids through my mentorship with City of Dreams, this however is a community that is at a whole other economic level. The community Huayllarcocha is a Quechuan community about 25 minutes out of Cusco in the mountains surrounding the city. The entire community consists of about 80 families. The houses in the community don't have bathrooms or showers and the families primarily subsist off the land. Most of the families have about 5-7 kids and make about 5 soles/day. To offer some sense of what that means, 3.15 soles= 1 USD. To make money, the community sells soil, potatoes, farm animals and pottery that they create. For those of you who don't know Quechua was the established language of the Incan Empire and the entire community speaks Quechua and Espanol. I have learned a few verbal exchanges in Quechua as it is important to be respectful of the native language in addition to Spanish.

Every day there are either pigs, mules, alpacas, cows, dogs, sheep, you name it, wandering the property of our project building which keeps it interesting. After all the homework is done we play futebol the last hour of every day. Needless to say with all the animals I have trekked home more than my share of poo on my pants. I was even lucky enough to take home with me one of the smaller animals....the Garapata one night. It must have stuck to my jeans and got cozy in my sleeping bag...I wound up with about 25 bites on my leg until I found the little sucker 2 days later.

I feel like since we are the 2nd round of volunteers at this project we could make a big difference. Additionally I have offered my services to help build a basic website for the organization. I must say ...I have really taken to the kids. I think there a few that could actually make me want to have kids one day which in itself is a miracle. I'm including a few in this post for you to see.