Last Chance to see Peru

Our plane left Ayacucho at five am on Saturday. We arrived in Lima without incident, to face the 12 hour layover. Tina, luckily, had already reserved a room at the Marriott and was kind enough to let Gayle, Meg and I join her. Meg was feeling under the weather, so crawled into bed, while the rest of us secured a tour of the city. Lots to see, lots of history. Lots of old buildings and bridges and statues, but a lot of the areas were as modern as any big city in the world.

The daily changing of the guard at the Plaza de Armas in Lima. It was quite a show; we didn't watch it all - we were on a tour and had to keep moving.

One of several cool old churches we toured. I think this is the one that had centuries-old catacombs in the basement where it is believed over 70,000 burials took place. No photos allowed down there.

Can't remember the significance of this old church, but it is right on the ocean, where the daily fogs and general dampness has completely eroded the roof and it is being replaced.

This is the shopping center at Mira Flores, practically hanging over the ocean. We had dinner here at a place called Mangoes.

Crazy can be in any country

On Wednesday, Angelina and I volunteered at the medical clinic in Ayacucho. She had been there already a couple months and knew the language, so she was actually productive. I watched a few exams and helped weigh and measure a few babies.

At the appointed time, we went out near the front gate of the clinic to wait for the van from Cross Cultural Solutions to pick us up. An elderly woman approached us. She seemed lost and confused. Angelina directed her to the registration desk and assured her that they would help. The woman went inside for a minute but then came right back to where we were sitting. For some reason, she seemed to have adopted us.

The van from CCS came about that time to pick us up. We greeted the driver and started to get in. The old lady went ballistic. She started yelling at the driver, that he was kidnapping us, and tried pulling us out of the van. We tried our best to communicate that everything was ok, that this was our ride, that we knew the man. But she just kept hitting the van and trying to hit the driver through his open window. Finally we just yanked the door shut behind us and told the driver to floor it.

I felt so sorry for the old woman; she was so upset. The poor little thing. I think I have a patient or two just like that at the clinic where I work back home.

A Look at the Clinic

When I first signed up to go to Peru with Cross Cultural Solutions in 2009 and they asked if I had any special areas of interest, I told them that I worked in a clinic, so would like to experience their health care. On Wednesday, I had that opportunity.

Angelina, one of the students who was staying in Ayacucho for several months, took me to the clinic that day and showed me around. Wow, it was a hodge-podge of buildings and rooms, all run fairly efficiently it appeared, but just very different from back home.

The back side of the clinic. Hmm? Looks different than what we are used to, doesn't it?

The minor procedure room. I watched one of the students debride a leg wound here. Nothing fancy, he did it the same as any of the surgeons back home would.

This is where the post-partum women stay for a few hours after delivery, before they go home.

This poster just cracks me up. Even with my very limited Spanish, I easily figured out what it was saying. In case you don't have a clear enough view of it, it is basically promoting breast feeding, comparing it to dining at a fine restaurant.

Look to the Cross

Rudy, our host at the CCS office in Ayacucho, Peru, where I volunteered in 2009, explained that many cities in Peru (perhaps throughout South America and even the world for all I know) will have a cross placed on a hill high above the city. Being a predominantly Catholic nation, people in Peru will look to the cross for strength and support.

Isn’t that something that everyone should get into the habit of doing? Whether you have a cross above your city, one hanging on the wall in your house or only the vision of a cross you carry in your head and your heart, look to the cross and remember what it means.

It means that our loving Father in heaven sent His Son to die on that cross so that we don’t have to. No matter what we are facing today, turn towards the cross and turn towards our Savior.

As for me, may I never boast about anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of that cross, my interest in this world has been crucified, and the world’s interest in me has also died. Galatians 6:14 New Living Translation (NLT)

From the city plaza in Ayacucho, you can see the cross high on a hill.

One day, we took a ride into the Andes Mountains. Can you see the cross

in the lower left side of the picture? Don't know which town this was.

A tour of Ayacucho

Cross Cultural Solutions, the organization I traveled to Peru with in 2009, set up most volunteer placements so that you worked in the mornings and in the afternoon you learned about the culture of the country. The first afternoon following our first placement, Rudy, the director of the Ayacucho location, took us on a tour of the city. Just a breathtakingly beautiful city. In these pictures anyway. Not all views looked like this, as I will share in upcoming days.

The absolutely beautiful town square (minus the porti-potty)

Maybe we need a few signs that say "no bull" back home

A fairly typical side street

View of Ayacucho, surrounded by the Andes Mountains

Doesn't take much to make me feel at home

I was exhausted. I had been up since four am on Saturday, April 11, 2009. It was now nine in the morning on Sunday, and I hadn’t lain down anywhere in that time and had only caught a few minutes sleep on the plane from Atlanta to Lima. But I was finally there, the home-base for Cross Cultural Solutions in Ayacucho, Peru. A simple but clean three-story building on a noisy street corner. My home for the next week.

Inside and up one flight of stairs were familiar faces. Megan, Gayle and Tina, my partners for the week, all who had arrived the day before. We had met each other via the internet and swapped pictures and experiences. It was like I had known them all along. Most importantly, English was their first language!

We had a quick orientation, then I went to my room to unpack, take a short nap and what would be my only hot shower the whole time I was there. Lunch that noon – and most days – was chicken in tomato paste with rice and mixed vegetables.

That afternoon, Gayle and I walked up to the Plaza. What a beautiful city square, full of shops, churches, statues of famous people and fantastic views of the surrounding hills. And only a five minute walk from our home base. We walked here at least once a day, so many pictures of that will be coming.

That evening however, still exhausted, fighting a headache and feeling the effects of the high altitude, I wanted to lay low and go to bed early. That would not happen. Instead I went down to the kitchen to socialize.

Including the four of us who had just arrived, there were three students who had been staying at the home base for a while already. Harriet, Angelina and Harry. They had decided to make cookies that afternoon. It was Easter Sunday and so the logical shape – and easy – to make was round, in the shape of Easter eggs. Then we all decorated them. Colors for frosting were limited, but we managed.

I felt like I had come home.

What Have I Gotten Myself Into?

Have you seen the original “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. One of my favorite movies. Remember when Butch and Sundance get off the train in Bolivia. This was Butch’s big idea; he had told his partner what a wonderful place Bolivia was, streets made of gold, a land of milk and honey, easy pickings. But when they arrived, when their train stopped and they disembarked, they weren’t met with any diamonds or jewels. They were met by pigs and chickens, dust and squalor.

When I got off the plane in Ayacucho, Peru, in April 2009, that scene flashed through mind. I don’t remember seeing pigs or chickens, but everywhere there was dust. The airport was a small structure, like a shed where someone would store their tractor instead of a building to greet newcomers.

Inside it wasn’t so bad. It was brightly lit and modern and no one spoke English. And because my flight had been two hours late leaving Lima, I was worried that my ride wasn’t there.

I waited patiently for my luggage, focusing on the simple baggage handling system, sneaking peeks at other people without being obvious, listening for a familiar word. I grabbed my suitcase, my lone suitcase which had to weigh in at under 25 pounds due to the small size of the plane I had just exited. Worst case scenario, I could spend the week in the airport because now I at least had my stuff.

Against one wall was a tourism kiosk, a cute little counter with an awning of palm leaves. The woman working there didn’t know English, didn’t recognize the words “Cross Cultural Solutions”. You would think that the organization had people coming and going on a somewhat regular basis and that the airport personnel would have heard of them. I clutched my backpack to my chest with one hand, my other hand gripping my suitcase handle.

“Excuse me, maybe your ride is waiting outside.” Oh, my gosh, was I hearing things? I turned to face a man dressed in business casual. He nodded toward the doors. Out the window, I could just make out the side of a white van.

“Thank you,” I stammered, “Thank you so much. That must be my ride.”

And sure enough. I walked outside and the van driver hoisted a hand written sign announcing “Cross Cultural Solutions”.

A young man introduced himself (and I promptly forgot his name) and his father, the driver. The boy was home from college on break and was anxious to practice his English. Interesting. And I only wanted to practice my Spanish on him.

Where, where, where to go?

When I returned home from my mission trip to Kenya, Africa, in the summer of 2006, I was content. I had accomplished one of my dreams, something that was on my list of things to do before I died. I’d volunteered in a third world country.

The fall of 2007, we hosted another (our third) German student for two weeks. The following summer, Val would be traveling to Germany to stay with that girl’s family. After the German girl went home the end of October, somehow we ended up with a foreign exchange student from Portugal for the rest of the school year. She became friends with a foreign exchange student from Taiwan, who became the girlfriend of my son’s best friend. Val was getting excited to go to Germany. My son Nick was making plans to volunteer in Ghana, Africa, with Engineers without Borders. His friend Josh was going to Taiwan to see his girlfriend.

The world was getting so much smaller. Within a year, I was getting major wanderlust.

First it started out with aimless web searches on my lunch hour. I would type “volunteer trips” to see what would pop up. One day, I typed in “mission trip Ghana”. The first site to come up was for Cross Cultural Solutions, so I checked it out. And every day at lunch, I checked it out some more.

Cross Cultural Solutions sends volunteers to countries all over the world. They didn’t just go to Ghana, Africa; they went to Tanzania, Morocco, India, China, Russia and even South America. I decided that I had kids or friends of kids who had been to Europe, Asia and Africa. South America seemed the place to go. Peru seemed the place to go.

What had I ever heard about Peru? Wasn’t that the country where the Incas had lived? That was about all I knew at the time. Tells you how much I learned in world geography.

Nick in Ghana

Val in Germany