Peru Through the Eyes of My Sister, Esther

Well you guys, it’s hard to believe I’ve already been here 5 days. 
They’ve been chalk-full of activities that help me know Peru like I really
wanted to know it.  Becky and Robert are at the hub of everything and have
tons of people swirling around them including many Peruvians.  So I will
give you a little peek into what we’ve been doing.  Becky and Robert
bought an apartment perched on the 4th floor in a neighborhood classified as
middle-class although their standards are much different than in America. 
It’s gated and being on the 4th floor makes it a little bit safer because there
are a lot of thieves.  The first day here was great because they don’t
have a car and so we’d just set out walking for the post-office, the bakery,
the food market and over to Kelsey and Ricky’s house.  The neighborhood
looks more like a poor area by our way of thinking with little buildings
squashed together usually several houses high, all with gates, very 
little gardening since cars are small and park inside the gate right up to the
front door steps.  They all look alike, pretty much square or rectangular
with painted cement and brick with different colors.  Wrought iron work is
used more for keeping out thieves but partly for decoration.  The streets
are tiny.  There are little fruit carts that travel around even on the
highways that are made out of cut-up motorcycles, which is crazy because you
should see the way they drive here.  I thought Italy and L.A. was bad but they don’t hold a candle to
these guys.  They honk constantly and now I understand why.  They
want to warn you that you’re going to die within the next 2 and 1/2
seconds.  So say your prayers and make it quick!!!!  So it was great
to walk around instead of ride.  There are not many white people in this
neighborhood and we are certainly watched with usually keen but not unfriendly
interest.  You can’t really read their facial expressions but I can see
things when I look into their eyes.  I think they don’t mind us too
much.  It’s fun purchasing things at their little food market and the
bakery bakes bread twice a day because the people won’t eat day old bread
here.  Kelsey and her family built a little apartment on top of Ricky’s
parent’s house.  That’s how they do it here, just go upwards.  Their
little 1 and 1/2 year old is adorable with his little dimples and Kelsey is all
grown up and makes a good mother.  Friday we went to the Embassy to tend
to Robert’s passport and then on for a much needed doughnut at Robert’s
insistence.  Then back to the house to prepare for the day’s visitors
which included Kelsey’s family including two little nephews, a couple of young
people who were here on missions, and then a couple more young women, one who
is going to set up an crisis center for young unwed mothers, and the other who
will be spending her life in Peru after her last year of college where she’s
majoring in Spanish studies.  After they left Becky led a group of
Peruvians in an English class.  Wow!  That was one day.  Each
day since has been just as filled.  (Oh yeah, we also went to a garden
nursery.  I bought Becky a gardenia bush and pot for out in front of the
little house.)  Friday we went to a more Americanized grocery store (which
was not anyway near as interesting) and bought food to prepare for an assistant
pastor and his wife who were coming a 5:00 but got here at 3:30.  You
should see how fast we moved to get ready before they came.  They were the
sweetest young couple though and come from a Peruvian church that was kind of
Pentecostal in nature.  We went their last night. 
Fascinating!!!  Three hours long with 5 speakers and lots of singing and
clapping.  One preacher talked for 1 and 1/2 hours all in Puerto Rican Spanish.  I didn’t have a clue what
he was saying but loved the way he said it.  He was hugely animated and
kept the audience both captivated and in stitches because he was darn
funny……We’re getting ready to leave on a 3 hour trip so I’ll write more
later……Love you all, Mom/Esther

 Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 Subject:
Re: Greetings from Peru

Hi all…..We just got back
from the 3 hour trip to Chincha where the earthquake two years ago hit the
hardest.  We visited two locations, one where Becky and Robert helped
repair homes that were damaged including a little church whose pastor and
family they befriended.  They also were responsible for getting
electricity established but they don’t have running water yet.  The houses
in this little community are built of thatch and straw and plastic roofs and
adobe and the government provided some wood structures after the
earthquake.  Trouble is the houses are the size of my living room or
dining room.  One story.  For whole families.  And they’re
almost connected one to the other.  Their floors are dirt.  But the
families are so sweet.  We stayed overnight in a little hotel.  Spent
a little time at a fabulous food market where we picked up rice and lentils for
160 families. (Just wait till I show you the great pictures I took of a pigs
head and some octopus tendrils!!!)  Then we went to another little church
that was being rebuilt and bagged the 160 bags of lentils and bags of
rice.  Then we filled up several taxis with the bags and went out to a
little community of refugees from the earthquake who live in those tiny little
dwellings.  They all share some community bathrooms and sinks for water
and washing.  People started trickling out from every corner and got in a
long, long line.  Robert and I worked together to give food to each family
as they filed by.  The people really touched me. They hugged us and
thanked us with such feeling.  I got to look into each of their
eyes.  Becky told me one lady would go every day and sit on a rock and
just look at the destruction and rubble that used to be her life’s home. 
Such sadness.  The children are sweet little
munchkins.  We then went into one of the homes and spent a couple
of hours with a family they know.  A little girl attached herself to
Robert and a little 9 year old boy who helped me give out the rice set beside
me and put his little arm around my shoulder.  You know my heart
melted.  There were two deaf grandmothers and the deaf husband of one of
them and they were great.  One showed her prowess at some string
games.  There was a woman named Julie who reminded me of Aunt Marguerite. 
Well, I just loved them all.  After that we went to a little restaurant
with the pastor who helped us with the food.  He and his family live in
one of those small shacks just like the others.  He was so kind and
humble.  He and Robert talked a lot in Spanish.  Becky and Robert go
to help these people in Chincha about once a month.  The government
stopped helping the earthquake victims about 6 months after it happened even
though they lost everything.  So churches and donators find alot that
needs to be done.  So much!!!!  So…..another amazing day in Peru. 
I’m sleepy and dirty so nite-nite.  Oxoxoxoxox

Sent: Wednesday, August 12, 2009 Subject: Last of Peru Trip

 Hi you guys…..We’ve been gone for a
couple days and boy do I have stories to tell….. We took an 8 hour bus ride
to the highlands in the Andes mountains and it
is my favorite place yet.  We got some hotel rooms in a small town called Huaraz, where in 1970 an earthquake destroyed all but
10% of it.  It registered 7.7 on the Richter scale
and killed 70,000 people in central Peru.  The town has been
largely rebuilt all though there is still a lot of building going on as there
is in most of Peru.   (People will
start and stop building depending on when they run out of money so it’s always
an ongoing process.)  The weather was crystal clear.  In Lima it’s winter right
now but in the highlands it’s summer.  We took bus tours on the 1st two
days of the trip.  The tour guide spoke only Spanish so we missed a lot of
the history but I was so busy drinking up the country-side I didn’t much care
as we were winding up dirt roads past beautiful terraced farm land perched on
the sides of the mountains.  And, oh the mountains!!!!!! 
Spectacular!!!!!  There are about 700 in that mountain range we were
told.  Amid the tiny little adobe brick villages was terraced farming,
sheep and goat herding, floppy-eared burros, chickens, a mother pig and her
little piglets, ducks, and guinea pigs, (which I
ate one of, by the way since it’s a great delicacy in Peru), and you can believe
I got pictures of everything.  Except the eaten guinea
pig of course.  The highest mountain in Peru
(6768 meters), Huascaran, with its snow-capped
top kept peeking in and out of the fluffy white clouds with all the other
mountains in it’s shadow and we climbed higher and higher.  Our first tour
took us to a small town that was buried in the l970 earthquake/avalanche,
killing 18,000 people.  There was a cemetery/memorial for that town that
we visited.  I got lost while we were there and they had to come back and
find me.  I know….Figures, Huh???  Anyway, I didn’t cry, and
everyone on the bus cheered for me.  Besides, while I waited for them I
got to bond with two of the cutest little sheep, and got to watch a Peruvian
funeral procession march by me on up the dirt path to the cemetery.  Isn’t
that something?  We also inadvertently got to see a wedding happening in
one of the little towns we stopped at.  Then we went on up the mountains
to see two lakes fringed by the most amazing mountain view.  On the way back down we
stopped in three villages, one for dinner, one to pick up some Peruvian desert
and one to watch a potter make and earthen pot on his potters wheel. 
Robert bought a pretty vase for their table.  I loved all those sweet
little villages.  It was like stepping back hundreds of years.  The
people live with very little money and only need about $2000 a year to
live.  They have no electricity but lots of running water since it comes
down in abundance from the mountains.  It was so strange to look for miles
and see no lights at night and yet know all those little towns and farms were
dotted across the country-side.  The women were all dressed in their brightly
colored skirts and shawls with tights and “practical” shoes with long
braided hair topped off with distinctive hats that depicted what village they
were from.  (The men often wore hats too.)  We met a little old woman
carrying a bundle of alfalfa on her back, in full native garb surrounded by a
couple  of sheep.  She had a sweet friendly face, kindly allowed me
to take a picture of her, and talked to us through Robert who speaks Spanish
quite well.  She had tiny little feet with the shabbiest of shoes, totally
worn through.  Robert, concerned, asked her how much shoes cost, and she
said 70 soles (or about $24.)  She explained she had been widowed two
years ago and couldn’t afford new ones.  In Peru there is no welfare system to
help these poor women.  Robert told her when he came up next trip, (he had
a young pastor friend in that town, he would take her to the village and buy
her new shoes.)  We wrote down the address of her little adobe home and I
gave him half the money for the shoes.  Such a small thing for us, such an
important thing for this dear woman.  When you see her picture you will
fall in love.  We had been walking up a little dirt road in the village
and were able to observe them tending their small plots of land which is how
they made their living.  As we wandered up through this lush farm land we
were greeted by chickens and two burros (who let me pet them), a pig and all
her babies and some sheep.  All on one dusty village road.  And children
playing, a man leading a burro who carried a big bundle of sticks, an old woman
by the side of the road sifting through some sort of beans in a pile, another
woman washing some clothes in a stream.  What a lot to see on one little
walk.  And most of the people were friendly to us.  Even when I
pestered them for pictures they were kind enough to say yes.  Farther
on up the road we stopped in at one of the farm houses,
which are a little bigger then the houses not up in the hills, and spent some
time with a young Peruvian pastor named Pedro.  The day before this we had
taken our second bus tour which took us to a partially buried temple that
served as a religious site as well as for civil ceremonies.  They believed
in human sacrifices and had underground rooms with 3,000 year old engineering
of a ventilation system that provided the rooms fresh air even though there was
only one entrance and no windows.  We also went to a museum in the town of
Chavin near by.
We also went to a mountain town called Mancos
where we had the privilege of visiting a youth pastor and his family,
including 5 children plus father and mother.  There was a tiny courtyard
that consisted of a sink for hand washing clothes
as well as for cooking and washing up.  In the same small courtyard they
were also housing two chickens, a duck, dog and cat, and 4 guinea pigs as well as a regular pig.  All in
the space of my living room, maybe.  There were lots and lots of flies and
chickens roamed through the rather open house at will.  This was a rare
look beyond the adobe house fronts that give no clue to what lies beyond. 
They are extremely poor but as generous as they can be.  As soon as we
came the mother and daughter started cooking us a special meal of noodles and
potatoes (Peru
is where potatoes come from originally and there are many varieties,) and yes,
fried guinea pig.  Because that is used only for special occasions they
prepared it for us but would eat none themselves.  The woman and daughter
didn’t eat anything, nor sit at the table (not sure why) but did stand around
us and visit while the father, his son, Becky, Robert and I ate.  They
were endearing.  I took pictures to show you the family and all the
animals.  We were lucky to be invited into their home…….Do you see how
amazing my trip has been, thanks to my daughters and Robert and Becky.  I
am so grateful!!!!!!!!  Tomorrow’s my last day and I’m flying home so I
can show you all mine, Becky’s and Roberts photos and to tell you much
more, and to take a rest. :o)   ——You can see the rest of the photos in the “Browse My Photos” link to the left——