So, in my last post I left off right before I traveled to Cusco for five days to see my Mom and the Jaffees (her friends) and to pick up the filters from the Urubamba factory for the pilot program. Spending time with my mom and the Jaffees was so much fun and it was so great to relax and let my mom spoil me for a few days 🙂 One day while in Cusco, my mom and I went to visit the Casa Mantay, where I volunteered in 2007 and 2009, with my mom joining me in 2009. The Casa Mantay (www.mantay.org) is a shelter for young mothers who have children as a result of sexual abuse. There are usually around 15 mothers and their children living in the house at any given time, and the mothers can be as young as ten years old (TEN). Peru has a high instance of rape, and until recently, laws related to rape and sexual abuse were extremely lax. In many cases, rapists could get off with a slap on the wrist. In certain cases, a rapist could get off completely free if he agreed to marry the woman he raped.
……
‘Disgusting’ and ‘horrifying’ aren’t good enough adjectives here. Luckily, and in part thanks to the hard work and persistence of the Casa Mantay, the rules have changed, and rapists in Peru receive harsher punishments now. But that doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t still exist, and that’s where the Casa Mantay comes in.
The Casa teaches the girls first how to be mothers and how to love their children, despite the circumstances (imagine being faced with motherhood at age ten), and also provides tons of resources such as legal assistance (in the case that a mother takes legal action against her attacker), psychological therapy, education (through high school), and specialized job training when desired. The Casa also operates a small taller (workshop), where mothers learn to make purses and other accessories to sell in Cusco. Once the mothers are ready, they move out of the Casa, but many bring their kids back for daycare or come back to work in the taller. Raquel and Sergio, who established the Casa in 2000, are SO passionate about their work and have dedicated their lives to the cause. It’s an incredible operation and it clearly changed my life–ever since my first trip to the Casa in 2007, I haven’t been able to stay away from Peru 🙂 If you’re looking for an organization to donate to, the Casa is a very, very worthy one (to find out how to donate click on the angel on the website’s main page). It doesn’t take a lot to keep the Casa running so any amount helps. Thanks!
Anyway, so the rest of the weekend was a lot of fun, and then on Monday my mom and the Jaffees set off on the Inca Trail. RocÃo came out to meet me on Monday afternoon, and we had a great time exploring the city for the evening. Then, on Tuesday morning, we traveled to Urubamba (about an hour away) to pick up the filters and check out the ProPeru factory. Urubamba, located in the Sacred Valley of the Incas, is surrounded by mountains and full of gorgeous wildlife and colorful flowers. I would have loved to stay and check out the area a little more, but there was work to be done. I guess I’ll have to come back some day.
We were showed around the factory, and though I already knew the process for making the filters, it was interesting to see a small-scale factory, as opposed to the huge Filtron factory I visited in Managua. The process itself is fairly simple, and very doable on a small or large scale (as made apparent by the fact that these factories exist ALL over the world, in a wide variety of environments). The Urubamba factory doesn’t turn out a specific number of filters per month but rather fills orders when they are made. Most of the workers in the Urubamba factory are foreign volunteers, who stay for a few weeks at a time.
Anyway, if you read my last post, you may remember that I was less than thrilled about the price we were being charged for the filters. Well, they were still charging us the same price, so the feeling hadn’t changed. But, we had made up our minds to buy the filters anyway, and, not wanting to cause any drama, we didn’t complain about the price or bring up the inexplicable ‘patent’ claim that had been made two weeks before. So, we got our filters, and moved on, figuratively and literally.
We hired a car to take us and the filters back to Cusco, and from there we went to the bus station to see if we could put the filters on the bus that would take us back to Puno that night. We were told that we couldn’t, and that we would have to send them with one of the shipping companies located in the bus terminal. Dealing with the shipping companies was a classic example of the ‘gringo price’—in Peru, gringos will often be charged a higher price (sometimes much higher) for something than a Peruvian would. On the whole, I think this is fair, but sometimes the difference is a little outrageous. For example, I approached the counter of one of the shipping companies and asked how much they would charge us for each box (we had eight boxes in all), and was told it would be 30 soles per box. That seemed really high, so RocÃo lead the way to another counter. There, they told her it would be 10 soles per box. So, there you go. Gringo price. It was a good thing I had RocÃo with me or I would have been paying a lot more for EVERYTHING—shipping, taxi rides, etc. So, thanks RocÃo! That night, we took the bus back to Puno, and in the morning we picked up the filters. Luckily, they all made it!
On Friday, my mom and the Jaffees arrived in Puno, having successfully completed the Inca Trail. According to them, it was difficult, but incredible. Now I’m kind of regretting not going…but maybe another time! On Saturday, my mom and I went to the Uros, which are floating islands on Lake Titicaca made out of totora reeds. The islands are super touristy now, but they were made by pre-Inca communities over 500 years ago, so hearing about their history and how the islands are made was really cool. On the islands, there is no legal system, nor are there any police, so whenever there’s a dispute between families, they simple use a large saw to cut the island in two and drift them apart. I got a kick out of that. Then, we went to Taquile, another island with a long history of textile production. It was a lot of fun to be a tourist for a day in a city where I’ve lived for over two months now.
On Sunday, we went to Ccotos to visit my host family from last year, and it was really great to have my mom meet my Ccotos family and see the town where I spent six weeks last summer. As always, they fed us a HUGE (and delicious) lunch, and after, we walked around the town and spent some time on the beach.
On Monday, we had lunch with everyone from the office! Again, I really enjoyed introducing my mom to my friends here and showing her what my life in Puno is like. Javier and my mom bonded over the fact that I am a terrible language teacher (my mom has tried to get me to teach her Spanish, and Javier has tried to get me to teach him English…I try, but apparently I don’t have the patience to be a good teacher).
On Tuesday, my mom and the Jaffees set off for the jungle. I was sad to see them go, but I had a LOT of work I needed to get started on. RocÃo and I went with several DIRESA employees to two different meetings, one in Putina, an isolated, small town about 2.5 hours from Puno, and another in Huancane, a large town which is about a half hour from Putina. In Putina, people were VERY enthusiastic about the filters. Apparently, they have a brick making industry there, so they wanted to know if the factory could be built there, and if they could start producing filters right away. Unfortunately, Putina is just too isolated and lacks the necessary infrastructure for a successful factory. I didn’t outright tell them they couldn’t have a factory there, because who knows what could happen in the future…but, I did tell them we were looking instead at Pucará for the factory, but that we wanted to work with them to make sure that they will have access to the filters once the factory is up and running. And, we definitely plan to include Putina in our pilot program.
The meeting in Huancane was mainly with healthcare workers who worked at various postas de salud (health centers) in nearby communities, but this was good because we were able to put
several more communities on our list for the pilot program. Again, we were met with a lot of enthusiasm, so I left Huancane feeling really good about everything.
In the meantime, I had discovered that I needed to renew my visa. I had thought that my tourist visa lasted for 90 days, but apparently, it was only for 60 days, and so it had expired by six days. Whoops. Luckily, in Peru, if you overstay your visa you only have to pay one US dollar for every extra day that you stay in the country. So, that was good, but not wanting to have to pay a large sum at the end of my stay, I decided to go to Arica, Chile for the weekend. I chose Chile over Bolivia because while Bolivia is closer and everything in the country is a lot cheaper, US citizens have to pay a $300 visa fee just to enter the country…which is crazy, but I guess it’s a reciprocity thing. So that’s fair, but I still didn’t want to pay $300 for a weekend trip to Bolivia. So instead, I went to Chile! Arica is right on the beach, and it was SO nice to get down from the altitude and spend the weekend hanging out by the ocean. I met a lot of really awesome people at the hostel I was staying at, too. One man from Australia was 76 years old and had been traveling nonstop for 27 years! He said that by this point, he was so addicted to traveling that if he went home, he would go crazy with boredom. He’s been practically everywhere, and his home ‘base’(which is also a hostel) is in Malaysia. Meeting him and hearing his stories was a trip. I mean, I love traveling (obviously), but 27 years? That’s longer than I’ve been alive! But anyway, my favorite part about traveling and staying in hostels is meeting people from all over the world and hearing about everyone’s lifestyles…Backpackers tend to be really interesting, friendly people with a lot of great stories, and in my travels I’ve met a lot of people who I’ve spent just a day or two with but am still in contact with (via facebook, usually) and may see another day in some other part of the world.
So yeah, I had a blast in Chile. I wished I had more time to explore more of the country, but I had to get back to Puno! So, here I am, back up at 12,000 ft, and though I miss the beach, it’s good to be back—I really love the people I live with and my friends here. So, I have a bunch of community meetings planned for this week and the next, and then we’ll probably get started with the pilot program. Things are finally moving along, now, so I’m excited!
Thanks for reading!
Courtney