So, I’m writing this post from the Starbucks in the Lima airport during my 12 hour layover here before my flight to Atlanta. I’m kind of in a state of disbelief that I’m on my way back to the U.S. and that my project is, for the time being, over…I’ve gotten so used to living in Puno that NOT being there is just weird. Like, I should be in the office right now, joking around with Javier and the girls, playing with the cats, and making sure our meeting for the next day hasn’t been cancelled. One thing I’ve noticed about traveling to a foreign country for a large chunk of time is that going to the foreign country and getting used to living there is usually easier and less strange than coming home after all that time. Maybe it’s because I expect my lifestyle in the foreign country to be radically different, or that I don’t really expect anything at all in particular and so am open to all of the new people and experiences that come my way, but then when I go home, I expect everything to be the same as it was before…and maybe it is, but the thing is, I’M different, so it feels weird. And sure, everyone asks, ‘How was Peru?’ or, ‘How was Argentina?’ (etc.) but as anyone who’s traveled abroad knows, you can’t even come close to describing the incredible things you’ve seen and done, and the ways in which your journey has impacted you, and moreover, people don’t REALLY want to hear about all that–they’ll stop pretending to be polite and interested after a while, I’ve found. Which is why it’s important that you make friends in the country you travel to, because they’ll understand 🙂

Anyway, so yeah, I’m in the Lima airport, and already I miss Puno like crazy. In particular, I miss the people–over the course of three and a half months, I’ve come to count the girls at Suma Marka and Javier and his family as very close friends, and I’ll certainly never forget them. I definitely would have been completely clueless and lost without their help with my project, but beyond that, they made my stay in Puno very comfortable and a lot of fun. They made me promise to come back, and I absolutely plan to as soon as I can!

As for my project, everything went as planned over the last week, and I’m really happy with the way I left things. RocĂ­o and I installed the pilot filters in all of the communities that we had planned to, and the health center workers were all really helpful with setting up the filters and agreeing to continue community education about the filters and the importance of drinking clean water. RocĂ­o will go back to the communities in a few months’ time to see how the community has responded to the filters.

The final meeting in Pucará was successful, as well. Rocío and I met with a group of regidores (local government authorities) who were interested in the project. The meeting served more than anything as a way to establish contact with people who will hopefully help out in the future as things progress.

As I’ve written before, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but now that so many people are on board with the project, I’m really optimistic about it. It’s certainly been established that the need for the filters, or some method of water purification, is there, and now we’ve established that the market for the filters exists as well. In many of the communities we visited, people asked us where they could buy a filter for their families right away. For the time being, people do have the option of ordering filters from the Urubamba factory, but as the price makes that option an inaccessible one for many, we hope that before too long they’ll have the option of getting them from Pucará.

So, I guess that’s it, for now. Hopefully, the momentum for this project will keep increasing, and there will be more good new to report within the next few years. Until then, thank you so much for reading, and I’ll be joining most of you in the U.S. soon!

Courtney