Where's Ron?

Where Are Steven and Laurie?

Peru, 17 November 2008 - 17 March 2009

Steven and Laurie in Peru, 2007

Cusco, Peru, February 2009

26 February 2009
Afton, Virginia, USA
Dear family and friends,
Having experienced/survived Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, Ron is now in Sao Paulo, last stop before he flies home from there next Tuesday, 3 March. He says, "Carnival was quite an event. Must have been multiple thousands of people watching what was like a series of parades and floats all night long for two nights. Getting sleep was impossible. Must have hundreds of pictures to sort through." He promises to write up a report shortly.
Since I have received several updates from Laurie and Steven in the last week, I decided to go ahead and send those out on their own, with the hope that Ron's report will come in the next day or so. So those of you who are only following Ron's adventures and not Laurie and Steven's can stop reading right now!
Love to all,

Ellen

21 February 2009
Cusco, Peru
Laurie writes:
well, there was no party! we arrived at mandorani with our exam equipment and two extra baskets and a 30 pound watermelon. and as is most days, we found out most everyone was out working in their fields. but we made good use of the time by tracking down 6 or 7 kids needing testing, seeing andres and mafre, dropping off the paperwork to victoria, delivering another message to sipascancha via a girl selling things at the Purikuq market, delivering two messages to tomas and probably most importantly visiting Bernadina and Florencio to see how their stove was. and what did we find out? that it was not working properly, like that other stove, because of a strong draft pulling the fire sideways! their kitchen is small and while the stove is more or less in front of the door, it's also very close to the stove. so we assured them there was a fix for this and tomas would come out this week. so that was the reason for the second message to tomas! (the first was in regards to returning to Ollanta tomorrow to build Hermano Vidal's stove.) Florencio also explained his stove was not as "pretty" pointing out the smallest ding ever! Bernadina went on to explain since their's was the first, tomas had learned more and been able to make the others more attractive. so i mentioned it in the note, but really it seemed like a minor detail! (just not to them!)
When i met up with Andres it was quite fortunate as i was lugging two baskets to leave at tomas' house. he stepped right up and carried them for me! thank god! i would have had to stop and rest ten times!! first we went to his house. he called Mafre to come down and we talked again about the operation. it will be to replace the lens of her right eye. i explained to her we had the money and that one half of it was from me and the other half from Steve's mom, Ellen. Little Misael Andres was watching us count the 600$ and said, "yo podia casi llorar!" (I could almost cry!) he is but six years old. Andres was incredibly appreciative and all Mafre could do was hug me. so it was very sweet. (thank you again Ellen!) Andres gave Mafre the money. her appointment for the doctor is on Monday and then she'll know the date of the surgery. as i write this it occurs to me i should leave a stamped envelope for her to write me about how it all goes. i told them in two years we would come back to Mandorani for another stove project with enough for her to have the second surgery, where the lens will be replaced again. (and again it will be in part thanks to Ellen for this also.)
this afternoon all the extra material went out to Chocco! So yet another thing off of our list! Steve treated me to a maracuya juice to celebrate! (ummm...the very best passionfruit juice!)

23 February 2009
Cusco, Peru
Laurie writes:
I am just finishing up a sheet we have decided to give to all our families about troubleshooting potential problems with the stove. after visiting bernadina's place last week and seeing their nature is to not always mention a problem, it seemed like a good idea. it covers:

1) too slow of a draft (open the door)
2.) too fast of a draft (close the door and semi-close the chimney)
3.) if there is smoke (wait for the chimney to heat up and be sure to cover the pot holes with pots)
4.) how to keep it looking pretty (patch it with more clay-dirt-cuy hair-liquid from the cactus mix)
5.) about always using dry wood and keeping the ash and chimney clean. While our advice seems like common sense, it will hopefully add to the education process. we will have victoria pass them out with her first visit.

so my report on the curandero advised purge: well it wasn't nearly as bad as a cleanse pre-colonoscopy, I'll tell you that! the day before i ventured to the San Pedro market and located a woman with medicinal herbs and showed her my "prescription". No problem, she had everything! The next night i cleaned and chopped everything, including potato skins, fresh from the chakra of Andres and simmered my mate for a few hours; then strained it, leaving it for the next morning. at 7AM, i first downed the aciete de ricina as instructed (Some kind of oil?) followed by my first glass of what tasted like potato tea. it actually wasn't that bad! this went on every half hour while at home reading until 12:30. nothing dramatic ensued, other than feeling full! so steve and i went off to watch our downloaded Lost program, while i finished my last four doses, carrying the green stuff in my thermos! by then i will tell you things were moving. and not to gross anybody out, it did smell differently, so in my infinite imagination i envisioned all this poison leaving me! promptly at 2 PM we found a place serving the simplest veggie soup with rice and yucca and i ate like there was no tomorrow. ( i know yucca has a reputation for stopping diarrhea.) then we went home and i fell asleep for three hours which is highly unusual for me. i woke energized, ate again, went for another walk, became yet again exhausted, and was able to sleep dreamily for the night. the curandero was in my dream telling me i always had a place there. and this morning, i do feel different. more energized? less weighty (perhaps a given, given the circumstances!) and coughing less. hmmm.
so i am about to do errands now. i am off to the doctors' offices to get copies of my records, do a bit of shopping and photocopying. and here is Steve's latest post. he remembers to write about the rest of the stuff i seem to forget about!

Steven writes:
One week left! Last Saturday Dan and Cindy came over for dinner, we made spaghetti and meatballs. About halfway through dinner something that was (to me) very weird happened. My first thought was "why is somebody pounding on our door so hard?" Literally less than two seconds later, Dan and Cindy had leaped out of their seats and into the doorframe of the kitchen. About half a second after that, I realized that it was an earthquake and dragged Laurie into the doorframe with me. Then, of course, it stopped immediately. Dogs were going crazy everywhere. Our friends are from Southern California, which explains their reaction time.
On Sunday we went out to C'Orao and did another interview, this one at the house of the soldadura's (blacksmith's) father, Lucio. He had a complicated family with stepdaughters and various other configurations, and his son had also tricked out his stove with an oven (!!!) and a third burner. We talked to Victoria about doing our followup visits and she agreed. As our last item of business, we took our big rubber boots and our arm-length rubber gloves, went over to Lucila's house, and cleaned up most of the trash her neighbors had thrown into her yard. We stuffed three rice bags full, and the rest was in standing water that was too deep to wade into. Good thing I'm a hardened Oregon Country Fair Recycling Crew expert, there were used diapers, bottles of urine, and all manner of mud-filled tins and bottles. I am pushing for us to have Victoria keep tabs on that situation to make sure the neighbors stop their behavior, we have a little bit of incentive since they got a stove and want their 30 soles back.
Monday morning we went off to the Visa office, bright and early. [Note from Ellen: They needed to renew their visas to cover their last several weeks, something they knew all along they would have to do.] Last time it was a major production, we had to go pay at a different bank, bring back a receipt, go to a copy shop to copy forms, wait in lines, the whole nine yards. This time they had greatly streamlined their process, we were done in less than an hour. We were amazed and pleased. With some of our extra time, we visited Rosanna's new "Second Chance" project, which is just getting off the ground. They are still doing construction work within their rental space. Later that afternoon, we sent off our first stove to Choco, and had a lovely dinner at Rosanna's, talking to a Swiss and an American as well as her family.
As the week progressed we did some grocery shopping since our budget is getting tight, sent off another stove to Choco, and had another one of Laurie's friends over for dinner (Carlitos, a guy who had been working in the jungle as a vet at a rare animal shelter). On Thursday Laurie spent the day in Ollantaytambo trying to get Hermano Vidal's stove working, but he hadn't gotten all the materials together so it wasn't finished by the end of the day. That night we went with Carlitos up to a bar in San Blas that we didn't know called Siete Angelitos (7 Angels). As we scouted around the bar for seats we were quite surprised to find most of the Hampy crew (Dan, Cindy, Brian, and two newer folks) hanging out in a little room off of the main bar. Turns out most of them live near there in San Blas. We stayed up late and got fairly drunk, at some point I was talking with Laurie and Carlitos and realized that for the first time ever I was actually talking and thinking in Spanish - final ly. Right before we were leaving, it started to POUR down rain, more than I've seen anytime except that one night in Sipascancha. The streets literally looked like rivers, with several inches of rushing water in them, pouring down the steep inclines. After 15 minutes it stopped.
This past Saturday we had planned a big meeting in C'Orao, we had sent notices out to all the families and were hoping to get more interviews of people we had missed before. Silly us, thinking we were more important than working in the fields or markets. Almost nobody showed up. Tomas had been called away for an emergency in Cusco, Lucio (the welder's dad) showed up to say that the two women in his house couldn't come (they were in the fields), and Erasmo showed up just to say hi (we had done his whole family already). So we decided to go off and start looking for people. We ended up getting six more interviews from various houses, bringing our total to 48 out of 70. Even though that is pretty good, we decided to go back this Wednesday and try to get some more. We also discovered that the first stove that had been built, at Bernadina’s house, was having excessive draft problems similar to the one Tomas had put the damper into. We left a note for him and will make sure the pro blem gets resolved when we go back this week. We also promised Timotea that we would take a rain check for her lunch that she had planned, now we have it down for next Saturday. Sadly, the watermelon we brought won't last until then, so we need to eat it starting today.
Yesterday was supposedly "Carnaval," but it was totally dead and very little went on. The night before seemed more festive, we went to Kamikaze for a bedtime shot (having discovered an acceptable kind of rum, the Cuban Matusalen brand) and they were gearing up for a busy night, with masks and all. If anything did go on, we missed it 'cause we were sleeping. The only thing that happened yesterday was that a bunch of annoying teenage boys ran around throwing water on people, especially women. Since it was cold and cloudy, this did not seem amusing. I tried to put on my "lens of cultural differences," but it still seemed like a bunch of macho bullshit in the end.
Today we are knocking off a bunch of errand-type stuff from our to-do list, and I am going to attempt to visit the Cusqueña brewery to take some pictures for my brewer friends in Eugene. Carlos is also trying to get us to visit a village up above Ollantaytambo where he is building a comedore (kitchen building) along with some other projects. We might do that Tuesday or Thursday, but time is running out!

25 February 2009
Cusco, Peru
And last, another post from Laurie:
quite a day today! we got up early to see tomas in mandorani to talk to him about building another stove for us. we awoke to a huge strike that ended up involving the bus we would normally take. apparently the district of Calca was staging a demonstration opposing the new boundary between it and the district of La Convencion. for quite some time it wasn't clearly delineated and now 29 schools will be transferred to the district of La Convencion much to the dismay of Calca. so what this meant for us was there was no bus going to Pisaq! the roads were blocked! but for some reason taxis were allowed to pass so we took a taxi. we met with tomas and gratefully he will build another stove for us this time in a small community above ollanta. our friend carlos is involved where he is assisting a person from singapore interested in funding a comedore (a kitchen and area for a community of children to eat). the comedore has been recently built and he wanted one of our stoves in it. the difference is is that this will be much bigger to accommodate two huge pots that will feed 30 children a day between ages of 5 to 14. so he gave us some measurements for the chimney and rejilla and adjusted the materials to accommodate such a stove. we are all going up there on friday and will photograph the process. it's a village (i have forgotten the name) at an altitude similar to sipascancha . so the meeting went well and we made our plans to all meet in ollanta at 7 AM on friday. carlos will see to it the materials are gathered. it feels good to know one of our last stoves will go to this cause!
on our way back we stopped by andres' house to give mafre the envelopes for the letters i'm hoping she'll write me. we discovered she had her surgery two days ago and was in bed complete with her eye bandaged and her glareproof glasses on. poor thing, her eye hurt and why i do not know but she was not given pain pills. we went to the centro de salud and bought some ibuprofen for her. she is otherwise doing well and will see the doctor on monday for follow-up and will be back in school on tuesday!
so then the adventure of getting home began. we caught a ride with a taxi but by the time we reached sacsayhuaman (ruin site above cusco) the road was entirely blocked. we ended up walking from there somewhat gleefully watching all the tourist buses unknowingly heading up the road not knowing they would find boulders blocking the road. we were lucky enough to catch another taxi and then walked easily down the hill. in town every block up avenida del sol was blocked by groups of people in defense of calca. steve thinks this is a show of saving face for them, and i have to agree. it appears the decision is made. none the less the show of support for calca and their disagreement and expression of it was impressive.
so no other big news other than to report our bottle of special Pisco is enroute via the mail to Eugene. we ran into our supplier, Oscar and bought a bottle yesterday. and amazingly it was all legal to send it even though he pours it from a gallon jug into an empty bottle, fitting a cap from a sack he has of spare ones! it is delicious as far as piscos go and we look forward to it's arrival in eugene!

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Last updated: 11 April 2009