Where are Ron and Ellen?
Latin America, 10 November 2008 - 3 March 2009
Ron and Ellen (and llama) at Machu Picchu, Peru, December 2008
Cusco and Sipascancha, Peru, November 2008
To see the first group of photos from Cusco, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see the second group of photos from Cusco, click on the thumbnail at the left.
To see the first group of photos from Sipascancha, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Visit to Sipascancha
To see the second group of photos from Sipascancha, click on the thumbnail at the left.
29 November 2008
Cusco, PeruDear Family and Friends,
We are both still breathless and wondering if we will ever adjust to the altitude. Cusco is an extremely hilly city, with most streets rising or falling so steeply that there are staircases in the pavement, so almost every walk requires steep climbs, and even at sea level we might be huffing and puffing! Ronīs epiglottis is much better, though he is still blowing his nose a lot, but it is more like he is getting over a cold. Ellen has had a minor cold, and Ron is having problems with a knee, so we got him a knee brace and he is icing it a lot and trying to take it easy. Who knew ice would be so hard to find! Our hotel doesnīt have it, and they checked unsuccessfully with a couple of restaurants on our street, but Laurie found it in little sealed pouches at the pharmacy, and the hotel does have a freezer, so Ron cycles the two pouches in and out of the freezer. All these ailments have put a crimp in our style, but we are hoping for improvement soon!
Weīve visited two fascinating museums here in Cusco, one the museum of pre-Columbian art (spectacular ceramics!) and the other the Inca museum, covering Andean culture going from 12,000 BC through the Spanish conquest, with the focus on the Incan empire. Good background before we start visiting ruins. One morning while Laurie was doing errands and Ron was icing his knee, Steven and I explored Qorikancha, an major Incan temple right in the middle of Cusco. The Dominicans build a monastery on the site, using some of the original walls, but (surprisingly) didnīt tear everything down, so there are still several nearly complete buildings incorporated into the monastery. All through Cusco you see remaining bits of Incan walls, huge blocks of stone cut and fitted so closely that no mortar was ever needed. They show no signs of deterioration, unlike walls built at various later dates. Further, because the Incas built using a earthquake-resistant trapezoidal form (doors and windows slant in slightly, so the top is narrower than the bottom, and many of the walls also slant slightly), their walls and buildings have survived earthquakes that destroyed or severely damaged later construction.
The highlight of the week was our visit to Sipascancha, the village where Steven and Laurie worked a year and a half ago. Early Wednesday morning we met Steven and Laurie at their apartment (just a few blocks from our hotel), we took a taxi to the appropriate bus station, and the bus to Pisac, about 45 minutes away. There we were met by Freddy, their taxi-driving friend from last year, who drove us to Sipascancha, waited for us and then drove us back to Pisac to catch the bus back to Cusco. It is 28 km from Pisac to Sipascancha over rough unpaved road, winding along the valley and then switch-backing up and over the deserted ridge (we did see a couple of herders) and down to Sipascancha; the drive takes a little over an hour, and when you get there you know you are a long way from anywhere else. It is cold (even with summer approaching) and pretty barren, and high enough so that nothing grows except potatoes, wheat, and some other grains. There is a greenhouse with adobe walls and plastic roof where they are growing cabbage and onions and cauliflower to use to make lunch for the primary kids, but these crops cannot grow in the open.
Wednesday is market day, but the market is small, many of the vendors coming by truck from Pisac. There was a little fruit, not much in the way of vegetables, some durable goods (rope, sandels, synthetic yarn) Most peopleīs diet is limited, with lots of potatoes, plus meat from their animals -- sheep, cuy (guinea pig), and occasionally pigs.
Adela, the primary teacher, made mint tea for us when we arrived, and then the youngest children gathered in front of the primary school to greet us by showering us with confetti and singing. Each child came up, one at a time, and put a little confetti on each of our heads -- we are still finding bits of confetti in our clothes! Ron pointed out that the kids were careful with their confetti as they put some first on Laurie's head, then Ellen's, then Steven's, and that when they got to him, they dumped whatever they had left on him, so he ended up with a much heavier confetti coating. The songs included one about ukuku, a half man half bear creature, and the kids were dancing and hunching their shoulders to be like bears and singing at the top of their lungs.
While we were drinking our tea in the teachers' kitchen area (an adobe building with fireplace with hood and chimney and also a propane ring) kids kept peering in to see us. One little boy, about 7, remembered Steven and Laurie and came in closer. All the kids carry woven bags with their school things in them, and Steven complimented him on his bag (in Quechua). We were all stunned when he proceeded to pull a small laptop out of his bag. He said, softly but proudly, "It has games." Seems that all the primary children have them (courtesy of the government), and the older children have regular tower-type computers that they share. When the primary children move up they pass on the laptops to other primary children. It is pretty remarkable to see a kid with a laptop in this remote, very poor village. Keep in mind that electricity is only intermittent, so the ability to charge them up is not a certainty.
We'd brought all the letters, photos, drawings and other materials sent by North Branch School in Afton, Sipasacancha's sister school (Ellen is on the board at North Branch and our grandsons are students there). Laurie had all the thank-you notes the North Branch kids wrote to her and Steven a year ago after they came and gave a presentation on Sipascancha, and there were enough of those so she could give each child in the nursery/primary class one -- most had drawings on them, so the kids had something to take home with them. The older children were all off somewhere ("at the lake") so we didn't get to visit those classrooms. However, Adela will pass on the materials to the appropriate teachers, and Laurie and Steven will visit those classrooms on a later trip.
We then headed over to the market so Laurie and Steven could make an announcement that they would be doing repeat medical testing on the folks who got stoves. People were hesitant until they realized that there were print copies of Laurie and Stevenīs Power Point presentation on their work, and then people crowded around because they wanted to see the photos of themselves and their neighbors. Laurie re-tested about 5 people, and she and Steven will be spending Mon-Wed in the village for the next several weeks to complete as much re-testing as possible. Anecdotal evidence gathered so far indicates that people are using the stoves, that they like them, that they use less fuel, and that they are having fewer burns. Laurie is still sorting out how to organize the data, since she realized after testing one older woman whose indicators were worse than last year, that people with long-standing and underlying health issues are more likely to continue declining. So they will perhaps divide the results by age group, and may also do some comparative testing on folks who didnīt get stoves.
Another issue is that many people didn't pay the money for the stoves they were supposed to pay to go towards a community project. I quote here from Steven's blog: "During the last week we have been having serious conversations with Nino and Pave about what to do with the people who didn't pay for their stoves. Only 18 out of 100 paid the 20 soles that we had intended to be used for sustainable resource projects. We considered giving them one more chance and then repossessing them, but decided that was too much bad karma. Instead, we decided to reward the people who did pay with baby pigs. We would have done chickens but Pave tells us it is too cold for them to live up there. We're going to walk away from the rest and not worry about it any more, but next time in Usi we are going to demand the money up front." All in all, they are learning from the experience in Sipascancha how to do the project better.
Many people in the village remember Laurie as the nurse from the year she spent there several years ago, so came up to ask her for medicines. There is little medical care -- a "motorcycle doctor" who makes the rounds of a whole bunch of villages (which means he doesn't get there very often), and a clinic about 2 hours away.
Two days ago was Thasnksgiving in the US. Yesterday we realized that we had had pizza for Thanksgiving dinner! Our visit to Sipascancha makes us very aware of how much we have to be thankful for.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Back to the Latin America 2008-2009 index
cfw.com
Questions? Send email to Ellen, ebouton 
operamail.com
While we're traveling, reach us at bikepacker
Last updated: 2 January 2009
