Monday, May 14, 2012

Volunteering experience of Caroline with MSH, Peru


By 
Caroline Sommer

                                      Volunteering experience of Caroline with MSH, Peru

Sitting on the Plaza de Armas in Ollantaytambo, I am surrounded by the day-to-day busyness of this little town. All around me, there are Ollantinos, attending to customers in their little shops or restaurants or selling handcrafted textiles, dressed in their traditional clothes, and looking down upon all this from the surrounding hills are the amazing ruins the Incas left behind. Everywhere there is laughter; the Peruvian temperament, loud, humorous, is almost palpable and adds even more to the unique atmosphere of this place.

Then, the little bus I have been waiting for pulls into the Plaza. It is full of the children MySmallHelp provides transport to school for, coming home after another day at the Arco Iris school for children with special needs. I get in and accompany them the last bit of their way; every then and so often, Ruben, our driver, stops to let one of them get off. I stay on the bus until there is only Lourdes left and we drive on to Rumira, the little village above Ollantaytambo she lives in.

Lourdes is a charming nineteen-year-old girl who is always immaculately groomed and dressed, with an infectious laugh and driving ambition to study and do her best in all she does. Every weekday, I join her on her way back from school and spend the afternoon studying with her. Right now, she is learning to read and write and solve basic mathematic problems. In all her life, she was never able to leave the house and therefore could not go to a school and get an education, because she is not able to move herself. After a chance encounter between her and Leander Hollings two years back, she now has a wheelchair and gets out a lot more, which you can already tell has made a huge positive change to her life.

Spending time with Lourdes and her family during my daily visits to their house is my main occupation here. Even though I have only worked for MSH for a week, I already feel responsible for this family and want to help them as much as I can. Circumstances are often difficult in this rural region; alcoholism is a problem in almost every family and child labour is not uncommon.  Most grown-ups cannot read and write properly themselves, so do not always think it necessary for their children to go to school. Lourdes´ family seems to have understood the necessity of their children to study, but all the same, there are a lot of problems remaining, such as her younger sister having to work and look after the household in her free time. The work I do there requests a lot of patience, as one cannot simply walk in on a group of people and change their lives as one would like to, but it is therefore even more rewarding when I see Lourdes advancing in her studies and her siblings opening up to me a bit more each time I visit them.

My other areas of work include helping out in our volunteer house, which looks directly onto the ruins of Ollantaytambo, and doing whatever there is to be done, for example look through donations and distribute them to families who need them or helping with making folders for each of the families we support.Life in our volunteer house has been a great experience. I come home every day to people I have recently met from all over the world, here to help in the project or only to stay for a few nights while visiting Ollantaytambo. There is always something to do and it is never boring. The whole project is very personal, so is volunteering here, I have a lot of responsibility and always feel appreciated for my contribution.

In the future, the next big project I am looking forward to is taking Lourdes to Cusco on the weekends to a different school to enable her finish primary school in less time.


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