Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Helen Osborn and her experience



I arrived in Ollanytatambo last Friday (1st October) this is my second visit to the town, my last visit was two years ago when my friends and I were on the tourist trail to Machu Picchu. This trip to Ollanta has been a lot rawer than my previous experience. When I say rawer what I mean that working with Leander and Casa Hogar del sol has meant that there is no way of escaping the problems of this town as I have been able to expereince really being part of the community. The work that Leander and CHDS are doing is truly having a great impact on lives of the communities and individuals here.



On my first night we went to visit Lurdes, an 18 year old girl that Leander is working with who has osteogenosis imperfecta (brittle bones disease). Lurdes family are extremely poor, both her mother and step father are alcoholics and on days when Leander or none of the other volunteers are able to take her out she i resigned to the house as she does not have a working wheel chair. What Leander and CHDS are aiming to do for Lurdes is to get her an electronic wheel chair through a recycling campaign in which they need to collect 50,000 bottle tops in exchange for purchase of the chair. This week we printed and gave out posters in hostels in Cusco, one of which being Loki the biggest chain of hostel in south America, so you can imagine their support is greatly appreciated. Lurdes also attends a private jewellery work shop run by Leanders friend Cristian Davila, who is an extremely talented artisan and the owner of the jewellery business Pez de Plata. Lurdes Hands have developed perfectly normally so Cristian is able to teach her his skills in the hope that she may be able to sell her work in the future. Cristian has donated tools and silver for Lurdes to make the first bracelet for herself and 2 additional bracelets which she will be able to sell and invest back in to more silver for her small business. Lurdes really enjoys the workshops and Cristian can see that she is already very talented. Lurdes is very dedicated and concentrates hard as she works with her hands. She showed us a chain that she had made for her brother woven from bronze in hoops a truly beautiful traditional style. I think with the continuation Cristians help this could be a real

opportunity for her. Another aspect of Leander’s work with Lurdes that I was able to see is the research into finding Lurdes a more stable place to live. As I explained earlier both her parents are alcoholics and Lurdes is extremely unhappy living at home due to fear from her step father’s behaviour when he is drunk and lack of care from her mother when she is in the same state. Leander is looking into homes in Cuzco mainly; however on the way back from Tastayoc on Monday Lurdes also had her own idea. We went to visit her biological father’s sister who Lurdes had not seen in nearly 8 years! The aunt agreed that it was not acceptable for Lurdes to be living in such circumstance and offered that Lurdes could live with her family. Her aunt seemed very nice, the house was lovely and her children all go to school and seemed perfectly well cared for. However a decision has not been made as caution is needed to ensure that the family situation we saw on Monday is a reality and consideration is needed into the fact that her aunt house is a bit remote and could mean Lurdes is even more isolated. Yesterday (Tuesday 5th) Leander received a phone call from a tv station who want to interview Lurdes about her situation and the recycling campaign.



We visited the community of Tastayoc on Monday 4th; I was utterly impressed by the work that had gone on in the community, with their new schools, green houses, soup kitchen, childrens playground, and toilet shower block. These investments in the community have majorly improved the community’s life style; all the children now regularly attend school and have a fantastic teacher. Many of the children only speak quechua so they are being taught Spanish in class but they all also seemed very eager to be taught some English. We ate with the community at lunch time, the meal was a mixture of vegetables and tuna, all the vegetables had been grown by the community in their green houses. Therefore thanks to the investment from CHDS we can be confident that all the children are receiving health regular meals.




On Tuesday 5th we went to Cusco with 21 members of the main community CHDS is working with (Paucarbamba) to a government run guinea pig farm where the members of the community could learn how to successfully rear guinea pigs to sell. CHDS is working very closely with this community because they were so extensively effected by the flooding last winter, many of them are still unfortunately living in tents. The trip to the guinea pig farm had a great turn out, and the communities members seemed extremely interested and determined to make this business venture work ( I caught a couple of the men from the group exchanging how many notes they had!). The engineer giving the training told us that she hopes the first lot of guinea pigs (around 100) to ready to by 5th November for the community. World Vision was also working with this government run guinea pig farm so it is clearly a well established project.



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