This past Tuesday, I had a wonderful opportunity to go on a tour of a few of the Otra Cosa projects in Trujillo and surrounding areas. The tour was led by Senora Juany, one of the directors of the Otra Cosa Volunteer Agency.
After a taxi ride into Trujillo to visit the university where she teaches, we picked up her entire class--around 25 Peruvian university students--and loaded a bus to head to the first project. The tour focused mainly on poverty, a topic that many upper class Pervian families do their best to hide from. Pretty much anyone that goes to the university is from one of these families, so for the students on the tour, this was all quite new to them as well.
The first place we visited was the local elementary school for extremely poor children. The whole school is run off of donations and volunteers, and you can definitely tell. For most children that go there, this is the only opportunity for them to have any sort of education as well as food. Everyday, they provide at least one meal for the children, usually the only food they will eat all day. None of the classrooms have floors, just dirt, and the roofs are barely there, mostly falling apart. All of the children were amazing though, so happy and seeming to have no worries at all.
If that was a shock, it was nothing compared to what we saw next. Next, we headed to the dump, where a community of around 1,000 people live and work. It was incredible. I've never seen anything like it. We walked through a neighborhood of houses, if you can even call them that, and felt completely overwhelmed. The people live there, surrounded by trash and a smell I can't even begin to describe. Everyday, they walk over to the new trash pile and dig through it, looking for cardboards, plastics, anything to recycle. Juany told us, that on average, for around 3 hours of work, these people collect around 80 cents work of stuff, and that's Peruvian cents, which equals less than 30 American cents. Ten cents an hour. You can't even begin to comprehend that level of poverty.
After that, we headed to the local YMCA, definitely an upper after seeing the dump. Any kids are welcome here to get help with homework, a small meal and general stuff to do. A really great program.
Lastly, we visit the school for disabled children where several volunteers work. Here, they focus on teaching students a skill of some sort, whether that be woodworking, knitting, crocheting or sewing. Another great program that has without a doubt helped tons of children that wouldn't have had any means of income otherwise.
It was an eye-opening experience. Before this, I had never seen actual poverty. You really just can't comprehend it. But it's thanks to programs like Otra Cosa, that are able to help a few people out of such an unthinkable existence.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
wow, I bet that experience is going to stay with you the rest of your life.
Did it change the way you think about your own life?
That's pretty heavy stuff.
I think most of us don't have any idea what it would be like to live in such dire poverty - poverty that has been the only way of life for so many people throughout the world. Are there any other agencies that Otra Cosa works with in these projects? It seems like such an immense need that one agency would quickly get overwhelmed with the many tasks at hand. And I can only imagine how profoundly touched you were, Hayley.
Wow, Hayley, what a profound experience! I've seen a few pictures and scenes of people working in a dump (the people didn't even have shoes on) in the documentary War Photographer featuring James Nachtwey and these pictures were stunning, however, certainly nothing compared to the reality. Certainly the smell adds a whole other layer of reality.
How is the parasite? I must be that you don't have the capacity to upload photographs, but I hope you took some and will take them to Austin for Thanksgiving for us to see.
Grit
Post a Comment