Occoruro: Take Two

Komal and Niloy listen to Laura as she explains how to do the surveys. 

 We started this week off by doing some health surveys, so 2 groups went around door-to-door asking people to answer a variety of questions pertaining to their health and any changes that they've noticed since ProWorld's arrival. The students that did the surveys said that it was a great way to meet villagers, even though some of them only spoke Quechua (an indigenous language that sounds more like Japanese than Spanish). The rest of the week we focused on doing the telas for the alacenas. Despite bad cutting jobs, needle stabs, and sewing mishaps, this ragtag group of Dukies finished all the required telas and they look pretty good, if I do say so myself. But by the end of the week, some of us were looking to do something a bit more physical. Cut to us digging pits. The pits are part of the micro-rellenos project, which provides a space for the community to separate its organic and inorganic waste. So these pits have to be 1 meter wide by 1 meter long by 1 meter deep which doesn't sound bad, but as we soon found out, it's the 1 meter depth that really gets ya. There were 2 groups working on two different pits, but the other group had a local man helping them so they naturally finished their pit and started on another. We on the other hand spent 4 hours digging half of one pit; guess it just proves that it really helps to have someone who knows what they're doing. Next week we're gonna continue with the micro-rellenos, greet the new Iowa kids, and start the cuy (guinea pig, which they eat here) cages.

Also, tomorrow's Monday which means we'll be teaching. This week's lesson: hand washing.

Kavita working on telas.

Tom and Detti at our morning meeting in Occoruro. After
getting off the bus we wait for the community leaders to
come and tell us what needs to be done that day.