Ancash is Harder

As mentioned multiple times, most of my time spent here is working with students in the school. Not only are students fun, open and excited to learn from the Gringa, but they are a whole heck of a lot easier to work with than adults. In some departments in Peru, adults are open, easy to work with and easy to organize. This ease is generally found in coastal cultures, where people are more open and accepting of change. In Ancash however, life is not easy, simple or breezy. I may sometimes paint the image that I only have great times down here, but it does not come without plenty of hardship and frustration in the meantime. Generally for every good day you have, 5 bad days are waiting for you, and those days are harder, longer and more frustrating here in Ancash. In the mountain culture of Ancash,

Ancashinos hold onto their traditional roots and maintain the antiguity of their culture. I feel that this traditionalism is a great strength of the culture and integrity of Ancash, but it also makes people a lot more closed off and suspicious to outsiders than other regions. In Ancash, you must gain respect from your community before you can be taken seriously as an individual. To gain respect, you need to demonstrate your continued presence, politeness, tolerance, willingness to learn the culture (ahem, Quechua) etc. It is very difficult to explain the

difficulties of integrating into a community in Ancash to someone who has not experienced it. It is one of the many things in the world that can only be understood by coming here, staying here as someone who is not a tourist, and experiencing it firsthand.
Once you have finally been accepted by your community, the next step of the process is trying to explain that you are not there as a source of money for the community. Generally in most parts of the developing world, any gringo traveler will be looked at as a source of money or resources. Face it, we have money, we are privileged, and we are most certainly richer (monetarily) than the people in the local communities that we will work in.

Another facet to add to this perspective is the history of NGO’s and other aid organizations here in Ancash. On May 30, 1970, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake caused the north side of the glacier of Huascaran to fall. This fall created a massive mudslide that killed 30,000 Yungainos and completely buried the city of Yungay, in addition to destroying many other small campesino communities in its trajectory. In response to the disaster, developing countries sent slews of aid to Ancash to help the population recover from their tragedy. Since this time, Ancash has been host to tons of different organizations, ranging from charities to

religious groups to NGO’s. Many of these organizations came to Ancash giving away tons of money and resources, and asking for no input from the local communities. 40 years later, Ancash is stuck in a rut of expectations; expectations that any development organization is there to provide them something of monetary value, and expect little or no effort from them. Now as organizations make motions to promote sustainability with their work, which is the true root of development, they are asking for participation and effort from the communities. This effort generally comes from participating in work events, attending workshops, going to meetings and attending classes. For many people in Ancash, this is simply asking too much, and they are unwilling to participate in anything that asks for their time. Unfortunately, without the active participation of the communities and community leaders a development project simply turns into a source of charity and welfare, which here in Ancash has not led to improving the situation of local communities, but to the degradation of their organizational strength.
As an individual representing an organization, this can be a huge road block in getting anything started. Up until now, I have had a great deal of trouble trying to organize community members to come to classes, meetings etc. Many people are simply uninterested or do not see the value in investing their time if they are not going to receive something tangible. After 8 months of living and being here in Huashao, I am finally making advances into organizing members of the community. At first, I was attending meetings of an NGO called World Vision, to see how they organized community members. After attending about 7 unsuccessful meetings, I realized that World Vision, an NGO that has worked here for about 4 years, also has a great deal of trouble organizing community members. After working in the

community for more time, I realized that the fault of the matter was not only the lack of participation from the community, but was in itself World Vision, due to their lack of professionalism, bad staff and huge faults in following through with promises. In the past few months, I have been working very closely with the community authorities (who before were seemingly uninterested to work with me) and we are designing projects, finding resources, and beginning classes together. Although Ancash presents plenty of road blocks, it is rewarding once you finally break through them. I have 1 year and 4 months to go, and I am looking forward to finally working with the adults of the community and reaching steps to promote the sustainable development of Huashao. Good things are planned for the next few weeks…….Hey there light at the end of the tunnel.

Working with Women’s Groups

A great deal of my work here in Huashao has been focused on working with the school and students of Huashao and the surrounding areas. About 4 days per week I teach in the school, help work on our tree nursery, and coordinate with the teachers and evil school director. In addition to working in the school, for the past few months I

have been working with two different women’s groups in Huashao (Asociacion de Mujeres Tejedoras de Huashao) and the caserio of Incapacollkan , which mean granero de las Incas (grain storage? of the Incas). There are plenty of words these days that I cannot seem to find or translate into English anymore, and they are becoming more and more basic.

In Incapacollkan, I have worked been working with the Mujeres Lideres Conservadoras de Medio Ambiente de Incapacollkan (Women Leaders in Conservation of the Environment of Incapacollkan) since February. This group of 15 women is an amazing example of the strength, will and capacity of the women in Ancash.

I began working with this group of women after being invited by my neighbor Victoria to come to her house one afternoon to become acquainted with Incapacollkan. Victoria is a boisterous, outspoken, older Quechua woman that once

thought I was crazy…… First of all, the only place that I can make phone calls is from a rock on the side of the road. As Victoria was passing by one day to pasture her sheep, she saw the new gringa in town sitting on the side of the road, on a

rock, in the middle of nowhere laughing and talking to herself. In the midst of my conversation, I saw her staring at me, afraid to move or come any closer. As I turned around she finally saw that I had a phone in my hand, and with a huge sigh of relief explained that she thought I was some crazy gringo that ended up in her

community. After that strange and wonderful day, we have been great friends.
Anywho, one day as we rode up in a taxi together filled with 14 people (these are normal sized cars mind you), Victoria invited me to her home one Saturday afternoon. At this first exchange, Victoria was ready with a group of women from

the community that had wanted to talk to me about forming a women’s group. From their children and one of the teachers at the school, they had heard that I was the ‘environmentalist’ of the school, and were ready with a slew of questions and ideas to form a new group in the community. Since February, I have helped the women

organize themselves as an established group, keep record keeping, learn how to write formal documents etc, in order to strengthen their organizational capabilities. As the group name suggests, this women’s group is concerned mostly with local environmental issues. As a result, we work together to organize trash cleanups, separate trash, and practice informed natural resource management within the community. In the next rainy season, we are going to build a tree nursery to promote local reforestation within the community.

In addition to working with environmental themes, we also work with artisanry (a word?) as an income generating activity. Like many women in the community, this women’s group creates woolen goods to sell to tourists that pass through on their way to Laguna Llanganuco and Huascaran National Park. Unlike many

women however, this women’s group uses wool from their own sheep and takes part in every step of the process of creating their product. Aside from shearing the wool from their own sheep, we hand spin the wool into yarn. In addition to hand

spinning, we dye the wool with natural, local dyes instead of the commercially sold chemical dyes. By using the natural dyes, the women are using skills gained through their culture, and thereby promoting local knowledge of their natural resources (in addition to avoiding the consequences of using harsh chemicals). The wool is dyed using herbs, vegetables, barks, ashes, berries and shrubs. Once a month, we meet to dye the wool, which results in a day of jokes, mini Quechua lessons and the

explanation as to why I am not married by now. Older Quechua women are probably the funniest, boldest people (after you have gained confianza of course) you will ever meet in any Sierra community in the Andes, and I always look forward to spending a day with the ladies during the week.
With these women, this first year is the time in which we begin to establish environmental action within the community to promote awareness, but to also establish a product that these women can sell to improve their economic situation. Hopefully as things become more and more established, next year (or few months) can

be more focused on large scale environmental projects and also marketing of their artisanry to tourists. At the moment, we are trying to coordinate with different NGO’s and their local municipality to receive weaving and spinning machines for the group. Hand spinning, weaving and knitting are all very beautiful things, but it is very impractical if you are trying to create a product base to market and sell. If

we cannot receive the machines, we are going to try to build them with plans from an NGO based out of Lima. The women from the group are saving up money to have a fund for the group, and on multiple occasions we have organized polladas to sell meals to raise money. Polladas are like bake sales, but involve slow roasted chicken that has been cooked in a variety of herbs, spices, beer and soda surprisingly. I love brownies and cookies, but polladas could definitely win in a fight.