Terri Anne with new friends in Kellococha, Peru, © Matt Dayka / Vitamin Angels PE12
Thursday, April 26, 2012.
Kellococha, Peru
Possibly the most remote, certainly the most challenging village to reach. Roughly 1.5 hrs from Pisac, where our driver expertly maneuvered the rock slides and muddy slopes hugging shear cliffs. There are many months when our in-country partners cannot visit. The driver had to drop us about a half mile from the village because the roads were too muddy to attempt and so we scaled down the muddy hillside.
As with the other villages, warm welcoming smiling faces greeted us. We sat in on a meeting of the local women and DESEA team. They discussed (all through 2-person translation from the local Quechuan, to Spanish, then for our benefit English) the benefit the vitamins were making in the community and the community’s desire for more medicine (such as aspirin and antibiotics). DESEA’s message is reinforcing hand washing and water filtration and use of vits reduces needs for medicines. The community members are beginning to see this happening as children are sick less, and they feel stronger and have more lactation when using prenatals.
We rarely see men in villages as they are working; tending potato fields (most typically) or working as porters on the Inca trail – the latter taking them from home most days of every month, leaving all farming, animal tending and child rearing to the women. These are the most capable, competent, warm, grateful, and courageous women I’ve ever met!
After distributing vits to the children and some playful interaction ,and interviews with the women and Qhali (local women of the villages who are trained health care providers by DESEA) it was time to head back to the van to go on some house visits. By now it was pouring rain which turned to hail (we watched it stick as snow on the nearby hillsides) as we trudged back up the hill to the van. We were all very cold and wet despite our Gortex outer wear, wool hats and hiking boots. I share these wardrobe details for perspective. Most of the locals only have the clothes on their backs; skirts, bare legs and sweaters on females, rubber sandals as footwear.
The house visits were very eye-opening. Most of the families we met all week share 2 rooms; a kitchen and sleeping room, aprox 10′ x 16′ total, dirt floor, tin or sod roof, some have glass in windows – some plastic sheeting. They burn sod or animal dung for cooking (but much prefer to save animal droppings for fertilization in the potato fields). Fire is never for heat – that would be indulgent.
DESEA assured us we were shown the better of the local accommodations. All of the people we met are very proud, warm, grateful and in dire need.
