Peru - Day 2-3

These were the first two service days in Huaycán. We ended up dividing into 4 groups, two medical and two construction. I will have more info on what the construction groups did in another post.

In Huaycán, being a very poor part of Lima, there is a government sponsored nursery system for those who cannot pay. Single moms in the area are probably the ones who benefit the most from the program aside from the kids themselves. It is called the Wawa Wasi program. Wawa is the old native indian term for baby and wasi was the word for house. It is weird to say it a lot though, just try it. All the nurseries we went into had a sign like this one.



Over 120,000 people live in Huaycán. It is divided into 26 zones, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each zone has about 12 wawa wasis which each take care of 5-8 kids 2-5 years old. During day 2 and 3 we did health screenings for all of the wawa wasis in two of the zones of Huaycán. We weighed and measured each of the kids and the doctors saw all of them. We had some free medications with us for parasites, bacterial infections, and other stuff like that. I don't have any idea how many prescriptions were written.

Here are a couple pictures of weighing and measuring in the wawa wasis.




This was the scale they had there for us to use. It was funny. The kids sat in the little overalls looking thing and hung from it to be weighed. You can kind of see how it was in the next picture. Pretty much every kid cried in it. In the first picture you see me holding it up because in that little place there was nowhere to hang it from the house itself - it looked like pretty much any of the supports for the roof would break if we used it. So, I put the scale on a broomstick and stood next to a bookshelf. It worked well enough.




This little girl was sooo cute. The picture just doesn't do her justice.


I think this one could go in a brochure or something. The man is Craig. He was the expedition leader. He is an ER doctor in Utah, served a mission in Bolivia and has gone to South America something like 7-8 times for things like this. He and his family were very nice. I don't have a good picture right now of the doctor I translated for. Her name is Peggy and she also was an ER doctor. I will try to put one up next time.


The group we went down with is called Ascend Alliance. They focus on working with government or other programs that are sustainable. They have a Peru regional director that is from Lima and directs Ascend's activities there. Anyway, the in country people do trainings for the wawa wasi people on having healthy conditions and such in each of the wawa wasis. Ascend also has literacy programs for the moms who work in the wawa wasis and the moms of some of the kids that are part of the program. They teach business skills to local small business owners and lots of things like that. We were just a part of what goes on through Ascend in Peru. Apart from all the work that we did with the screenings and building things I think our trip helped the people that are working there every day by showing them support.

Here are some pictures of the area I took while we were either on the bus or while we were walking between the wawa wasis. The whole area is basically on mountainside - gray, ugly, half-mixed concrete looking mountainside. I don't know how many people are familiar with this but in Lima and other parts of South America, the poor people are the ones that live on the hills. I guess it is further from where they all want to work and the government doesn't care about them just taking the land because no one else wants to live there. Either way, for some reason, it is backwards from how it is here.







After day 3 we moved on to another part of Huaycán to help at a school. The people in these zones knew we were leaving them so they put together a little program to say thank you for what we had done. It felt like too much but I guess it really meant a lot to them. Some little kids dressed up in typical dress from different regions of the country and did cool little dances. Then pretty much everyone, including us from the group, danced for about a million years without stopping. They really like dancing. A lot.




Well, that should pretty much do it for today's post. If I left anything else out that you want to know just ask and I will include it in the next Peru post about day 4, at the school.