Buying sand is harder than you think...

by Alisha

A group of health volunteers from Peru 12, who are currently training, were in the Chota area last week observing different projects of current health volunteers. Micah and I tagged along a little bit to meet some of the new volunteers and to learn more about one of the projects they completed at the orphanage that we have been visiting. We all learned about the process of building a cocina mejorada which is basically a wood burning stove that is used for cooking. The idea of using this model is that it efficiently burns the wood and also includes a chimney that takes the smoke out of the house and thus prevents repertory problems. This stove was being built outside, but usually they are put inside the home.

Micah and I helped out by buying some sand that was needed for the project. We were instructed to pick up 17 latas (cans) of sand by the volunteer who was coordinating the project. No problem, right? It took us a little while to find the guy that sells the sand, but after finding him we figured we were home free. When we arrived he asked us where our bags were to take the sand. Not knowing we needed to bring anything with us, we asked if we could purchase the bags from him. He said we would have to walk to the market to get the needed bags. We returned about 20 minutes later with the bags. The price for the sand was negotiated and I asked if they could transport the sand for us to the orphanage. He said no problem and the price for transportation was added. We then went to the sand pile and discovered that one "can" of sand was actually a 5 gallon bucket of sand. I started to get worried about the transportation of all of this sand to the orphanage which is just outside of town. While the guy was bagging up the sand for us he decided that he wasn´t going to transport it for us after all. He gave us our money back and said he would find us a moto-taxi (a motorcycle with a buggy on the back) that would take it to the orphanage for us. After many unsuccessful attempts to find a moto-taxi driver that would take all of the sand, one agreed. It took three trips to get all the sand out to the orphanage and at times the driver got out of the moto-taxi to push it (while running) up some hills. You would think that the guy who sells the sand would also sell the bags to put the sand in as well as the transportation, but you would be wrong. After an hour of trying to buy sand, we determined that buying sand is harder than you think...

We have also started writing narrative of our diagnostic report which is a culmination of the last two months of work. It is going well so far and we are finding that we have a lot to write about our community and the potential projects that we can develop.

Work has also continued on our World Map project; however, the rainy days are slowing our group down a little bit.

A big thanks to everyone who has been sending mail!