Health Fair, Pervian Thanksgiving Plans, and Protest #???



Harlequin for the health fair

We had a visit from the director for Family Search for the five country area. His name is Dulio Delgado and we spent several hours with him and the local Cusco representative. We have been doing very well in this part of our assignment. We take around 5000 photos a week on average. We have submitted several discs now that have not had any books to retake.

We feel good and excited about this.

 

A lot of people know about our project now and they get excited. Rich told an artist he ran into about what we are doing and he got all excited and said he has always wanted to do genealogy but did not know where to start. Rich told him about Family Search and he thought he had to be a member of the church to use it. He told him that it is available to anybody and while some things are exclusive to church members, none of those things will impede his personal family search. He left very excited.

 

We have had some great experiences lately. We have been filming records from the mid-eighties. Most of these folks are alive but the records are still important. We see some social trends reflected in them too. About this time a lot of Western names begin to get used in naming children. Julie photographed a name that was Sherwin Williams Uscca Mayta and Rich had Ronald Harrison Colquehuanca Chancayauri. There are lots of Elvises, Katherines, Elmers, Rebeccas, Julies (spelled Yuly), and Wilburs. Interestingly, the trend of late has been more for traditional Quechua names like Kusikollyor (Happy star), and Kolque (Gold), and a lot of traditional Spanish names.

 

We learned that Institute is over with one class to go. We had never been told how long Rich’s class actually went and so, we are winding up about three books short! Rich talked with the director to see about teaching a class on Isaiah and he got it approved. This will be in the interim between semesters.

 

Signs of approaching Christmas are everywhere. There are bottle-brush Christmas trees in the stores and huge ornaments of dangling bells. One unique Christmas item is Italian Panetone. This is hugely popular and for sale in every grocery store. The Peruvian version is just as good as the Italian. The bacon we buy is better than any bacon we ever bought in the United States and Rich even posted a status avowing his devotion to fried bananas. The fruit that is on right now includes huge stacks of delicious mangos and pepinillos (little striped melony flavored, cucumber textured fruit).

 

We figured out our oven to be able to bake pies and have made two sweet potato pies. We don’t have access to Libby’s canned pumpkin here nor pumpkin pie spice but the sweet potato pies have been just as delicious.

 

On Saturday we searched stuff to be able to cook Thanksgiving dinner. We have invited some Peruvian neighbors and the mission president and his wife. We have invited 11 people to our little bungalow!

 

While we were out, we ran across a health fair in the Plaza San Francisco. The fair seemed mostly focused on dental health. There were dancers doing traditional dances such as one where they whack each other with huge woven slings and one called a baker’s dance. There was a flash mob sort of a thing with girls and boys dancing to a tune about stopping violence towards women. A string of dental vehicles lined up to check people’s teeth. Kids tended booths with various displays of things one can do to stay healthy. A giant guinea pig with a toothbrush wandered among the festivities along with a couple of heroic donkeys and a llama, all critters with big teeth, we suppose. They seemed to be from outside of Cusco, from the farming communities. There were even stilt walking harlequins.

 

We traveled totally, uneventfully to Izcuchaca this morning. Once there Rich got asked to give the last talk in sacrament meeting and Julie got to teach primary for two hours, totally unprepared. She has come a long way in her Spanish confidence and did not freak out at the request. It did get a little hot but we did not travel in the rain, no mud issues, nothing… Once home we had lunch with our downstairs neighbors, the Agüero family. She is Colombian and cooks well. She fixed beans, rice, eggs and avocado. It was great!

 

At home, our family is trapped by the bad weather in New Mexico and Texas, hoping to get together for Thanksgiving.

We go for a long walk through the center every morning before beginning our work in the archives. On Wednesday morning there seemed to be an extreme amount of activity and so we, like lemmings headed off to see what was going on. Marchers filled the Avenida Del Sol all heading towards the center of the city. They carried sticks and clubs and the police paralleled their march. They did not carry banners but chanted anti-Humala (the Peruvian President) slogans. They are unhappy that the government does not step in and fix the oil prices and since virtually everything is driven by that, the cost of living is rising. Of course, they look to the starship, Venezuela for guidance. Venezuela produces oil; Peru barely does and is certainly not in a position to solve the problem. We walked past the march with no incident but it felt a little uncomfortable.

So they chant, “¡Urgente! ¡Urgente! ¡Presidente!” (Urgent! Urgent! A New President). These same chanters were the very same who pushed to get this socialist president into power when the last president did not fix the oil prices and the last time they had elected him, he let terrorism run amok and absconded with millions of soles and the one before him, just ran off with millions of soles and did nothing to stabilize the economy…

 

Of course the few in the march who have an education probably got it at the hands of terrorist sympathizers, so they still stir these things up. Sadly, it is a very old and unproductive tale here. One feels for the poor who struggle to feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads. We, in the U.S. think that we see poverty but in Peru, millions live by subsistence farming, meaning they only live on what they can grow. This means that if they cannot make it, they don’t wear it, if they don’t grow it, they don’t eat it and they raise an animal or two to sell so that they can buy luxury items like rice, tea, yarn and so forth. They don’t have electricity, most send their children to school late because they have to do their chores or they don’t send them at all because they work. Child labor is an unenforced crime here. These children typically eat two or less meals a day and as often as not these meals consist of toasted corn or freeze dried potatoes (chuño), rarely do they get fruit, meat, milk or cheese. Still, things have improved since we were last here, especially near the bigger cities like Cusco, Arequipa, Trujillo, Lima etc.

 

Julie got called, “Mala,” by one of the little children that sell trinkets to tourists because she did not buy one. These kids should be in school and buy supporting their selling, we enable the problem. Still, it kind of eats you up to not help their need.

 

A lot of children do go to school and we see them all the time. Even public school kids wear uniforms. We ran into a group of third graders while we were going into a restaurant for lunch. One of these little boys told his friends that we were gringos. Julie answered them and said, “Why, yes we are!” Their mouths dropped open when they realized that we were not deaf or stupid and that we could speak Spanish. We visited with them for a bit and told them that we are missionaries. They were cute little fellows.


Sling Dance/ Campesino Slam Dancing...

The baker's dance

Giant guinea pig with a toothbrush

Flash Mob dancing to a song protesting violence against women,(part of  the health fair, we  think)



Hey! Nice  tie.

 

 



Nemesio's Dog



Watchdog of Amargura

Guard Dogs

Protestors

Cusco Judicial Building

The March



Begging in the church doors


Hard Rock

School Girls

School Boys

Our first sweet potato pie




Mobile dentistry units doing check-ups



Health fair kiosk(mystery desiccated fox...)

Health fair kiosk, (Note the roasted guinea pig, upper center on the table...)

Churros vendor

Sheep's Head Soup joint

Warning that thieves will be lynched.



Tourist

Our friend Nemesio looking all elegant and spiffed up