Two strikes and four days without water...

Banana roaster

Tico Strikers...

More Tico pandelerium

Hospital strikers

Retratos en sepia

Man! can he park or what?!

Our old street after four months, so glad we moved...

Our old house, imitating a street in Dresden cerca 1945

On the road to Ayaviri

Shoe shiner's hands

Ayaviri hospital, maybe not such a great idea to get sick here...

Campesino women are TOUGGGHHH!

We were awakened about 1am Monday morning by a phone call from our friend Yeny Yauli. Rich tried to answer and call her back to no avail, we figured it was a pocket dial and went back to sleep. When we got up for the day Rich had seven calls from Yeny. She finally answered and we learned that her sister Grecia was in a bus that turned over on its side. Grecia was traveling from Cusco to Espinar at night and the bus swerved to miss a cow, or so said the bus driver… It tipped over. The bus was overcrowded with 75+ people on a bus that should have held about 40. 

Sadly, this kind of accident happens far too often here. It is against the mission rules to ride the busses overnight. They are too dangerous. Thankfully, Grecia only had some bruises and a pretty banged up nose, but she seems to be doing well. She, along with all the other injured sat in the hospital in Sicuani for hours and hours without anyone helping them. The hospital wouldn’t touch them without the bus companies and the driver’s insurance information. Naturally, the bus driver was no where to be found! Yeny and her fiancé took another bus to Sicuani to get Grecia and bring her to the hospital here in Cusco.  There is one adequate hospital here and she had a thorough check up and is on the mend by now.

Our water was cut off early Wednesday morning, but came back on long enough to shower and get ready for the day. We learned later that this was a planned cut for repairs and would last 2-4 days! Apparently it had been announced on the radio, but we don’t listen to the Cusco radio station so we didn’t know, nor did our landlord and hundreds of other people. Rich had a prompting and started filling bottles, pots and our only bucket so we were able to get our big water bottles filled and have been “camping” since. 

Our land lord said he has a 1000liter tank on top of reserve water but he couldn’t figure out why it was all gone. We knew why, it was transfer week for the missionaries and Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, there were about 12 sister missionaries upstairs all showering and getting ready to go to their new assignments. They didn’t know about the water being cut or we’re sure they would have been a bit more careful.

Early Thursday for whatever reason, there was trickle of water for about 30 minutes so we refilled what we could and again on Friday there was a trickle for about 30 minutes.  We’re ready to have our water back! This is way too much like backpacking.

We had strange weather too. Julie's english student told us about this being the season of the Cabañuela. This is where the Inka used the day's weather to predict the months to come for agricultural purposes. It all depends upon the moon's phases and when the moon goes dark they start the count, day 1 is for January, day two for February and so on. Then there is the interpretation of the day's weather to explain the coresponding months to come. This all happens in August while they are paying back the earth. It is all very mystical and about as difficult to interpret as US tax laws...

Rich traveled to Ayaviri for interviews Saturday morning and Julie and the Harbertson’s went up on Sunday for the meeting. The Ayaviri District was dissolved and will become two independent branches, Ayaviri and Choquehuanca. This should be a good thing for both branches. 

It snowed in Ayaviri and it is freezing up there so we used our hand and toe warmers. The church there was like a walk-in freezer. Rather, every building there is like that.

We got home at about five pm on Sunday night. We were pretty wiped out.