My favorite kinds of pictures…. It just never gets old!
The corn and orange harvest is over, but now comes the time for processing all of the food so laboriously collected. Like Jenny and Shaw observed on their trip to Sicchez, everything here is work. The life of a piece of food from seed to plate, especially for those without technology, requires heavy personal investment. A rural farmer is connected to his/her food in a way that we can’t come close to understanding in the States. Almost every crop I can think of that is to be stored (coffee, peanuts, corn, beans) must first be cleaned and dried out in the sun before being ground, toasted, and stored. In these pictures we’re taking the kernels off of semi-dried corn so that they can lay the grains in the sun to finish drying completely. For green city folk like us, our thumbs start to hurt after 20 minutes. These times with the family are really special to Brian and I. It’s kind of like the equivalent of sitting around the fire. I can understand now why seniors get so nostalgic for the days before television and computers, there is an organic quality to time with the family that tends to get lost with so many new fancy diversions. However, I do have to say that it makes me somewhat pained to see how much time, land, and labour go into growing food for animals. Animals that usually die of diseases, get eaten by wild animals, or stolen. And still, even with all the effort of raising animals, there is a severe protein deficiency in 40% of the children here. The amount of protein-rich plant crops they could grow in the same space as all of the corn or grass for grazing is astounding. But I’m just a biased vegetarian.
How women weave.
This man is making adobes for an improved cooking stove that Brian will use in his demonstrations. The mud is mixed with a particular type of grass. He made about 70 adobes in a little over 8 hours.
It’s actually a lot of fun to play with the mud, kind of brought me back to the days of being three years old and enjoying the sensation of mud running through my fingers. Brian built a cocina mejorada (improved cooking stove) for his training classes with the local mothers. The health center chose four villages to work with in which all of the moms with kids under three will receive the materials for the stove. In return the families have to make the adobes, transport the materials to their houses, and build the stoves. There are about 30 participating families, plus the local schools (the moms take turns cooking food at the schools because there is no school lunch program in Peru). These stoves are of vital importance all over the world in developing countries, as half of the world’s population cook with open fires in the kitchen (using wood, animal droppings, or crop debris). Respiratory infections are among the three most common health problems in Sicchez, along with diarrhea (parasites) and psoriasis (alcoholism). Along with a chimney to divert the smoke, improved cooking stoves also burn more efficiently, using 35% less firewood. Yay for the forest!! The moms came down from the villages for a training given by Brian and the nurse. Our next task is to visit each family to answer questions and provide support in building their new stoves.
Just in case you had doubts, dirt floors and streets do follow a strict cleaning regimen: 1) fill up holes with loose dirt and pack it down, 2) if a street, rake away weeds, 3)sweep the dirt to remove all loose debris – yes, with a broom, 4) water the dirt, but not too much. If this is not done weekly, your dirt floor with begin to get pockmarks, become uneven, and create lots of dust. This is how I spent one beautiful Friday helping a local village clean the streets for their anniversary party. Turned out pretty clean, hugh? Living on dirt doesn’t have to be dirty!
In our never-ending quest to understand the place and people of Sicchez, I went peanut-harvesting with a man from a village down the valley (2,000 ft. down). His way of life is extremely simple and he is very poor. They have some goats, pigs, chickens and cows and about 5 acres of land. No money except for what they can sell of their crops to a village up the valley. His village just got electricity last month. And he is one of the happiest people I know. Not really surprising. In the picture of his field, the peanuts are the green patch on the right. So peanut harvesting is a freakin back breaker. You pull the plants up and make big piles, but most of the peanuts get stuck in the ground so with a stick (which he carved with his machete to make a point) you have to dig them out. But usually there are two layers of peanuts underneath, and some of them are really deep. At first he had to re-dig everything I did because I kept missing them. It’s a really interesting plant. The flowers are tiny yellow things that bloom right next to the ground and the peanuts are the fruit that develop in the soil. After four hours of continual harvesting I wasn’t sure if I could stand up straight. The women bring lunch to the field so you don’t waste time walking back and forth, as most fields here are a ways from the house (that has a lot to do with historical land-us policy in Peru, a fascinating and sickening story).
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