Humanitarian Trip to Peru

 Ken traveled with Choice Humanitarian to Peru to help with a humanitarian project in a little village (Pircas) there.  Shonna's husband Blake grew up doing these humanitarian trips with his family.  His dad was one of the leaders of this trip (he has been on 17 of them.)  Blake, his dental partner, Jeff, and three assistants went to do dental work.  Blake and Shonna's kids Lily, Hannah, and Caleb also went.  This was Caleb's third trip, Lily's second, and Hannah's first time.  Doing this every year is very important to Blake.  He wants his family to be part of it.  (Shonna stayed home with Gabe who is still too young to go.)

Donna and Mark Cameron (Blake's parents), Lily, Hannah, Caleb, Ken, and Blake at the hotel in Piura.

Hotel in Piura

Boarding the plane.

These kids were great travelers

They stayed the first night in Piura.

This is the interior of a Catholic Catherdral near their hotel in Piura, Peru

The group visiting together at a potty stop in Frias, Peru, half-way up the Peruvian Andes to their destination village of Pircas.

A picture of Frias' Catholic Church.

Overlooking Frias' town plaza

Ken was surprised by the Poinsettia "tree". He had never seen that flower bigger than a small bush.

The Village of Pircas 

They reached the little village in the Andes mountains called Pircas.  This is where they would stay for five days and help the people with a project and exchange cultures.  Here they are meeting some of the residents.

The project they would be working on is to get bricks from the site where they were made to these long ponds.  The people in the village run a fish farm. The villagers eat about 20% of the fish and sell the remaining 80% to provide income for the village. They have three long ponds (fish runs) in which they keep the fish.

They keep the fish in pond number one until they become a certain size, then they move them to pond number two.  Then to pond number three after they grow.  The ponds have been lined with mud.  The project was to cement (you can see pond number three is cemented) and build brick walls for the ponds, preserving the water and keeping the fish healthy.  It will make a huge difference for them. They project doubling their fish production due to less mortality in the fish from disease, etc.

Building the brick walls.

They formed a long "bucket brigade" passing the bricks from one to the next to get them to the pond area.

These precious kids worked so hard, never taking a break except the "Mandatory" breaks, as Hannah explained to me afterward.

Ken and I are so proud of these kids.

Blake and his dental team worked on the project the first day.

This is Cosme.  A coincidence is that Shonna was good friends with him when they lived in the same ward back in college at BYU.  He and his daughter (Ruby) were on the trip.  They didn't make the connection until Shonna saw the pictures after they got home.

This precious little 9-year-old girl held her own.  She went to Peru to work and nothing was going to stop her.

Along with moving the bricks (they were HEAVY) onto the project site, they were also tasked with hauling sand from the creek bottom up to the work site, so it could be mixed with cement to make the mortar and plaster on the new fish run.

They all put their handprints in the wet cement.

What a great group of people!

This is some of the sheep that roamed freely throughout the village and surrounding area.

This is Ruby painting the fingernails of one of the local village ladies. That was one of the many ways the group interacted with the local people.

A group of local school kids walking down the village's main street on their way to school.

The village of Pircas was located at 10,230 feet above sea level. The wind blew almost constantly, night and day, and the temperature was generally cold. They had no hot water and so the groups' hands were always cold from having to wash them in cold water. As they left the top of the Andes' Mountains, they found themselves looking down on the cloud cover.

They set up cots for the Americans equipped with mosquito nets.  But the nets were not necessary as it was so cold up there; there were no mosquitos.

Everyone on the trip shared pictures afterward (that's why they are a bit jumbled.)  I love these beautiful pictures of the natives. The hat worn by the woman is a status symbol among the local people. Many of the adult women wore that exact style of hat. 

Aren't the children cute?

This is the chef and his crew hired by Choice Humanitarian to prepare the meals for the group.  The food was absolutely delicious.

The fresh vegetable/fruit store room that the chef and his assistants used to create such delectable meals.

This is the kitchen. The trained chef is on the right. On the left is Yanina, who was a sweet lady that was part of Choice Humanitarian's Peruvian team.

This room served as both their lunch room and an activity room.

  "This is the meal we were served in Frias, on our way up the mountains to Pircas. Notice that the vast majority of the meal is rice. We each got one chicken leg and a slice of cooked plantain to go with the mountain of fried rice. It was all very yummy."

This is where they ate their meals.

A few more pictures of the project:

Watching the villager feed the trout.

You can see the fish are jumping as they are feeding them in this picture.

Mandatory break

People lined up for their turn to have dental work done.  Ken said there was always a crowd waiting by the door, looking very nervous.

Hauling sand from the creek up to the project site. Here again, Caleb, Lily, and Hannah were impressive in their work ethic, carrying an equal load with all the older youth and adults. Hannah & Lily were the youngest members of the group, and Ken was the oldest by 3.5 years.

The partially built home of one of the village leaders.

Mrs. Kinney blowing bubbles with the kindergarten kids. They were all having a blast!  They probably had never seen bubbles before.

As one of the cultural exchanges, the village men showed them how they separated the locally grown wheat from the chaff. First, they cut the wheat stalks by hand in the field, then they hauled the stalks to a central location and brought in this machine to do the separating.

Here they are showing the group how they harvest and separate wheat. It certainly didn't appear to be very efficient.

The group also dug a large hole, approximately 4 X 4 X 4 feet. This was going to be used by the villagers as a settling pond for the water before it would be fed into the fish runs. They also had to haul all that dirt/gravel, etc. away from the project site. "Yes, we were pretty much the mules for their project."

Dinnertime! For Ken the meals were the highlight of each day. The physicality of the work wore him down each day. Without an afternoon nap, he wouldn't have survived. The chef made an assortment of Peruvian versions of American cuisine (e.g. hamburgers, pizza, etc.) and native Peruvian cuisine. The most common meat was chicken, but he served fish (trout) once, and red meat a time or two. No matter what was served, he did an amazing job of making the food taste great!

The dental team consisted of Blake and his partner, Jeff Wegener, and three assistants (Wes, Kensi, & Amy) and Blake's mom, who kept the instruments clean. These people were the heroes of the expedition. They did amazing things (for free) under very difficult circumstances.

Each person could have one procedure done.  Most were extractions.

No one loves going to the dentist, but think of this picture next time you are in a sterile environment in a comfortable dental chair instead of a cheap plastic chair, trying to hold your head back.

A highlight of the trip (at the end of the visit) was a dance where the group was taught native folk dances and got to dance with many of the local villagers, young and old.

The children put on a show, displaying their folk dances.

One day the group went on hike.

Here they are explaining how they planted these pine trees as there were very few trees in the area.

Hiking from the village to the planted pine forests (there were two of them).

They stopped at a little reservoir called Crystal Lake, which was between the two planted pine forests. It had some swings, a makeshift teeter-totter, and a bench or two, located next to the lake,

Lily and Caleb were quick to take the lake's owner up on her offer to ride on her swan boat.

The grand finale of their stay in Pircas was the soccer games.  The people there were SO excited to play the Americans in soccer.  We didn't get many pictures of it, but it was truly the highlight.  A group of guys from a nearby town even came to play.

The soccer players

It was a successful trip as they worked together and shared cultures, changing lives on both sides forever.  Adios!