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Reflecting On Peru

By on August 31, 2012 in 2012, Cornell, Peru, USF

It has been a few weeks since the project in Peru has finished and I have had a good amount of time to reflect on the experience. First let me share a picture of how the clinic looked the day we left it, with the foundation for the new rooms finished and the brick work well under way.

Here is a review of the project:
Our Goals: Our project will serve to facilitate good health practice and services in the community through our construction of a medical clinic. This will increase access to medications and increase education about health topics. It is also a networking opportunity to increase cooperation between the community and Nourish International.

Actions taken to work toward these goals: We worked on the construction every day for 4-5 hours. We tried in the first week to walk around and talk to community members, but that was largely unsuccessful (no one seemed to want to talk). We joined a community meeting once in the second week so that we could introduce the project and ourselves so that people weren’t wondering who we were. During the third and fourth week, we took turns lodging with members of the community to get to know a family better, have cultural exchanges, and connect with the community. We also connected to the youth in the community by helping to teach at the schools and playing with children during our lunch break.

Our Impact: We made progress on the clinic construction. We did not quite get to the point where the clinic can begin taking patients, but it is closer to being functional. The construction project, the clinic itself, has a great potential to have impact on the community through offering reduced price health care right in the community of those who will need it. It will help to improve their health, increase their productivity and ability to be more successful.

I think we can all say that it was a good summer. There were definitely some bumps, bruises, and trials along the way, but the lessons that we learned about Peru, international development, and being flexible were all extremely eyeopening. Peru was nothing like I expected. I honestly had my expectations grounded in ideals and past experiences that maybe were not relevant to this project, but I learned to fight through my initial disenchantment and take my experience in through the eyes of a learner, looking at everything with a bit of wonder and curiosity rather than judgement.

Thank you Peru, MOCHE Inc, and Nourish for the experience. I will never regret being a part of it.

Liz

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Cornell in Peru: We’re almost done!

By on July 31, 2012 in 2012, Chapter, Cornell, Peru, USF

How the time has flown by the past 5 weeks. It is hard to believe that we only have one more day left at the construction site and then the Nourish team will be going their separate ways, some to travel a little, visit family in Peru, go home, or stay to work on other projects in Peru. What has happened in the last couple of weeks? We will share highlights illustrated for you with some lovely pictures.

1. Much trench digging. With pickaxes, shovels, and these big metal rods, we spent more than 7 work days digging trenches to be the foundation of walls.

2. Plastering – the inside of the walls of the examination rooms that were previously built.

3. Painting – a beautiful Peruvian inspired mural for the area and the inside of the examination rooms. And of course, coming back to the hospedaje covered head to toe in paint speckles.

4. Visiting awesome archeological sites: Huaca de La Luna – and learning about the heritage of Peru.

5. Pouring concrete – to make floors for the examination rooms and foundations for the new walls. We are aiming for earthquake-proof construction with the depth of those foundations.

6. Conducting health fairs for two communities – We brought in various types of physicians to offer free examinatons, gave free hair cuts, and had booths of information and activities on the topics of nutrition, sanitation, and dental hygiene

7. Visiting major Peru attractions; Cuzco/Machu Pichu or Juaráz – Part of the team went on a longer trip to visit the amazing Andes mountains and hike some trails in Machu Pichu. The rest of the team spent a few days in the mountains to enjoy the outdoor activities in Juaráz.

8. Finally building up: Brick laying. Look at that progress! We are building an entrance, a triage room, and a hallway, off which will be bathrooms.

9. Resting. Because manual labor is tiring.

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Cornell in Peru: Bello Horizonte Clinic Construction

By on July 5, 2012 in 2012, Cornell, Peru, USF

Hello from Hana and Liz, the two students from Cornell who are participating in the MOCHE clinic construction in Bello Horizonte, Peru. We are partnering with Nourish´s USF and Yale chapters for this project, so make sure to check out their blog posts as well to get the whole story on this development project. We are about a week and a half into the trip and now understand our project enough to be able to give a good report on the details of our project.

All three of the participating chapters are lodging together in a house of a wonderful family who makes us delicious Peruvian food. <3 On weekday mornings, we take an hour bus ride to Bello Horizonte, which is a town that is developing from a squatter community of Peruvians moving away from the highlands. Our group of 14 then splits up into  a few different groups to accomplish the task of the day.

One group greets our maestro on the construction site to build the medical clinic. The work is a continuation of a project that was started by Nourish´s OSU and Yale Chapters last summer. These groups were able to construct the structure of two examination rooms, which are only a small part of the clinic building plans. Our team´s goal is to put the finishing touches on these examination rooms to make them functional (plastered walls, electricity, water, etc.) and also to build a bathroom and hallway for the clinic so that the clinic will be able to start taking patients.   Eventually, the plan is to build a waiting room, another examination room, administration space, and a health education area. The construction group is usually moving rocks to clear the construction site, pick axing through ground, shoveling dirt, and helping the maestro with plastering.

The second group may be participating in one of the other many community enriching projects that we are involved in with the community of Bello Horizonte as well as the neighboring Cuidad de Dios.  We are cleaning up the area around the clinic which will be turned into a playground and green area for the community, which is a joint effort with Bello´s Peace Corps volunteer. We are starting to paint a large colorful mural in this recreation area. Our team is also taking turns to going to the local school and teaching students some English and also Spanish reading comprehension. Finally, there are a few people helping a MOCHE staff member to start a women´s cooperative group which will help them generate income through handmade items.

Each day we are working on a project that has been coordinated by the MOCHE staff. The MOCHE organization has been working with numerous communities in Peru for a little more than ten years. The founder of the organization is primarily an archeologist who wants to help the people protect their heritage and a number of archeological reserves in the area. However, in working with the Peruvians, he has begun to help them be proud of their people not only through their heritage, but through having respectable living and health conditions. They have brought a water system to the communities, have built latrines, and are now working on a health clinic that offer services on a sliding pay scale, with subsidized health care to limited income individuals. The plan for the clinic is that it will be staffed by a combination of government paid health professionals as well as medical students and volunteers. They will be concentrating on maternal health care, dental hygiene, nutrition, and other immediate health needs of the individual.

We are very excited to be a part of these community development projects in here in Peru.  We have already been learning in the past week and a half that international development does not always run very smoothly,  but you must have patience while waiting for supplies and plans to be coordinated within the time frame of a different culture, because here, everything runs on Peruvian time.

There is a lot of manual labor involved and we have been getting dirty with all sorts of things –paint,  plaster, dirt, sweat, and, most importantly bug spray (there are carnivorous gnats here). We will keep you updated!
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