As part of the Nourish International Honduras presentation, Jonathan and I spoke to the crowd in the lounge, accompanied with a slideshow, and played this nifty video at the very end.  It’s very short (we budget time carefully), but I think it still captures the spice of the summer.  I wanted to share it on the blog for your viewing pleasure.  So, enjoy!

Find more videos like this on The Nourish Network

Here is a list of the top ten things that I will miss from Peru:

1. The People – Peruvians are some of the friendliest people that I have met in all of my travels.  They were always willing to lend out a helping hand and tell you the best way to go about completing a task (maybe even an hour long demonstration if you are in Ciudad de Dios)
2. La Barra – The infamous night club in Trujillo.  It provided our group with many nights of fun, and even better stories
3. Sounds of Hunachaco – The entire day was full of sounds that ranged from combi drivers yelling at you to take a ride to “Trujillo, Trujillo” to the fruit salesman projecting his voice through a megaphone saying “mandarinas, mandarinas, un sol, un kilo.”  And one cannot leave out the sensation that is Peruvian Cumbia; there is not a place you can go without hearing Grupo 5
4. Brian Billman’s Revolutionary Speeches – No town meeting is complete without Brian speaking in his flawless Spanish and stating “Poder de la comunidad!!” which is almost always followed by the raising of his fist
5. The Coca Plant – The popular plant proved to be quite helpful during many strenuous hikes throughout the Sacred Valley
6. 8 Hour Long Bus Rides on the Local Bus – These bus rides between various cities are full of characters, interruptions, and amazing movies.  I believe that the ride to Puno was my favorite, I was privileged enough to get to sit next to a Peruvian woman and her three year old child. This ride consisted of stops for food where women would jump on the bus and butcher an entire calf in the aisle or run around throwing pieces of bread the size of pizzas at people for 5 soles.  The two forms of entertainment were movies (Terminator and karate movies) and dietitians that would provide us with live infomercials for vitamins.
7. The Ruins – Obviously the ruins around Cusco and Machu Picchu are amazing and worthy of making my top ten list.
8. Town Markets – One can get lost in the Mayorista of Trujillo for hours and stumble upon some of the coolest/weirdest stuff ever.  Some people feel nervous or scared as they walk through markets, but I become overjoyed with happiness because you are able to see the locals in a real environment where they are interacting with each other and enjoying themselves. Plus the cd’s are cheap.
9. Talking in English – Surprisingly, it is quite fun to know that nobody around you can understand what you are talking about.  This set the stage for many entertaining conversations, too bad this all had to change once we got to Cusco.
10. The Nourish Group and Ciudad de Dios – Our group was AMAZING! The friendships that we formed with each other and the townspeople helped make the work that we did more enjoyable and productive.

Thank you,

Felipe Dest

I remember how excited I was when I first heard about this project. I’m an International Studies major with concentrations in Latin America and Global Health and Environment and I’m also minoring in Environmental Sciences. Therefore, this project was exactly what I needed to get into for what I want to do in the future. Evverything that I was hoping to learn and experience from this project was so valuable and priceless. I could not have learned any better from a book or lecture. There are so many things that are necessary when working with development projects. Community involvement, community ownership, community relationships, patience,  determination, understanding the nature of third-world countries, cultural and language understanding, and so much more are necessary for a truly successful development project. I’m not sure if I would have been able to understand all of these things had I not done this trip. I realized that there are many different kinds of people that are needed for projects like this. We always need our people like Melissa or Kathryn Gelder that love to talk to people and create friendships with the ladies of the town. But we also need people like Nina and Alyson that humor the children and dance with them in parties. But then, people like Sandy and Kathryn  H.  are so very valued for their painting and community beautification skills. And then we have people like Jorge, Alex, and Felipe that try to teach children things about the water cycle or do research about the feasibility of a cooperative middle valley recycling system. Because there are so many different and unique characteristics that are needed for development work, there are also so many different and unique people that we had on our trip. I’m not quite sure what exactly it is that I want to write but I suppose I’m finally starting to understand what exactly development work involves. This project was such a wonderful and challenging experience that allowed me to see what exactly I’m studying and preparing myself for in college. I have not been discouraged from development work despite our numerous obstacles and difficulties faced in the project. Instead, the idea of the people of Ciudad de Dios receiving water which in turn will allow the children to have a teacher makes everything so worthwhile. ( I apologize for how cheesy that sounds)

One might think that after such a challenging project as this one, one would be turned off from work like this and start running in the direction of working for “the man” or some high end job that earns six figure salaries. But I have to say that I feel quite the opposite of that, I’m so excited and ready to work with projects like this. One can never know what to expect and there is something new to prepare for every single day. The people you meet, the things you experience, and things you accomplish are unforgettable.

Friday was our last day of working on the water system. In the morning, while we waited for a pipe delivery, we completed the mural in the Plaza de Armas. It is now 42 meters of vibrantly colored landscapes, accented with symbols of the ancient Moche culture and a stylized representation of the town itself. We climbed up a neighboring hill to get the full effect, and it really does give Ciudad de Dios a fantastic splash of color. The uniform brown of the adobe houses and dusty streets is now broken by a long vein of green and blue, and hopefully this will be the first of many community beautification and pride initiatives.

The water system is nearly completed, and we are all heartbroken to be leaving without seeing the water flow through the taps. It will certainly be finished within the next few days, but the funding crisis (which is still occurring–visit savethemoche.org for more info) slowed our progress significantly. Melissa will update us all about how the final steps of the project go.

Yesterday the people of Ciudad threw a marvelous fiesta for us, probably the biggest the town has ever had. Saying goodbye was hard, but they certainly made sure our last day was unforgettable. After a feast of grand proportions (cuy, or guinea pig, was the main dish), we celebrated the end of our time there with dancing. The music eventually came to an end, and we made our way through the crowds to say goodbye. As we walked down the hill for the final time, dusk was quickly turning to night. It was strange to leave Ciudad that way, with the landscape and the faces of the friends we had made obscured by the darkness. I could feel my memories of the town already fading. In vain I tried to take everything in, grasping at the images that I had taken for granted every day, trying frantically to secure it all in my memory. But the vague remnants of daylight did not provide enough illumination to distinguish the brilliant colors and textures of the landscape, and it was not enough to make a final observation of the expressions on peoples faces. Climbing onto our bus, I began to panic. What if I forgot what I had seen there? As we drove away, shouting Ciao to the children that had followed us to the bus, I tried to reassure myself that I could not possibly forget all of the beauty and warmth of Ciudad, nor could I forget all of the hardship. Peering out the window into the now blackened countryside, I realized that the beauty I was earnestly seeking to sear into my memory was not the kind that was found in the physical surroundings. The connection I felt to the community, especially strong in those final hours, was not lessened by the receding daylight.

During the evaluation there were (of course) differences of opinion on a variety of small issues but one thing stood out: the team´s commitment to working towards continuing Nourish´s relationship with the wonderful people at FIPAH.  All of us were continually impressed by the level of integration FIPAH has with each community in which it works and the excellent work guided by consideration of all possibilities to help better those communities.  At the moment we are preparing a report that will go over what we did this summer and some ways to continue our work which we hope to have posted on the blog by the end of the month.  Until the fall we will continue discussing the direction of this partnership before presenting it to the UNC International Projects Committee.  Regardless of what happens, we will continually remember the people of Yorito and Otoro and the invaluable things we have learned by living and working with them.  Such things do not escape you.  For example, on a bus in Guatemala yesterday I couldn´t help kicking my foot back a bit and mouthing the words to “Mi Vecinita”, one of my famed dance numbers courtesy of Rio Arriba.  I´m finding it hard to wrap anything so special up so I´ll leave it at this – ¡Que le vaya bien!