Cornell in Peru: Bello Horizonte Clinic Construction

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!