School Supplies for Airepampa
Saturday, March 27th, we arrived in Airepampa after over three hours on narrow mountain roads, the last two hours on a rough dirt road. The night before, Elio Huaman Bolívar came from Calca with a truck to pick up the donations from Escuela Inmaculada Concepción, where Henry’s sister Yanet Morales Loaiza was storing our donations. Yanet also donated books, desks, tables, chairs and whiteboards from her school. We are so grateful for all of our donors in Cusco who also gave us yarn, clothes, shoes and hygiene basics like shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrushes. On Friday morning, we purchased 150 notebooks, 300 pens, 150 pencils, 50 coloring books, 50 sets of colored pencils, 150 small towels and 500 oranges. Towels may seem like an odd addition, but personal hygiene is a struggle in rural areas like Airepampa and anything helps. Thank you so much to all of our donors who sent money for the school supplies!
When we took a chocolatada to these communities last December, we had first stopped in Ttio Grande to do a chocolatada there, then drove another half hour to Airepampa, where we held a second chocolatada on the same day. This time, we stopped in Ttio Grande to pile as many people as possible in the truck with the donations, and in the back of the pickup that had come to pick up Auqui and I in Cusco. We squeezed a couple young mothers with babies and the smallest children in the back seats of the pickup and everybody else climbed in the pickup bed. It's a twisty mountain road, so there was no way we were going to be going fast anyway, but the driver Carlos was extra careful on the last leg of the journey to Airepampa.
The mood was festive, just like the chocolatada had been in December. March is the start of the new school year, not the holidays, but with the continuing pandemic, there hadn’t been any big celebrations or gatherings since the December 5th chocolatada. The kids of Ttio Grande were excited to visit their friends in Airepampa and everywhere I looked the kids were smiling and laughing with each other. Elio introduced us to José Antonio Fernández Castro, the teacher in Airepampa. Like most teachers in rural areas, he lives in town and comes to the village only on week days. He had ridden his motorcycle two hours on the dirt road from Calca to help with the event. He graciously allowed us to interview him and we learned a lot about education in Airepampa, one of five “microcuenca” which are communities too small to count as villages.
Like all of 2020, schools are closed due to the pandemic and teachers are supposed to teach online. This is impossible in places like Airepampa where there is no cell service or radio signal, let alone internet. José and his colleagues visit each family once per week to drop off worksheets and pick up completed work. This is incredibly frustrating for all involved and José convinced a few of his students to talk to me about how they really feel about the government program “Aprendo en Casa.” Every one of them said that Aprendo en Casa was too difficult, that they want to go back to regular school and that they know that they’ve fallen behind significantly. One of the ironies of the situation is that Airepampa, and the other microcuenca, have stayed so isolated that there are no cases of Covid in the area, even more than a year into the pandemic. They really feel like they should have been able to have school last year and they definitely want to go back to normal school this year.
We had plenty of hands to help unload the truck and set the donations on the tables that they had lined up where we had held the chocolatada. We started with the coloring books, colored pencil sets and towels for the smallest children who are not in school yet. Then we gave pens, a pencil, a notebook and a towel to the primary school kids, followed by the secondary school students. Most of the girls wear a cloth tied around their shoulders, called a queperina, which serves as a backpack and purse. In some regions of the Andes, both men and women use them, but in Airepampa none of the boys were wearing one. While the girls put the school supplies in their queperina and got back in line, the boys had to hang onto the school supplies or just set them down somewhere. The second round was oranges and clothes, which were equally popular. Some of the kids were wearing clothes that I recognized from when we distributed clothes here last December. Some of the kids were familiar too.
After we had distributed the items that we had enough of for everybody, we called over some of the community leaders to ask about handicapped adults in the area. We had about a dozen skeins of yarn, plus knitting needles, which one person said he would take to a woman who is homebound. The other basics like shampoo, toothbrushes and toothpaste went to other handicapped adults in the area. It’s hard enough for able-bodied people to get from Airepampa to a dentist in Calca and next to impossible for those with physical handicaps.
It was afternoon by the time we were finished distributing everything, at which point the presidents of the three microcuenca that have schools divvied up the books, desks, chairs and tables evenly amongst each other. Everybody is hopeful that before too long they will be allowed to have classes in person again and when that day finally comes, the schools will be ready.
Elio, Carlos, Auqui and I were invited to share lunch with the community president’s family. It was the same place we had shared potatoes and cuy in December and today they had both alpaca and cheese to accompany the potatoes. When we first arrived that morning, we were greeted with huayro potatoes, my favorite of the pink potatoes. For lunch we were served maqtillo, which is my favorite of the purple potatoes. There are over 3,000 varieties of potatoes in Peru, so it’s a miracle that I actually knew the names of the ones we ate.
Also that morning, while the truck was still being unloaded, I spotted Sonia Suli Sulorseno, who works for the government’s Vivienda agency. She had hitched a ride in the truck to come out to inspect the water source at Airepampa. Only a couple years ago, the regional government invested in water filtration systems for the communities in this area. Some homes still do not have access to water, but most now have a tap just outside the front door. Sonia was here to check the filtration system and the level of chlorination in the water, which she said is crucial because of the high number of parasites in the water here. I asked her a bit about living conditions for children and she said that almost all children here have anemia because their diet is almost entirely potatoes. At this altitude, few other plants can grow and Sonia also helps distribute vitamin tablets with iron for the kids here.
Airepampa is far from everything, is on a steep hillside, doesn’t have any natural resources like trees or streams nearby and the land can’t grow much besides potatoes. Yet, it is beautiful in the way so many high-altitude areas of the Andes are. The mountains have their own beauty that those of us who live in cities usually envy. If only we could get adequate medical care, internet or cell service and education, preferably in Quechua, to Airepampa, it would be a wonderful place to live. As it is, young adults flee as soon as they are old enough to find work in Calca or another town or city. Here’s hoping that the services these families deserve reach them soon.
As one project ends, another inevitably begins. Our food aid deliveries from last May through August turned into holiday chocolatadas, which turned into a school supply drive. Now, we are looking for a way to encourage children to value their native language and culture. As essential as education is, in Peru it is always in Spanish, which quickly devalues and eventually erases Quechua. The world has already lost so many languages, taking with them the cultures with which they were intertwined. There are still enough Quechua speakers left that this is a language that can be saved, but only if it’s speakers find it useful. For centuries, Quechua speakers in Peru faced discrimination if they tried to live in or even visit a city. That has changed, but now that so many are moving to cities, they are leaving their language in the countryside. We are looking for ways to sponsor poetry competitions in Quechua and are open to other ideas about how we can promote the value of Quechua. If you have any ideas, or want to get involved, please emails us at covidreliefcusco@gmail.com
Thank you! ¡Gracias! Añay!