Pisco

Easter Sunday we arrived in Pisco to begin our volunteering with Pisco Sin Fronteras we were lucky enough to get our tour transfer to drop us off at our new home for the next 3 months. What an overwhelming experience coming from a tour to the volunteer house. We were greeted with such friendly faces who were happy we were volunteering for a longer time and were eager to
show us around. The house consists of a central courtyard, biodiesel shed, tool shed, kitchen and common room on the ground floor and the dorms on the other three levels. It works well for PSF as the building use to be a hostel! F and I took up residence in the 8 bed fish bowl with two other residence from the UK. We are only staying in this room for a week until another NZ couple leaves and we can move into our private room (still living in bunks though in our private room).
We headed out to explore the city and find some lunch. It is refreshing to be in a place with so few tourists that you have to use Spanish and nothing is in English on the menus. There are few streets that are paved in Pisco after the earthquake and the other rocky streets are very dusty due to the complete lack of rain. The beech was cleared about 4 months ago by the government, some 5 years after being the dump yard for rubble from this broken city. It is now nice to see people back using the beech and has subsequently become a little safer – well at least during the day. The old promenade and seaside leisure centre still lay as they did five years ago and the twisted cement is a stack reminder as to why we came here and why Pisco still needs help.
Living at the PSF house is great fun and provides great food. Each morning Monday to Saturday a team of three volunteers goes to the market and cooks everyone breakfast. Another team of three people is chosen to so the same for dinner, it is a full day job so you don’t work on a project that day. On our first day there was a space for dinner duty so I put my hand up and cooked dinner for 35 people, really good fun and a great way to learn your way around the market. Because there is
no space to store things in the house you need to buy everything for dinner fresh each day and a given a set amount per person to spend.
F has been working on a project designing a building a fitness course for adults to put into the local park PSF are creating with support from the local municipality. The project is called Muscle Man and is very much like the oones we have at home, with sit up stations, chin up bars,
balance beams etc. Resources are limited so it takes a lot of creativity to put the equipment together. The ground at the park is all stone, so pick axes and shovels are used along with a lot of sweat to dig the 50cm deep holes, and then of course pouring the concrete. We finished off installing the equipment today and once the instruction signs are up I will be sure to post photos of the teams work.
I have been lending my hand to a range of projects. One is working in a school for one hour a day relieving a teacher – the kids are very hard work – think climbing on tables, pulling hair, screaming and hitting each other – but it is actually good fun. After the one hour you head to an after school centre where you help the kids with homework and whatever other projects are going on that day – the teacher there is super nice and I think I will continue to go to this project a couple of days a week. It is good fun and will force me to improve my Spanish. The other project I worked on in my first week was painting a mural for a rural community on a building that is going to be used to distribute milk to children. It was so much fun, and the mural looks great – will post pictures soon J Every day the project leaders go through what is on and how many people are needed for each project. If there is room on the project you can put your hand up and get involved, if you want to try something new you cross your name off at the end of the day and choose something different the
next day. It provides such a great opportunity to gain knowledge in different
fields and learn new skills and work with heaps of people from all around the
world. The community that you work in provides lunch and there is always lots
of cute kids to play with and practice some more Spanish.
So after the first week here at PSF we are having a great
time and getting involved in heaps of different things. Volunteers arrange activities
for the weekends so there is always something fun going on. We have adjusted to
living in a communal space- made better by having our own room. It is exciting
to be involved in PSF as it tries to gain more community involvement and work
towards building capacity in Pisco. It is not without its challenges however,
community and working together is a strange concept for many Peruvians and the
idea of why we are hear to volunteer is somewhat beyond their comprehension.