There are few times in your life where you can truly sit back and ponder the intense, awe-inspiring nature of life the universe and everything – for us this happened while dangling 3000m above sea level from string and a patch fabric. Paragliding over the sacred valley was stunning and is assuredly the closest humans will ever come to the feeling of flight.
Although we took turns with the same instructor on a similar path to each other, each of our journeys seemed completely different. The flyer promised us that we would “Join the birds swooping through the amazing landscape and enjoy the sacred valley from an entirely different angle” and for Laura this piece of advertising, oddly, was fulfilled. Her feet were first to leave the ground and we watched with giggly excitement as she circled the valley, continuing out to the thermal. (A thermal, we were told, is a tunnel of upward moving air allowing a paraglider to climb further up into the sky.) At this moment Laura was actually joined by a majestic bird which followed her as she and the instructor spiraled to breath-taking heights. I would love to give a long description of the view so high in the air but unfortunately shortly after Laura´s experience the winds changed and I was unable to catch the thermal. At first slightly disappointed, my spirits (along with my body) were quickly lifted. We scraped the treetops and glided over the beautiful cities into a vacant paddock. Floating above lush green fields bordered by snow-tipped mountains was just indescribable.
Swept away from the view, it took me a moment to notice that the paddock we were slowly dropping into was not a ´paragliding landing field´ or anything of the sort, but rather it was the harvested section of a field that locals were still working on. We gathered up the parachute and shuffled to the gate where nine Peruvian children from neighboring houses had gathered to gawk at us as if we had just fallen out of the sky. Of course we had just fallen out of the sky so their expression was quite appropriate and matched mine exactly.
A small car took us back to the top where Sarah was patiently anticipating her turn. Her further twenty minute wait for correct wind paid off as she quickly ascended to an enviously high position. As luck would have it Sarah is deathly afraid of heights, she revealed to us that the first ten minutes were almost literally breath-taking but she soon settled in and was able to enjoy the spectacular scenery.
To make a good weekend even better we were celebrating the birthdays of Laura and Clancy which involved dinner, cake and presents. Laura was presented with a beautiful ring and pair of earrings, whereas Clancy was given a bottle of fine Peruvian Pisco and a sharp new razor (it is our understanding that he must have lost his long, long ago).
Anna and I recently had the honor of attending a local Catholic church to witness the first confirmation of the youngest in our Peruvian family. Although we were unable to sing the hymns or understand a single word said it was wonderful to listen to the inflections in the preachers voice and the responsive laughter that told us he had made a joke. It had been an interesting morning actually. I had noticed another very cute chicken in the yard whom I quickly named Rafael. Rafael had large sharp talons and soft brown feathers and spent his time pecking aimlessly at the ground. Of course we spent much of the afternoon picking Rafael out of our teeth but he really was very tasty. Another good learning experience for us – don´t name the lunch.
On the school side of things, classes and construction are still going well. On Monday we will be filling the trench we have been building with a foundation of concrete followed by heavy rocks and mudbricks over the weeks. Although excited to see progress the group is a little disheartened to see their trench go as about a week ago Rachel realized it could be used, during breaks, as the perfect arena for a heroic war re-enactment from which people would spring and in a matter of steps die dramatically, falling hard into the dust – the children were very amused.
Last Sunday we were able to travel half an hour past our school in Ccorao to a small city called Pisac. We emerged from a sidestreet into the bustling Sunday markets. A large tree stood stretched out in the centre of the square from which emanated what seemed like hundreds of little stalls holding earrings, beanies, colourful flowing pants, old relics and Peruvian patterned bags, all with a backdrop of stunning mountains. (To be honest it is impossible to avoid a backdrop of stunning mountains here however, conveniently, it is also impossible to get sick of them.) We browsed the markets for a while before heading to the balcony of a little restaurant for lunch – from here we were in a prime position to view a religious parade that had just commenced. I love that no matter whether you are in this country there is always something interesting going on. Pisac was beautiful and house anything you could ever want in a market, colours, the smell of spices and the clatter of a foreign tongue.
The most amazing thing we have been able to do recently is the house visits. We walked down a dusty dirt path to a neighbourhood quite close to the school. On the outskirts of the neighbourhood stood a little mudbrick room which was the house of a couple of students we teach. The room had one and a half levels created by placing a few planks of wood over existing buttresses with a handmade ladder leading the way up. The small adjoining kitchen was filled with smoke slowly seeping out from the tiles as a chimney had never been installed – neither, however, had windows. Both the house and kitchen had holes in the walls packed with mud and old containers to keep the cold out as best they could, however this makes the house pitch black even on the sunniest of mornings. It was the kind of house we had assumed to be abandoned. After a while of looking around we chose to ask Arlich how many people lived in this room, admittedly not much bigger than my room in Sydney. It is home to seven people. There are only two small single beds.
The saving grace of this experience is that we get to use a small portion of the fundraised money from Australia to improve the quality of this family´s life. Currently we are discussing priorities and absolute necessities and after we have made a list we will see how much of it we can get done with the money available.
Back in Australia I found it difficult to believe that this could actually happen on a regular basis. Many of us regret not spending more time and effort fundraising now that we are here, standing in the houses of families that could really use the support, however we take comfort in the understanding that whatever we can do, however little we can help, even if we can just get them an extra bed or a chimney it will have positive-term effects on the lies of this one family.
That´s all from me this fortnight, until next time,
Chao!
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