Lima's Shanty Towns

A little boy picking out his candy.

A shy little girl and the motor taxi.

I can rock out to music, be a diva, and paint at the same time!

(Picture credit to Kelly)

Our group at the end of the day

(Picture credit to motor taxi driver)

Today was a magnificent day spent giving back to the local Peruvian society! Often times when students go abroad they really enjoy learning about the culture of their host country through experiencing the food, social atmosphere, school, visiting museums, and a variety of other things, but today our group from ISA Lima, Peru 2012 got to go into one of the many shanty towns (pueblos jóvenes) in Lima and help fix up a school for young (jóvenes) children (niños). While at the school we were able to help paint the outer walls of the facility along with prepare food for the children and locals that live in the area of the school.

To give a little more perspective on about what the life in a shanty town look like take a look at this video. From my understanding Lima has been continuing to grow as Peru's largest city in numbers that far outweigh the available infrustructure which has caused people to build their homes on the outskirts of Lima out of whatever materials they could afford to use. For many families their homes are made of bricks and still others have mud homes with metal roofs to hold off the heat of the sun and the occasional rains. Overall the economic status of the families living in these towns is very low so in the area we were in the school had women working there who would come during the day and cook meals for upwards of 100 people and sell the food at 1.50 soles per meal (the equivalence of about 60 cents or so US per person). The ladies (mujeres) that work in these kitchens switch off from day to day and from what I gathered they cooked the food in order to get free meals for their families as well.

Despite the hard times financially for the people living in these areas it was very comforting to see the comrodery that was present amongst the people. As we were working we were able to ride motor taxis which were motorcycles turned into small taxis for the purpose of getting around the town. After giving all of our group a ride one of the drivers went and got a paint roller from his house and helped us to reach higher areas on the walls. Also another driver pulled up and pumped some music so that we could all sing and dance as we worked! This voluntary involvement by members of the community reminded me a lot of the kids at the Hanbury Home for Kids in Jamaica, where I traveled last March on a missions trip.

All in all it was very humbling to see how these children and families were living in an impoverished area, but they were still more than willing to give of their time and efforts to help support the young people in the community through improving their educational facilities. During the day we were also able to give out candy to the kids and it was thrilling to see their faces light up as we told them to come get some free candy (gratis dulces).

As the day comes to a close I am editing my photos from the day and then headed off to the beach (playa) with my host family for the weekend! I hope that all of you take a moment today to think of something or someone you are thankful for and let that individual know. William Arthur Ward once said, “God gave you a gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say thank you?”

Please do add a comment below and say something that you are thankful for today!

Jamaica Day 2

Sweeties!

Studying in class

Working Hard

Rocking the tunes

Natural Photographer

What a Cutie!

Looking Groovy

Nice Shades

Happy Boy

Laughing ladies

Amanda: Leader of the trip

Boys playing soccer

Michael

Today I started off the morning at 7:00 AM with morning devotions and breakfast at 7:30 AM. After breakfast we lathered up with sunscreen and prepared ourselves for the day full of work ahead of us. Once showered and ready we met for a team bonding game where we played Super Ninja. For those of you not familiar with Super Ninja it is a game where every person has a special name and action specific to themselves and then when their name is called they call their name and do their signal and then say the name and do the symbol of somebody else. In our case we did an adjective followed by our name to help people learn names, so I was Daring Daniel. This game was a great way to wake people up and get us more familiar with the names of the people in our group.

Once we finished our morning routine and game we headed off to the Hanbury Home for Children, which is the orphanage we are working at this week. On a side note, normally I would have a better sense of time for when we were leaving for different places/activities, but in Jamaica their cultures is set up on a relaxed schedule, so clocks aren’t really used much. As soon as we arrived at the Hanbury Home we split into groups and took a tour of the area. While on our tour we were bombarded by the little kids who were not yet in school. Many of these little kids took the liberty to show us their rooms and the areas where they do their chores, like the chicken coop and the pig pen. These little children were really adorable and that is where I started taking my pictures for the day.

Throughout the day I helped clean walls for painting, by using rocks to rub off paint chips, and then we painted Babyland, which is where all the little kids live. Over the course of the week we will be painting the outside and inside of Babyland to make it more appealing to the eye and filled with educational images to help the younger students. Along with doing our painting project there were people working on carrying dirt to an area where they are planting a new garden, so there were a number of people who turned orange because of the dirt. Overall the projects were really fun because the kids were helping us throughout the whole day.

Outside of our projects we were able to spend a lot of time with the children. I was able to help out in one of the classrooms for the younger kids where I read them books, helped them with counting, and helped them with their alphabet. It was really cool to see how excited the kids were to work with us, although it did draw them away from their studies a bit. We were also able to sit in on one of the older kids’ classrooms where they were singing songs like Father Abraham. The kids also really liked to where our sunglasses, get their pictures taken, and take pictures. The thing the kids were most excited about besides us were Sweeties (candy) and the toys we brought.

Throughout the day I was able to work with many of the children and take a lots of pictures…776 to be exact. All in all today was another full of many fun and uplifting experiences!