MySmallhelp Cusco

The adobe brick moving mission continues

The wall around Cuylandia has nearly finished but the Paucarbamba workers are still short of 3000 bricks to complete their job. This Thursday an additional 6 families from the Paucarbamba community had their 260 bricks ready to move. The Casa Hogar del Sol team put up posters all around Ollantaytambo and Kim put up posters around the Loki hostel for additional volunteers to help with moving these 1310.

Unfortunately only 5 volubteers turned up from Loki and 7 people from Casa Hogar del Sol. As 2 trucks had been hired we had our work cut out. After finding 2 additional (drunken) men in Ollantaytambo willing to do some hard labour we managed to get the bricks moved in 3 runs between the 2 locations working from 10am until 6pm. A long hard day and lots of aching muscles!

 A big thank you once again to Loki for their continued to support and for their donation of 250 soles (approximately £55) towards the cost of moving the bricks.

Dear Friends of Mysmallhelp and Casa Hogar del Sol,

Thank you all for supporting the flood victims of the sacred valley Peru over the past 6 months.   I am now working as the director of the partner charity “Asociacion Casa Hogar del Sol” together with the founders Carlos Gibaja and Dr Sharron Forrest. For more details of the work that we have done since the floods please see the previous entries in this blog. 

You will see that we have set up a volunteer house,  helped to provide food, shelter, clothes,blankets, dental care, english classes, building materials, school supplies etc. We don’t want to “give” anymore without helping to create businesses and income for the flood victims.

 Our dream is to set up Cuylandia (a guinea pig rearing training centre) and accompanying guinea pig businesses for at least 25 families before the end of this year. We need to raise approximately £14,000 for Cuylandia in 2010 and would greatly appreciate your support on this. Any funds raised above £14,000 will allow us to provide guinea pig businesses to even more families that were affected by the January floods.

To avoid paying bank charges UK donors please make donations directly to the Mysmallhelp UK bank account – Lloyds TSB, Sort Code 30-90-57 account number 02074080 marking your donation CUSCO APPEAL.  All other donors please make donations  to the MSH paypal account leander.hollings@mysmallhelp.org or directly to the Casa Hogar del Sol Banco de Credito del Peru (Sucursal Cusco), Avenida del Sol 189, Cusco, Peru, Account number 285-17299567-1-75 Swift code BC PL PE PL

Once you have made a donation please do email me to let me know how your payment has been sent so that I can confirm when your donation has been received.

Please remember your SMALL help can really make a big difference!

I look forward to hearing from you soon

Kindest regards

 Leander Hollings

Our 15 days living and volunteering in Ollantaytambo have come to an end and for this entry I´m going to do something a little different.

As we were some of the initial volunteers with the Casa Hogar Del Sol NGO and may want to give future workers an idea for the work available I´m going to first list out what we did as far as labor during our stay and then later, what we did for fun, on time off, etc. Their main project is to create Cuylandia aka Guinea Pig Land , a long-term small business opportunity for the communities of Pacuarbamba and Ancapachar that suffered massive flooding in January 2010. Believe it or not, Cuys-Guinea pigs form an integral part of most rural Peruvians´ diets as they have for 1000s of years and Cuylandia is to be a training center, classroom, and pen, for the communities to learn how to raise and sell Cuys for profit. The project is in its construction and planning phase but has gotten a strong response from community members. We still haven´t tried eating Guinea pig yet but I hope to before the end of the trip. The meat is said to taste like a mix of pork and chicken? Here goes:

1. Moved, transported, and stacked 1000´s of hand made adobe bricks (made of local mud and straw and weighing 45 lbs each) via wheel barrow, moving truck, ¨fire lines,¨and sheer strength for Cuylandia walls.
2. Helped erect the Cuylandia wall with local workers using the adobes, mud, and other tools.
3. Assisted local man with forming 250-300 adobe bricks to rebuild his flooded home.
4. Visited local Pacuarbamba Elementary School two times and taught one initial English class for 90 minutes to 12 students ages 6-9. Volunteers will teach English at this school every thursday afternoon and play with the kids of course. Students speak Spanish and Quechua.
5. Contributed apprx 1000 Soles or $330 to the project over the 15 days.
6. Wrote 3 blog entries on the Casa Hogar del sol web site at http://www.mysmallhelp.blogspot.com/ Check them out.
7.  Went to Urubamba, nearby bigger town, to purchase water and other supplies.
8. Cleaned volunteer house.

Non Volunteer Activites during my time:

1. Won trivia night at unnamed secret english bar (prize: Swiss Chocolate and free beer) vs. many other American volunteers with the awamaki organization.
2. Put up with 48 hours withouth electricity the first weekend we arrived. I guess power outages are not uncommon here but this was the longest in years. So dark! and kind of a fun way to get to know a town.
3. Learned what it´s like to have food poisoning. I spent literally all day and night the 4th of July in bed puking and sweating but after about 24 hours felt good as new if a little weak. I think it was from eating a little of uncooked salad and will be more careful in the future. I don´t remember ever being this sick in my whole life. I´m glad that I wasn´t in a hostel or hotel and had my own room and comfy bed for this. At least I was able to hear some fireworks…
4. Attended 2 going away parties for British friend of the organization Kirstie in Ollanta and Cusco. Celebrated by eating out, dancing to live music and then bad dance music at discoteques, and chatting.
5. Toured the great Ollantayambo Incan Ruins the day of the Ollanta Raymi festival June 29. The ruins normally cst $30 each but got in for free. The fiesta and reenactment celebrates the towns founding story of great warrior Ollanta leading people to battle and winning the heart of the Cheifs daughter in pre-Incan times. Actually reminds me of the White Bear Lake story a little bit.
6. Hiked to the Salineras salt mines nearby and wached the community´s ancient method for harvesting salt. Still in use today and delicious. Also hiked to smaller Incan ruins (don´t remember name) outside Ollanta.
7. Applied to graduate assistantship with school of Public Health at University of Minnesota.
8. Met and got to know many great Ollantino guys and gals and other international volunteers at the volunteer house and in the community, especially through the NGO´s leader Leander. Many locals our age work as guides for the Ollanta ruins, Macchu Picchu and others. Many study English and Tourism in School.
9. ¨Cooked¨many meals in the volunteer house kitchen and drank lots of tea! Does making ramen, grilled cheese, or mac n´cheese count as cooking?
10. River Rafting the Urubamba with KB Tambo tours also owned by a Minnesotan.
11. Practiced beauboup Spanish with other workers and local friends and through reading. Still not at where I´d like to be though. Many locals also like practicing their English on us.
12. Manuevered the public transportation system and hitchiked a lot. Most days we had to catch ´combi´ buses to the Cuylandia work site or other towns. These are basically 12 passenger vans that they fill to the brim 25 people not being abnormal with tons of produce or baggage or whatever on the roof. No seat belts, no personal space, but quite cheap.
13. Ate Anticuchos 5 times- skewered and marinaded beef hearts with spicy sauce. Delicious and don´t really seem skechy at all. Drank Chicha- home made corn beer only once for fear of the water that they use being contaminated.
14. Fished the fast flowing Urubamba river for trout once in the peruvian style as our friend Christian taught us. We tied fishing line around a 20 oz plastic bottle to use as our pole and then used worms on a hook like usual. Christian actually hooked a little trout and we all had bites. Not really recommended as river is nasty, sort of an open sewer drain for whole valley but fun nonetheless.
15. Visited internet café too many times!

 So there you have it. I´m really glad we spent some time in Ollanta getting to know the town and many people. Much better than playing the tourist like we´ve felt for much of the rest of our trip. The town itself is gorgeous with ruins looking down into the valley from mountains and hills on both sides. Also the old town is one of the remaining examples of Incan City planning wih running water flowing along three of the main streets, huge Incan double doorways, and interior patios and gardens.

Lastly, I think we´re going to have some type of fundraiser party, pub crawl or event for Cuylandia when we get back in Sept and you all are invited.

Next up: Lake Titicaca and Bolivia.

Go Twins,

Dan Henry

Today was a busy one for us volunteers in Ollantaytambo. The Loki Hostel once again brought about a dozen hard working volunteers from Cusco, that were eager to help us make some much needed headway on the Cuylandia project.

Not only did they assist with the transportation of hundreds of heavy adobe bricks, but they put their pick axes and shovels to work as they dug out about 40 yards of much needed trench for water retention around the Cuylandia perimeter. This will be a huge help for the workers that have been finding creative ways of storing the water they need to mix with the earth and help create the many more bricks that are needed to complete the construction of cuylandia.

In other news,  we had a very fruitful meeting with many of the cuylandia community members this morning where they committed to helping us make the last remaining adobe bricks needed.

While Leander and the Loki volunteers labored away at the cuylandia site, Dan, Marlo, and Cecily (3 of the current in-house volunteers) kicked off the very first English Class for the students of La Escuelita de Paucarbamba. Today, we covered the basics of English language like the alphabet and numbers 1-10. Highlights included singing the alphabet song together as a class and ending the day with a lively game of “Gringo” Bingo!

It was a great day of learning for students and teachers alike, and we´re all looking forward to next week´s class when we´ll learn some basic English phrases and, of course, some new games and songs.

By Marlo Grabner

Today Leander and the 4 in-house volunteers (Dan, Marlo, Xian, and Cecily) visited the community school in Paucarbamba, where future volunteers will now be giving weekly English lessons to some very enthusiastic 3rd and 4th graders.

We met with the teacher in charge, Sr. Carlos, to discuss lesson plans and goals and he was very appreciative of our eagerness to work with the children. It looks like the new English program is going to be a wonderful way to connect with the community while helping students gain the critical language skills needed to succeed in the modern world. During a rousing game of “Vaca, Vaca, Torro” (“Cow, Cow, Bull” in English), it was easy to see and hear how excited the children were about the new program and their new guest teachers. Though today we had our fair share of fun and games, all of us were very impressed by how attentive and eager to learn the kids were when it came to going over some basic English words and phrases.

Working at this school is bound to be a great experience for both the volunteers and the students, and we´re all looking forward to next week´s first lesson!

The first volunteers stay at the Casa Hogar del Sol volunteer house

Pierrick and Maryline from France are friends of Gopal from Mysmallhelp Nepal. They had heard that Mysmallhelp is also supporting projects in Ollantaytambo, Peru.  Whilst travelling around Peru they decided to come and visit the small small town of Ollantaytambo to give their small help for three days.

They worked with the Paucarbamba community members helping to build Cuylandia, the future guinea pig breeding and training centre for the flood victims of the sacred valley. They helped by digging the foundations of the protective wall. They also spent one day with the families who lost their houses in the January floods in Huayroncoyocpampa and used picks and spades to start cleaning the land so that they can build new houses with stronger foundations. It is a long and tiring task they have to handle if they want to stop living in tents !

Maryline also joined Carlos and an american team who went to visit shools in Pachar and Tastayoc providing dental health care to the children.

Everywhere their “small help” was warmly welcomed by the people they worked with, and the almuerzos were always good moments to share with the communities and to learn more about the places they were visiting.

On Thursday June 10th, 8 volunteers from Loki arrived at 11am at the Ankapachar  land and were taken in the back of a truck up to the Paucarbamba land where 950 more adobe bricks have been made. The Casa Hogar del Sol team together with the volunteers worked hard for 3 hours to move 500 of these bricks the new land. Lots of muscles aching the next day!

A big thank you to Loki Hostel, for donating 250 Soles to Casa Hogar del Sol for the cost of hiring the vehicle for moving the bricks for the day.

There are still 10,000 bricks to be made for the Cuylandia building. Watch this space!

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On Thursday June 3rd 14 volunteers from Loki Hostel and Real Mccoy Cusco got together with the staff of Casa Hogar del Sol got together to make a human chain. Between 11am and 3pm the volunteer worked in 2 teams collecting stones of different sizes which will be used in the building of Cuylandia. 

Despite the heat, the day was a great success and resulted in new friendships as well as 2 large piles of stones which will be moved to the Cuylandia Project in the very near future. Watch this space!

14 volunteers from The Real McCoy and Loki went to the new site in Ancapachar to help clear the land on which Cuylandia will be built.

Splitting up into two teams, the volunteers started harvesting the wheat from the land with hand-held sickles and piling it up ready to be taken away. After a break for a delicious lunch the volunteers continued harvesting and, by the end of the day, had cleared nearly all the crop from the site – leaving it almost ready for the building of Cuylandia to commence.