Leymebamba, week 1
This quaint little mountain town, located in the cloud forest at an elevation of 2050m and a population of 1100, is said to have 2 horses to every resident in town. Most people that live in town have farms that are, on average, a 3 hour walk. This town is surrounded by beautiful green valleys and has a cold, fast moving river going through it. Sadly, there is no garbage, let alone recycling program, and most of the garbage ends up in the river, making the water not the safest to drink. But it still tastes much better than Huanchaco! There are a LOT of ruins in the whole region and new ones are still being discovered. Kuelep is close to here, which is supposedly as grandeous and amazing as Macchu Picchu, but without the crowds or tourism. I’m sure it will come and that is one of the reason we are here. Scary mummies and horses.
For the next month, we will be teaching English to local guides who want to develop tourism locally. An issue with Macchu Picchu is that most money that is spent there is received by foreigners. The expensive bus that most people take up the mountain is owned by foreigners, as well as most tourist hotels are foreigner-run.
I think it’s great they want to take it into their own hands and the coordinator, Maibel, is very passionate about it. So, we will be teaching three times a week to the guides and I have the advanced class while Matt has the basic class. We are also setting up more classes and just today we locked in an opportunity to teach 3 times a week to 3, 4, and 5 year olds (Head, shoulders, knees and toes everyone!). Now we need to try to remember our childhood songs and games to learn our language over again. We will teach a few times a week in 2 de Mayo, a poorer village just outside of Leymebamba. Matt has started this week and I may join in next week with him. I am also teaching a group of 12-15 year olds twice a week basic English and Maibel has set up a class next week for us to teach 6th graders at their school a few days a week. ALSO, we are offering two drop-in classes a week for people that miss class (there are A LOT, usually the adults sleep at their farms if it’s too late to hike back and obviously, miss class) or anyone wanting tutoring. We are filling up our week and hopefully reaching out as much as we can so that when the tourism bug comes to this town, they will be able to communicate to the foreigners and have their own businesses set up. Two men are just starting to put together an official guiding business (right now it’s all word of mouth) with a website. Matt’s doing what he can to get our volunteer opportunity online to the world to attract more volunteers and I’m sure he’ll be helping whoever with their websites as well.
One of the benefits of this program is that we are offered free housing by a local family. We spent our first few days at La Cazona, a very modern, airy, posh hostal with a garden and more. The previous volunteers lived there for their 2 months here; but as usual, things always change and we had to move to a different hostal, Laguna de los condores, with a less modern kitchen and a shared bath. It’s still very nice, but after a few days in a place with a microwave, an immersion blender and a grassy lawn to nap in, we need to adjust (we just moved yesterday). The hosts are very friendly and actually OWN the Laguna de los Condores, which is an amazing lake where a group of farmers in 1996 found 6 ancient Andean burial towers with 219 mummies and over 2000 artifacts. We’ll head there for sure, but it’s a 4 day minimum trip with a guide. The daughter in law of the owners of our hostal wants to learn to cook and is VERY friendly and enthusiastic. I made soymilk last night and she has raved all day about it and wants to learn how. They are currently building a restaurant in the hostal as well and the kitchen is beautiful and we get to use it! I can’t wait to teach them gnocchi and lasagna and tofu. Tonight we’re going to make pizza together.
Our lunches are being provided by our students, which has been interesting so far. Every week a different student makes or takes us to lunch, thus sharing food, culture and sort of a thank you for the free English classes. This week we have Manuel, who has not been home yet this week to lunch with us; he’s been at the vaqueria…that’s the thing with guides, it’s not their day job. Most of them still have to go take the big hike every day to work on their farms. So instead of eating with Manuel, his aunt has cooked for us and the food has been….not very balanced, to say the least. I appreciate the gesture and look forward to spending more time with our students…I think it’s not about the food-but food is always important to me. (Today was a beef rice soup with the meat removed, but they forgot a piece of liver or something in mine….I couldn’t eat any of it…and rice with salad (which is shredded cabbage with lime juice and mayonaise and boiled yucca root)).
So begins the new adventures………….and just so you know, I haven’t been really sick since I left Huanchaco.