Marci Soifer

I have spent the last 24 hours eating, sleeping, and getting familiar with Ayacucho. I went with the group of volunteers (from my program) to a local soup kitchen, orphanage, and clinic, as a random sampling of some of the volunteer sites. The soup kitchen was very small, antiquated in most respects, and makes food for hundreds of people. The women who work there are volunteers, and are forced to work for free in order to earn food for themselves and their children, who play at their feet before the stove. The orphanage I visited is huge and houses boys ages 6-16. The boys were so excited to see us and our cameras, which fascinated them and made them all want to pose like models, echoing one another´s laughter. They affectionately called us ¨gringitos¨, which is the affectionate term for white people, or tourists, or in our case, volunteers (otherwise, we are called ¨gringos¨). I was really interested (and not at all surprised) to find that the clinic, while clean and relatively large (it serves an entire neghborhood), was far, far below adequate for the thousands of Peruvians who require the care. The departments were small and the people stood for long periods of time in massive groups, awaiting attention. But, although I could not say much to them, we exchanged many smiles. One thing that I found really interesting about the clinic is that on the wall of a room inside, near the entry, there is a deatiled map of the entire neighborhood. On this map, there are tons and tons of push pinned icons of pregnant women (they are small, detail-less pictures of women with bellies), meant to indicate where the pregnant women live. The icons that were yellow were the healthy mothers, and the icons that were red were those at risk. There were far more red than yellow, but we were assured that the single doctor who works at this clinic and two obstatricians actually make home visits to all of the pregnant women. And, we were all invited to view a few of them giving birth. Not sure if I´ll be taking up that invitation...

I also walked through the town, or as I have discovered, the city. This is a real city, with a small unversity and a plaza with much commerce and a fantastic market. I found a man who has been weaving textiles for 80 years and creates art on rugs that mimic Dali...it´s amazing. And, a family who takes stones off the street and maniputes the rock for as much as ten years with small tools to create grand statues (and they had a large plastic figure of Barney Rubble, which I thought was rather poetic...and hysterical). And, I started my Spanish classes today...which is great, because I think that I might actually get some of the language out soon. Phew.

This is especially good because tomorrow morning, I will begin my volunteer placement. I am happy to report that the placement is what I originally thought---I will work inside the Ayacucho prison. I will mainly work on the women´s side, which is dramatically smaller than the men´s side (it is split) and holds mostly women who have been arrested on charges on drug trafficing (cocaine is a huge crop in the Andes). I will be inside to work with the children of these women. The Peruvian government forcibly encourages the children (under the age of 6, contrary to my original guess of much older) of incarcerated parents to join them inside. This means that these children are also incarcerated, and remain without much attention or education. When the children grow and their parents are still serving a sentence, they must move to an orphanage. I will be working with these children, which is great because while I may struggle to speak to their parents, I know that the children will understand that hugs are pretty universal.

I will post tomorrow to let you know how things go, and any news or updates from Ayacucho.