Trips to el Campo (the country side)

Huallanca is a small town in the middle of nowhere hours away from what feels like any other kind of civilization. But there are communities outside of Huallanca that are even more in the middle of nowhere and are much smaller. These communities are where people who farm for a living generally live. It is also where most of the indigenous Peruvian who speak Quechua live. Compared to Huallanca, these communities can feel like another world with a much higher lever of poverty, mal-nourished children, and illiteracy. This past week I went out to two different communities on different days with the health center to help check up on the nutrition of children and give health sessions. The two different communities are each about an hour driving distance from Huallanca and are very small towns of about 100-200 people. Most people who live there rarely go to Huallanca because the only means of transportation they have is either by foot or by horse. In both of these communities, there is an elementary school but no high school meaning that youth who live there either stop attending school after elementary, or they rent a room in Huallanca during the week and live by themselves to attend the high school (they often end up getting into trouble and not actually attending class). On both days that I went to the two different communities, moms came with their children and many of them walked hours from their homes to get to the health post where we were meeting them. Since people in these communities work on farms, most of them live wayyyy out in literally the middle of nowhere and their closest neighbor is an hour walking distance away. Indigenous woman and youth tend to be much shyer and less likely to trust an outsider due to past and current situations of people trying to change their culture and not being able to trust outsiders (ex. The Spaniards or people with money and of more modern traditions who want to change their ways or take their land).

Babies in el campo are always the cutest!!!

The health post in one of the communities we visited. We rode up in the old ambulance that the Huallanca health center has and I got to play with the sirens on the way up! Haha. 

Beautiful views. 

Teaching the moms how to cook with nutritious foods 

Indigenous people are known to have many children (I have met some women who have up to 15 kids). During some of the health sessions that we gave, the doctor decided to have me talk to the women about how many kids the average family in the US only has two or less kids and how is it better to have less children.

Giving a session on parasites...something very common to get in Peru.

Family planning birth control methods! When I got put up in front to tell everyone why its better to have less kids like we supposedly do in the US.

The Peace Corps encourages us to work with these communities when possible and I am very happy to do so. The Peace Corps will be giving me a bike soon and my site mate and I plan to ride out bikes out to the communities to work with the youth and families maybe a few times a month.