Earlier I asked the question "what does a gringo have to do with the urbanization of southern Peru?" And before I answer that question, I'd like to show some ways in which lower class Peruvians have gone about helping themselves without the gold and golden intentions of foreigners.



In order to save money on food, the wives of an entire community will go into the city and knock on the doors of rich people asking for any leftover groceries. With these groceries, they make enough food for the entire community for one day, selling each meal to themselves for 30 cents. With the money collected for the meals, they go into the market and buy food for the next day, and continue this indefinitely, thereby setting up a communal kitchen.



For the week that a certain group of wives do the cooking, their families do not have to pay for the meals, and each week the cooking duty rotates to a new set of wives, and they keep track of this with a kitchen roster.



Another way in which the Peruvians are helping themselves is through what's called a "Wawa Wasi," which in Quetchua means "Child House."



Inside a Wawa Wasi you will have one woman



watching over the kids of the community while their parents go to work.



Lastly, Peruvians help themselves by taking advantage of the fact that thousands of gringos pour into their cities on the way to Machu Picchu or some other local attraction. They all have family back home, and they all feel obligated to buy little trinkets to affirm how much of a world traveler they are.



So aside from buying trinkets, how can gringos help? The answer to this question is complicated. To begin with, I'd like to make a distinction between two different kinds of "help." The first is relief, which is the most common kind of help foreigners like to give. This comes in the form of money, clothing, food, medical treatment, etc. For a rich gringo with more souvenir money in their pocket than what a lower class Peruvian makes in a month, it only makes sense that this kind of help should occur. Ultimately, however, relief is like a temporary bandaid placed on a festering wound. The second and much more rare form of help is development, which is an attempt at dealing with problems more systemically. The Peace Corps, for instance, tries to focus almost entirely on this form of help. It is rare because it requires a large investment of time. It takes the form of education (like sex education in AIDS-torn Africa), training (like showing Peruvians how to purify their water by leaving a bottle of water in the sun all day), microfinancing, etc. Development is the kind of help we would be interested in. One idea we had was to set up a kind of standard for trinket stores so that the customer can be assured that a percentage of the profit is going toward microfinancing. With these finances, we hope to empower Peruvians to open more communal kitchens and Wawa Wasis. We are open to more ideas.

My next post will be about evangelism. Why in the world would we evangelize among a predominantly Catholic society?

It's difficult to explain to someone why you would want to move your family to a foreign country. Especially when you drop the m-bomb (missionary). I wonder what goes on in their head. Do they think I'm a Western Imperialist trying to plant a Republican colony in foreign soil? Who knows. Over the next week or so, I'll be writing some posts and including some pictures in an attempt to explain why it is we are considering moving to Peru to do mission work.



In the Andes it is high and it is cold. The human body is not accustomed to this environment, and so the tourists are advised to chew Coca leaves or eat Coca candy.



I hope I don't have to take any drug tests soon. If breathing in the Andes is hard, making a living is apparently close to impossible. For this reason, the ancestors of the Incas move to the cities. Arequipa is one of these cities.



The reason why Arequipa, Peru is called "The White City" is contested. Maybe it's because the city's most prominent architecture is made out of white volcanic rock.



Others claim that a colonial era census revealed the city to be populated mostly by white Europeans. Either way, the name tells the same story of oppression. Either way, this man, a warrior of the highlands in another life, hews giant volcanic stones from a cliff face with a car axel.



He does this all day, and if he works efficiently, he can make ten of these blocks which will sell for 30 cents a piece. That's three dollars a day when the price is right. When he has time, he will find a piece of land and build a short stone wall.



The purpose of this wall is to claim the patch of dirt it encloses as his own. Over the years, he might take some of the blocks he makes and build a house.



It is estimated that 45% of the people of Arequipa (a city of well over a million people) live like this. This house will be his life's work. He will proudly leave it to his children when he dies. If his children can afford it, they will rent his body a burial plot. The rent is up in 25 years, so if they don't pay up, his body will be exhumed and cremated.



His children will band together with their neighbors and begin petitioning the government to recognize their patch of dirt as a legitimate neighborhood. The city might do this, and might begin offering their neighborhood services like electricity and telephone. If they dig their own ditches, the government might even lay pipe for water.



After another generation or two, this neighborhood might transform into something different.



So what does a gringo like me have to do with the urbanization of southern Peru? Stay tuned to find out...