Poverty

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Yesterday, Saturday the 27th, Rebecca and I went to help Lynn with the river clean up project. Lynn has been educating the children in the schools on the importance of clean water. She has give countless newspaper and T.V. interviews to help create public awareness on the importance of clean water. The river clean up was the worse experience I have had in Peru.

I worked a 15´by 5´ swath of the river and collected ten bags of garbage in just over two hours. The rivers and any other open spaces are used as landfills. It is very disturbing that the people think it is OK to dump into the rivers. I only scratched the surface and was unable to dig deep into my section. It is so bad that it should be declared a disaster area. I picked up so much crap. I use the word crap because that is what some of it literally was, Crap! I collected carcasses from so many unknown animals; I couldn’t even begin to guess what they were. I found a bag full of waist from some sort of clinic. Now I’m going to go out on a strong limb here and take a guess as to what type of clinic it was. Abortion is illegal in this country, yet widely practiced. The health clinics are government run, therefore they are able to properly dispose of there waist. I saw a woman who was washing her close, food and drinking the water from this river. The river was nothing short of a flowing river of raw sewage. The parasites are so large that you can see them with a necked eye. I spent a good portion of my time dry heaving my guts up from the unexplainable smells and sights.

I now have an understanding of what poverty is to me. In my opinion poverty is largely due to the lack of education. Poverty is not being educated enough to know any better, not knowing that you should wash your hands after using the bathroom, drinking clean water to prevent dysentery and not using a river as a land fill. I just can’t understand what makes people think it is ok to use a river as a God Damn Landfill. It seems to me that Lima, the capitol, is only concerned with the rich of Lima and not the poor of the beautiful and wonderful highlands. I also think that a lot of the poverty issues of Ayacucho are the after effects of the Shinning Path. It’s very unnerving and has literally made me sick to my stomach.

Sorry today’s writings were not on a more positive subject.
Machelle

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