Pisco: Earthquake Relief

---

Last weekend, all of the students from UVa (seven including myself) and some peruvian friends decided to spend the long weekend helping with earthquake relief in the areas hit hard. We volunteered through a program called "Un Techo Para Mi Pais" (check it out here: www.untechoparamipais.org).

We spent Friday shopping for gloves and food. There is still no running water or power in most places, so we had to bring all of our food and water with us. We stayed for three nights at the Pisco airport in tents and sleeping bags. We met at a park in Lima on Friday night and departed for Pisco (about 3 hours after the scheduled time, as most things go in Peru). We arrived at the airport around 3am and set up our tents and crashed immediately.

Saturday morning, at 6am, we were awoken by a set of about 15 flares being set off. Excuse me?! So early, and SO loud. We drowsily ate breakfast and headed out. The group of 150ish volunteers was divided between three sites. We boarded three buses and started the hour journey to the pueblos.

Pueblos are REALLY small towns; in the pueblo I was working in, there were less than 100 residents. We got there and got our housing assignments. We were divided into groups of four and each group was expected to build a house a day. The houses are prefabricated and shipped from Chile. We had to put large stakes into the ground for the floor to sit on and then fit the walls together like puzzle pieces. The support stakes turned out to be the hardest and most time consuming part; we were using a tube filled with water as a level and digging in sand dunes, literally. We would dig and then the sand would fall back in, sigh. Also, our supplies didn't arrive until the end of the first day, so we weren't able to start building until Sunday. It was incredible to see the teamwork when the tractor trailer was being unloaded (it was incredible that the tractor trailer made it down the teeeeny dirty roads to begin with). All of the men in the pueblo came to help and it was a powerful combined effort.

The families were so thankful and were so welcoming. They served us lunch and supper daily (lots of chicken and rice with Inka Kola, a bubblegum flavored Peruvian soda).

We left Saturday night at 9pm, arrived again Sunday morning at 8am and worked all day until 11pm. House number one: check. The houses are just temporary and pretty small (3m by 7m) but mean so much to these families. We had a little welcome party (complete with one flat cerveza, which is not a cheap purchase for these families) and then started the next house. We were all so exhausted by the time the bus got there at 11pm we passed out on the bus ride home.

Monday morning, another 6am wake up call. The lack of water (aka only port-a-pottys and no showers) was getting to us, but we all pushed through. My group got our second house finished and then helped out other groups. We didn't quite reach the three houses for every four people goal, but over 150 houses were built in three small towns over three days, pretty good, eh?

---

Photos

Broken Home
Remains of a home in the pueblo we worked in

Sweet Street
The gorgeous drive to the pueblo we were working in

Crunch Time
Workin hard!

Before...
The lot where we built our first house

... and After!
Our first house!!

Familia
The madre of our first house; an amazing lady that holds that little community together (and knows how to cook like nobody's business!).

Day Three
My building group: Fernado, Les, Me, and Cesar. And they all spoke Spanish exclusively.

Pretty Sunset
There's is something beautiful about living life simply and living with natural, undeveloped surroundings.

Home Sweet Tent
The compound

Riverside Chores
Organic Washing Machine

Down and Dirty
Our shirts after three hard days of work

Just.. Want.. Water
A dirt line (not a tan line) after three days without showering

Little help?
One of our construction assistants