Why I Volunteered in Peru

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The Smaller Picture

Friday the Fourth
- woke up at 7:30 am to sit through an 8:00 am meeting
- literally picked up a person’s house with 8 others and moved it a meter East and a meter South
- tossed about 2 tons worth of heavy stones from one pile into another pile 3 meters away
- hacked at stone with a pick axe and steel pole for several hours
- dug a 12 meter long ditch with a depth progressing from 20 cm to 90 cm
- wheel-barrowed massive amounts of dirt and stone

Saturday the Fifth
- woke up at 7:30 am to sit through an 8:00 am meeting
- sewed thick tarp
- threaded wire over bamboo and fastened it to a screw on the other side of a wall 5 meters away
- lifted the 80 pound tarp
- painstakingly dragged 80 pound tarp over a thick bamboo pole to spread out over 15 meters

Monday the Seventh and Tuesday the Eighth
- dug a hole
- chipped away at rock with pick axe, mallet, chisel and hand
- wheel-barrowed massive amounts of dirt and heavy stone
- lifted buckets of dirt and rock out of 4 meter deep hole

Wednesday the Ninth
- bent rebar by hand for 4 hours
- fastened rebar with wire by hand
- cleared massive amounts of dirt and heavy rock created by jackhammer

The Slightly Bigger Picture

- helped a family keep their temporary housing while allowing them to begin preparations for a more permanent structure
- dug a sewage line for a family so that they could finally hook their bathroom pipes up to the city’s sewage after 10 months of having no proper bathroom
- worked until sundown on what was supposed to be a half day of work so that the people of a poor rural community would have a fixed roof when they attended mass the next day
- helped build a 9-room school for a poor rural community who migrated from a mountain village 80 km to be closer to the amenities of a city

If you focus on the smaller picture, it’s easy to be frustrated, ungrateful, and unhappy about what you’re doing. There is nothing glamorous about 8 hours of tough manual labor for no pay, even if it is for a good cause. It's easy to start to wonder what you're doing, and if you couldn't be doing something a little easier somewhere else. If you focus on the slightly bigger picture, it’s harder to be frustrated, ungrateful, and unhappy about whatever it is you’re doing. It can at least partially explain what you're doing. However, if you can catch even a glimpse of the big picture, it is absolutely impossible to feel frustration, ingratitude, or unhappiness.

A Glimpse of the Big Picture

It’s about 4:00 am on Wednesday morning and I’m in the middle of a peaceful dream, deep asleep after a long day of shoveling rocks in the Sun. I am immediately awakened by an unfamiliar disturbance. Going from the dreaming stage of sleep to fully awake is an easy transition. In an instant my eyes go from darting back and forth behind my eyelids in a fanciful bliss to being wide open and fearful of the unknown rumbling rippling heavily from miles away to my left to miles away to my right before fading off. It is my first experience of a tremor or minor earthquake.

It's 4 in the morning and I'm lying in my bed wide awake listening to the now constant racket of dogs barking and howling for miles around. There are tons of dogs in Chincha and not one of them within earshot is quiet. I've heard a chorus of dogs before, but nothing this ever present. My senses are on alert. I'm listening for the slightest sign of another tremor. Maybe the next one won't be so quick. Maybe it will be logarithmically stronger. I'm trying to remember Andy's words about what we should do in the case of an earthquake. Something about darting to the back of the house to get out into the open courtyard. The last thing I want to do is be standing out in the open when the ground beneath me is shaking. But I guess it's better than standing under a roof that might collapse on me.

My ears are perked; my body is alert. At a moment's notice I'm ready to dart from bed and bolt through the back door. I hear soft rustling coming from Andy's room. He's getting up. He's clearly the leader in this situation and I'm ready to follow his any instructions. Maybe he's coming to warn us that this was the pre-tremor. This was the warning. Now we need to head to the open courtyard. He's about to walk by my open doorway. “I felt that," I say to let him know that one, I'm awake, and two, that I won't question him if he tells me to stand out in the cold in the middle of the night. He responds, “Yeah, that was a quick one. If you feel another, bigger one, remember to head to the back.” "Yeah." Andy continues towards the bathroom which is next to my room. I hear the sound of urinating and a toilet flushing. That tremor literally scared the piss out of him. I’m still waiting for further instructions or at least a brief consoling conversation from Andy to ease my nerves, but he simply returns to his room and goes back to sleep.

The chorus is still in full swing. The howls of dogs of all sizes fills the night air. It's an eery cacophony of noise that amounts to an uneasy silence. What if that was just a warning tremor? What if a bigger, longer, more destructive one is on its way? I'm lying still. Alert. The animals won’t stop howling. I don’t blame them. This is my glimpse at the big picture.

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Photos

Tying Rebar
to make columns for the walls of the school.

The School Yard
Where we're helping to build the school in Chincha.

Ditch
Example of a ditch we dug to be used as the foundation of the school.

Paul and Garreth
Building a column

My Bed in Chincha
Where I was lying when the tremor hit.

Comments

[Stephanie]

UNNERVING
I am a friend of your Mother's and live the cushy life in La Quinta, CA as a retiree. However, I did experience a 7.6 earthquake in Mexico City some years ago and totally understand how unnerving that can be. You are doing wonderful things for that community and you are a great writer. I see a brilliant future for you. Thanks for the update on your experience. Stephanie