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Published: January 9th 2007
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This blog to date has detailed the many tourist activities of this Kumuka tour, today the tour took some of the gang on a local cultural tour to understand how the majority of Peruvians live. The Arequipa Reality Tour is run by a local called Miguel, whose family works with the lesser fortunate of the town to help evolve their economic wealth.
Arequipa is said to be the southern capital of Peru, the south dominated by mining and agriculture, important to the countries economy. It is small, only 1 million people, compared to 7 million in the capital Lima, all of Peru has 27 million citizens.
Arequipa has the densest living of the two cities due to the economic nature of family real estate. Miguel explained how this works for himself and the majority of the lower and middle class families. Children will live with their parents until married, at that point, they will continue to live with one set of parents for a further 2 and a half years, then the other for an equal time. At that point, if they have money to buy property outright they can, the majority can not tho. So there are some
Peruvian laws that entitle young couples to claim unowned land. The process tho, is not simple, and takes between 5-7 years before full legal documents can be attained from the government. In that period, the young couple only has the right to build a basic dwelling without power, water, sewerage or gas. Once legal documentation has been attained, then the young couple has ownership of the lot, and at that point, can asked the government for loan, of 10,000 Soles $3,300 USD to build the 1st floor of their new house. Once granted, the government does not loan cash, rather, the ministry of building, provides the required material, services and overseas the construction. In previous decades, cash loans on this sort were squandered, causing further economic decline for Peru. The building has a small government plaque on the front and remains he property of the government until every sole is paid back. At that point, a 2nd floor can be built and the house extended.
This process results in unused land, being turned into shanty towns over time. Sixty percent of the Peruvian population lives under in this way.
The 1st stop was at a local Market, where many
local delicacies were explained, including local frogs, used for their rich iodine, to prevent thyroid problems. These frogs don’t taste very nice on their own, so they are mixed with herbs and fruit, put together in a blender to make a nice puree drink. The frog however, is put in the blender ALIVE! What’s that frog in the blender thing…
The 2nd stop for the Reality Tour was to a see the process at a local Stone Quarry. The photos show the family doing there daily work, of manually converting walls of soft rock into bricks. This process is tough work, in hot sun, with everything completed with manual labour. The 1st stage is to extract large chunks of rock from the wall of the quarry. The 2nd is to divide this into smaller brick size chunks, the 3rd, to shave, hammer and scrape until the required size is achieved. Hundreds of families work in the quarry we visited, with each family working an area, with the children helping and eventually inheriting. The economics of these families is rather poor. Each block is sold for 60 cents; each person can produce 10 blocks a day when working within a
Dinner - The Guinea Pig - Consumption
Tastes like a cross between chicken and lamb. Not alot of meat on the bone. We all had main courses as well family. So each person works for 6 soles a day, around 2 USD per day. The life expectancy for quarry workers is around 65 years, where as city dwellers, its 75. Many suggestions to increase productivity were suggested by the group. Two examples, a water saws for cutting and shade cloths, were not viable. The 1st, water is too expensive, the 2nd, the time to setup the shade cloth at each site would limit the number of blocks the family could produce.
The 3rd stop was to a local shanty town cemetery. The culture of the burial was a mixture of Inca and Catholic. U can see the effort put into some of the grave houses, the belief is that the sole will rest more at peace the more beautiful the grave is. The cemetery was split into 3 sections, baptised, who died of natural causes or accident, baptised, but committed suicide and non-baptised.
The 4th stop was to a child care centre. The centre is setup especially for a growing single mother problem in Peru. The problem has been caused by gorilla forces that kidnapped young men from Andean families, displacing the gender number balances, causing young
woman to look for husbands outside of tradition. What often happens is the woman is left pregnant, and alone, with little way of supporting themselves. This childcare centre is one of many of this type. Ten single mothers get to together to create the centre, each one works for a year, looking after all 10 children. The other 9, can then go out and work, 6am-4pm, Mon-Sat to earn an income. The woman who works at the centre receives 150 soles per month from the government, 3 soles per day is payed by each parent for food for the day. U can see from the pictures, they were normally happy kids, unaware of any economical situations.
The 5th stop was to a common food room, were meals are provided for 1.5 soles. This is another way the people of the Shanty towns can come together to provide economic community benefits. The woman who work in the kitchen, each work for 6 days week, for payment they receive 5 free meals per day for there family. For the elderly, pregnant, sick or mentally ill, a discount of 50 cents if provided, which Miguel family substitutes. Miguel explained they audit the
discounts and only provide help to communities that are willing to work together to help each other. There are many communities he will not help, because they do not have this common maturity.
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