April 2nd - 3rd

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We were to go to a nearby school and give fluoride treatments for the students, but when we got to town the dentist had been called away on an emergency. So we drove out of town to check out another section of the Inca trail to see how much it had overgrown since it was last clear a month before. We trekked through the brush and then found the Inca road. I couldn't believe that it had ever been cleared, and maybe in the end it had been a different section, because it seemed that the trail didn't match the GPS readings. Then we returned home for lunch. After lunch was the weekly cleaning of our home. We take out the hoses and brooms and brush the soap and water down the slope of the house out the back door and down the drain channel. This was a stable so we might as well clean it the way it was meant to be cleaned.

The next day, we ended up clearing the former stables, no longer roofed, We are trying to create spaces that can be used for developing new trees for reforestation which is another part of the project. So hard work again, machete, raking, pulling trees, clearing old cut wood. One of the staff, Americo, brought 100 chicks in while we were working, two days old. It was like an early Easter. There are guinea pigs here (meant for eating), lots of chickens (I saw one nest of 8 eggs in the compost pile), a number of geese and two dogs. The dogs are the only ones allowed in the house, and I did have to chase out the geese one day. In the afternoon, we went to Huyro to the library where we met some of the local children. We bring buckets of lego and drawing supplies and play with the kids for a couple of hours. I was surprised by how well the kids played together. The lego wasn't a source of conflict, there was lots of sharing. We go there every week. Every afternoon we have the opportunity to go into Huyro to buy supplies, get a drink and get on the internet, if we want. On library day, we are already there so we hung out at the local store until we got our ride home. The evening meal is full of conversation amongst the volunteers, tons of cross cultural comparisons, but again we are not learning a lot of spanish. We went early to bed, the work every day helps promote good sleeps.

Good Night and Sweet Dreams

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