Volunteering in Pisco, Peru

---

We have been in hiding for the past 2 weeks because we have been up to things that may worry our families.....

Having passed through areas of Peru hit by the earthquake on our way to Nazca, we decided to backtrack and go and see what we could do to help out. We found an organisation called Hands On Disaster Response (www.hodr.org) and turned up in the town of Pisco with our work boots, gloves, face masks and goggles.

Arriving in Pisco was shocking. The entire town had been razed to the ground by the 8.0 earthquake which lasted two minutes. There was not one building that was untouched by the huge tremor. We wondered what on earth a few people like us could do to help and felt quite overwhelmed at this point.

We stayed in a disused restaurant with no beds and no showers, which made some of the hosels we have stayed in recently seem like 5 star hotels. At least it was a roof (a nice and stable one) over our heads so we were doing better than some of the locals. We started off as a group of 15 volunteers, mostly travellers who interrupted their trip top help, and by today the numbers had grown to nearly 40. There was a big English contingent which made for some good rivalry with the Americans, particularly when sharing of tea bags was suggested. (I mean, really?!). We were issued with Hands On t shirts and hats to work in which we were pleased with as this doubled our wardrobe size!

Our days involved hard labour, which was a shock to the system after 2 months in the Caribbean. We started work at 8am, off we went with our wheelbarrows, spades and shovels. Our job was to clear the rubble that was left of peoples homes, so that they could get a temporary wooden house instead of living in a tent. The work was painstaking. The adobe brick walls had fallen in, and then the roof was on top so we just had to go through it bit by bit, and pile it up in the street, in the hope that one day the bulldozers would come and take it all away. The streets soon became impassable due to the amount of rubble dumped there. The collapsed buildings usually only partially collapsed, so a favourite task was to knock down walls. We used ropes and teams of people to pull them down, or just belted them with sledge hammers until they fell. After the walls fell, we had to run away to avoid the huge clouds of dust that showered us in years of filth. It was pretty dirty work.

Other activites other than demolition and rubble clearing involved a beach clear up after a tsunami dumped loads of rubbish oin the beach, planting palm trees, entertaining the towns children in the tent camps, oh, and more rubble clearing.

The generosity of the local people was incredible. They had just lost their homes and often their families, but they were still keen to thank us for our efforts. Not a day went by when we weren´t given water or Inca Kola (a sugary luminous yellow fizzy drink that cannot be good for you) to keep us going. On a number of occasions just as we were about to down tools for lunch, a local person would inform us they had cooked for us, so off we went into their homes to eat their meals. We had not graciously accept their kind offers as it was the only way they could thanks us, but it did mean that we had to eat 2 lunches quite often, as we did not want to offend the ladies that prepared us lunch at home.

It was such hard work, but so much fun at the same time. We met a great bunch of people that made it very entertaining. We are very pleased to have left as we are going to treat ourselves to a nice hotel soon, and consider ourselves very lucky to be able to leave.

---

Photos

Pisco
Hands On headquarters

Pisco
Sleeping quarters.....it was a good job the accommodation was free!

Pisco
This wall was stubborn so is still standing

Pisco
Lunch at the Camp after playing with the children

Pisco
Dast!

Pisco
This is what´s left of the Church