So I didn’t get to post yesterday’s blog and today was another long day, we spent another 2 hours in an airport and drove for 2 to get to San Marcos where the program unit we are visiting is located. I’ll get to the second part of the day later.
Our morning started at 9am Peru time we met for breakfast at the hotel before heading over to the Peru Country office for a Security briefing, an overview of work the National office does and a tour of the Peru country office. On the way over there, the crazy driving and the traffic jams were crazy. The Traffic is so bad that there are people who walk between the cars selling their merchandise. Laura did pick up a bad of sweet potato chips for 1 Peruvian dollar (about 40 cents Canadian).
We arrived at Peru’s countries office at about 10:30 where we met Cristina Arrasco who completed our security briefing – don’t get into a tico (free-lance taxi), don’t eat street food and look both ways before quickly and carefully crossing the streets. She did provide many tips and suggestions for our trip, but those were the ones that stood out the most. We also met Mauricia the National Sponsorship Coordinator along with Maria Espinoza the Program Support Manager. They prepared a great presentation that walked us through sponsorship in their program, and the direction they are taking in the next 5 years. For my Inspire friends I’ll consolidate all my notes and provide them.
Then it was back to the airport for our hour flight to Cajamarca where Manuel Cisneros the Program Unit Manager for Plan Crisnejas (Plan Peru’s newest Program unit) picked us up and took us the 2 hours to reach San Marcos. When we landed in Cajamarca I think collectively as a group this is what we were expecting, a small airport, nice people and the city itself was quaint. This is where the blogging is going to start to get hard for me. It is really hard for me to put into words what I saw, but I’ll give it my best shot. In Cajamarca there was a lot of construction, like many urban cities in Canada, growth in the cities is decreasing farm land and being replaced with housing developments. Not as fancy as in Canada, but appropriate for the economics of the regain. Shelia and I were speaking to Carol our translator about the new developments to find out how the developers get the land. The most common way to get property in Peru is to inherit if from a family member. It was all very fascinating. Once we travelled outside Cajamarca it was the most amazing landscape, the houses on hills, and the mountains as a back drop, the curving winding road, and the multitude of time the van we were travelling needed to move over to avoid, families and children walking on the side of the road, donkeys, sheep, dogs, merchandize. It was a shame when the sun set and we lost the view.
We then arrived at the Program Unit in San Marcos and were treated to a wonderful presentation on the Crisnejas program and the different places we will be visiting in our 2 days in San Marcos and met 5 of the 15 staff that work in this region. The region itself has 2452 sponsor families in 52 communities in 7 districts in 1 province. After the presentation we had a nice dinner at Restaurant Donde Freddy where we will be having most of our meals for the next few days. The food was very good; I had a beef and potato and onion dish. I think I’ll try the trout tomorrow.
Then it was off to the hotel which doesn’t have internet L but Plan’s office does so I’ll take my laptop to the office and see if I can post today’s and yesterday’s message before we head out. It is going to be a very exciting day. We are scheduled to see 3 districts tomorrow ranging from 1000 meters above sea level to 4000 meters above sea level, so I’m going to get some sleep I have to be up in 6 hours.
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