From Huaticocha to Afghanistan
Change is the only constant we will experience this year. Each month brings a new country, ministry location, ministry job, new living conditions, and a new environment. This month is no exception. For the most part all of the change we experienced this month has been a good thing. We traded our hot humid jungle for a dry and sometimes hot and sometimes cold desert in Peru. We traded hauling rocks for hauling sand and helping to build an orphanage, the jungle boys for kids living in the local dump. We traded our tree house for an actual house with real beds, showers, a washing machine, and a real kitchen. We traded our seclusion in the jungle for having to figure out how to live with another team. We traded mud for sand, lots of it. I traded being healthy in the jungle to spending all day in bed and the bathroom.
We left Huaticocha Saturday night for Quito (8/13). We spent all Sunday and most of Monday recovering at the Inca Link headquarters in Quito. Monday night (8/15) we boarded the bus and drove 12 hours straight to the Peruvian border. The bus dropped us a few blocks from the border crossing. Before we left Quito we were told at the border crossing we were to just walk straight across the border into Peru. The border crossing was in a very sketchy area. We were told by our squad leaders to just keep walking, not to stop, and if someone asked to help tell them “no” and keep walking to the immigration office on the other side of the bridge. It was different than I pictured it to be. On both sides of the border it was desert and small villages but the crossing was a bustling city, blocks and blocks of markets and vendors selling everything imaginable. The border was a small bridge over a man made river that everyone was just freely walking across…I figured we could too.
We crossed the bridge into Peru and we were stopped by an armed Peruvian border guard. He told us that is was too dangerous to keep walking and we needed to get a bus to take us the rest of the way to the Peruvian immigration office 6km down the road. He just so happened had a friend next to him who could get us a bus to take us to the office then down to Tumbes, where we would spend the day until we took another night bus to Trujillo. So there we all 60 of us sat with all of our luggage just over the Peruvian border in a little pavilion being surrounded/protected by armed border guards. The bus finally got there and we loaded up and headed straight to the immigration office then to Tumbes. We spent the day in Tumbes resting from our 12 hour bus ride the night before and eating everything somewhat American in sight. Around 8 that night we loaded up another bus for another 12 hour bus ride to Trujillo. That night we were stopped 6 times by Peruvian immigration officials. Each time they would just look at all our luggage then walk onto the bus then let us go on our way. At one stop they told us to unload the entire bus so we could be checked. Once they saw how much stuff we had they changed their mind. We got to Trujillo sometime Wednesday (8/17) morning after spending a total of about 30 hours on the bus.
We got to our compound outside of Trujillo and the only thing we could say after seeing it was that somehow we ended up in Afghanistan. Desert everywhere and the foothills of the Andes about a 20 minute walk away. It is definitely a different environment from the jungle. This month we are helping to build an orphanage for Inca Link- making adobe bricks, doing concrete work, and moving lots of sand and bricks, spending time with the kids in the daycare whose parents work in the dump, and spending time with people that live and work in the local dump.
Our project for the month
