DukeEngage | Duke Center for Civic Engagement

     In Peru, the Andes mountains dominate every aspect of climate and geography. Towering in the center of the country, they divide the country into three very distinct regions. The mountains themselves form the center alpine region. To the west, along the Pacific, streaches a thin costal desert. To the east, stealing the majority of the countries rain, is the Amazon.

     Most of our time in Peru has been spent in the costal desert. La Libertad (the state we are living in) is actually one of the wetter costal regions, but still it only recieves a few milimeters of rain each year. Although the region is naturally rather barren, it is also rather densely populated, and used extensively for agrictulture. Extensive irrigation systems and canals that date back to pre-Incan civilization spread across the land like veins carrying the lifeblood of the region. Farms dominate the countryside: large Colombian owned sugarcane plantations, sprawling agricultural collectives, and a horde of small acerage plots squished into every nook and cranny avaliable. Where the water reaches, the land flourishes. Just a few feet outside though, and all there is is red rock and yellow sand. This creates a view ripe with sharp contrasts. Driving along the costline, one can be surrounded by desolate dunes of sand one moment, and then be in an almost utopian oasis of greenery the next. Just a few miles inland the barren red crags of the Andean foothills clash with lush green valleys.

     Cuidad de Dios (the town we work in) lies at one of these color barriers in the Moche River Valley. A collection of about 50 dusty squat adobe houses, this squatter village lies just above the irrigation line - just above where the property value jumps from almost worthless dust and rock to very valuable arrable land. We are not staying in the town though, as there is nowhere there to house a group of twelve gringos. Thus, we live about 30-40 minutes away in Huanchaco. Huanchaco is situated at another sharp contrast: where dusty sand and crumbly bluffs collide with the blue ocean. A rather densly packed suburb, the town apparently is the Peruvian equivalent of Myrtle or Daytona Beach during the summer. Fortunately, we are in the depths of the Peruvian winter (it gets to a freezing 60 degrees farenheit at night) when it is just as the Peruvians like to say ¨muy Tranquillo¨.

     And, that is all for now. My time on the computer is just about up and some Peruvian dude is about to come and bother me for money. As for the other two sections of Peru, I´m afraid I cannot comment right now. I have only spent four days in alpine region (although I will be in Cusco after the trip so maybe I will update this then), and am sad to say that as much as I would like to, I do not have time to visit the Amazon. 

I had studied abroad three times before I embarked upon my Duke Engage trip to Cuidad de Dios, a squatter community in northwestern Peru. During each of my previous abroad experiences my objectives were clear; I was there to explore a
> new culture, get to know people, and broaden my horizons. My goals were noble, but a bit selfish. While I did share my culture with others and hopefully affected their lives in a positive way, my focus was primarily on personal growth. This trip has been different, my focus here has been on community growth, but through working with the community I have also learned about myself.
While a passerby might observe twelve Duke students and ten UNC students (with Nourish International) simply painting a mural in the Plaza de Armas, picking up trash, and helping to construct a new water system in the small community, we are in actuality doing much more. In all of the projects we are striving to bring people of the community together. We want them to take pride in a beautiful town and a clean water system.
The majority of the residents of Cuidad de Dios, a small town of about 40 families, moved to the town, which lies on high ground, after devistating flooding during the El Niño of 1997. People came from different cities and towns and have not lived for long in Cuidad. People in the lower, more well established part of town have water in their homes while new residents in the high part of town must use public taps and carry water up to their homes. The current water system is controlled by a larger town called Santa Rosa, and the amount of water pressure in Cuidad de Dios is directly related to the amount of water used by Santa Rosa. The current water system often lacks sufficient pressure and can be cut off by the town of Santa Rosa.
In order to start the new water project held a meeting with the town to get their approval as well as elect community members to a commitee to oversee the maintenance of the system and be an integral part of the contrustion. We see community ownership of the system as vital to its success. During the contrustion of the the water system we hired members of the community to work with us in digging trenches, laying pipes, and backfilling. We have had paid work days as well as community volunteer work days. Community members who already have water have worked side by side with newer waterless community members to build the system. Even after we reduced the number of paid workers, community members have brought their shovels and picks to help us for free.
This week we have interviewed members of the community about their feelings on the water project and about the strange "gringos" that have invaded their small town. While comments were made about the funny way we shovel and my unbelievably white skin, most people were very excited about the new water system and some people even commented on a new sense of unity in the community. While the community has become tighter, my horizons have been widened. I definitely share the sense of pride the community has in all of our accomplishments of the past six and half weeks.

At the start of my Duke Engage experience, I was excited about the prospect of trying something that I had never done before: keeping a consistent diary of my experiences and probably even publishing a couple of actual internet blogs. Obviously, this is not the only nor the most exciting plan that I was looking foreword to - things such as travelling to South America, exploring a new country, building a water system, and having a good time were also on my list. However, I bring diary and blogging up specifically in ¨Preface to my blog¨, because as happens oft in life, ones hopes and expectations don’t always pan out. Although at first I was enthusiastic about dutifully recording my trip experiences, I soon discovered that my writing euphoria at age twenty was no different than its manifestations in earlier periods of my life - i.e. something very transient. For my first four days in Peru, I wrote four diligent journal entries. Unfortunately, in the next six weeks, I managed to enter one more. This is the first time I have made it to the blogging site. Those are some overwhelming accomplishments. I am keenly reminded of a time in first grade where I became suddenly passionate about writing a book on pirates. I finished one page (to my credit, it was accompanied with a picture).
Thus, as I finally do sit down to blog, I am faced with the difficult task of distilling six weeks of intense experience into succinct (that’s how they tell us to do it) blog entries. If you haven’t noticed already, my writing is not particularly succinct. I am working without the handy support of a diligently kept diary. Also, I am currently rather sick and on powerful medications. Furthermore, it has come to my attention that many of the basic facts, details, and issues of the trip have been chronicled by some of my trip mates. In light of these developments, instead of just condensing a summary of my activities so far, which you can probably already in better form somewhere else on this site, I will try to capture the essence of this experience in a more general (and maybe even artful) way in my subsequent entries. This may not be easy. I am an engineer. I am not an artist. But, bear with me. If you have managed to not either leave my blog or become violently sick by this point, you may enjoy whatever titbits of inspiration and enlightenment that I just might conjure up. If you are my mother or father, I apologise. I will be back.