Como Trabajo

After more than a week here, I thought it fit to give you all some insight into what the conditions are like here, in addition to what I am doing. Chimbote is a very poor city, its economy centered around the fish cleaning factories which are now only open three or four months out of the year due to overfishing. Because of this, there is never much activity in the city, and people sit and stand on the sidewalks drinking Cusqueña (the local beer), and yelling ¨hola gringo¨as you pass by. The school that I work at, Mi Segundo Hogar, is in vacation right now, but with the help of the program Peru 109, they have opened their doors to all of the kids who would be otherwise in the streets, or at home watching television, to come and do arts and crafts or play in the schoolyard. The school is private, and the parents are paying to send their kids to a school where the small classrooms will seat 20 kids, as opposed to the overfilled public schools, which lack space, adequate supplies, and qualified teachers, and can have up to 50 kids in a classroom. The kids here are well off, which is to say, they have a house and parents and daily food.

I have also gone to a shelter for abandoned women, El Hogar de La Paz, which is extremely different. There, many of the women have mental issues, or are forced to wear straight jackets for fear that they might harm themselves or others. Many of them can´t speak, and the more able ones are learning how to write. More than anything, they crave attention, considering that they spend the whole day sitting inside. There are over 70 women there at this moment, and they have three bedrooms. Each is lined with over 20 cots. Upstairs, the nuns who live there attend to the more needy children, many of whom are unable to eat by themselves or wash themselves. Some lay in their beds, staring at the ceiling while flies land on them. One woman was able to talk, and was content with telling me the same story about her family over and over. It is difficult for me to believe that conditions like this existed before I went there.