Peru

I head off in a couple of days to Peru, back for the second year with a team of students from across Ireland, to work with our Peruvian counterparts – AGEUP . We’ll be working with christian student groups in Lima, helping run an English camp, helping out in some of AGEUP’s long term community development work in Caraballyo – the shanty town we had the privilege of spending time in last year. It’s part of a familar story of cities across the two thirds world, where those from the countryside come to try and find jobs in the city, in Lima’s case a city of 11 million people. San Martin is the little community in the area of Caraballyo where we worked last year, it doesn’t ahve electricity or running water, its beside a rubbish dump, which the children play in, yet there is a sense of life and community which we don’t have here.

We’ll also be spending a week in Huancavelica – a town in the mountains badly hit by last year’s massive earthquake where the soapbox and his cohorts will be putting our minimal construction skills to use helping AGEUP with some of the reconstruction they are doing as they work to bring hope and life not just to students but to communities across Peru. It’s around 3700m so the atlitude will affect us a little no doubt, but i was most disturbed to find out that the night-time temperature at the minute is -5!

Once again we are flying with (dirty) Delta, and with a 2 hour turnaround in Atlanta i’m anticipating we won’t be seeing our bags for a couple of days. Change of clothes in the hand luggage all the way!

I’m hoping to post a few updates of what we get up to, what we are learning and some stories of the people we will meet. Hopefully there won’t be any dog incidents this year.

For those of you who are the praying sort, we’d appreciate those prayers as we trave, try and speak spanish, love each other well as a team, and those we meet, and as we serve alongside AGEUP in the amazing stuff they are doing, and especially for Emily and I as we lead the team.

The team are myself, Emily, Lisa, Nathan, Claire, Louise, Philip, Denise, Gillian, Charlotte and Warren.

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