By far the most unexpectedly wonderful experience of this trip were the events of the 17th of March, when we visited a sponsored child of my parents, her family and their rural community 45 minutes drive from Cuzco. To explain: they give money to a charity called actionaid every month to help improve the lives of people in poorer communities, and part of the experience is that you 'sponsor' a child, and send regular letters back and forth to help learn about each other's lives.
We've been sponsoring this family for a good number of years and so I had been expecting a warm welcome. What I hadn't expected was to arrive at Annabel's (our sponsored child) school classroom to balloons, a seat of honour at the top of the classroom and a full programme of performances by the class to welcome us into their world. It was clearly a big deal for the whole class to have us their and they all seemed very nervous in presenting to us.
Next followed several speeches of appreciation for our support and a huge wreath of freshly picked local flowers for each of us, which they must have been up since the early hours preparing. We were then given a dry potato and cheese and were left to eat it with most of the class staring in wonder at us, and perhaps a certain amount of jealousy that one of Annabel's sponsors had actually come to visit her.
Potato eaten, we managed a slightly awkward question and answer session with the kids (maths is everyone's favourite subject!) before some photos, an attempt by me and Mareike to express our thanks in Spanish, and then it was on to see some of the projects in the community that the money has helped to fund.
We visited three separate viviendas (self-sufficient farms) on our tour, including that of our sponsor family, and in each one the goals of the projects were quite similar.
The aim was to help them to be truly self-sufficient and do it in a sustainable and hygienic way. So families had received paving to stop the courtyard from flowing and increase crop production, toilets and hot showers to make that hole in the ground redundant and an outhouse in which to breed guinea pigs and keep them away from the kitchen area where they had previously been running around as a 'part of the family' and making the children ill.
A big part of this is education about why these new methods are better than their old methods and tutelage so they can keep them up. We were proudly presented newly-built and furnished digs for volunteers who stay with them and do so much more good work than I could hope to have done.
Oh yes, and the guinea pigs... I had already tried guinea pig twice and had presumed it to be either a curiosity that is rarely eaten, like rabbit or lobster for us, or a bit of a touristy gimmick. Oh no. It was outlined several times to us the crucial role that these low-maintenance and protein-rich critters play in the livelihoods of the families there.
Not only do they eat one as a family around three times a week, but they can also take them to market and fetch a handsome 5 dollar price tag for them, more than enough to keep their children going to school. When you realise that after 6 months of having a large outhouse for them one family was breeding 300 guinea pigs at any one time, you see the huge difference that this is making to people's lives.
As the final part of our visit we were driven around as Annabel proudly showed us the lake near the village and the honey production. We were then taken to the family vivienda, where we were served guinea pig, played chess with Annabel's brother, and were shown a lovingly kept folder filled with our letters and photos.
It was then that I realised the importance of these correspondences which she so cherished - money is clearly very helpful, but it is the communication that makes it special and makes a little girl feel there's a family on the other side of the world that really cares for her. And by the end of the day, we really did.
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