Peru #2: Volunteering is Good for the Soul

December 18, 2009

After 2 days in Lima, I was sufficiently bored (shocking, right?) and ready for the next adventure! Elaine and I decided to continue our Peruvian journey with a selfless venture into the land of volunteering (that and volunteers get dirt cheap lodging and meals)!

We decided to volunteer at Pisco Sin Fronteras, a volunteer org that started in 2008 in response to the earthquake that destroyed the Peruvian city of Pisco.

We arrive at the volunteer org 30 minutes before dinner = YAY to perfect timing and veggie lasanga for dinner. Win.

After dinner, we are shown to our beds, in the room oh so properly named “The Slums”. Not win. Actually its not so bad, if you leave out the part where Elaine shocked herself in the shower attempting to turn on the hot water.

Other highlight of the evening: Within 3 hours of arriving, I spot an awesome Scot with an i-phone = internet access = i am ALL over him. I shamelessly befriend him, ask to borrow his phone and then proceed to feed my facebook addiction. Go me.

Volunteering

– The project I volunteered for was deconstructing a woman’s house (shack?), moving the material 100 ft up the road, and rebuilding the whole house. Sounds easy-ish? No. It was HARD manual labor, toiling away in the hot sun. Also, half of our group was injured. I was very surprised I wasn’t among the injured, considering my clumsiness. One girl had the wooden beam fall on her hand and cut it open a bit, and the beam fell on another guy’s head. Bad beam, bad. We will (hopefully) finish up the construction mañana! All in a hard day’s work!