Pampas

Pampas is a smaller town situated in a small valley in the northern part of the Huancavelica province. We arrived on Monday morning, May 19, and got to work right away and found a few of the short surveys in the afternoon. In the evening, we travelled to a small town on the other side of the mountain range and did another one. We took these pictures on the way there. It was a steeeep mountainside!

The next day, we woke up at 4:00 am to travel to a couple of towns about 2 hours away where we had approximately 8 short surveys and 2 longer interviews. So we left at 4:30 and arrived at the first town around 6:15. We split into teams of two, and one of the girls and I went to survey one woman while the others went to another. After the survey, I walked a few feet away from the house and saw a vast valley in front of us filled with clouds, and the sun was just coming over the mountains opposite us. It was breathtaking. The picture doesn't do it justice...

After we had finished the surveys, we loaded back into the car and headed off to another town where we had 5 names. Unfortunately, when we got there, not a single one of the women was there! Despite the fact that we had gotten up so early to get there before they leave for their fields! Oh well. Since we had travelled so far, we ended up surveying several other women from the same village who had also taken out loans and were in the same group. We also did two longer interviews and a focus group as well! So it was productive, even though it didn't go as planned. And even though it isn't ideal, we will use the information we gathered there. After returning to Pampas (on crazy mountainside roads) we rested and then did some more work for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Chelsea and I woke up at 5 and travelled to a town about an hour away, and high high high in the mountains (4000 m) called Pacchapata. It was very small, only around 20 people, and it was cold. There was frost everywhere. But we found the people we were looking for, so it was great.

And for the rest of Wednesday, we tried to finish up in Pampas. It didn't end up being perfect, but we did our best and it was a good first run as we got our bearings and figured out what we needed to do. Wednesday night, we went up onto a mountainside looking for a woman in a smaller village, and she never ended up arriving. But we saw the stars, and there are way more than I've seen for a long time! There's not nearly as much light pollution here, high in the Andes, so it was a brilliant sight. I'm going to try and look at the stars some more while down here.