Hoolee-aca

We had a great week in Juliaca - by great I mean that it was pretty effecient. It was also quite tiring, actually! We arrived Tuesday afternoon and settled into our hotel. Because the Royal Inn (that is really the name) didn't have two rooms with two twin beds, Cam Nelson and I took the one that they had and the girls got a matrimonial suite. They had a king-size bed and a bathroom with a jacuzzi. They were both pretty excited about that, and I think one of them tried to take a bath later but alas, there was no hot water, nor was there much water pressure. I can't say I'm surprised... :)
Wednesday and Thursday we went out to Cabana and Cabanillas, respectively, and in each of those communities we went out to smaller settlements of people and did 6 focus group discussions each day. We travelled together, but in each of the 3 smaller settlements we split into 2 partnerships of 2 and thus did two discussions in each place. It worked well, although it was a lot of work. One of the partners leads the discussion and digs for information from the people, while the other takes vigorous notes. Some of the discussions we also recorded with voice recorders (that sounds redundant?) and listened to them later to beef up our notes a little more. So we racked up 12 discussions in a short period of time. Although after the discussion, we needed to spend up to an hour per discussion going back through the notes and writing down anything we could remember we missed. So while good, it was an extensive process.

Here are some shots from the countryside.

Friday we had hoped for 6 more discussions, but the partner organization Fondesurco was working through said they didn't have enough notice and also it was a festival of some sort, so we got the day off. We took advantage of the time and took a bus down to Puno, a city sprawling up some hills next to the northwestern end of Lake Titicaca. The lake is the highest freshwater lake in the world, speaking about altitude. I guess there's not many other terms I could've really meant...the lake's not high on drugs... Anyway, it was quite pretty. The water was a deep, dark blue. Three of us decided to take a tourist boat ride out to the floating islands, which are islands that are made entirely out of reeds that grow profusely in the lake there. They also make their homes and boats out of the reeds. Almost everything, in short. It was interesting, although very touristy, and after they explained how the islands are made, and how they eat a part of the reeds and fish for food (and take a boat into town for most other things), they kept us in one little part of the island and tried to convince us to buy their souvenirs. Our boat wouldn't leave for nearly half an hour, and they even tried to tell us we had to spend even more money than what we had already paid to have them row us to another island on one of the boats made out of reeds. But we told them no, we'd already paid the fee for the motorboat. They didn't want to let us do that, but we didn't want to spend any more money. So the motorboat finally did leave, and took us to the other island anyway, where there was...more souvenirs and people trying to sell them to us! There was also a restaurant, but none of us three wanted to eat, so we sat down on the reed-ground or reed-benches and napped and read books for around an hour. When our boat finally departed and headed back to Puno, we met back up with Chelsea, who had stayed there waiting. We all thought it would be an hour and a half or so, but we arrived back a little more than 3 hours later. She, meanwhile, had had an interesting experience with an evangelical minister talking to her about all sorts of things and condemning her for her religion for much longer than she wanted, considering she didn't even ask him to talk to her - he had just seen her reading her scriptures. Anyway, it was an interesting and fun experience to spend part of the day in Puno and on the floating Islas de los Uros.

Saturday we conducted a few more focus group discussions in Santa Lucía, another city near Juliaca. Sunday, we headed off to the church in Juliaca, or at least one of them. There we met a pair of sister missionaries, and one of them was from Salt Lake. So Cam and I (as we're both from SLC) had a fun chat with her playing the name game, finding out what friends we had in common. Then she and her companion invited us to their lunch with the member family that cooks all their meals for them. The sister was really quite energetic, and told a lot of funny stories, including one about when she (being rather taller than the average Peruvian) ran into a doorway while in a hurry, and fell backward and blacked out. That's not the funny part, I'm not that cruel - but when she woke back up and having a bruise and a goose egg on her forehead, she and her companion put on a little more make-up to make it look like they had been in a fight, and went to their next meal with the member family, acting like they were mad at each other. Anyway, I thought it was clever and amusing, and a good way of making the best of what was probably quite a painful injury.

All in all, we had an enjoyable time in Juliaca, and on Monday morning we headed back to Arequipa, making the 8-hour trip on a bus, once again.