Thursday, June 09, 2005

i want to post some emails and photos i have gotten from peru since returning. i have the photos in my hotmail but for the life of me cannot figure out how to save them so i can then post them. some cannot even be opened right now. so darn i spend too much time at this computer already. so i can talk about them and maybe someday add the photos.
so i have made a mention here and there that i hear from everyone. my godchildrens' families, the people working in sipascancha, in ollanta, chicho, walter and from the local hospital i also worked at. in the village of sipascancha, i think i wrote that i have 5 god children. they have god mothers for everything there it seems. me, i have cut 3 childrens' hair, so i am a madrina. the first time it happened, i had no idea that by cutting a child's hair i would be awarded this honor! after that i knew better, but of course considered it the honor that it truly is. another i was in a official bapism. it was at christmas and a visiting priest came to the village and so while there he performed baptisms. and my 5th is my namesake, laurita. we never had the time, nor did she have enough hair, but am considered a sort of spiritual godmother. (please scroll on down to read about her in the intl womes day article and further for photos of her.) the reason i bring this up is that carlos has bought himself a little moto, motorcycle and so now i can send him money for the families and for the clinic and bless his heart he rides for 3 hours up into the mountains to deliver it himself to each family. that is so cool. when i wrote and told him where these people lived...well you can imagine maybe that to describe where a shack might be in the middle of the andes, in a dinky village, considering my spanish and lack of direction. anyway he went up the first time and simply asked! haha thats the way to do it! so then i get regular updates on them! so cool. i will have to ask him to take his camera!

and washi and carlos and now eddy, another brother are in the midst of getting grant money form rotary switzerland to refurbish an old building in ollanta to a new "restaurant" for the children. they already have a greenhouse up and running, so there are alot of vegies. but this building will have running water, even a bathroom, and rooms available for the children who walk the farthest to school. then they can stay there during the week. i am working on getting the money there to build the bathroom. and carlos set up a huge program that brought dentists to the tiny villages outside of ollanta. he wrote and talked to dentists, both local and out of the country. complete with everything they needed to clean teeth and do extractions he drove everyone up to various communities and then set up shop in the schools. it was a huge success. my friend chicho still has to help his mom pay for chemo. her visits are 3 months apart. soon she will be done...he says she is still not well. of course. so he has gotten himself in the university of trujillo, they allowed him a special price because of the difficulty his family was having. he is studying environmental science, esp as it applies to the ocean and bodies of water inland. he can't alway afford his books or his rent, so there exists another opportunity to give!! and walter, my buddy in lima, whom i me up north in mancora, plugs away at trying to find a job. like so many of my friends there, he is optomistic regardless...