Week one of workshops: check!

It has been some time since I last kept everyone up to date. There is some good news to report; we completed our first week of workshops in the community and it was a successful first set. Our second set begins today and will run until Friday again. It was really amazing to spend our afternoons in the communities getting to know the women and the children whilst teaching, learning and sharing experiences with them.

This past weekend we did a day excursion to one of the local sites called “Kuelap”. It is a pre-Incan ruin that was actually discovered before Machu Picchu however as it was a Peruvian who discovered it, it did not get as much Western publicity as MP. This site is spectacular as it is located at the top of a mountain at an altitude of 3,000m and boasts the ruins of hundreds of homes. Some of the carvings in the rock are very well preserved and you can notice the different hybrid creatures that the ancient Chachapoyans worshipped. There are also some Incan ruins on site as the Incas did eventually take over the site. The main way to differentiate the two cultures is by the shape of the buildings; the Chachapoyans built theirs in a circular shape whilst the Incas built theirs in a square shape.

This week is filled with our second set of workshops as forementioned as well as the start of our report that Sarah is starting on as well as developing the final presentations that we will be giving to both the Municipality here (with the press on hand) as well as to WUSC back in Lima at the start of July. I will be working on both of these presentations with Erma who is from here.

On a side note, last week there was a congress in Lima that addressed the latest struggles in the Amazonas region for the aboriginal groups and whilst I do not have any details on the results, our friend who is from the Condorconqui group has said that things have settled for the positive for the aboriginal groups. I will try to look into more details and keep you posted.