La Casa de los Hombres del Sol

A couple of days in Cuzco. We had made arrangements to spend two days to volunteer at a drop in center for kids in Cuzco. There are a variety of programs, schools, and outreach centers designed to help poor children in the greater Cuzco area. There is a great level of economic disparity in Cuzco- from children who live on the street, or in places with no electricity and no water, to kids who live in what you would think of as suburbia- house, garage, TV, Internet, etc. One of the key problems is that all of these children go to school together. Sounds fine, but those kids who struggle daily and have no electricity, are clearly unable to complete homework that requires research done on the Internet. According to Luz Marina, the founder of the organization we visited, La Casa de los Hombres del Sol (the house of the people of the sun), the school system doesn't take the resources that different families have into account and as a result, many children drop out or fail out of school at a very young age.

We found this organization on the web, with a little help from the GAP people. The website is http://www.streetkidscusco.org/, if anyone is interested in checking it out. This was one of the few organizations that welcomed short term volunteers- and two that didn't speak Spanish. We were excited to check it out. Luz met us upon arrival and gave us a tour and told us all about the organization. Her vision was to create a place to both help with school work and to teach handicrafts and life skills to both street kids (loosely defined to include all children who needed assistance of this kind) and developmentally disabled adolescents. They have different sessions throughout the day. In the morning, the younger kids go to school and the older kids come to the center, in the afternoon, it is reversed. We were excited to help out. What we quickly learned was that we were there as observers and visitors. The language barrier was too big to be really helpful and the kids were very busy working on their projects- embroidery, leather crafting, jewelry making, cooking, etc. So, we spent our first morning of "volunteering" sitting quietly with little to no interaction with anyone else. Larry busied himself cutting leather strips, and I organized threads for embroidery that didn't really need to be organized. Besides looking at the kids were doing and complimenting them (in limited Spanish), I sat and wondering how long I could sit without going stir crazy. We both made it through the two hour session. It was the first time the language gap was so big that it wasn't able to be bridged. We left for our lunch/siesta break both impressed with the organization and sad that we weren't able to be more involved.

In the afternoon, Luz had offered for us to go up to the new center building and "volunteer" with the younger kids. Eager to see another place, but apprehensive about sitting silently for the afternoon, we returned to the center. We were sent it a cab to a place where the teacher would meet us. That was all the information we had. The cab driver took us up into the hills into a really impoverished area in front of a liquor store with no one around and nothing that looked like a drop in center and motioned to us that we had arrived. We had a brief conversation of "here, really?" back and forth with the driver. Larry and I were deciding whether or not to get out of the cab when finally we saw one of the teachers we had met in the morning walking up the hill toward us.

The community we were in was indeed quite a poor community. In an effort to help their children, the community gave half of their government built community center to Luz Marina to create another drop in center. It is pretty new for them, and by all accounts seems to be going well. We got there as the younger kids were working on their homework. We were immediately the center of attention. As opposed to the morning in which we felt invisible, we were welcomed openly, and joined the kids in process. I helped with a handwriting assignment, and Larry helped with basic addition until it was play time. The language barrier here was bridgable. I think it was partly due to the more free flowing setup of the younger kids program but mostly that the kids were younger and much more interested in trying to talk to us. I had brought with me pictures of Colorado, our wedding, etc, and that was a huge hit. The teacher spoke some English, so when my new young friends and I reached a language barrier, one of them would run to the teacher to get her to help. We looked at pictures, played games (mostly Monopoly with kid style rules), and took some photos. It was great fun and one that we are sure will be remembered both by us and by the kids who had visitors that one day.

The next day we opted to only spend the morning at the center, again with the older kids. It was fairly similar to the first day, but maybe a little more interactive. Larry was back to work cutting leather strips and I helped a developmentally disabled boy make a bead necklace. We thanked Luz for her hospitality and made a donation to the organization. We promised to spread the word about her work, so please, take a look at visit her website. She is proof that one person's vision can really make a difference.

We left the center thankful for the experience and with a new understanding that volunteering sometimes means visiting and offering emotional and financial support as we did with the older kids, and sometimes it means getting more involved and building connections where they might not otherwise ever exist. We have plans to do some more visits/volunteer stops during our journey, so it will be interesting to compare and contrast as we go.