After flying from Lima to Cuzco on Friday morning, we took a bus through the Andes Mountains from Cuzco to Andahuaylillas, a small village where we will be staying for the next few days. We spent the rest of Friday resting and getting acclimated to the altitude and walking around the small Jesuit campus where our retreat house is located. After a very cold first night in the mountains, we had a delicious breakfast with fresh-squeezed orange juice and coffee on Saturday morning. We then visited three different churches around the area where we learned about today’s religion and culture and also about how the many cultures from various time periods played a role in shaping the church. After doing some shopping and picture taking, we returned to our new home for dinner and a few games of Spoons and Go Fish before bed.
On Sunday morning, we headed to Cuyuni, a village about an hour away by bus up the mountain. When we arrived, we were greeted by a few of the local people, who then performed their spiritual ritual to Pachamama (Mother Earth). The ritual included a sacrifice of coca leaves, beans, and small candies, a dance, and piercing a llama’s ears. After the ritual, we went to a nearby house that we refer to as the “sustainable house.” The owner explained that, with the help of students from the local Fe y Alegria School, they built a small structure that uses manure to produce a gas that is used to power their home. They also use the manure for plants in the yard but they explained that they’re careful not to use it with plants that produce food and they also have to be aware of where their water source is so it isn’t contaminated. We then returned to a building where the ritual took place for lunch, where we had a variety of Peruvian dishes including soup, fresh vegatables, Chiccarron (chicken breaded with quinoa) and Lomo Saltado made with alpaca.
At this point, I am curious to learn more about the culture in Andahuaylillas and the other regions in the rural areas. In the past couple of days, we have seen how different Andahuaylillas is from Lima, but I also am noticing similarities. I look forward to visiting schools in Andahuaylillas and Cuzco and how they incorporate culture into their curriculum and how the indigeneity plays a role in daily life and school life.
On Monday morning, we toured one of over one hundred Fe y Alegria schools in Peru. The school’s curriculum is mostly in Spanish, however many of the students also speak Quechua and they do incorporate the language into daily school activities as well. While many of the schools we visited also teach English, this Fe y Alegria does not because they feel they should focus on Spanish and Quechua, as these are the language the students will speak and a third language would be far too complicated, especially for children.
In the afternoon, we went to Ludeteca, an after school program within the Jesuit campus, which is located right next to the retreat house we are staying in. Since there will be a precession on Wednesday, we and the children began by creating small paper dolls that would represent a number of different characters that will be represented in the upcoming precession. Afterwards, we gave each of the children balls that we brought with us from Cuzco. We all played together for about an hour until most of the children had gone home.
While we have discussed how to attend to equity and justice in education, we have found that it can be difficult to balance high goal-setting, and realistic goal-setting. For example, we have learned that, unfortunately, many people who live in rural areas in Peru and also people who speak an indigenous language feel inferior to Spanish speakers and English speakers. If someone from a rural town in the mountains were to move to Lima, no matter how much money they had, they would face many difficulties because they are different and they speak differently (even if they know Spanish or English, they have an accent). While the teachers at Fe y Alegria in Andahuaylillas encourage students to set goals and want them to be as successful as possible, they encourage their students to be happy with their lives here and also teach them to acquire skills that will help them within this community. This also goes back to why they want the students to be fluent in Spanish and Quechua.