February 20, 2010

Two weeks ago we descended from the mountains to accompany a health campaign in Trujillo´s newest barrio... La Esperanza. It is what amounts to a shanty town, an area of sand at the edge of the city where poor people began to put up makeshift housing 2 years ago. It has grown incredibly, yet still lacks running water and electricity. Water has been promised them for July of this year, but you never know. We´re on Peru time. I hope it´s soon, though, because sickness is rampant and the area is dangerous, filling the ER with gunshot wounds on the weekends (something I have seen first-hand). Here, Tyler is using his doctor skills to check out the kids that came.
It never rains in Trujillo... or so we were told! And so everyone thought. El Niño has done crazy things with the weather here and we had to put tarps on the roof to keep the rain from ruining our work. It was quite the process!
These kids are waiting for their parents to move their houses so that the bulldozer que level out the hill upon which their house resided. Imagine living on the side of a hill of sand! I was just impressed that a bulldozer had finally come to help out!
A typical street in La Esperanza.

Here´s the health campaign we helped out at..... starring Tyler and his star ;)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

wow what a great opportunity to learn and experience global health in this community. thanks for sharing your experiences and pics with us

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