Message on June 13, 2005

June 13, 2005

Hello family and friends!

Some of you who viewed the photos I sent of our mission site in Alto Trujillo asked about why the people would build houses on sand.  Click here if you want to look at these photos.  I thought I write a bit about the situation of the people we found in Alto Trujillo. 

People who live in the mountains (Andes, etc) are being starved out of their homes. They cannot make a living off the land so they leave the hills and come to the large cities, looking for work, housing, etc. As the third largest city in Perú, many people come to Trujillo. Unfortunately, the city cannot accommodate this influx of people. In response, the government plats whole cities for these people to live in. The planned development maps out streets, allocates space for houses and builds neighborhood cisterns in which to deliver water. The city initially does not provide any other infrastructure such as paved roads, sewer, running water, power, telephone.

So the people come, build homes and look for work. They are so poor. They buy water by the bucket from the community cistern. The wage earner of the family goes into town, trying to be hired for the day as a laborer. As people fill in the available spaces with homes, the government does bring in power and sewer and sometimes water. So some services slowly creep through the neighborhoods. The poorest parts (with people moving in today), have no services. There are no paved roads in any part of Alto Trujillo and no telephone.

Missionary groups such as ours and NGO's, provide education for the children as the government is slow to staff schools. The process seems to be that missionary groups and NGO's build schools and then beg and coerce the government to staff them. One group of nuns we met have built and are building a school called "Fe y Alegría." Every year they add a grade and we saw the parents working to build the school; women carrying buckets of water to mix concrete. It takes a long time, but the people work hard to build their future.

I am struck by how much smaller the children are in Alto Trujillo than the ones I see in Lima. The poverty even affects their height! Food is cheap, but their diet consists mainly of carbohydrates (potatoes, rice, bread and pasta). Dairy products such as fresh milk, cheese, yogurt are difficult to find and expensive. They cost more than they do in the U.S. There is some meat, mainly chicken, but it is also expensive.

Many mothers struggle to raise children alone. Fathers tend to leave because of the stress of poverty as well as cultural differences that allow them to abandon the family.  For many, the family structure is broken.

We feel very needed. Our job, as missionaries, is not to give them "stuff." Rather, we walk with them and share their journey. We choose to live with them and share their daily challenges. We do not come "bringing God", but rather as companions on the journey. Together, we make the invisible God visible among ourselves.

That is some of what we learned in our initial tour of Alto Trujillo.  An image burned into my brain is that of a very skinny man and woman both dressed in baggy gray rag-clothes building their house. They live in the outskirts of Alto Trujillo (the poorest of the poor) and, when I saw them, they were working side by side building an exterior wall out of mud blocks.  Hannah played with their children as I talked with them. What struck me so strongly was how Hannah has so much and how we can, with ease, move in and out of their world of poverty.  Hannah has milk to drink and plenty of protein in her diet.  She can attend school and learn because her lifestyle allows her to be ready to learn. These children don't have that same opportunity.  Why does Hannah have that and they don't?

Let us continue to pray for one another and for the poor of the world.

In peace,

Ralph and Theresa May