The Children of Quisicancha & Their School

As we waited for instructions on the barn, we tried to be useful, or at least busy.

Their swings were all tangled and Mack, Ab and Michelle tried to fix them. The kids pointed at them and laughed and ran away. 

So we chased livestock for awhile. 

Sheep and Llamas 

A Big Mean Pig. The ladies in all of the villages (&in Cusco) wore these packs. Sometimes it was for their babies, sometimes for food, and in Cusco it was their items for sale.

A lamb

The view of the school from across the road. Their fence is made from two liter soda bottles.

It started to rain so some of the group moved the blankets from the roof of the van to the inside of it. They unloaded the mini truck and decided to use it to at least move the barn bricks from their drying spot to the barn site. We got one load moved and then the truck had to leave to go get our lunch from Chacabamba. It felt a little like spinning our wheels. We weren't getting much done. We distributed the blankets and gave candy to the kids. Maybe that's what won them over for us. They started coming closer to us and trying to talk to us.

They loved seeing the pictures after you took them. In fact, I nearly got strangled because of my neck strap and them trying to grab my camera to see their pictures!

This boy was one of Abbi's favorites. He was very interested in the English word for things and remained calm and engaged while some of his classmates were being wild!

Before too long, we were singing songs and playing games together. It started with Tisha teaching them some clapping games, but before we knew it, we were playing London Bridge, Hokey Pokey and singing Old MacDonald with them. Abbi's Spanish vocab for that week was animals so she would name the animal in Spanish and the kids would make their sounds. It was actually quite comical because American dogs don't bark like Peru dogs and neither do many other animals. When we said the burro (donkey) says hee-haw hee-haw, they laughed hysterically. Apparently, the appropriate donkey sound is chish-caw chish-caw. Hard to make sounds in type, but let's just agree the animals in Peru speak Spanish/Quechuan, too!

Hokey Pokey

Abbi was trying to come up with another animal to name and a child yelled out  "Cuy!! Squish Squish Squish!" Abbi and Rhonda tried to say we don't eat our guinea pigs in America and they were utterly confused. When they said Cuy, I thought Rhonda had the funniest/best reaction. The kids thought she was crazy for saying, "No! No!! No como guinea pigs!!"

Maybe you have time for a quick video clip of our fun. 

We ate lunch in the 5th grade classroom. The locals did present us with the potatoes and guinea pigs for lunch, but thankfully Navidad and the cooks had lunch for us as well.  Here are some pictures I took from inside their room. I thought some of my teacher friends and others might enjoy them. 

Turns out the Quisicancha kids were the highlight of the village. Their initial ambush of our van and the way they seemed to taunt us at first, eventually warmed over to a more welcome reception. (Candy is universally a great ice breaker!) There was very little interaction with the adults in Quisicancha. 
We did work with them loading bricks and stacking them. But it wasn't like in Chacabamba. There were basically two groups working concurrently but not together. The majority group got involved and we made some progress. It just wasn't the outcome we had anticipated.

Our work chain, passing the bricks.

Navidad actually just started working on the barn himself. Then, Shelly and Mackenzie started spreading the mortar. We started building where they had a window planned and that's what I think actually got them involved with us in working on it. They came over to correct us. We got three more layers of bricks added. It's hard work and we did help, but I'm not sure either group felt satisfied by our visit.

Mackenzie spreading the mortar that Navidad made.

The end result was that Kim said she probably wouldn't return to that particular village again. She said she would consider financial support, but the Quisicancha people may just not want our involvement. It was certainly the most icy reception and least prepared village visit we had experienced.