After meeting a few participants along the way, we arrived in the Lima airport at midnight to our wonderful host Ronal and the humid air of Peru. The airport was a busy place, with taxi drivers calling at us from every direction. We hauled overtired selves and our large amounts of baggage and wound our way Lima for about 30 minutes until we reached our hotel in Miraflores. It was surprising that although late at night, the city wasn't really that dark.
We got up for our first breakfast around 10am, and part of the group went to explore the area, while a few of us went to the IFEJANT office to sort out our work plans. We will be working about an hour away from our hotel, building washrooms for a school of about 120 working children. At first we were quite startled to learn that the school literally teaches the children to work, but after much contemplating and hearing how the school also emphasizes what we would consider to be 'typical' education of math, writing and sciences, we realized that these children have to work, and the school is teaching them better practices to be more profitable and create better opportunities for them later in life. We will be continuing the building process the Kamloops High School Student group recently started, and hopefully finishing the washrooms during our four weeks here, although we know building doesn't always go to plan.
With the exception of one participant fluent in Spanish, the rest of us are scrambling to pick up as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
Adios!
Erica
DWC Team Leader
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