"Please, don't give the children money."

Reportaje número 5, 20-22 de Octubre

Let me begin by explaining the title of this week’s entry. I travelled out to the islands on lancha shared between All Ways Travel and Cusi. On my trip, as the guide explained local life on Amantani, pointing at the ever-handy map of the lake and teaching a few phrases of Quechua, he said—three different time in three different languages—“Please, don’t give the children money.” If you've ever traveled to Peru or any third-world country, you understand the sheer poverty and amount of children begging or selling on the streets. He explained, the majority of money given directly to children in used to purchase candy or soft drinks, products which only promote the development of cavities and unhealthy eating habits. Furthermore, children on Amantani often skip school or leave early in order to ask for money or sell small knick-knacks. I think that was perhaps the best piece of advice that the tour guide could have given to his group. It’s sometimes hard to imagine, as a tourist visiting a place for one, two or three days, the long term impact of tourism. But, if you do the math: an average tour group is about 15 people. If 1/3^rd of the group, or just 5 people, give just 3 nuevos soles each, or approximately 1 U.S. dollar, to a community’s set of children and that community sees 1 group each week, or 52 groups of 15 tourists (which is a relatively low estimate of tourism frequency for most of Amantani’s communities), the total given—to the children alone—is 780 nuevos soles or 260 U.S. dollars. Imagine, that is not too much less than the average annual wage of a campesino in Peru. Sorry for that little mathematical word problem, I was very impressed and glad to hear a tour guide give information that helps all parties involved in this situation: tourists, native parents and their children. There are alternatives, gifts that can truly help the children of Amantani. These include books, pencils, or even fruit. The main message here is that we should all be conscious of our impact on the world, whether we’re at home or travelling.

Now, to the real report. This week, I was alone on the library front during my stay. Don’t be disheartened though, on Thursday we had a group of 15 (!) participants on the Cultural Exchange Tour. About a dozen children attended the main learning session on Monday and another 4 or 5 came after during our free time to utilize the library’s resources. Honestly, I’m just as a happy if they come after the session because, for me, it signifies that the community has grabbed on to the library as a center of learning and not just to me or to my teaching. When I was teaching/playing with the kids though, we did a lot of review: body parts in English, different words we had picked up from stories, some drawing techniques for the younger children who need to improve hand/eye coordination. Afterwards, we read a story together, the “La Vendedora de Fosforos” (The Match Salesgirl). A note about the stories that we read: I generally pick a selection of three stories for our group reading that I know are going to be understood by every child, regardless of age or reading proficiency, then we always, always, always vote on the one we most want to read. As for the reading, the majority is done by the children themselves while I and several children who can’t are still earning to read in Spanish or who are too shy to read to the group act out the story. In this way, I hope to improve their comprehension of the story and teach them of the various ways to interpret stories. On top of the stress on democratic selection of stories, every day at the library I try to stress good manners and picking up after ourselves. If you’ve ever been to Peru, you’d understand the importance on the latter. It’s not uncommon to watch even the residents of Amantani fling trash into Lake Titicaca.

On Tuesday, we had an entirely free day. The kids had a blast! It’s not that they don’t enjoy the times we sing and dance and learn together; it’s more that they have finally started to feel a sense of ownership towards the library and the books in it, and I wanted to give them a chance to explore and realize how much fun it could be on its own. The reading, drawing, practicing English, and laughing that went on on Tuesday made it a very memorable day. Moreover, Tuesday morning, 7 adults of the community, including the Justice of the Peace and Santa Rosa’s governor came to the morning English lesson. We went over basic phrases to use with tourists to make everyone feel comfortable and the pronunciation of the English alphabet. With time, I really think the community of Santa Rosa will flourish because of their own desire to learn and understand the world that is, with or without their permission, encroaching upon their traditional way of life.

Not just Santa Rosa, either. I forgot to mention that on Monday, 5 residents of Villa Orinojon visited to observe my lesson and the library space, in order to prepare for the construction of their own library!

P.S. I also forgot to mention that, now that I’ve become much more a part of the community and I’m not treated like a tourist I’ve been eating A LOT more. Maybe I should back up a little. When visiting Amantnai, the foods served at meals are traditional or, at the very least, common and everyday to the residents. The only difference between what residents and tourists eat lies in quantity. For breakfast, for example, most tourists are served a few pancakes and a piece of bread with coffee or tea. This past Tuesday morning, I ate the usual two pancakes followed by a large bowl fo potato and onion soup that was then followed by an even larger bowl of sopa de quinoa molido (ground quinoa soup). If you’ve ever had quinoa, a very traditional grain on the Altiplano, you know that it is extremely filling. It has more than its fair share of protein, vitamins, and minerals along a complete set of nine amino acids. When lunch time came, I was still stuffed.

Not full. Stuffed.