By Yannick Wende, Program Director
Last week my regular community visits had a little bit of an extra difficulty and danger added to the sum.
I was on my way to Marccuray, to go and visit the community to see how the Cuy (guinea pigs) and chicken cages were at, for the nutrition program that we are developing in the community, and what materials were going to be necessary to begin the second stage of building. Usually I drive my motorcycle up to a town called Socma, and then hike for about 1 hour and a half to be able to visit the community of Marccuray (as the road to get there is still in the process of construction).
I had scheduled a visit, knowing all the problems I had in the past with these sorts of work in the road, and also having heard that they were about to start a new section of working in the road to the village. In my head I thought, “well, I guess we will just have to see how bad it is in person” It wasn’t until I drove up there and saw the huge amount of rocks falling off this giant cliff that the workers were sending out with explosions of dynamite and caterpillars working. There were a few workers closing my usual way up sending every body who walked through that valley through a detour that would take on the complete other side of the valley.
From the top of the valley on my way to Marccuray, I could now see all the huge rocks that were falling off. Some were even going as far as the bottom of the valley destroying everything they found in their way, and it was a very unusual soundtrack while hiking that day than in any other day, suddenly the sounds of birds and the river flow got changed to these heavy-hitting tumbling noises that shook the ground and made it for a little bit more of an adrenaline rush, rather than our usual peaceful hike. This work is estimated to end in three months time from now.