By Yannick Wende, Program Director
Last week was a one of the most meaningful weeks in the Marccuray Nutrition program, as the very anticipated date of the arrival and delivery of the animals was finally about to happen. It took long months of hiking up and down the steep hillside to go and check how progress was going in the cage building and project development for each family that signed up for our nutrition program for the children of the primary school of Marccuray.
Finally all the families had their cages ready, their pasture plantations and were about to receive their animals for the most important part of the project. The day was filled with anticipation as the families gathered in Socma, the nearest village that has access to a car road, to pick up their 10 cuys (guinea pigs) and 10 gallinas (baby chickens).
As the day went by the anticipation was even higher. Mainly because there was a bit of a delay on the deliver and arrival of the animals. As we had not took in to consideration that it was a bit harder to carry up 200 guinea pigs and 200 chickens up the very slippery and bumpy cliff side road to Socma than what we thought it would be. As the day went by the delay and expectation seemed to grow by the minute. Finally it was noon and the animals were there. All the families gathered quickly around the truck and were ready to receive their animals in different boxes and cages they had prepared. IT WAS GO TIME! .
I ended up moving 200 chickens from their cages to the boxes of each family, one by one, some of them ran away and were sneaky to catch back up again. All in all it was a very unique experience and the families were more than thank full and excited to start on this new but very important stage of the project.
