Peruvian woman

We didnt have to wonder much to find this village. We were lucky this time. All the villages assigned to us were very close, a mere 15-minute drive from one another. No, the distance was no problem, but the driving was. The narrow, winding roads on the edge of the cliffs, in the middle of the desert, were scary. Even more, Carlos, the driver, seemed to be completely oblivious to the dangers. He drove fast and fearless, and every time a car was coming from the opposite direction, my heart skipped a beat. But he always managed to avoid it. I dont know how, because it seemed that there was no way for two cars to cross path on that narrow road, but he managed. So I am grateful for that.

Because I felt so close to a near-death experience, my eyes were closed most of the time. I only opened them from time to time, to admire the majectic view of the desert mountains, see the threatening vultures flying over our heards and wonder over the sporadic cactuses that grew in absolute nothingness. The desert is indeed beautiful. Gives a sense of loneliness because you cant see the end of it. It has a small element of peaceful solitude in it.



Small areas of low vegetation indicated that we were approaching. The desert melt into the "chakras", green plantation and water, where agriculture was doing better than the rest of the southern coast. As we passed miles and miles of sugar canes in the Tampo Valley, we stopped to taste the raw sugar plant and we sucked the sweet juice until our teeth hurt.



Along the Tampo river we continued our journey and arrived finally to our destination. It was the fourth village for that day and one of the busiest ones. We had arranged to meet, apart from the city officials, with the representatives of the political party of Keiko and to compensate that, we looked for a meeting with the representatives of Ollanta. It was not good to be seen only in one of the candidate's offices. It could indicate support, which was not the case. Election observers are supposed to be neutral.

Passing through the primary school, just to locate it for the following day's trip, we called the head of the ONPE (Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales). He was also in Arequipa, like all the previous ones we had tried to reach, since it was the day before the elections and they all gathered in the capital to get material. He instructed us to go to the ONPE office and talk to the personnel there. The ONPE offices that we had seen so far were indeed humble, but this one took the trophy. There was no way of suspecting that this was an office. We asked a couple of old men that were laying lazily on a bench and they assured us that, yes, we were at the right place.

We knocked on the door and entered. A very old woman attented us, and informed us that she was voluntarily hosting the ONPE staff for the pre-election period. She lead us to a small inner yard and called her guest from the top floor. The yard was like any other rural yard, things lying everywhere, chicken walking around. The plants were drying up and all the cleaning equipment was just laying there, waiting to be used. A short, plummy woman came hastily down the stairs, fixing her thick black hair as if she had just woken up.

"Que alegria verles senores!" she exclaimed with pleasure. I liked her immediately. She was radiating genuine kindness. She happily answered our procedural questions, how many party agents were trained, how many table members hadnt shown up during the first round and where there any incidents in the village that could jeopardise a fair result. As the questioning came to an end, she started talking about her life.

"Im from Cuzco", she said. "Im only here for the elections, I am a teacher and I have time now to volunteer. I working for the elections, but it is so different here from where I come from. I dont like it here, there is no water. We havent had water for three days, and Im gathering whatever I can find in a bucket to wash myself. I dont like the desert. In Cuzco we have water. But people are very poor. Look around you. This tiny place is a house of a normal person. The lady who is hosting us is not even considered poor, but look at her house and think how a poor person must live. This lady doesnt have water, she cannot take care of her plants, she cannot clean her house. Most people in this country are suffering. I raised three children on my own, my husband died. I struggled and stuggled, and when my children grew up, I didnt have money to send them to university. My daughter told me, 'mum, I want to be a teacher, I want to go to University', but I couldnt send her. With what money? How would I pay for her? Thank God she found a job looking after children, so she's doing something she loves, but she works all day long and she gets paid close to nothing. This is not the future I dreamed for my children.My heart is aching because I couldnt give education to my children. I managed to raise them, with 400 dollars a month, we lived poorly but managed to survive. But education I could not give them. So they will stay poor, they will die poor, because there is no way to escape this poverty. Without education, you will never get a good salary to survive. Thats the way it is, and I blame myself for not being able to help them.."

Tears were running down her cheek as she was speaking. I felt my heart breaking.I hadnt realised. I mean, I did see. People were poor, but they were not miserable. Their houses were small and looked abandoned, but at least they had houses. It did not strike me as tragedy. But people stuggling to make it with ridiculous salaries, having no way out of this constant struggle is not obvious suffering. They seem happy. They seem alright. And you see it, you feel it, but somehow it is not striking and it is only when a single mother starts crying because she couldnt give her children a better future that it strikes you. This is poverty.

As much beauty and excitment a trip to Peru can offer the visitor, for me, the realisation of poverty marked this experience more than anything. We drove back to Mollendo in silence and sat by the sea, watching the enormous waves of the Pacific hit the shore. It was a beautiful place. This was a beautiful country. And its people were suffering in a way almost unknown to our generations in Malta and Cyprus. But there was hope. Maybe I hadnt known poverty, but my mother surely did. Im sure her mother would identify perfectly to this Peruvian woman. My mother hadnt received any education, she was also crying to go to University. It simple wasnt possible. But things changed. And things in Peru are changing.

The face of that Peruvian woman is stuck in my mind. I dont remember her name, but I will never forget her story. And I hope that one day I will go back there, and things will be different. People will have more opportunities to make better lives. Ojala.