Thursday, June 2. Today was dedicated to learning more about the history and lives of African descendants in Peru. We made a sad but insightful visit to a former slave plantation that grew sugar cane and later cotton, a crop that is still grown in the fields around…
Thursday, June 1. We took a 2-day field trip to a small community of Afro-Peruvians, descendants of the slave trade that had existed in Peru, just as it had in the U.S. A four-hour ride south of Lima, in the small community of El Carmen, we were warmly…
Saturday, May 27. Before heading out of new Caral to see the ruins of the 5,000-year-old Caral, we walked to the health center to learn about medical care in small towns (pop. 1,200) like this. Because of the limited services the health post could offer, an ambulance…
Friday, May 26. Today was part of a two-day field trip visiting two locations with a shared name but separated by 5,000 years of history. A five-hour bus ride took us past seemingly endless mountains of arid sand and stone, punctuated occasionally by lush, green valleys made possible by…
Tuesday-Thursday, May 23-25. This week included two afternoon field trips to study the history of art in Peru and the many, but lesser-known, indigenous cultures that preceded the Incas. And, as usual, the week included lectures and quizzes that, although not as picture-friendly as field trips, form an…
Saturday, May 20. On Saturday morning we had our main activity, working in bio-huertas, or urban gardens, where those in surrounding low-income neighborhoods use vacant lots to grow fruit and vegetables. A video, From the Earth to the Pot, describes several bio-huertas in Lima, including…
Friday, May 19. We spent Friday and Saturday in the Cono Sur, the southern region of Lima that, like the area we visited on Friday of last week, saw explosive growth in recent decades from massive influxes of people from the rural highlands. Most residents of Lima live in…
Wednesday, May 17 We have all seen stores like Ten Thousand Villages that sell artisan crafts from abroad, but this week students learned what it means to buy those handicrafts via fair trade principles, meet some of the artists that make the crafts, and try their hand at being artisans. The organization…
Friday, May 12. Today we drove 25 miles north to Puente Piedra, an area more typical of where most people live in this sprawling capital city of 10 million. The outer regions of Lima, known as the conos, didn’t exist 50 years ago when the population of Lima was…
Wednesday, May 10 In the center of very urban Lima we visited Cantagallo, a tiny part of the Amazon jungle that lives in the hearts of a few hundred indigenous Shipibo people, from the far eastern side of Peru, who have settled here. Their language – Shipibo –…
