Bianca Kissel

Cross-Cultural Solutions

Ayacucho is a large city with 150,000 residents located in the Andes Mountains of Peru at an altitude of over 9000 ft. It is one of the poorest regions in Peru and 30% of the population lives in "extreme poverty." Because of the region's poverty, its rural location and a period in the 1980s dominated by terrorism the area receives few tourists. With few tourists I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture, the people and the problems in Ayacucho during my summer internship.

During my time in Peru and throughout my internship I had to adjust to the changing situations. I began my adventure working at a medical clinic where I hoped to learn about the major health issues in the region and then relate them to the corresponding environmental issues. I had planned to focus on water issues that affected people's health and the environment. But after my first week in Peru a national strike began that shut down the schools, the universities and the medical clinics for six weeks. This left me with little to do at the medical clinic but a lot of time to explore the environmental issues in the region. Environmentally, Ayacucho struggles with many complex issues. Beyond the center of town where the government cleans up the trash, most people just throw their trash down the mountain or burn it. The air is polluted from the trash fires and the old cars that don't have proper emissions controls. The rivers are covered in garbage and polluted with animal and human waste. But despite this mess, people in Ayacucho don't have enough money to be wasteful like we are in the United States . Everything is reused over and over again because it is too expensive to buy in excess. For this reason, per capita the people of Ayacucho produce much less trash than we do in the US but it just isn't managed properly.

In an attempt to remedy some of these issues I got involved with Red Ecologica Interinstitucional Hatun Sacha or simply Hatun Sacha which means “big tree” in Quechua (the indigenous language of the Andean people). Hatun Sacha is a non-profit organization funded by citizens of Quebec , Canada . The organization has two full time employees and a knowledgeable core group of volunteers who range from retired professors to current university students. The organization has limited funding and usually works within the public school system educating children about their environment and how they can protect it. Unfortunately, the schools were not in session because of the strike so we spent our time preparing for their return and working on other small projects such as hosting public talks about environmental issues, planting trees and evaluated the health of the main river in the city.

Every time we began a new project I was always hoping that we would reach a large audience and make a difference in the city. Instead I learned how ineffective Hatun Sacha is and how difficult it is to work with the people of Ayacucho. Hatun Sacha focuses on a small neighborhood called Picota where they hold regular talks or charlas that are usually cancelled because there is no audience. It seemed clear that we were targeting the wrong audience. These people do not have enough money to be wasteful and they did not have time to listen to us tell them about the world's environmental problems. You can't speak to them about walking instead of driving because they don't own cars and they can't afford to pay for a taxi. You can't talk to them about composting because the food and bones that are not eaten are fed to the dogs and the chickens. You can't tell them to not wash their clothes in the river because they have no running water in their houses. You can't tell them to recycle because they reuse and reuse until there is nothing left. You can't tell them not to have open fires because they don't have money to buy wood to burn. You can't tell them to turn off the lights because they don't have them. So why in the world would you talk to them about being more environmentally concerned when they aren't the ones using up the environment? We are the ones who own cars, don't compost, don't recycle, don't reuse, burn fires because it smells good in our homes, waste water in everything we do, waste electricity and come up with a million other ways to uselessly consume.

Of everything I learned about the environmental issues in Ayacucho I would always return to the fact that the World's environmental issues aren't primarily caused by the citizens of Picota but by us who can afford to be wasteful. Of course there are still many things that could be done in Ayacucho to improve the environment Most of those actions begin with infrastructure changes that will make pursuits like recycling possible. But in seeing how the people of Picota live I have come to understand how much we can improve in the United States if we consumed less and utilized our infrastructure.

Despite many of Hatun Sacha's shortcomings as an organization I did get to work on one successful beginning. We planted over a thousand tree cuttings that will hopefully develop into successful saplings that can be planted throughout the city in the spring. The trees are a type of native perennial that do not require any pesticides or fertilizers and that produces small black fruit that can be used to make jam and wine. When the saplings are planted in the spring I hope they will be a benefit to the city and be an educational opportunity for the community.

I learned so much from my summer internship in Ayacucho not only about environmental issues but also about how environmental issues are handled in a South American country like Peru . Beyond my time formally spent in my internship I also got a glimpse into the Peruvian culture and an opportunity to learn about the society as a whole. It is this overall understanding of Peru that I hope to utilize in my Senior Integrative Project. My project will evaluate the health benefits of chewing coca leaves which are used widely in the Andean culture. It will also explore the misuse of coca to produce cocaine in Peru and how the cocaine industry is impacting the country environmentally, socially, economically, politically and internationally.