Puerto Alegria

Puerto Alegria on Google Maps

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I did a little searching on Google Maps and was happy to find Puerto Alegria, the SU boys home I am currently working at, on the map!

The site is located on the bank of the Itaya River, and between 20-45 minutes from Iquitos (depending on the speed of your boat). If you drag the map and follow the river up you will reach Iquitos, which is the closest city to the site. The very first clearing past Puerto Alegria on the way to Iquitos is where the boys go to school.

The buildings around the blue tack are part of the boy’s program. The large one in the middle is the dining room, those on either side of the dining room are bedrooms for the boys, and the third building that is closest to the river is the house parents’, Gene and Patty, home. Of course, each site comes with the mandatory soccer field, which is the light tan square between the buildings and river.


See Puerto Alegria in a larger map

23 mosquito bites and counting…

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I have finally made it to the jungle – to Puerto Alegria and the city of Iquitos!

Instead of traveling between all the Girasoles homes with different work teams as I did last year, it was decided to send three site coordinators to the three  SU sites where most of the work teams will be visiting – Kusi, Cusco and Puerto Alegria. Due to differing schedules and me wanting/needing to travel with the group from Dearborn, I was delayed in making it up to Puerto Alegria until last Monday when I arrived with a team from Philadelphia.

The Puerto Alegria site is 40 minutes from the city of Iquitos down the Itaya River. Because we are so far out from the city, there is no constant electricity (the generator is turned on every night around dinner and runs until 10pm), cell phone service is pretty low and all our water comes from the river. It shall be a test in keeping myself busy and a very slow lifestyle!

There are approximately 37 boys at the home in Puerto Alegria that live with the house parents Gene and Patty, and their two children Kanny and Josue. When the boys are not in school, they entertain themselves with games, soccer, swimming in the river and playing soccer.

Since we are in the Amazon jungle, the weather is mostly hot and humid, with lots of rain. Yesterday alone it rained over 5 times throughout the day, which made for an interesting and muddy afternoon soccer game!

Not only is it hot, there are tons of mosquitos, cockroaches and every other type of bug possible. Thankfully, I only ever see the mosquitos around dusk time, and the cucarachas only at night. Despite this, I have still have plenty of mosquito bites!

Since I´ll be here in Puerto Alegria for the next 6 weeks, I´ll have plenty of time to get to know the Girasoles boys, Gene and Patty, the three educators that live at Puerto Alegria and assist Gene and Patty with the boys and a little bit of the city of Iquitos.

36 hours: 5 buses, 2 boats, 1 airplane and very little sleep

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In the past 36 hours, I used almost every form of transportation possible in Peru. Short of riding a train, I traveled down from the Casa Girasoles Kusi home nearby Yungay/Huaraz, to Lima and then up to Iquitos to the Casa Girasoles Puerto Alegria home – all in 36 hours.

The long day started Saturday morning in Kusi. My Scottish team, which was a school group from Kyle Academy in Ayr, Scotland, spent Saturday morning making hundreds of adobe bricks and preparing to depart Kusi later that day. Midday, they broke from working to participate in the traditional Pachamanca meal that ends each week with work teams. Pachamanca is a delicious meal that is cooked in the ground. The fire starts at 4am the morning of the meal and food prepared and wrapped in banana leaves are dropped into the pit to cook on the hot coals for 1 hour. The pachamanca is traditionally followed by the Peruvian vs. American/Scottish soccer game, where Peru always wins.

Around 5pm, we boarded two combis (which are Peruvian minivan taxis) to head down to Yungay, to meet our bus fletado (private bus, like a Greyhound), which would drive through the night and take us directly to the Lima airport for us to meet our 4am flight to Iquitos. Typically the trip between Yungay and Lima takes 8 or 9 hours, depending on how many stops you make and how fast the driver takes on the winding mountainous roads.

Miraculously, it only took 7 hours for us to descend from the Andes into Callao and the Lima airport. This meant we arrived at the airport at a prompt midnight, four hours before our flight was supposed to depart! Thankfully there was no line at the LAN counters and we were able to check our belongings without much hassle. By 12:30 we headed upstairs to the restaurants and stores. All that was left to do was wait for our 4:35am flight.

We proceeded downstairs to the domestic departure waiting room, where we were told that there was bad weather (which means extreme rain) in Iquitos and the flight would be delayed 1 hour. After 20 minutes, the flight was delayed yet again for another hour. Surprisingly the team of students was unusually upbeat and having a grand time talking back and forth, watching One Tree Hill (apparently it’s quite popular among some of them), and playing mind/card tricks with their teachers.

We finally made it out of Lima around 6:30 in the morning, two hours after our original flying time. You would think that after this ordeal we would have easy travels the rest of the way to Puerto Alegria.

Not quite.

Once we arrived in Iquitos, we met an English couple that would accompany us during the day in Iquitos and few days at the Casa Girasoles home in Puerto Alegria. Our first stop in Iquitos was to drive 1.5 hours to the port of Nauta, where we would meet up with a Scottish medical work team that was heading out on the Amazon Hope 2 for ten days. One of SU’s six ministries is a medical mission, which takes place primarily at a clinic in Belen (the slum neighborhood of Iquitos), and on two boats the organization owns, the Amazon Hope 1 and Amazon Hope 2.

Before we even reached Nauta, the bus that we were traveling on managed to overheat – from a mixture of the long distance, extreme heat in Iquitos, many hills we climbed, and old machinery – causing us to switch buses and join the medical team that was traveling ahead of us. Finally, we made it to Nauta.

The boat, which has capacity for the 10 medical volunteers, a staff of Peruvian doctors, and ship crew, departed Nauta and took us on a 45-minute journey down the river. The scenery was beautiful, and seemed very exciting to travel down one of the Amazon tributaries for ten days.

After Nauta, we returned to Iquitos (in a bus that didn’t overheat) to have lunch at the traditional Ari’s Burgers – one of the only gringo (a name for a white person, non-Peruvian) friendly restaurants in Iquitos. By this time we were all exhausted, hungry, and hot from the hot and humid weather. A cold water and frozen lemonade were desperately needed.

Following Ari’s we re-boarded the bus to take us to the port where we would meet the boat owned by Puerto Alegria. From this port, we made the 45-minute journey down the River Itaya to the Casa Girasoles home in Puerto Alegria.

36 hours with 1 plane, 5 buses, 2 boats and we finally made it.

SU Background

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Here’s a little background information about the non-profit I am working with while in Peru. The majority of my time is spent within the Programa Girasoles abandoned boys program, working as a translator and guide for visiting work teams from the United States and United Kingdom.

SU Background

Scripture Union is involved in six different ministries in Peru:

– the publication of Bible reading aids, working with church leaders
– work with the hearing impaired, penetrating families who see their children as God’s curse
– a growing schools work, where staff teach Christian values in public schools
– a full camping program for children on the Pacific coast, high in the Andes and deep in the jungle
– an innovative medical outreach located in the Amazon Basin
– a unique ministry to abandoned boys, known as Programa Girasoles, where 40 abandoned boys live with a family in a Casa Girasoles.

In addition, to these six ministries, Scripture Union has 6 worksites available to work teams from all over the world. Each site is home to a Casa Girasoles (a home for abandoned boys), and has plenty of work to do.

Scripture Union Sites

Kawai
Started in 1978, Kawai is the Pacific beach campsite and home for abandoned boys, located approximately 1.5 hours south of Lima.

In Kawai, SU is building beach condos to rent as part of their income generating projects, which enable the organization to become more self-supporting. At present, Scripture Union covers 72% of its budget through income generating projects.

Groups that visit Kawai interact with the 30 boys and their house parents, Raul and Rosa, and since they visit during the winter, they have full run of the campsite.

Kimo
To reach this high jungle campsite, groups travel 8 hours by bus from the desert over the Andes (at approximately 16,000 ft.) and down to the mountainous jungle area.

To reach Kimo, a hand pulled cable car shuttles people across the torrent Chanchamayo River, 6-8 people at a time. Cabins built with palm leaf roofs make the perfect place to rest. There is a lake to swim in, trails that lead to waterfalls, and plenty of work to be done. A new home for abandoned boys is being built in Kimo, which is expected to be completed during 2010. Currently, two of our older boys from Puerto Alegria live in Kimo, where they have trained as carpenters and are now pursuing other studies in town.

Kusi (Quechua for Joy)
Kusi is nestled high in the Peruvian Andes nearby the town of Yungay, a 9 hour bus ride from Lima.

Currently, Scripture Union has been given the privilege of supervising an elementary school for over 100 children from the nearby area. One of its kind, this school is available for the poorer families of the area and is financed by the Peruvian government, but administered by SU Peru. Groups have the opportunity to visit the school and lead songs and games one morning they are in Kusi.

There are currently 43 boys living in the Casa Girasoles with the house parents Angel and his wife Rosa.

Work teams make adobe bricks to help create the little village of Kusi. Plans have been made to include a city square with all the necessary buildings around it – chapel, city hall, school, stores and homes.

Puerto Alegria (Port of Happiness)
Our Amazon site is an hour away from Iquitos in the Amazon River basin. Work teams stay in a dormitory setting with a bunk bed in each room. The 42 boys who live in Puerto Alegria eat their meals with teams, and go to school in the mornings just a few hundred yards away.

Puerto Alegria is the most rustic site still since there is no electricity. There is, however, a generator and, therefore, you have lights in the evenings when needed. The Casa Girasoles house parents are Gene and Patty.

In Puerto Alegria, we are building a new campsite for schools and churches and to generate money for the program. It is all on the same property where the teams stay.

Each week a day is arranged to travel into Iquitos where Scripture Union has a medical clinic and an outreach program for semi-abandoned boys. Work teams visit the market area of Belen and see poverty in a way that most visitors have never seen.

Valle Sagrado (Cusco)
Live the splendor of the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, recently voted one of seven modern wonders of the world.

Days are spent building the Casa Girasoles Valle Sagrado which is located 1 hour outside of Cusco, and 15 minutes from Urubamba. Work teams help make adobe bricks to expand the home. There are 40 boys at the Casa Girasoles, and the house parents are Hector and Maritza,

Many teams spend a day traveling through the Sacred Valley on a one-of-a-kind train ride to the lost city of the Incas. The very core of Scripture Union and the very center of the Inca Empire (Cusco means navel or center of the universe) join hands in the wonderfully alive and remote southern Andes to bring an experience of a lifetime.

Ica
Inaugurated in January 2008 as the Casa Girasoles Ica, this site is located in the desert city of Ica, approximately 4 hours south of Lima. Work teams stay on site with the 42 boys that live at the home. The house parents in Ica are Augusto and Nancy.

Since Ica is located in the desert, there is very little water for cooking, drinking and cleaning. One afternoon during a week, work teams distribute water to the surrounding areas. For 80 soles, teams purchase 1000 liters of water that can help many families that can’t afford to purchase clean water.

Lima (Chosica)
At the heart of the entire program is our Centro Girasoles that is located in Lima’s downtown historical district. At the end of July, this program along with the abandoned boys and offices will be moved to a location 45 minutes outside of the city of Lima in Chosica.