Buildings and People

Earlier this year work began on a chapel for the people of Amauta A, one of the parish valleys. It was to replace a dilapidated wooden and wicker panel construction which had served as a place to gather for some years. Work has been fast and the roof is ready to be started. Money which has been donated to me in these past months will enable the roof to be a solid concrete structure and hopefully by August the community will be back in their own chapel having celebrated mass on a Saturday evening in a small nearby park - fine in the Summer months up until March but in these past few weeks an increasingly chilly experience - people start shivering severely if the homily is too long!







































Thanks to all those who have been generous to support this work, for all the fund raising gatherings which have taken place. I’m sure it will be good to see the money going to good use.







Other ongoing projects include supporting the great work being done by Consuelo, the social worker here who is involved with many families and individuals suffering the wide ranging effects of poverty. There is great work done in providing a good balanced meal for children in the parish ‘comedor’ - the Order of Malta also run another one of these lunch projects in another part of the parish. And there are plans for educational and IT projects in the parish rooms. The roof of the parish rooms are even used for a Caritas (CAFOD’s international name) project to encourage people to cultivate their own small supply of vegetables.

Some Celebrations…

‘There’s always something to celebrate’ could be the motto of Peru. The photos included with this blog include the opening of a small scale soya processing plant, hoping to bring a much needed protein supplement to the people of this area. The Rotary Club had provided the machinery involved and there was an impressive display of local music and dance to accompany the obligatory numerous speeches that are a defining feature of any ceremony here.





















Later in the same week one of the communities up on a hill celebrated its feast day - Our Lord of Justice. Certainly the celebrations began with the celebration of mass but the stacked crates of beer in the background showed that the celebrations would be continuing in a different style. Sadly alcoholism and excessive drinking all too often leads to violence and harm in Peruvian society and there can be sharp divisions between those who truly wish to celebrate a religious festival and those looking for a chance to drink to excess.



















Last Saturday a new community up in the hills celebrated four years of moving into a barren new valley - having forged their own way through a rock face. Plots of land are marked out in chalk on the bare hillside, plans are submitted to the municipality, electricity probably took some years to arrive, the dust track is constructed by the community itself. Water and drainage is still probably years in the future. Hard beginnings for this determined and committed group of people who I see from the park where we celebrate mass at 7am on a Sunday, silhouetted on the ridge of the hill with picks and shovels pushing out the boundaries of civilisation in this inhospitable place.



















Finally, we hosted a group of 12 volunteers from Ireland - some of whom helped with the construction of a chapel in the Amauta valley, some of whom went visiting with Consuelo the parish social worker. They were a great hit with the parish community and there was, of course, a party to send them on their way back to Ireland!