Visiting Juan Carlos

    Juan Carlos and his mother live just up the hillside in the Patacancha valley at a place called Mores, about five kilometres from Ollantaytambo. Juan Carlos has autism (undiagnosed but obvious to anyone with experience in autism classrooms) and Downs syndrome. The Kiya Survivors discovered his presence and have been working with his mother to get him ready to attend school a couple of days a week. They visit with supplies of milk and soy/kiwicha flour, and they've built a little toilet to get him trained in how to use one - he used to be dressed in skirts and relieve himself wherever he felt like it. The mom and any other family members who were there would go up into the fields to do their business, but now they all use the new toilet.

    Yordi Angles Garcia Usca, Juan Carlos' nephew, is a handsome young man of twelve and in grade six; he lives with his grandmother because his mother has a new husband who doesn't want him, if I understood that correctly. Iris the social worker took some simple school supplies and books for him, and handed out toothbrushes.  A female cousin was also visiting today. Mariane and Thomas from Tampa, who were staying at the lodge for a couple of days, had given us some clothes that their son Calvin had outgrown, and some of those were the perfect size for Yordi, who was very grateful to get them. I believe the rest will go to other Kiya children at the disabilities school.

    The family cooks in a small hut that is built on the foundation of an old Inca or pre-Inca fort, and they farm terraces with rock walls.  The walls are overgrown and falling down, and a little difficult to distinguish. They have a second building closer to the road which has a board floor and two newer beds for sleeping, as well as farming equipment and sacks of produce that the Mom, who is about fifty, takes to market in town once a week. She has ducks, a house full of guinea pigs, and two sheep up the hill that she gathers wool from. She spins and dyes the wool with natural dyes, and probably weaves with it also.

    The washroom is rudimentary, but has a water source for flushing and cleaning, and a covered septic drain. Plastic pipe takes water to a shower head as well. Cold water, of course, and not potable. The water coming from the irrigation ditch, which is where they used to hike to get their water, and is merely strained of larger debris by a plastic pop bottle with holes in it that has to be replaced on a regular basis. 

    I had a short discussion with Miguel and Julia about how easy it would be to build a covered concrete capture and settling tank, or even a wood board one lined with plastic sheeting.   There's a natural three-sided hollow in the hill that's the perfect size already, right under the pipe.  They could scoop or pipe the clear water off the top and filter it through a $30 ceramic filter to provide clean drinking water to the family, so they wouldn't have to bring their drinking water in, and wouldn't have to waste hard-to-gather fuel on boiling water, assuming they actually boil their drinking water.  

    The final step before ingesting that water would be to let it sit in the sun in clear plastic bottles for 6 to 48 hours depending on what you're trying to kill and the weather conditions, in the concave valleys of the bright galvanized corrugated roof panels they've put over the new toilet, to kill any remaining micro-organisms, molds and fungus. Ultraviolet light is used in high end purification systems to kill bacteria and micro-organisms, and the UV levels up here are the some of the highest in the world.

    We discussed adding black piping, a black vinyl solar shower bag, a black five gallon plastic can, or even just large plastic bottles painted black, to have passive solar heated shower water. The water is all gravity fed, so there's no need for pumps of any kind.  It's just a question of adding a bit more tubing and some valves.

    Iris tried to visit a second home on the way back, but they were not at home. We got home in time for lunch, and then I spent the early afternoon editing and captioning my photos and writing this blog entry, most of which also doubles as a report for Alan Harman of the Alma Foundation. 

    Back at the lodge, Gemma taught me something.  She's been working on adding higher resolution photos to Booking.com, where the lodge gets at least 20% of their bookings. She's managed to increase the lodge's rating with Booking.com from 67% to 100%, after working at it over the past week, and that translates into being presented to customers at a higher level on the website. Expedia.com accounts for 30%.  Agencies only book one night at a time, and direct bookings account for the other 50%. They don't seem to get any business from three others that they have to continually monitor anyway - Hostelworld, Hostelbookers, and Despegar - probably because Apu Lodge is priced higher than hostel-seekers are looking for, so they'll be dropping those services. All good to know, in case we want to buy our own lodge some day and market it on the internet.

    A few days ago I made a photo album of The Doors of Ollantaytambo. This morning, in a fit of whimsy, I took photos of dogs top create another photo album: The Dogs of Ollantaytambo. I took some other random shots around town, and of the school.  The new term was supposed to start at the beginning of March, but as we were warned before we even came to South America, there are an inordinate number of days when the children are not in school for one reason or another - religious days, fiestas, teacher inservices, strikes, contract signings - making it difficult to volunteer in schools here...this time, after only two days, the teachers all went away for a whole week of "inservice", and they're only back today - but the kids were not required to sit in the classrooms and learn anything to make up for the time they'd missed; instead, it was a "fiesta" day to celebrate the return of the teachers. Am I impressed? Not so much...no wonder countries like this have such a hard time pulling themselves up to First World standards.

    The bakery here is interesting. It's a community oven. The baker has dibs in the morning, builds the fire and spends the morning baking up batches of fresh, flat little buns about the shape of small cow patties.  People from all over the village step inside to buy the fresh buns at about 6 1/2 cents each until they run out.  After that anyone else may go in and use the oven to bake a cake, or whatever else they desire. However, today the baker decided to take the day off and go to Cusco, with no warning, no notice.  The consequence is no fresh bread, for residents or tourist guests at the many accommodation homes throughout the town.  There's no oven at Apu Lodge to whip up some biscuits or bread, because Louise took the good stove to her house - we only have a tiny little two burner propane stove, good for frying eggs and making soup.  How lucky it is that we have no guests this morning!

Next diary entry: Kiya Survivors