Journey to Pachacamac

Pachacamac is a city outside of Lima. The city itself is not one of wealth, which is what led the exchange students there. Specifically, we were headed to a school so that we could plant trees and later we would head into the city center to give out wheelchairs. While our time at the school was fairly brief, it was certainly an overwhelming experience. We started off by introducing ourselves and singing each national anthem. After this we sang the Peruvian national anthem with the students (in typical Peruvian fashion). Once we were all done singing, the exchange students watched a gymnastics routine of sorts that the students had prepared for us. While it was fairly simple, it was obvious that the students had spent a lot of time working and practicing. Moments of the routine were difficult to watch, as the boys were tumbling and jumping over each other. Another performance was done by young girls in polka dotted skirts. They pranced around shaking their little hips. The final performance of the students was a traditional dance in which the women have ropes and make sorts of bird calls (I don’t know how else to describe them) while the men prance around. After the students were done performing, if was the exchange students’ turn. We performed one dance routine that we had prepared for the night of talents. We were originally going to perform more, but we couldn’t get the audio to work. Once all the performances had been concluded, the exchange students were given food prepared by the students and people from the town. At first it was small chocolate snacks, but it quickly evolved into bigger meals of chicken, noodles, and beans. While I was eating with Gracie (USA) and Els (The Netherlands) and I began talking with a girl who had a deck of cards. Before I knew it, we were playing a card game, pretty soon after that, we had a small crowd of children playing or watching us play. Only a small amount of time had passed before we were told we had to stop playing. We all thought we were leaving, so I headed toward the bus. Turns out we weren’t, we were simply beginning to plant the trees. I never got to planting a tree however, as around this time all of the students began swarming the exchange students wanting us to sign things. I signed papers, games, school uniforms, ties, jackets, arms, and hands. I took pictures with people, with my flag, and even just posed so that someone could have my poster. It was so overwhelming not only to have swarms of kids desperately trying to get you to sign something or to take a photo, but crazy to think about. I have yet to do something spectacular with my life, yet these kids acted like we were superstars. All because we were from a different country. Eventually we were done planting the trees, taking photos and signing things, so we all said goodbyes to the children that we would never see again. 

The next stop on our agenda was to go to the city center and give out some wheelchairs. After the assembly and the handing out of the wheelchairs, I met a baby. Now this might not sound that abnormal, but this baby was the happiest baby I have ever met. She was very small, but able to sit up and hold her head (which was covered in thick black hair). She smiled and laughed when you talked to her, and beamed when you kissed her little cheeks. She also happened to be an orphan. It’s been a while since the Pachamac trip, and I still think about this little happy baby. But after holding her for a little bit, we all had to leave the little nugget to her caretaker and board the buses. We weren’t headed home however, we had one final stop for the day. What else would we do but see another ruin? This particular ruin was huge. We quickly toured it, made it to the top of the giant hill, took some pictures, and then headed back to buses. Everyone was exhausted and wanted to make it back to Lima so that we didn’t all get stuck in horrible traffic.