Rolling in on the overnight bus last night, I wiped the glass on the sopping wet window to see a mamacha seated on a curb, and I couldn’t help but smile. I’d been gone from the Central Andean town of Ayacucho for about a week, and I had already begun to miss seeing the local indigenous women. The women don traditional skirts and arrange their long black hair, parted in the middle, in braids that hang long down their backs. In the more rural Andean communities around Ayacucho, even Spanish takes a backseat to the indigenous language of Quechua.
The image encapsulated my experience as a Kiva Fellow in Ayacucho; I am in a culture so incredibly foreign from my own, but with a people more beautiful and hardworking than I could have imagined. As I interview women at FINCA Peru, Kiva’s partner microfinance institution in Ayacucho, they are often breastfeeding and tending to their children. It is a classic image of the perpetual struggle women around the world face as they try to balance it all.
Interviewing a few of FINCA Peru’s Kiva borrowers in Ayacucho.
What a beautiful thing it is to live in a part of our world where its people have been succeeding in the battle to preserve their culture while climbing out of poverty. What extraordinary proof that the Kiva Fellows Program, and volunteering in general, is just as much about personal development as it is about growing the communities we work with.
I am thrilled to be blogging with Idealist.org and look forward to comments from readers as well as posts from other contributors. Viva la Vida Idealist!
Latest posts by suzypm
- Redemption for Our Hearts, for Haiti - January 28th, 2010
- 33 Tips from Kiva Fellows in Latin America - December 2nd, 2009
- The Biggest Mistake Volunteers Make - October 30th, 2009
- Amazon Burning: Blog Action Day 2009 - October 15th, 2009
- So You Spin the Globe... - October 2nd, 2009
- When Boredom Attacks - September 25th, 2009
- Ignorance is Bliss - September 18th, 2009
- The Harder Days - August 28th, 2009
- For the Best Fruit, You Gotta Go Out on a Limb - August 14th, 2009
