Home visits

While in Pigulca this week, Mike and I visited almost all of the houses of the community. Gregorio, the community president accompanied us on most of the visits and often acted as translator. We did a survey which our team mate, Rick Aschmann, translated into Quichua for me. We were asking about school, health, financial and agricultural information. Most people were more than willing to visit with us. My funniest question was supposed to be whether they owned any kind of vehicle. However, in Quichua it comes out sounding more like, "Do you have a car?" And then, "What type of car do you have? an auto, truck, bicycle, cart, other." Most people laughed, though many families in the community have at least one bicycle. This picture is of the Arellana family, two sisters and a brother and their children. There are three houses close together, and each has a field that they plant.

We really enjoyed getting to talk with community members, and they seemed to be very open with us. Segundo, our Quichua team member was with us on Monday and Tuesday. He said that he has been in lots of communities, and this one seems very open to us. He related that in other communities the people will maintain a distance and sort of stare. In the case of Pigulca, people always come out to talk to us, and if we are near the community house, they come over to see what we are doing. A couple of times when we did not have anything planned, we just went out to talk to people. On Tuesday morning, we did not find the person we were looking for at home, but an older woman was walking down the road. We asked what she was doing, and she said they were planting a field. Since we did not have another plan, we went with her to watch what she was doing. We enjoyed sitting in the shade of a tree watching her and her grandchildren plant. They planted in pairs- one person with a stick making a hole and dropping corn into the hole while the other person drops in bean seeds. Then, the person with the stick tamps down the dirt with their heel. I went down into the field to follow along, but they walked along planting faster than I could follow!