Day Fifteen: James Lee interviews Anco Pancha leader

July 26, 2010 -- Independence Day

Seeing Ghosts

Today I had the opportunity to meet with a leader of Anco Pancha, the community we are working in. Julia Blank is the vice president of the community. Anco Pacha is guided by five leaders in total. Ms. Blank’s duties include organizing labor, acting as a representative of the town, and overseeing the signings of official documents related to the town. She met us at the kitchen table of her house, with Adela Arenas translating, and a wandering chicken observing us in the corner of the room.
Physically, Ms. Blank does not impose the kind of confident charisma that Americans may be used to seeing in politicians and leaders. However, there is a certain kind of strength in her composure that strikes me as soon as I meet her. I begin with a nervous greeting in Spanish and thank her for taking the time to meet with me. As we began the interview, I resorted to using a combination of hand gestures and rudimentary Spanish, and eventually to asking the questions fully in English to Adela for translation.
I started off by asking her about the challenges facing the community. Education is obviously an issue. There is no real school in Anco Pancha. The “Pronoei” we are working in right now is essentially a community-run pre-school, not funded by the state. Local mothers act as teachers, and the classroom itself is shabby, even for Peruvian standards. There is no electricity, no heating of any kind, and very few resources. Older kids have to go to school in Ollantaytambo or Urubaumba, near-by towns. Ms. Blank herself sends her kids to school in Urubaumba. Since we work from the morning until the afternoons, we have not seen any teenagers or older kids, who are all at school.
When asked about the role of the volunteers in the community, Ms. Blank smiles in a sad, grateful way and tells us that most of the community appreciates the help. Perhaps, she goes on to say, what is even more helpful is just the act of service, rather than the fruits of service itself. We are a group that has no previous connection to Peru or to Anco Pancha. We are not from the government, and we are not an official aid group. We are just a bunch of students from all over the world that want to help without needing to help, and that fact itself may provide a spark of hope for the community that it desperately needs. Anco Pacha itself is composed of two or three different towns that were washed away in the flood, and the exact number grows each week. These towns have come to live together with only the aftermath of a calamity joining them together. Because this is the case, there is sometimes conflict and many times a lack of trust, which is another challenge that Ms. Blank will have to overcome. The community has been promised help before by volunteers such as us. However, they have often been disappointing with their lack of effort and attitude towards the town. This has lead to a severe lack of trust in volunteers. Groton, on the other hand, has been different, Ms.Blank goes on to tell us. Our conviction in our work, as well as our willingness to work side by side with the local people has been exceptional among volunteers. People have started to have faith again in their ability to improve their situation, and perhaps this is a greater help to the community than any steps or swingsets we build during our short time. At this point in the interview, Ms. Blank takes us outside to take a walk around the town.
I am seeing ghosts.
The place that Ms. Blank takes us to is an empty building in the back part of the town. It is a building that previous volunteers have worked on before. They originally intended it to be a public health center, a kind of a mini-hospital. However, they could not receive government permission to establish one here, since there is one in Ollantaytambo. Since then, there have been efforts to turn it into a Catholic Church, but for now the building stands empty and purposeless.
The scary part of it all is the clear evidence of the work done by past volunteers. The walls have been plastered and painted with what must have been a strikingly refreshing white, what is now a chipped off, dirt covered memory. There are unused tables and chairs inside, which must have been made by volunteers who imagined that they would be used every day. The doors are new, made with fine wood, and nailed shut. The only way one can look in is by a window that has no glass panel in it.
The ghosts scream out in fury.
Is this a direct reflection of what is to become of our own work? Will our brightly colored fence posts and newly made see-saws fade away into uselessness and idleness? Will we, in years and years after which we are someone else, discover that the only purpose of our hard days of work were to serve ourselves, our consuming need for self-satisfaction, and our need for conviction in something?
After the failed health center, Ms. Blank takes us around the back to a rock-filled stretch of land. This, she explains, is where she would like to have a playing ground for kids. This is her current biggest hope for the community, that youth have somewhere that they can play sports and spend time at. However, even this seemingly achievable task seems unfeasible. The land is covered with not only thousands of little rocks but big boulders. It is not even, and garbage is everywhere. The only thing separating the land from the railroad tracks that run along next to the town are a series of sharp, menacing cacti. Unused adobe bricks are piled up on the side, and chickens strut about freely.
However, Ms. Blank does not share my attitude. She says that the youth of the community will head the project themselves, as soon as vacation starts. There are already plans to level out the land and to clean it up. Her eyes gleam with confidence and conviction, and I am momentarily startled. For the first time in this trip, I have nothing, nothing at all to say.
Then, I am hearing ghosts again. This time however, they are not striking out in anger. They are the ghosts of kids shouting to one another in a soccer game, and laughing with one another. They are ghosts of the future, not the past. Groton will not be here when this project is finished or even started, but I am convinced that it will indeed be done.
The ghosts tell me so.

James Lee