View of the city of Bagua Grande looking over the rice fields. The mountains in the back-drop are where we make our trips into to visit our friends.
Bagua is just over 400 metres above sea level, in a valley amongst high mountains. The climate is hot and sticky, lots of rice grown as well as other fruits and vegetables. Chicken is the main source of meat, tough free-range chooks!
More of Bagua
There is one church here in this city. The workers first started visiting this area of the Amazon in the mid-80s. Derek Clark and then Trevor Loechel and companions did a lot of the pioneering, Norman Nash later too. In those days there were absolutely no roads, and they walked hours, sometimes days to reach these places. They would come because someone had a relative or acquaintance somewhere, and that then led to others coming in touch. No cell phones in those days! The people that now live here in Bagua have all originated from somewhere else, little outlying towns in the wop-wops, and have latterly come to live in the city.
Scenery around Bagua, rice fields.
With Roder and Gina Mego, the elder of the church in Bagua Grande. This is the "moto", the most common form of transport in the city! Three can fit in to the seat, and luggage on the back. They are used a lot as taxis, and are cheap as chips. These don't exist in Argentina, we just walk everywhere that the bus doesn't take us, but these things make us lazy. They took us out for a drive one Sunday afternoon, so that I could see the countryside.
This is how your Whittaker's Peanut Slab starts out!! Cacao beans drying in the sun.
The moto in the front has a tub of washing on the back...
Stopping at a dairy for a drink of "Inca Kola" - one of the greatest rivals in Peru to Coke. It's not bad actually, tastes like the old soda stream flavour Creaming Soda
More rice
The Mego family - Roder and Gina and their two sons and daughter, and daughter-in-law. Lady in white t-shirt is an employee. They came from the town of Perlamayo (more on that later), a young married couple and their first chile (in red t-shirt) just born. The Catholic tradition says to baptise the baby, but Roder was very uncomfortable with that, and wanted to know in himself if that was correct. He started investigating and could find nowhere in the Bible that it says that. Right at that time, the workers were beginning to visit Perlamayo because of some relative of one of the native brothers, and through the first man that professed, Antonio Delgado, Roder met them, and recognised truth. He told us recently that when he made his choice, his desire was that all his children should one day go in the work. (At this stage none of the three have shown a need to serve God. Very respectful, and sometimes go to meetings, the girl more than the boys). But, he said, I realise that if that had happened, I would have just become proud of it, and criticised everyone whose children go astray. They own the little bach we use, and all the friends here do so much for us! I love our time with this couple.
The streets of Bagua Grande
View one from the bach
View two - from my bedroom window
The street we go down from the bach into the town
Palmira picking her way through the mud after heavy rain in the night
This is the nearby city of Jaen, ("Hy-EN) where I arrived to from Lima by plane (saved me an 18-hour bus trip). There is a pair of brothers here, but it's only an hour by car from Bagua.
The two little sisters who met me off the plane! Very cute.
Palmira buying fruit
My co Palmira Rojas is a local, from the mountain area of Olmos. She and her family heard the gospel when the first workers went up into that area, which was so lawless that not even the police would venture in there. The people of Olmos are known in Peru for being very volatile and hot-headed! All the men would go around armed, just in case! When the workers went, and the Catholics got up against them because people started to profess, the police said well those foreigners are doing what you have never been able to do...the people were changing! Palmira also has a sister in the work, Celmira. They are tough people!
Open-air shoe-repairers!
Roder draining a coconut
This is how Roder and his wife earn their living... they sell what they call "menestra" in the local market. It's a mixture of beans and pulses, which the people will buy for their meal. It entails lighting the fire at night, then they get up at 4 am to start cooking it all. They have some industrial-sized pressure cookers, and use the wood-fire as well as some gas rings. They sell most of it every day. A lot of people come into town from the mountains, to do their business and stay all day, so they go and buy that to eat.
Getting everything ready the night before.
Right, I shall publish this...to be continued!
