So, it took us all day to get there. Wended our way up, up, up and ended up in this town high up (2,260 metres above sea level). It's on the edge of a lake, and one family of our friends live there. They actually come from an area even higher up (4,000 metres above sea level), and made the move to this city. So they're pretty isolated, and would get a visit from the workers maybe four times a year. They have a little farm that they go out to each day, that's their livelihood.
The family that lives at Pomacochas. Just the parents professing.
The real old Spanish-style Catholic churches. Quite different to the Argentinian ones.
The motorbike taxis at Pomacochas, all lined up waiting for customers. They are a dime a dozen and a great way to get from A to B very quickly. These don't exist anywhere in Argentina, we just have to walk! I noticed that they decorate them all differently according to the region. These had doors on them, obviously due to the cold weather at high altitude.
I think I was trying to warm up here in the weak sunshine! It was so cold in the morning, we had taken a walk around the lake. Hope you all like my Peruvian fashions....
This bed is where Palmira and I slept that night... It is actually in the middle of the "lounge". That little open door goes out onto the street, and also to the rest of the house. You have to go a few steps along the street, and then turn down into the rest of the house. The other bedrooms go off the lounge, so obviously we had the Bible study using our bed as a sofa, then waited till all had gone to bed, and then retired ourselves. The blankets are all as heavy as lead, woven out of their sheep's wool.
This is the other part of the house that you go down from the street entry. It's the back yard. The little brick wall is one side of the toilet and shower. Built for Peruvians...if I stood up at full height I think my head came over the top!! (It doesn't yet have a roof apart from the corrugated iron overhead.
These photos are by no means to demean the people...this is all they know, and they open their homes to us with such gladness! But just so you get an idea of what is their normal! I have never come across anything like this in Argentina by the way. This is how a lot of the native Peruvian workers have grown up.
This is how we often travel. They are loading my backpack up onto the roof. Then we pile in and once it fills up we take off.
These are pictures I snapped out the window of what kind of country we were passing through. It's low altitude there, warm climate. Top picture is a school.
The combi just stops where it pleases. Here the driver got out to get a bunch of bananas.
Next port of call, a city called Soritor. It's so unphotogenic I don't have any photos of it. This couple are some of our friends that live there.
The streets of Soritor are all like this.
Sitting outside in the evening...no, it's not cold by any means. Very hot. But this blanket was to keep the bugs off me! Rather be hot than bitten.
This is an intriguing tree that was in that family's back yard. Looks like an apple, but turns into that flower.
This is where your coffee comes from !! It's drying in the sun/air then sold. It really smells fermented at this stage. When a shower comes over, they rush out to cover it up.
Palmira buying fruit at the local market at Soritor. This is how food buying is done in these outlying areas. No big supermarkets, but rather a covered-in area where everyone sells their wares, ranging from fruit and produce and meat, to other products like cleaning products, dairy etc. All the fruit and veg has to undergo this very complex process of washing once you get it home. I thought longingly back to Argentina and the ease of opening the tap and having safe drinking water come out! In Peru we had to first wash everything in tap water to get the dirt off, then another wash in water with chlorine, then a third wash in boiled water. Then and only then can you put it away to be consumed. Phew!
The butcher!
I don't know why I never took a picture of the little bach that we lived in for the days we stayed in that town. I wouldn't have been able to capture the dust that covered every single thing when we arrived!! Anyway, we moved on after doing the visits and meetings there. Travelled half a day, winding through little villages and arrived to where this dear lady doña Orfelia lives. She is the only one professing there. Here she is with two of her granddaughters, both of whom came in to be in the meetings we had with her. She has a husband who isn't worth much! She is alone each Sunday...
This is the view of the little village looking out of our bedroom onto the street.
I couldn't get the whole perspective of this stairway. The little ledge on the right of the photo is actually where the floor ends, then there is that space, and the staircase. At the bottom of the staircase is the doorway that you see in the next photo.
So out that doorway is a tap that is the bathroom. ie shower and laundry. You can just make out a gutter going down the middle of the floor....that's where all your waste water goes.
...and behind the curtain is the toilet!! The front door is to the left of the photo, and I was standing beside the dining area to take the picture... no-one stays too long in there I daresay. I sure didn't!!
We walked along the road one day to where there is a little waterfall
Moving on...
Travelled another few hundred kms to a city called Tarapoto. A bustling, teeming city right in the middle of the jungle. Those motorbike taxis buzzing all over the place, hot, humid. Even though there is copious rainfall, the water was always off until about 6pm, so we had to leave a drum under the shower, turn on the tap so that it would catch the water when it came through the pipes.
Just a handful of professing people there, a few not so hearty, a few contacts from years gone by. It was interesting to go back there as I had travelled there in 1998 before I started in the work.
Matilda and her sister Ana. Matilda owns the extensive home where we stayed, they have the Sun am mtg, and special mtgs and conventions here. The living room is a big room with three walls and the fourth being open to the back yard. When the rain was really torrential we had to move the lounge suite to stop it getting splashed from the spouting!
"Bella" the Sharpei...means Beauty
The houses are often funny split-level styles. Staircases everywhere leading from room to room.
This old man Theophilus, was very sick. He had been professing but kind of lost out/discouraged or something. His son Lorenzo beside him is so friendly and helpful, comes to all the meetings when he's around, would take us on his motorbike taxi... Lorenzo told us how he used to go and meet the workers when they walked up to their mountain village. He was probably 14 or younger, would leave early in the morning with the packhorse and food, and go and meet the workers who had by then been walking for a few days. They'd meet and he'd give them lunch and put their packs on the horse, and they'd walk back together, up over a fairly high mountain. So sad to think that today he is just in "neutral" I suppose you'd say! Not a bad man but not actively in fellowship. A few years ago the brother workers looked him up in the village where he is living and since then he's been back in touch. Hopefully one day he feels his need... I'll not forget the night he was taking us back from visiting some contacts. There had been a cold snap and the wind was pretty fresh. We thought he'd just take us straight home, but he stopped off at a restaurant and bought the three of us plates of yummy hot soup.
This is where don Theophilus lives. You can see the mountains behind this jungle city.
View from our bedroom window!!
Now, came a long anticipated trip. We were going to go and visit Antonio Delgado, the ex-terrorist. He and his wife have been living in this region ever since he got out of the group and had to live with protection. Now they have a little house along the main highway going further into the jungle. They have had contact with the workers off and on over the years, she has been more constant really than him, especially during those years when he was still getting out of the terrorists.
The funny, jagged mountains on the way
Antonio's house
Antonio and his wife Doraliza. They were so happy to see us.
Antonio telling us a bit of his story...
He told me of that night he was hiding up in the mountains, in a cave. He was so desperate, he wanted out of the terrorists, but there seemed to be no way. He even had contemplated taking his life, he was so miserable. But it seemed so impossible to leave, he was in up to his head. He wasn't a leader, but he had a lot of authority, and more than that he KNEW a lot. So this night in the cave, he prayed to God, and asked him to give him a way out, and then he would served him for the rest of his life. He later slept, and had a dream. In his dream, a big rock came away from the mountain-side, and was rolling toward him. It was going faster and faster and was coming straight toward him. At the last minute it avoided him and carried on down the mountain. As he watched, when it got to the bottom, it hit water that splashed up high and he marvelled at this pure, crystalline water, wondering where it came from! In the small hours of the morning, his father came (he knew where he was hidden), and gave him the message: The government is offering you an amnesty. If you give yourself up and show them where all the arms are hidden, they won't do anything to you. The army is there in the village, waiting for you to give yourself up. Imagine...his way of escape! It was so incredible. His father left, and as I mentioned beforehand, the plaza was full of soldiers, and Antonio's mother would call out, up the mountainside, for him to give himself up. Eventually, he came out, and it must have been a very dramatic scene. And it is another story altogether when he led them to the arms cache... He then spent the next few years going around the country identifying the different terrorist leaders. His testimony against them was crucial for convicting them. If he said he didn't know them, they would go free. He managed to help a few of his friends from the village by saying he forced them to join, when in fact he didn't. But that got them off free (they were not leaders, just joined up as he did), and to this day they are grateful to him for that. He was in great danger during these years of course, but had protection from the army, and they transferred him and his family to a different part of the country.
His dear wife had a very hard life during those years. When he joined the terrorists, she was left with the children (he was hiding out in the jungle). She had to deal with the police and military turning up at the house, asking where he was...then when he turned himself in and was going around the countryside identifying the leaders... She has kept herself alive spiritually somehow.
Antonio told of how his daughter found her little girl kneeling and praying beside her bed one day recently. This touched his heart so much, and he feels so condemned now for the wasted years and the opportunities lost for his own children. This seems to have stirred him up, so hopefully it might make him move. He said it's 20 years since he made that promise to God that night of the dream, that if He would give him an escape, he'd serve Him for the rest of his life. He said "God has been faithful and kept his part, now it's time I kept mine". He recounted how desperate he had been searching for truth, praying while out working in the fields, and the day he saw the workers sitting at an acquaintances table having a meeting, he just knew that they were of God. He has never lost that utter conviction of God's way. It's nice to know that he and his wife had been reading together every day. It would be such a joy to so many people if this man is restored back to fellowship...all the people that he himself led to truth.
Picking coconuts in the back yard of Antonio's.
Hacking in to the coconuts...
And hoeing in!
Beautiful moth on the curtain
This is how we wait for the public transport to the next city...it is just too hot to wait out in the sun, so we park our packs there and cross the road again and wait in the shade until something comes along! The visit we had with this couple was one of the highlights of my time in Peru! Gives you hope for people who have been outside of fellowship for many years.
We were travelling on to the final city of our tour. Yurimaguas. The entry way to the Amazon jungle, hot, hot, hot. Again no water sometimes for days. These big shiny palms line the highway.
We went to visit two families in this city. This is Jorge Quispe and his family. His sister Susana is in the work, and we were companions in Argentina in 2018. Neither he nor his wife are in fellowship with us, but make us very welcome and we stayed the two nights in their home.
Jorge is a teacher, and his wife runs a general store which has expanded and takes up a good two thirds of their home. Their living quarters is in the back part.
The elderly lady is doña Juanita who was staying with her son here. Here she is sleeping her siesta in the hammock
It was so, so hot and humid here. It's the gateway to the Amazon, and the big Amazon city of Iquitos. But not much more in between except jungle and big rivers. It was interesting to go down to the river and see all the activity. These rivers are HUGE with a massive volume of water going down them.
Sorry this picture is blurry, but I didn't want to attract any more attention by openly taking the photo! These men were offloading those planks from the truck and floating them out to the boat that was waiting further out!! When it floods they have to work in water like this.
At the market...this lady is selling ANTS. The little black piles are handfuls of them. They are really big critters, fried and then you peel the shell off and eat the body! Soft and white and sweetish...ugh.
But I think these wriggling huhu grub things were much worse!!
This is the cooked huhu grubs! Double ugh!
note the kids in the background, one doing schoolwork, the others playing with a monkey. The food is cooked banana.
note the hog-tied chook
These are the kind of roads we travelled on around this region. Sometimes had to cross mountainous areas to get into the jungle. You can see what it will be like during torrential rain. Ahead is one landslip recently cleared. I saw boulders the size of mini-vans that had fallen in the last deluge...scary to be on the road then.
These rocks have come down from up higher. This creek had washed over the road when we passed.
Those were small specimens...but even so imagine it thundering down from overhead!!
Took this pic out the combo window, had been a massive landslide
