Monday, May 25, 2020

Quarantined, Out of Work, and Hungry


This man's "shoes" were made out of belts.
Imagine what it would be like to not know where your next meal is coming from, and trying to comfort your children as they go to bed hungry again.  None of us can even come close to knowing what that’s like, but for millions of people throughout the world, this is everyday life.

This is also the new norm for many, many people in Peru during the quarantine.

As we mentioned in our previous blog post, the quarantine here is preventing people from working.  And when you don’t work, you don’t eat.  People here who otherwise are able to feed their families fine are lacking adequate food day after day because they simply don't have the money to buy it since they're not able to work.

After we had been quarantined for 5 days, another missionary family contacted us to ask if we could help a couple families in the pueblo they used to live in with getting food.  Like so many others, the quarantine kept these families from working and so they were out of food and out of money before the week was even over. 

Robert brought them into the nearest town of Picota to take them to the market, and while he was there he noticed a number of people who were buying tiny amounts of food.  He asked them if he could help them buy more food for their families also.  After this trip, it got us starting to think about ways that we could start getting food out to so many others who were in the same predicament. 

We started making bags of common staples that we handed out to some of the poorer people in our pueblo.  Then we talked with one of the ladies that we had taken grocery shopping about other people in her pueblo who were also in need of food.  She put together a list of people and also a list of food she thought would be best to have in the bags we put together.  So the guys went back to Picota and bought food in bulk so that we could put 28 bags together.  We brought the food to her house, bagged it all up, and they called the people to come over and grab the bags.

After this, we realized that some people were getting financial help from the government but that was only people who have bank accounts, which not everyone has.  We also learned that the municipality of Picota was providing some sort of food basket for the people most in need in certain pueblos, our own pueblo being one of them.  But pueblos categorized as “rural” were not receiving these baskets. 

The bags provide enough food for a family for 5-7 days.
Knowing this, we were able to better determine the need in the different pueblos we visited.  We would ask people at the pueblo’s municipality if food baskets were being delivered from Picota.  We also asked how many people in the pueblo were not receiving any financial assistance from the government.  The people at the municipality would make up a list of those households that weren’t getting help and then we would come back a couple days later after making that number of bags (and a few extra as usually a few more people show up than what’s on the list and our contact person lets us know whether they, too, could use the help). 

Our next stop, then, was a small community of 40 families off the main road near us.  We found out that none of the families there had received any help.  So we bought more food in bulk and delivered bags out to that community, and then to another pueblo down the road from us. 

By that point, we had run out of funds to buy more food so we sent out an e-mail update to all of the people who support us on mission.  We explained what we were doing and asked for help in raising more money to keep buying food to reach other areas that hadn’t yet received any help.  We were blown away at the response!  Not only did that group help out but they also got the word out quickly to others and we immediately had more funds to visit more pueblos.  

At one of the towns we visited in our district, they said no one there needed help but they told us about pueblos up the foothills a few hours from where we live that were in need.  Although those pueblos were in our district, we had never been to them before.  We bought enough food to make over 300 bags and delivered them out to this area which consisted of 4 different pueblos.  We made a video of that trip to share with all the people who had donated and made the trip even possible.

This entire community was in need of help.
After that, we finished visiting each of the other pueblos along the Ponaza valley road that we live off of, and made more videos of most of those visits. 

There are still many more people in need in other pueblos up the foothills that we weren’t able to visit on our first trip up there.  We had plans to go back there but the travel restrictions have since become more strict and we’re not allowed to go past a certain point on the road into Picota.  So not only can we not visit those pueblos now but we also can’t go into Picota to buy more food. 

Meeting Jose on the road to transfer the food.


Luckily, our friend Jose lives near Picota and has been buying the food for us and has been allowed to meet us at one of the checkpoints (most recently, he’s been allowed all the way to our town) and the guys transfer the food from his truck to ours. 

So now at this point, we’re making a second trip to all the pueblos along the Ponaza valley road.  It’s been at least 2 weeks since we visited them last and the food that they had received has been gone for awhile. We will continue to keep bringing food to these pueblos for as long as the quarantine continues and as long as we have the funds. 

Our quarantine began on March 12th.  It was supposed to end on May 24th, but has been extended for the fifth time until June 30th.  It is shameful what the government is doing by keeping the people quarantined for so long.  The financial assistance and food baskets are temporary fixes; they only help for short periods of time.  More people are going hungry as a direct result of being quarantined than would have ever contracted the virus.  It is ironic that the purpose of the quarantine is to keep people healthy, and yet it is the quarantine that is causing so many people (here and throughout the world) to be malnourished, and for some, literally starve to death.  

As you cope with the effects of the quarantine in your own life, please remember the poor and offer up your prayers, trials, and suffering for them, and for an end to the oppressive mandates and restrictions here in Peru and around the world.