El Paro

It´s been a few days since I´ve checked my email, and therefore since I´ve been able to write on my blog. I´m in Cusco right now. My volunteer friends and I came here last night to go dancing at a real discoteck with some other gringos who came down to work at the clinic for an optometry campaign last week. Ben and I are staying a little extra longer for some NFL football today. I´m ready for some football.

Last week was crazy. Always with campaigns, the clinic is extra busy. I gave about 400 visual acuity tests over a 4 day period. We fitted over 800 people for glasses while an opthomologist did about 20 cataract surgeries, some of which I got to watch and help out. But the big news of the week is that of the two Paros that took place. Paro is a strike. They happen for various reasons, whenever people decide that there is something wrong and they want to protest. It involves a slight threat of violence, but mostly it´s just men attempting to display testosterone and prove their cahones are large. They block the roads with rocks, trees, logs, broken glass, tires-really anything they can find to throw in the street-so that no cars can pass. They then sit on the side of the road declaring this, and get angry when cars try to go by. Of course, we had to get to the clinic to see patients that had scheduled eye exams and/or surgeries. So we hopped in the back of Guido´s pick-up truck and made our way over rocks and around giant boulders to get to the clinic. Fortunately Guido-the owner of the clinic-is well known and respected, and we were allowed to pass with minimal harrassment. But the paro went on.

Tuesday´s Paro was a dispute over the ownership of a town. Calca bid good riddance to this town in the 1970´s, but now wants to reclaim ownership after natural gas was discovered underneath the village. How convenient. Thursday brought a national Paro, with a dispute over water rights. The government wants to privatize ownership of water in order to sell it to the people who currenly use it for free (river water for irrigation). Thursday´s Paro made Tuesday´s look like child´s play. Roads to Cusco were totally cut off, while people dislodged parts of the train track that leads to Machu Picchu (the train is the only way to and from Machu Picchu). On the road between Calca and Coya, men disloged a boulder from the mountainside above which measured about 15x5x6 feet and easily weighs over 5 tons! (Oh, and it´s still there, and probably put a huge hole in the road). After work on Thursday, we walked the 12km back to Calca because we couldn´t get a ride. Our optometry team was stuck in Coya, missed thier flights, and almost forfeitted their excursion to the jungle town of Iquitos. They eventually made it, but not without the threats of lawsuits against the airlines from Guido. And what about the outcome? Does the government listen? Probably not. The people really just shoot themselves in the foot by losing a day of tourist money as well as sending the message that it´s difficult to travel in Perú. Terrible.

I have a couple of picures, which I will upload later-I left the cord in Calca. Cheers!