Lima Day 2

Well, where to begin. I'm actually writing this on day 3 because sadly I ended up sick on the night of day 2. It's been a while since I've felt this crappy but I guess there's nothing really that I can do about it. Day 2 actually started off great! It was tour day and time to go visit the outskirts of Lima where we would be setting up clinics-the favelas. The tour was through the giant favelas that engulf the edge of the Andes mountains. It was like nothing id ever seen. I have seen the amount of poverty before especially in some rural areas in India, but the way everything was on steep, large mountains was something I've never seen before. Walking and driving in the area was tiring and definitely scary so just imagining doing it everyday seemed like a huge burden. One of the major favelas that we worked with was Pamplona Alta. The community was one that Medlife considered self efficient because of the way the community worked together. As Medlife see's the situation, the communities where we provide service should have a community that works well together so that the education and the infrastructure we leave will be sustained. Although they are poor, they work together instead of just working for themselves. This is the ideal community that we can serve and the type of communities that we want disorganized communities to strive for.  One of the biggest problems in the favelas is the politics that cause people to become even more poor. People come into the communities and as landlords they build staged communities which are then sold off to poor people who want to live in the urban area to get better jobs. The situation is pretty complicated and the types of problems they have are more than just this but they all involved the landlord and the house buyers who are trying to be closer to the city. One of the other problems is again the aesthetic of the community which makes it harder to go up and down the steep terrain for simple things such as water which isn't portable in all areas. For this reason, the higher you go up on the mountains in the favelas, the more poor you are. There's one story of a woman who everyday had to walk all the way from the top of the favelas to her nursing school and her nursing internship. She would cover herself head to toe everyday in plastic to make sure that her uniform didn't get dirty because although she lived in a less fortunate community, she still was held to the same standards and if she showed up dirty to work she wouldn't be giving a good impression. Similarly in the schools if a child's uniform is dirty they are sent all the way back home and as a child it is very difficult to walk through the favela cleanly. For this reason and more many kids ditch school, don't make it there, or are sent back home to change and come back clean. One of the last things they showed us was the wall of shame. This famous wall splits two different economic classes literally right next to each other. From an aerial view one can see that on one side of the wall there's poverty and on the other is one of the richest communities within Lima. This gap between the economic standing of people in Peru makes it harder for these poor communities to thrive and gain more power in their county. Although there is a law that every person must vote, the mayors take advantage of bribing in order to gain more votes and the favelas accept this form of bribery because they are desperate for supplies and money. The politics within the country are advanced and very controversial. Obviously it's something that can't be solved overnight or even in a couple years. It's interesting to see how different the regulations and living situations are from America, but at the same time the similarities between some parts.