Life is Good

A recent teacher’s strike in Peru has disrupted the early portion of the school term for the second consecutive year. The protests involve President Kuczynski’s election promise to increase teacher’s salaries. As I understand it there was a small increase granted some months ago, and a promise for a larger increase later this year but many teachers don’t regard these actions as keeping his promise. To my knowledge pronoei teachers have not taken part in the demonstrations but during unsettled times parents tend to keep their kids at home and we’re told that at the moment school attendance is down. If I can offer a brief opinion here, in my view Kuczynski offers Peru the best opportunity they’ve had in many years to see solid progress away from their third-world status…if the population and opposing politicians would cooperate with him.

Despite the turmoil Promesa Peru has completed five projects in the Mochumi District this year. The villages are identified on the map. Magali has had two more villages request that she visit; El Tepo and Salitral (also on the map), both much closer to the city of Mochumi than the other villages we’ve donated to. Magali has no information for us at this time about the villages but hopes to visit both of them next week. Should a project result for one or both of them transportation costs should be reduced.

As for Maribel and I, we’re both feeling more comfortable with our new home and community. We pretty much have the interior of the house the way we want it, though we’re still looking for unusual pieces to fill some empty spots. With that thought in mind, we’ve taken to visiting antique and second-hand stores…something I’ve never done before and am really enjoying. Negotiating prices is the norm in these shops but I think these people have never been exposed to a Peruvian negotiator like Maribel. After a particularly lengthy session of offer and counter offer, one man commented to me that if it had lasted much longer he would have ended up paying Maribel to take the item.

We have a large back yard with trees and are enjoying working on it to shape it/them to our likes, and also built a brick grill where we cook, eat and relax…a pleasure I have missed during the years in Peru. Life is good here but I do have to admit that both of us have started talking about when it would be a good time to visit Chiclayo. We are very happy to have our house in Chiclayo available to us to visit whenever we want to.