During
the year 2013 Promesa Peru was involved in three activities. In April we
donated a dry-erase board to the school in the village of Casa de Madera. Also
in April we provided food to the Edith Fuentes family and assisted her with
legal costs. In October we were at the village of La Raya trying to determine
how best to help the family of Luzmila Valdera. Our attempt to raise money for
a replacement house fell short but we were able to provide clothing for her and
her daughters, and $210 in cash to purchase household items. We also provided
donated medicines to the La Raya medical clinic.
The
financial figures are:
Activity Cost Donations
Casa
de Madera $66.00 $0.00
Edith
Fuentes family $308.00* $308.00
Luzmila
Valdera family $210.00 $210.00
Totals
- $584.00 $518.00
*
includes $47.69 in cash given to Edith
In-kind
donations in the form of medicines and used clothing - all distributed in La
Raya amounted to an estimated $225.
Maribel
Filipowicz – Treasurer Promesa Peru Chiclayo
Last
Saturday we were in Piura visiting Maribel’s son Brian who attends the University
of Piura. It was sort of a lazy afternoon…not too hot as Piura normally is. We
were strolling on Ave. Grau and decided to sit on a tree-shaded bench…the very
bench the women in the photo are occupying, to relax and do some people
watching. I happened to glance overhead and saw what I first thought were bird
nests hanging from the tree, but then released it was a fruit of some sort that
I’d not seen before. Neither had Maribel or Brian. Being curious I asked a
woman who had a kiosk nearby if she knew the name of the tree. She responded with "matacojudo" and started laughing. We got the same response from several other people.
There is no good translation for matacojudo to English that I’m aware of. The closest
I can come is ‘kills the idiot’, which has a connotation that Peruvians find
funny. Later that night when we arrived back home Maribel Googled matacojudo and had lots of hits – most of them humorous,
but one of them led us to Kigelia Africana, also known as Kigelia pinnata also
known as the sausage tree. 
The
tree is mostly associated with Africa though it’s cultivated as an ornamental
tree in other tropical countries. The tree blossoms at night, with the
brilliant red flowers falling off the next day. The uneatable fruit can reach a
size of 2 feet in length and weigh 15 pounds. One article cautioned that care
must be taken as to where the trees are planted because the falling fruit can
be dangerous to people and vehicles (and apparently idiots), and that is exactly what the first woman
we asked told us, though she added that the fruit falls “mostly during the
winter” which in Piura is June through November, though the climate change is barely noticeable.