October 2018 - Maïa Ollivier

When we met our family in Peru  

We left with four suitcases of clothes, shoes and toys for our Peruvian family, a little worried of what we were going to live: would our two boys understand our approach? Would "our family" find us intrusive? Wwould we know what to say to them? Could we communicate? We ended up leaving these issues behind us and arrived in the Sacred Valley a few days before Christmas 2017. The last kilometers before arriving at the village had to be done on foot, no car being able to climb on this steep and dented road. We left our packages down the hill, and climbed the path with Myriam, our interpreter-guide who runs the Kausay Wazi Clinic. She gave us information about our family, talked about the father's work in the fields and the mother's daily life. She told us about the colossal work they do at the clinic to help all those families who live in places so remote that just the prospect of going to the doctor is unthinkable. We arrived, breathless by the altitude and the effort, in front of a small mud house. "Our" whole family was waiting for us on the doorstep: the parents and the four children.

I do not know who of us was the most intimidated. Myriam introduced us; we shook hands, a little indecisive. Then we went back down the hill to pick up the parcels left behind. And things went very well.

The father and his boys helped us carrying everything, laughing at our clumsiness and fragility; our boys offered the toys and they started playing together. I felt a great well being by just being there in the middle of them, without being able to really communicate and yet so serene, so moved. They were just laughs and thanks, "Gracias Papa, Gracias Mama" they kept saying! And we took them in our arms, clasped their hands, so touched that they let us in their life. I was afraid of the voyeur side of our trip, we, healthy Westerners who arrived with our suitcases packed to the ground. I really wanted them to see our real motivation behind these packages. And I think that's what they felt. When we had to leave, the patriarch took my husband very solemnly and offered him a traditional cap he put on his head. The mother, meanwhile, covered me with a scarf. When I look at the pictures, I see our faces, and that's the happiness I see.

I learned from the clinic that they had adopted two more children this year, their nephews whose alcoholic father fled his house. One of them has a club foot and needs a prosthesis. So I tell myself that the year of medical care that we have committed to provide them will be well used ... We are going back at Christmas. I look forward to our visit.