some photos and more

From the second floor balcony of the hostal. I´m not quite sure what the oxen are about yet, but they always make me smile. I guess that´s what they´re about.









The skies here are sooooo big. It´s just amazing all the time and the clouds are always really interesting. They make the mountains look totally different everyday for the shadows they cast. I love coming out of my room every morning to this view.








We walked up the hill behind the hostal the other day and this is a photo overlooking Cusco.

















There is no doubt about who runs this town. Not one of them have been neutured or has had rabies shots. You definitely let the dogs do what they want. A girl we know got bitten recently and had to go through the rabies shots - 6 shots that cost nearly s/700 ($700 soles - around $300). That sucked and we all try to avoid it for sure.







This is the hostal from the kitchen door during a rain storm. I love how bright all the colors are. My room is on the second floor a little further to the right than you can see here.








I don´t really recommend reading the following stories. They are stories of some of the kids in the jail that I wasn´t sure about writing here, but did so for posterity for myself. They are sad stories.

So the police station has been really bothering me this week. There haven´t been many kids, so it´s not that, it´s their stories.

There is one little boy who is mentally ill can´t tell us where he lives. He was completely unresponsive for a few days and is starting to open up and be more communicative, but if you ask him about his mom, her name or where she lives, he shuts right down and wont talk again for some time. Watching him come to life is amazing and I love to play with him, I just hope that some orphanage picks him up before his mom finds him.

There is a little girl who´s mom left her at the police station while she went on vacation. We were bringing the kids back from the outside yard and there was a woman very nicely dressed with high heels and a nice hair do and asked one of the other volunteers if she was with "her" meaning her daughter and she said she was. So this woman handed her a bag saying it was her pajamas and toothbrush and a dolly for her. We were confused because usually the parents are there to get their kids out but then she said, happy as can be, "She´s just sad cause it´s the first time I´ve left her here to go on vacation." We were just stunned. It´s like she thought she was taking her to summer camp or something. Not very often do I have the violent reaction of wanting to hit someone, but I sure wanted to just knock her in the side of the head. Her daughter just standing there crying. This is how people get broken.

One little girl was there two days this week, she was probably one and a half or two and her hand was burned so badly she will probably lose some fingers. There is no way this was self inflicted wound. They took her to the doctor the first day and he removed the black dead tissue but then she was just back in the most unsanitary place ever with her gaping open wound. It was so sick and sad and she just sat there, eyes dead to the world, never cried once.

Another girl of about 12 just cries all the time. Someone finally worked out today that she has been raped since arriving at the jail. No one knows if it was a prisoner or a guard but there she sits, just crying.

Three boys escaped last night from the police station (I use this interchangeably with jail as they are the same). They managed to get the bars over the window open a little and make a rope of clothing to lower themselves down with. We were all praying that they made it out of Cusco but I just heard that they were captured and are being held downstairs with the adults and their lives are going to be really really aweful for a while.

I wasn´t sure about sharing this stuff cause it´s just bad, but I had to get it out of my system and if the point of this blog is to remind me, I have to remember this stuff as well.

But I have next week off to go to Machu Picchu and some other ruins and I will be glad glad to be out in the andes and in the sacred valley.