First week in Ollantaytambo comes to a close

Time is flying by here now that I am back in work mode. I finished the health clinics this week and will start on the schools next week. I am photographing volunteers at their worksites for Awamaki (in case you have just tuned in). I was very impressed with the rural health clinic I went to yesterday. The clinic is staffed by two nurses and doctors from Ollantataytabmo and other larger towns come for one or two days a week. Also the dentist comes once a week. The sixth grade class at the local primary school came to see the dentist (each week a different class comes) and they were a pretty roudy little group. There were only a few patients so we went with one of the nurses to the local high school to pass out plastic canisters for students to cough in to check for TB as one classmate has come down with it. We also stayed at a parents meeting at the high school where a pyschologist from Ollantaytambo came to give a talk on domestic violence. The auditotirum was packed and he seemed to be an engaging speaker as there were many moments when the hall broke out in laughter. He spoke mostly in Quechua but from the little bit he did in Spanish it seems like a very good presentation. Then a dentists from a bigger town nearby, Urubamaba, gave a presntation on dental hygiene. This clinic seems to do a lot around preventative medicine which is really important in this poor community.

Tomorrow I am going up the the weaving community high in the mountains (12000 feet they tell me). This is the main project of Awamaki, supporting weavers and helping them develop products that will bring in more funds, the value-added concept. Then Sunday I am going to Machu Pichu...finally. It´s been a dream for many years to see this place, now officially one of the wonders of the world.

I forgot to put some photos on my thumb drive from the batch I unloaded on the Awamaki computer. I will try to remember to do that next week.

Cheers!