Riding in trucks
The project is a go! How did we get it get it to this point? A whole lot of random craziness.
Last Saturday, we decided to begin our trip into the affected areas by riding with a truck of relief goods being delivered by a man running a local NGO. After waiting six hours at the National Stadium in Lima, we finally secured a truck and a random assortment of goods to take to the rural towns of Cañete (a province about 1.5 hours north of Pisco). Our random group grew to include Aníbal Paredes (founder of YCPA), Marc and myself, Paige (an American who individually raised money from friends to purchase 9 full rolls of plastic sheeting material) and her Peruvian friend Fito, Jodi (a photographer working for the Boston Globe), a Peruvian police officer, Pastor David Jesson and his team of missionaries from DreamCenter Peru, and our truck driver. Some of us rode in the DreamCenter pickup truck, and the rest of us piled on top of the sacks of relief in an enclosed cargo truck. I was in the cargo truck.
The truck wasn't as claustrophobic as I thought it would be. The roof was opaque yet translucent, and we arranged makeshift couches out of the sacks of clothes and mattresses included in our delivery. It's a strange sensation to travel and have no visual cues for where you actually are; our only window to the outside was a 1cm diameter hole punched into the back sliding door of the truck (yes, I did start calling it a window). Two and a half hours into our ride we'd all fallen asleep, when I awoke to an odd silence - we'd pulled over to the shoulder of the highway with an overheated engine. Oh, maybe the dashboard instruments weren't working, or maybe this truck doesn't even have any, I thought. No, the truck did indeed have instruments, and they did indeed work, the driver just ignored them and drove with a burning smell for an hour. Voilà, hole in the radiator.
We sat at the rest stop for two hours and idly ate pan con huevo (simply a roll with a fried egg, yet so satisfying) and drank coffee (watery hot chocolate for me). I climbed into the back of the truck to check on my bag (and because the inside of the truck, even with the door open, was warmer than the night). A truck agreed to give us a push to try and get us started; not thinking, I decided to just sit it out in the truck. As the pusher truck started backing up to the open back of my truck, I grew a little concerned, as it made contact and gave us a light boost, I realized how strange this whole thing was, and as we began to roll, I began to imagine us careening with no brakes, ending up in a ditch with a wheel spinning in the air. Really, all that happened was that we started to roll, the truck started, and we limped into Cañete to deliver our goods.
As the truck fell silent again, I could hear the buzz of a crowd outside. Peeping out of the hole, I saw that we were parked in the central plaza of the first town on our list,with a plaza full of people waiting for supplies and relief. Due to the delays throughout the day, it was too late to continue on and distribute goods to all the towns on our list. Instead, we decided to unload the goods and then continue on a bit farther towards Pisco. With Pastor David's help, we found our way to San Clemente (a district in Pisco province), where we could spend the night. A local family with an undamaged house put us up for the night, and we quickly laid out our sleeping bags and fell asleep.
Last Saturday, we decided to begin our trip into the affected areas by riding with a truck of relief goods being delivered by a man running a local NGO. After waiting six hours at the National Stadium in Lima, we finally secured a truck and a random assortment of goods to take to the rural towns of Cañete (a province about 1.5 hours north of Pisco). Our random group grew to include Aníbal Paredes (founder of YCPA), Marc and myself, Paige (an American who individually raised money from friends to purchase 9 full rolls of plastic sheeting material) and her Peruvian friend Fito, Jodi (a photographer working for the Boston Globe), a Peruvian police officer, Pastor David Jesson and his team of missionaries from DreamCenter Peru, and our truck driver. Some of us rode in the DreamCenter pickup truck, and the rest of us piled on top of the sacks of relief in an enclosed cargo truck. I was in the cargo truck.
The truck wasn't as claustrophobic as I thought it would be. The roof was opaque yet translucent, and we arranged makeshift couches out of the sacks of clothes and mattresses included in our delivery. It's a strange sensation to travel and have no visual cues for where you actually are; our only window to the outside was a 1cm diameter hole punched into the back sliding door of the truck (yes, I did start calling it a window). Two and a half hours into our ride we'd all fallen asleep, when I awoke to an odd silence - we'd pulled over to the shoulder of the highway with an overheated engine. Oh, maybe the dashboard instruments weren't working, or maybe this truck doesn't even have any, I thought. No, the truck did indeed have instruments, and they did indeed work, the driver just ignored them and drove with a burning smell for an hour. Voilà, hole in the radiator.
We sat at the rest stop for two hours and idly ate pan con huevo (simply a roll with a fried egg, yet so satisfying) and drank coffee (watery hot chocolate for me). I climbed into the back of the truck to check on my bag (and because the inside of the truck, even with the door open, was warmer than the night). A truck agreed to give us a push to try and get us started; not thinking, I decided to just sit it out in the truck. As the pusher truck started backing up to the open back of my truck, I grew a little concerned, as it made contact and gave us a light boost, I realized how strange this whole thing was, and as we began to roll, I began to imagine us careening with no brakes, ending up in a ditch with a wheel spinning in the air. Really, all that happened was that we started to roll, the truck started, and we limped into Cañete to deliver our goods.
As the truck fell silent again, I could hear the buzz of a crowd outside. Peeping out of the hole, I saw that we were parked in the central plaza of the first town on our list,with a plaza full of people waiting for supplies and relief. Due to the delays throughout the day, it was too late to continue on and distribute goods to all the towns on our list. Instead, we decided to unload the goods and then continue on a bit farther towards Pisco. With Pastor David's help, we found our way to San Clemente (a district in Pisco province), where we could spend the night. A local family with an undamaged house put us up for the night, and we quickly laid out our sleeping bags and fell asleep.
posted by Stefanie at 9:37 PM
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