Creating a garden in the desert.

Friday and Saturday, Sept. 16-17

The neighbors who prepared the land and will attend the gardens worked with us.

We took a two-day field trip to Villa Salvador, a relatively new urban area at the southern edge of Lima where Alicia (who prepares our lunches 2-3 times per week) and her extended family hosted us with beds and meals in their homes.

One of many activities during the trip was visiting an elementary school, where we painted a wall and learned from the director a little about schools in Peru.  After leaving our luggage at Alicia’s home, she took us up one of the many surrounding hills being populated by new homes made from scrap wood, metal and plastic.  One of those rustic houses she and her husband built for their son; for a large portion of Peruvians, having one’s own home means structures like these.

The next morning we had our main activity, working in bio-huertas, or urban gardens, where those in surrounding low income neighborhoods use vacant lots to grow fruit and vegetables.  A video, From the Earth to the Pot, describes several bio-huertas in Lima, including the one we worked at.  The project organizer, Senora Gregorio (seen at 8:44 and 14:30 in the video), told us that the land under powerlines could not be used for homes, and so had instead become a large, uncontrolled garbage field.  They cleared out all the trash and got assistance from the power company to buy plants and water for converting the lifeless area into a green, life-giving oasis.  The project continues to expand, putting more vacant land “under the plow,” and previous SST groups as well as ours have been privileged to help.

In the afternoon we went to visit the home of Corpusa, who told us a story repeated innumerable times on the outskirts of Lima: poor people with no resources for acquiring land, and during the 80’s and 90’s often fleeing violence in the Andes, settle en masse, or “invade,” empty lots.  She explained that at first they only erected a simple woven straw hut, and not until more than a decade later was she able to get a title to the property that gave her the security to build a permanent structure.  In the intervening years they had to use alternative arrangements for water, electricity and bathrooms.