Cuncani

We did the farthest houses first, climbing up a hillside full of buried potatoes at around 7 am. At each house  I sat as Ian and our Quechua translator, Juana, slowly gathered the information necessary for our needs assessment. By the end of the day we had only completed 10 surveys, and I was exhausted and sunburned to a fairly ridiculous extent. The village pooled together animal skins for us to sleep on, and we passed out on our beds of llama by 8 pm.

The next day there was a town meeting, and during its lunch break we were able to gather groups of people to interview. Most people under 40 spoke better Spanish than I do, and we trudged through the questions with occasional help from the translators, who were busy running between clusters of people spread across the field. I felt ridiculous fairly often; certain questions, like "what do you like about your village?" where met with blank stares or laughter. Going through a checklist of food and hearing no to vegetables, no to meat, no to fish and no to milk, and realizing the widow you are interviewing literally only eats potatoes, made me feel like an asshole for asking in the first place.

I hope that the information we gathered will be useful and that we will be able to design and implement a project with the ability to do some good. Right now, we are in Cuncani's debt- for the village's hospitality, patience and kindness towards us, as well as a delicious sheep and about 400 potatoes.