Peru 2.0 (Day 3)

We want to share our recent trip to Peru with you… but since we felt like we might have bored the living breath out of some of you with stories from our previous adventure(!!), the next few posts on our blog will be photos from this latest trip with minimal commentary. We hope you enjoy the journey… [For more context… Read more →

Peru 2.0 (Day 2)

We want to share our recent trip to Peru with you… but since we felt like we might have bored the living breath out of some of you with stories from our previous adventure(!!), the next few posts on our blog will be photos from this latest trip with minimal commentary. We hope you enjoy the journey… [For more context… Read more →

Peru 2.0 (Day 1)

After our first trip to Pucallpa, Peru last October, we came back to Memphis with two potential candidates for a clean water system. Refuge of Hope – the school for handicapped, at risk and family-less children and their siblings – was high on the list due to the number of people who would benefit from the clean water on a daily,… Read more →

Saved, not enslaved.

Sometimes we have to go beyond our preconceptions and look at the broader context in order to find the truth. This is a picture of the entrance to El Centro Nativo in Pucallpa, Peru. At face value, it looks like these people are kept behind bars, in a state of poverty and misery. But this is the loading dock. An open… Read more →

Peru: The Shipibos

The largest tribe of indigenous people in the Peruvian Basin is the Shipibo tribe. I tried to find out online how big a population they are, but there doesn’t seem to be any concrete data. One source says over 20,000 while another says approximately 35,000. But there’s no question that, although the Shipibo people are having to live with one… Read more →

Peru: It’s not about me

Well, the inevitable has happened… and I was so adamant that it wouldn’t. We leave for our next trip to Peru this week, and I still haven’t posted all the photos from our previous trip. Ugh!! In the middle of all our craziness, I may still try to get everything posted before we leave, so I apologize now for the… Read more →

Peru: Block 1A

Block 1A in Pucallpa, Peru. It’s located across the street from where the city began. Back in the day, there were only a bunch of Indian huts, but as the road (singular!!) was built back in the 1940s, the city grew and grew to its current population of over 500,000. In those early days, the Indians (the natives from villages… Read more →

Peru: Bad Abuelo!

If you Google “Casa Shea Pucallpa”, you’ll find a whole bunch of photos and blog posts that span several years. There are also several accounts of people being chased or attacked by a rather unfriendly parrot. Abuelo. (Or Abuela. Over the years, no one’s been brave enough to flip the bird over onto its back and check its hoo-hah for… Read more →

Peru: A land of onomatopoeias

Onomatopoeia: The formation of a word from the sound associated with the object. For example: sizzle, cuckoo, splat, oink, peki-peki. Umm… peki-what?? The city of Pucallpa, Peru sits on the banks of the Ucayali River, serving as a major port. The Ucayali drains a lot of water from the Andes and then meanders northward, becoming one of the major tributaries… Read more →

Peru: Where this Brit had her heart broken

Do you know someone with a disability? Maybe someone who’s blind… or wheelchair-bound… or someone who has Down syndrome… or maybe they have some other kind of physical or mental handicap. Now, can you imagine the world without them? Is that an uncomfortable question? It wasn’t too long ago that the Indians who live in the Peruvian jungle (and other… Read more →