September 30, 2021 3:07 pm
By looking carefully at the map of Peru and observing the Ayacucho department, you will realize that it has the shape of a sitting dog raising its head. The animal’s ear pokes out in a corner that reaches the border with Cusco and Apurímac, and on the side of Ayacucho, in the districts of Chungi and Oronccoy, in the province of La Mar. The area is known as Oreja de Perro, dog’s ear , and belongs to the valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro (Vraem) rivers. To get there, you walk on mule tracks for hours or days, depending on where you are headed.
Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes Oreja de Perro as “a forgotten point on the map”. It is also the area of the country most affected by internal violence, according to data from the single register of victims. In the 1980s, in the harshest era of the Peruvian conflict, entire communities in these areas were massacred and hundreds of inhabitants fled to the cities.
Óscar Huamán Lima and his family also fled due to terrorism. In 1982 they left the community of Pallccas, in the province of La Mar, in Ayacucho. They settled in Huamanga, where Óscar studied infirmary. Then, at the age of 22, he returned to Vraem for work. Today he is 44 years old and goes through the villages carrying a freezer with vaccines that he administers to the inhabitants of the communities. Since June, vaccines against covid-19 have been added to those against yellow fever, polio, hepatitis B, flu, measles and pneumonia.
Continue on foot
Since 2007 Huamán has been working in the Mollebamba health center, in the Oronccoy district, in the Ayacucho department. To get to this town of 187 inhabitants, you have to go through Andahuaylas, in the nearby department of Apurímac. The trip involves a four-hour journey along a path that leads to Santa Marina, the last point reachable by car. Then continue on foot.
It is the same path that covid-19 vaccines follow, but starting from Huamanga. The rest of the journey to Mollebamba is done on foot along a path less than a meter wide: on one side there is the mountain, on the other the precipice with the river downstream.
The Mollebamba health center also serves the communities of Yerbabuena, five hours away; Ninabamba, three hours, and Alto San Francisco, three and a half hours. A total of 537 people live in these areas. When Huamán and his colleagues go for population checkups, answer some emergency calls or bring vaccines, they first coordinate with local authorities to inform them of their arrival.
In Peru, the everyday life of some is a surprise for others
None of these communities have electric lights and the health care instrumentation works with solar panels or batteries. On 12 July from Santa Marina, the last point reachable by car, a group of forty inhabitants of Mollebamba took charge of a vaccine freezer and a solar panel. They carried them on their backs to the community. It took them fifteen hours, walking slowly to avoid doing any damage.
The last time they had transported a freezer to Mollebamba was 2012. It ran on batteries and with solar panels that now needed to be replaced. For this, and to ensure vaccination against covid-19, the regional health directorate of Ayacucho has sent a new freezer that reaches -18 degrees.
On July 12, as the men walked the first few meters, Huamán shot a video with the mobile phone. “At that moment I was thinking about the sacrifice they were making to transport the freezer and the solar panel. An accident could have happened, ”he says. The video, in which six men are seen carrying a freezer to the edge of a precipice, has gone viral. In Peru, the everyday life of some is a surprise for others.
A team effort
The vaccine freezer story had started several weeks ago. Nurse Huamán and the president of the community, Modesto Aspur Rivas, had summoned the inhabitants with a speaker. In the meeting they had decided how to transport the freezer: a van from the municipality of Oronccoy would pick it up in Huamanga to take it to Santa Marina. From there forty men, taking turns, would transport it for fifteen hours together with the solar panel to the health center. The only tools they could rely on were agave wood planks, ropes, torches, and the usual travel food: corn and dried meat.
For the transport the inhabitants of Mollebamba have built two chakanas or stretchers. To one they tied the freezer, to the other the solar panel. Each stretcher weighed forty to sixty kilos and was carried by four men. They walked slowly, trying not to hit the load against the rocks and not to fall into the void. They changed every fifteen or twenty minutes. As they climbed it was less hot, but the cliffs became deeper. Halfway through they ran out of water. Fidel Orosco Alarcón, a 45-year-old volunteer, jokes over the phone that, if it weren’t for his cane, a distillate of sugar cane juice, they would surely all pass out. At sunset they brought out their torches. At ten in the evening, they finally arrived.
“For us it is normal. If we don’t take care of bringing these materials, who does it? There is no other solution, ”says Alarcón.
The San Miguel health network had asked Ayacucho headquarters for a helicopter for transport, but no one ever answered. A few months earlier, the inhabitants of Mollebamba had widened the mule track thanks to the Trabaja Perú project. They had used their tools: hoes, shovels, picks. Now the road is less narrow than before: it is about one and a half meters wide.
In 2006 Alarcón participated in the group that brought the first freezer to his community, along an even longer and more dangerous path. Six years later he brought another. The last time they walked one day and one night without ever stopping except for short breaks to change clothes, drink or eat something.
The small health network of Chungui, to which Mollebamba belongs, includes six other locations. In all of them there are freezers to store the vaccines and all were transported in the same way: on foot, for hours or days.
It doesn’t matter if the conditions are difficult. He has always enjoyed working in the most remote areas, because he feels he can help those who need it most
During the pandemic in Mollebamba and neighboring communities, there were no serious cases or deaths from covid-19. Huamán explains that the scarcity of cases is due to the fact that almost all social interactions take place in open spaces, in the middle of the fields. In early June, the nurse and colleagues began an information campaign on the benefits of the covid-19 vaccine. Those who agreed to be vaccinated signed an informed consent. The name of the applicant was placed on a list which was then presented to the San Miguel health network.
The first person to be vaccinated was a 95-year-old woman in Mollebamba. In all, forty adults over the age of sixty out of a total of 49 were vaccinated with AstraZeneca doses. In mid-August, vaccination of people over 45 began.
Minor detail
When walking the trails of Oreja de Perro, Huamán always thinks of his seven and nine year old daughters who live in Andahuaylas. “I try to go faster to get to where there is court and call them. They are the ones who give me the strength to carry on, ”he says.
It doesn’t matter if the conditions are difficult. He has always enjoyed working in the most remote areas, because he feels he can help those who need it most. “In these places there are many people who need the help of the health personnel. But many do not resist and leave. And the population loses ”.
One day Huamán accompanied a new colleague who had been hired for the Mollebamba health center. At the point where the mule track began, the colleague stopped. He had to walk down to the river, cross it, go up the mountain and follow the path to the community. Instead he went back.
Four years ago, after Oronccoy became a district in the Ayacucho department, construction of the first road began. The works were completed on 21 August this year: for the first time the road connects a carriage road to the province of Andahuaylas.
The second week of August Alarcón and other Mollebamba residents walked to Santa Marina. On mules they carried cement, iron and tiles to the school which was closed at the beginning of the pandemic. One of Alarcón’s daughters, who is seven years old, was unable to follow the lessons remotely because she did not have electricity.
“Our children are completely lost,” he says worriedly. Alarcón received the first dose of the vaccine on August 15. He doesn’t know what it was. For him, after the effort made to get vaccines, “this detail” does not matter.
(Translation by Francesca Rossetti)
This article was published on the Peruvian information and study site OjoPúblico.
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