Visit to Peru

Getting perspective when moving at speed is almost impossible. But today we’ve pulled over into a lay-by to let the world rush by and allow our spilling thoughts to settle.

Communities cling to ugly & dangerous  hillsides outside Lima

We’ve spent the past 6 days hurtling about visiting various communities that all share more or less the same challenges. To put it in a nutshell, they all face sure and certain attack from the weather....at some time unspecified and unknown. They live under the threat of a possible catastrophic water related event, from floods, either from violent rivers nearby or flash water&mud floods that will arrive unexpected from the barren hills above.

Within months this river will be bursting its banks

Peru is a curious country geographically and climactically. Those of you who are clued up on these subjects will know about El Nino, or have heard about it as it's in fact a global problem. And maybe you’ll also know that Peru has been central to this strange and little understood weather phenomenon.
If you google or Youtube: El Nino+Peru+1998, you’ll discover what happened when the last great El Nino hit the country - floods and mud slides of epic proportions and havoc beyond belief - more terrifying than can be expressed here.

But it’s been a while since ’98 and during the past 16 years meteorological technology has advanced to an insanely clever level. They are able to track the weather pattern of the world with dizzy-making detail and collect swathes of data from the warming deep seas and all the evidence points to another El Nino disaster on the horizon.

An informal community in the flat, desert-like, Piura basin - no water, sanitation or basically anything!

The imminent arrival of El Nino and other flood related events is debated every day...it’s ‘imminent’, but, like the second coming, no-one knows the date or time. So, you would think that everyone would be hyper vigilant and on their toes for the second coming, but you would be wrong.

The women and their children from Los Polverines, Piura

Those in the know watch and wait, they pour over their maps and discuss in great depth which are the most vulnerable areas and which communities are in danger of annihilation. But, it’s been a long time since the last disaster and when you live in a city where it never rains (Lima is the second largest desert city in the world), it’s easy to eat, drink and be merry and...keep your fingers crossed.

This house is metres from the river. See their own flimsy flood protection, which will be swept away in seconds

This week we flew north to the Ecuador boarder to Piura and visited communities at high risk and talked with their leaders and the fearful men&women who have no voice (actually it was 90% women - terrified for the safety of themselves and their children and their meagre posessions) . We walked in the wide dusty street-corridors which one day will flow with terrifying torrents of destruction and visited 3 schools all in flood paths.

This little orphan is being looked after by teachers. 

We were guests of Practical Action and their sponsor Zurich International. With them we visited communities in flat desert planes, on the banks of rock-dry rivers and those up in the foot of the Andes where rivers are beginning to bubble with mischief. We visited formal and in-formal settlements where were was no water, no sanitation, no clinics, schools or even a space for the community to meet.

They all asked for help. Help to...improve their terrible living conditions, to improve their personal safety, to get them land rights, to build schools, to get first aid training...oh, and to know what to do when the floods rip their worlds apart. All the communities had no early warning systems or sirens, no government advice, no adequate flood defences, no community action plan, no disaster supplies......etc etc (...you get the point)

This river bed has been used as a dumping site for rubble. It will be torrent in the floods - Andes in the background

And we listened and allowed our hearts to ache and to wonder what Emerging Leaders could possible offer in the future. Strangely the threat of the river almost became a metaphor for the hopelessness we felt all around us







.....and we were reminded, at a visceral level, that there is no sustainable change without good Leadership.










Oh, and p.s....right now Lima is hosting the Global Climate Summit @ COP20. All the great climate wise-heads of the world have come together from 198 counties to see how they can stop us all destroying our planet. Let’s hope that common sense rules and not the arrogance of egos.


- JB