It’s the kind of place Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, are working in now—at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level in air so thin that newcomers lose their breath and no other aid agencies have the fortitude to venture.
The place is the district of Caylloma, and the people who live here are alpaca herders. Oxfam’s mission is to make sure that when trouble does come—as it has in the past and surely will again because of the changing weather patterns families in these Andean hamlets are already grappling with—they will be prepared to cope.
Three years ago, after a severe cold snap wiped out tens of thousands of llamas and alpacas across Peru’s southern highlands, Oxfam and Proyección joined forces to find a way to prevent a repeat of the suffering people experienced then. Their proposal—a form of disaster risk reduction—included a range of self-help ideas, a smattering of technology, and the most important tool of all: planning.
Today, acres of barley now grow on the slopes—a buffer against food shortages for livestock. New adobe sheds with metal roofs stand in some of the coldest mountain pockets, offering critical shelter for alpacas that had none before. Gravity-fed sprinklers irrigate enclosed pastures of rye grass, guaranteeing a steady source of nourishment for animals. And a handful of radio towers dot the district, connecting far-flung hamlets with the world at large.
Simon Ccalachua, who lives in the little village of Jachaña, put it this way. Without this project, nothing would have changed for him and his family. They had no choice but to accept what nature brought, good or bad. If the cold came, their animals died. But now, armed with new ways of growing the grasses their alpacas need and a way to shelter them, families like Ccalachua’s can overcome the troubles nature brings—on their own.
For Arturo Rivera Vigil, a field coordinator for Proyección, the importance of equipping people with tools to solve their own problems was a lesson he learned the hard way, and one he vowed to share with Caylloma.
Working in another region of Peru during a different emergency, Proyección decided that the best approach would be to provide direct aid to the families in need. So the agency purchased vast quantities of dried alfalfa to help feed the livestock on which those families depended. But that commodity was in short supply because of the emergency, and instantly, its price nearly tripled. Nevertheless, Proyección moved ahead with its plan, delivering tons of alfalfa to the troubled communities. But when the supplies arrived, Proyección learned there was no place in which to store it all.
“We realized we weren’t teaching anything to the communities,” Rivera said. When the cold snap paralyzed Caylloma, Proyección and Oxfam decided to take a longer-term approach—and find sustainable solutions to the problems rather than offer a temporary fix.
But that decision required a new way of looking at the situation: Could there possibly be things communities could do to prepare for disasters at such high altitudes?
“The typical thinking was people living up so high were so remote and had their own culture and own system of raising animals,” said Rivera. “No one thought they could help them, and no one thought anything could grow up that high.”
Proyección and Oxfam proved them wrong.
“We came here because the local government asked us to come, and when we suggested planting barley, everyone said we were crazy,” Rivera told a crowd during a recent ceremony at the Caylloma town hall honoring the project’s high-altitude accomplishments for 355 families. “Three years later, here we are.”
Oxfam and Proyección have helped Caylloma take solid first steps towards addressing a problem that is all too familiar to poor people living in precarious places around the world: When something goes wrong in their environment, they suffer the most.
Cataclysmic events—deep freezes, drought, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions—only turn into disasters when people get caught in them and have few means for managing the consequences. That has been the case in the Caylloma district.
From the hamlet of Chinosiri, for instance, it’s an all-day walk down to the town of Caylloma for help. When the storm hit, assistance didn’t arrive for a week. In sturdy, four-wheel trucks, it’s a three-hour drive from Caylloma to Chinosiri along a rutted track that snakes in hairpin turns up the sides of ridges and back down through streams.
Even at the end of the summer the weather at this height is harsh. Thunder rolls over the mountain plains as hail ricochets off the stony ground. At higher elevations, snow blankets the thin pastures.
Far from one another stand tiny dwellings, made of stone or adobe with thatched roofs. Inside, small fires burn. There is not a tree or bush in sight for fuel, so families make do with dung and Ichu, a spiky grass that livestock will only eat when it’s young and tender.
Widespread poverty across the region means that beyond elementary school, there are few opportunities for learning. Students determined enough to attend one of only two high schools in the province wrestle with a good deal of hardship in pursuit of that dream. The son of Jose Gonzalez Condo, now in his second year of high school, walks four hours to get there in the morning, and another four to return home at the end of the day.
For Gonzalez, the effort his son is making is worth every step: An education will give the boy the tools he needs to live a better life—not necessarily far away in a city, but right here in Chinosiri, perhaps.
With the uncertainty that lies ahead for herding families in Caylloma, education is an important asset and it has been a component of Oxfam’s and Proyección’s disaster risk reduction program. For example, the agencies have produced a series of colorful guides on storm alert systems, the construction of livestock sheds, and improving the use of water resources.
Lately, families have begun to worry about shifting patterns of rain that are affecting the growth rate of the grasses on which their animals feed. The rains are supposed to fall in November, but for the past two or three years, they haven’t come until January, stunting the progress of the grasses. That in turn prevents them from dropping their seeds to start a new round of growth before the May ice season arrives.
Having the means to cope with the consequences of those changes—stores of barley, irrigated pastures—will go a long way toward easing the hardships people would otherwise face. And that explains the enthusiasm with which the mayor of Caylloma has embraced this disaster risk reduction project.
“A project like this can be applied to the whole province,” said Simón Quispe Chipa, the mayor. “This project has been a real motivation for the whole town.”
]]>"Caylloma. Caylloma. Caylloma," he says into the mic, and over the airwaves, not slowed for a moment by mud or steep ridges or gushing streams, comes the scratchy answer—accompanied by a big mayoral smile.
This is Chinosiri's new radio, one of four Oxfam America and its partner, Asociación Proyección, have installed in remote mountain hamlets around Caylloma following a devastating cold snap and heavy snow three years ago. The storm lasted five days, dumping nearly three feet of snow in the highlands, paralyzing families of alpaca herders who make their living there, and killing the grasses on which their precious animals feed. In some of the remotest communities, help didn't arrive for 10 days.
Now, for the 70 families living close to 16,000 feet above sea level in Chinosiri, calls for emergency aid can be broadcast instantly. And on the receiving end, storm alerts, picked up via the new radio, may soon give residents of the hamlet and their far-flung neighbors a chance to get ready.
"We can keep communications with authorities both ways," says Jaime Condori Inca, Chinosiri's 27-year-old radio operator whose job it is to establish contact twice a day—at 7 a.m. and again at 7 p.m.—with the world far below his hamlet.
The radio network is part of an early warning system that is helping 355 families scattered throughout the Caylloma district prepare for future emergencies.
Training has included the compilation of a list of natural signs—much like a farmer's almanac—that could indicate a pending change in weather. What can you expect when the sky is pink in the afternoon? Frost. If you should hear a sheep bleating at night, snow is surely on its way. And about that black lizard: its color announces plentiful rain. But if the lizard is white, the rain may be in short supply.
Gleaned from generations of herders' experiences with the harsh conditions in the Andes, the list now appears in a colorful training guide published by Oxfam and Proyección and distributed widely among Caylloma residents. But as weather patterns begin to shift—during the last three years, for instance, November rains didn't come until January—mountain families need new ways of understanding their environment. And that's where the radio comes in.
With it, Condori can send details about daily changes in the local weather to a national repository that collects meteorological data as part of a long-term tracking initiative. Caylloma is working with the Meteorologist National Services and the ministry of Agriculture on the project. Environmental details are gathered with the help of a small weather station—a sturdy white box with a thermometer mounted inside—that stands just behind the radio hut. It's checked daily and the temperature, along with noticeable precipitation, is carefully recorded on a chart next to the radio.
Across the highland plains, in the hamlet of Jachaña, sits a second radio, which in turn connects with another in Chinosiri and with a fourth one in the Caylloma town hall. It's here that Proyección has a small emergency operations center equipped with a computer, a printer, first-aid supplies, and a list of all the relevant radio frequencies.
Small though the radio network may be, it represents a major step forward for Caylloma—and is testament to the commitment of the entire district. Families arranged, for instance, to carry parts of the Chinosiri weather station up the mountainsides on the backs of llamas.
"The people from every community got involved," said Danny Gibbons, Oxfam America's communications officer in Lima. "They shared the burden."
Additionally, the radio network has helped people communicate about other emergencies such as health crises and alpaca rustling as well as improved coordination among different levels of government.
]]>We were there, together with Angel Chavez, one of Oxfam America’s humanitarian officers, to gather stories about Oxfam’s work with alpaca herders. They had suffered serious losses in 2004 when a severe winter storm killed many of the wooly creatures that are the backbone of the local economy. So vital are these camel cousins to the well-being of the families scattered across the mountains that many of the shelters they have built for the animals are superior to their own mud-brick and stone homes.
The income from alpaca wool—softer than cashmere when it’s cleaned, spun, and woven—feeds and clothes families, buys them medicine, and helps cover the occasional extraordinary expense. Without the few hundred dollars herders earn each year from the sale of the wool, life in these barren, thin-aired mountains would not be possible for them. And for many, it’s the only life they have ever known, helping to account for Peru’s position as the world’s top producer—by far—of alpaca wool.
About 80 percent of the wool now on the market comes from this South American country; Bolivia produces another 15 percent; and the rest comes from a smattering of countries including Australia, Switzerland, and England. So you would think, given Peru’s dominance in the industry, that the work of these Caylloma herders would guarantee their families a measure of security. Not so.
There, at nearly 16,000 feet above sea level, nothing is certain: The cold kills, and changing weather patterns are robbing the region of the rain it needs for mountain pastures to grow. Life is hard, and people are very poor.
Oxfam’s work with Proyección has been to help Caylloma herders find ways to buffer themselves against future disasters by improving pastureland; planting barley to serve as an emergency reserve for their animals; and developing an early alert system, including the installation of a simple radio network—all at an altitude that has scared off just about every other aid group.
“Nobody has worked at this height,” said Rivera. “No one wants to come up here. Only us.”
There’s a reason: To reach Caylloma’s remote communities requires a degree of energy that would exhaust a lesser field coordinator and his team. But for Rivera, that challenge—and the need that is so evident among the families of this rugged terrain—is the inspiration that repeatedly draws him up the steep slopes to Chinosiri, Jachaña, and a handful of other hamlets.
From Arequipa, a city in southern Peru where Proyección has its offices, the drive in a pair of heavy-duty pickup trucks to the town of Caylloma took us about seven hours through rain, hail, and snow on a rutted mountain road—and that was just the first half of the journey. Following a night’s rest, we left at 6 a.m. for the three-hour climb to Chinosiri, the belly of our truck scraping the ruts as we inched around hairpin turns and splashed through streams carving gullies in the dirt track.
The snow was falling in fat, wet flakes, blanketing the mountains in white, when Rivera, in the truck ahead, pulled over and jumped out, signaling that this—of all high and remote spots—was just the place for a group picture.
“Beautiful!” he said, surveying the vast emptiness around us: no trees, no bushes, no dwellings—only mountains and more mountains with sharp rocks underfoot.
It wasn’t until I scrambled up the slippery bank to where Rivera and Chavez were already standing in the snow that I realized just how hard the work in Caylloma could be: Without the sea-level amounts of oxygen I was used to, a few quick steps at 15,748 feet high left me breathless and exhausted. Puffing hard, I slipped back down the embankment and into the truck, grateful to be sitting once again, and marveling at the stamina of my colleagues. Could I do this, like them, on a regular basis? Could anybody?
Rivera had already answered that question: No.
The air at the end of this Andean summer was cold and damp, and all of us in the pair of trucks were bundled in just about every stitch of clothing we had brought. I had on two shirts, a sweater, a fleece vest, a fleece jacket, a down vest, a windbreaker, thick wool socks, and a wool cap—just enough to keep the chill at bay.
So I was surprised to see, beyond the steamed windows of the warm truck, two boys hiking hard and fast through the mud on a slope of pasture: They had only sandals on their feet—no shoes, no socks to keep the cold away. They’re boys, I thought, and that’s what boys do: tough things.
But as we bounced along, there were others—men, women, children—all wearing sandals in the frigid air. And as the clouds swept across the sky, occasionally unleashing a shower of cold rain, some of the mountain dwellers hardly seemed to notice, and simply wrapped themselves tight in their woolen blankets and ponchos.
Jose Gonzalez Condo, who has lived all of his 39 years in the tiny community of Chinosiri, explained that he and his fellow villagers are used to the mountain weather and its variable conditions. Chinosiri is home, he said, and he likes it.
But as weather patterns have begun to change—the rains are coming late, which in turn delays the growth of pasture grasses and threatens the health of herds—raising alpacas at this altitude has become increasingly difficult, said Gonzalez. And in the recent past, there was no way to get the word out about challenging weather conditions—be they drought or cold waves—unless someone made the 30-mile trek down to Caylloma to ask for help. The only way to get there is on foot, and the walk takes a day.
Chinosiri’s new two-way radio, installed by Proyección in February, has connected this remotest of villages to the outside world. And with that connection has come the sliver of hope that a way of life for the 70 families there—and for more than 3,400 rural residents scattered across the Caylloma district—is now more secure.
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