At MEDLIFE, we rely heavily on working with communities, not just for them. Towards the end of September, I went into the field to visit three different projects MEDLIFE are working on in three different communities. Each project was at a different stage of development and each had a different level of community involvement.
The first project was the house we are building for Soledad. We have been working on this project for nearly three months now and in this time have completed various volunteer days to get materials up the large hill to the site of the new home Soledad will share with her son José. On this visit, I saw how the construction of the house was going. The structure of the first floor was almost completed and plans to begin the second floor were working to schedule. This is a project that has required a lot of involvement from staff and interns as it is a project for one patient, not a whole community. However, we have also been lucky enough to get help from friends and neighbours of Soledad and José when it came to bringing bricks and cement up the hill to ready the site for construction. It was good to see that the project was under development and running to schedule.
MEDLIFE staff and interns working at a volunteer day to bring materials to Soledad’s house.
The next project was a staircase we are constructing for MEDLIFE patient Alfonso Mendoza. When we went to visit the site in September, construction of the staircase hadn’t started as Carlos Benavides, director of MED Programs Peru was struggling to get the support he needed from the community to build it. “I have never seen a situation quite like this before, it is difficult to know what to do.” Carlos explained, “these people have everything they need, water, gas, land titles and so they are not wanting to help build a staircase they don’t think they need”. However, it seemed the problem was greater than that. I spoke to one of the community members, Gloria who owns the local bodega and she explained the situation to me. “It’s bad as there are so many empty houses. Many of the houses here are owned by people who have many properties. They’ve gained the land titles and are waiting until they’re able to sell them and make money.” The phenomenon Gloria was talking about is that of ghost houses, a problem across the slums of Lima where people started abusing the land titling laws to make money off properties they don’t need. It seemed likely that Carlos was going to have to organise a volunteer day in this community as well to get the support to build the much needed staircase for Alfonso.
The path leading up to Alfonso’s house where a staircase is much needed.
The final site we visited that day was in the community of Laderas and it was the last of five staircases that we were building for this community. Laderas is located on a steep hill side. Before MEDLIFE came to build the staircases, the community members were struggling with basic access to their homes. MEDLIFE have been working with Laderas for over four years now and in this time have developed a strong relationship with the community. When we arrived at the staircase, which we had been working on all week, MEDLIFE staff and interns and community members were sat the whole way up the stairs, all working together to put the final touches of red paint to the staircase. After the inauguration, the community invited us all to their community centre to watch some traditional dance and enjoy some Inka Cola and food they had cooked for us. I spoke to the community leader, Oscar who told me why everyone in the Laderas community was so keen to get involved to help with the projects in this community. “Only when we’re all together can we make these projects work and guarantee they are completed quickly. We make sure everyone works together by making sure that everyone benefits from the projects. This creates a good community environment and brings us all together.” MEDLIFE have constructed five staircases along the hillside with the same number of community members helping each time. The people who benefited from the first staircase were just as keen to help build the final staircase because the people who were benefiting from the final staircase were keen to help build the first staircase.
Interns Alison and Emily painting the MEDLIFE logo on the final Laderas staircase.
Just from these three examples it is clear to see how important community involvement is in MEDLIFE projects. Last weekend, we held two volunteer days to get the materials for the second floor of Soledad house up the hill. On Saturday, more than thirty people showed up to help us with this project. Some were friends and family members, others had just heard about the project on Facebook. With this many people, we managed to quickly and easily bring 500 bricks and 10 bags of cement up the hill. However, on Sunday we only had around half as many volunteers, making the task all the more daunting. On the Sunday, instead of going straight to the site of Soledad’s house, we made a detour. The bus stopped and when we got off we walked up and rounded a corner to see around forty community members working with Carlos Benavides to construct a staircase. I was amazed to see that this was the site I had visited just a few weeks before where we hoped to build the staircase for Alfonso. I asked Carlos how he had managed to convince the community members of the ‘ghost houses’ to help. He shook his head and said “these are not the community members from this community, they are from Laderas”. To my astonishment, I realised he was right and that these were the same people we had been working with a few weeks before on the staircase in Laderas.
Members of the Laderas community helping to construct a staircase for Alfonso.
Carlos asked everyone to gather around and explained what was going on to everyone. He told Laderas community members that we were currently building a house and needed help passing materials up the hill. Before we knew it, we were all back in the bus and heading to Soledad’s house. However, this time we had around an extra fifteen people on the bus with us who had volunteered to help us with the materials as they were not needed to help with the staircase. With the extra help from the Laderas community, we were able to quickly and efficiently get the last load of bricks and cement up the hill. At MEDLIFE, especially in MED Programs, there is a motto of ‘problema, solución’. This is applied to all projects we do and it was amazing to see the communities we work with getting so on bored with this. Carlos had approached the community of Laderas with the ‘problema’ of not having enough people to build the staircase for Alfonso and they had come up with the ‘solución’. We then had the same problem again of not having enough people to bring the materials to Soledad’s house. Once again it was the community members that came up with the solution. I asked one of the community members why they were so keen to help on projects that don’t even benefit their community. He told me “whenever we have come to Carlos with a problem, he has found a way to solve it for us. It seems only fair that that works both ways”.