Arrival
After 30 hours of travel, an eager journalist arrives at Cusco
Cusco Airport — Sept. 21 at Cusco, Peru
We meet her just outside Cusco Airport at 9 a.m. local time. More than 30 hours since I leaned over and said my 3 a.m. good byes to my sleeping sons, the South American sun is shining and the morning air is springtime crisp.
Travel to Cusco was nearly seamless. Slowed only slightly by the America Airlines “strife” that erupted Thursday (a modified labor strike). Fortunately, all seven Heart Walk volunteers made scheduled connections and from various parts of the United States, Penelope has received word that everyone is en route and scheduled to meet here within the hour.
As we make our way to baggage claim, I see David Jamieson from Seattle, Wash., whom I recognize from the speech he gave at the Heart Walk Foundation Gala in St. George last February. I was so inspired by the experiences he shared and by Penelope’s devotion to the cause, I knew I wanted to come to Peru to write the story of what Heart Walk Foundation has done — and is doing — for the once forgotten indigenous tribes living high in Andes.
Like us, David looks a bit travel weary. I begin to wave and he pushes his luggage cart in my direction heaped with khaki canvas duffle bags filled with donations for the villages. In fact, we are all arriving with stuffed suitcases carrying items like school supplies, hygiene items, towels, soaps, socks, nail clippers, warm clothing, baby blankets, hiking sticks for the elderly and soccer balls for the children.
David points to the other side of the baggage claim area to a tourist-looking couple I can only term adorable at first sight. Guy and Mary Kitchen have arrived from Marysville, Mont. and look enthusiastic and ready to go to work. As of yet, I have experienced nothing less than absolute energy from the Kitchens who are both delightful and dedicated to serving others in these early years of their retirement.
Penelope directs us all past the taxi drivers shouting offers that are difficult to resist. Even though I don’t need a taxi, I want to say ‘Yes gracias” if only to satisfy my eager desire to blurt some semblance of a Spanish phrase.
I hear a high pitched “Penalopay” from across the parking lot and I see her.
Bertha (pronounced bear-ddta with a Spanish role of the tongue) is somehow all that I expected her to be. She is the 5’1″ embodiment of Peruvian love and kindness with a vigorous attentiveness to getting things done and done right.
Penelope Eicher and Bertha reunite at Cusco Airport Sept. 22.
Penelope runs to her in celebration and we witness a warm, tearful, joyful reunion between two women equally devoted — heart, mind, body and soul — to serving a people high in the Andes Mountains who are impoverished, patient and simple, and who have been abandoned by their own government.
Penelope begins to introduce us to our field director for the trip as we fall in behind her. “Bertha, these are the people I have been telling you about in my emails,” she says.
From Southern Utah, she introduces myself and Rain Sundberg of St. George, and Michelle Snook of Hurricane. And with sleepy smiles, we reach to meet Bertha’s enthusiastic handshake. Standing tall and straight, her smile and Peruvian rosy cheeks somehow allow her stature to reach us eye to eye and infuse us with her love and energy for the work we have come to do.
After rallying us with her excitement to meet us, she shows us to our driver who squeezes most of our 25 luggage pieces into a small compartment at the back of an 8-passenger economy tourist van. What is left, he lassos to the top of the van like a rodeo cowboy — he has done this before.
With alarm, Penelope realizes one of our bags is missing and dashes back to file a search report. This suitcase is important. We have brought two sewing machines to Peru that are critical to helping the Q’ero people learn to sew clothing for their families and to earn money. The power transformer needed to run the machines in Peru is packed in Penelope’s missing suitcase.
Michele suggests we offer a prayer asking for help in finding the missing bag. As new friends representing different religious backgrounds and belief systems, we join hands forming a circle and bow our heads to offer a common prayer of gratitude for our safe arrival, assistance in finding the lost luggage, and guidance in using our collective strength, talents and resources to assist the people of the Q’ero villages while we are are here.
When Penelope returns she says she filed a claim for the bag. It is filled with donations, and she is eager to see that they arrive where they are intended. We pause and consider ourselves blessed that we have arrived safely with our personal luggage, and that the camera equipment is with us, unharmed. We are ready to go to work.
And with that, we squeeze into the van (camera equipment piled on my lap) and make our horn-honking way into the city of Cusco.
What an adventure this will be.
Continue the series: https://medium.com/heart-of-the-andes/a75615be746c/edit
In case you missed:
Part 1 in this series can be found at: https://medium.com/heart-of-the-andes/6a005fbeaf
