Over spring break this year, I took a trip to Cuzco, Peru with a group of students from the University of Cincinnati. The trip was organized by the service organization on campus, Serve Beyond Cincinnati. I'd been on two previous trips to El Salvador with this group and had come to love these trips more than any of the others, not only because the trips provide us the opportunity to help others but also because they afford us the chance to really dive into the culture and get to know the local people and traditions. While we were in Peru, we worked with the organization Hampy and were tasked with helping to build a classroom and water purification system for a community destroyed by recent flooding.
Before we got started on our own work, our group leaders from Hampy took us to see the project they had just completed. Working in an area of Cuzco known as Chocco, Hampy volunteers had helped youth in the community develop micro-businesses that could help bring steady work and income to the people there. One of the businesses we were able to see was the community's new cuye farm. Cuyes, or guinea pigs as we know them, are an important food source for people in Peru. Many, including our host mom, even have cages of cuyes at their own homes!
Fun Fact: Peruvians consume an estimated 65 million guinea pigs each year, and the animal is so entrenched in the culture that one famous painting of the Last Supper in the main cathedral in Cuzco shows Christ and the twelve disciples dining on guinea pig.
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