Caroline and Simon Hadlington visit Ccorca - 26th April 2010

In April 2010 Caroline and Simon Hadlington visited Ccorca with Fred to see the boarding school project.

“This was our first visit to Peru – the mountains are as spectacular as the air is thin! Ccorca is both the name of a district and of the main village and administrative centre of the district. The village of Ccorca is an hour’s somewhat hair-raising dusty car ride along a looping stone road through the mountains. Ccorca the village has the main schools that serve the district, with the children from outlying communities having to walk to and from school each day – a round trip of up to eight hours for some of them. The boarding houses established by Amantani enable at least some of the girls from the remoter villages to ‘live in’ during the school week to allow them to get a fuller education than they would otherwise be able to.

The boarding houses themselves in both the junior and senior schools are simple, clean and functional. The girls clearly take pride in them given how the rows of bunk beds were neatly made and the rooms are spick and span.

At lunchtime we sat down with the senior girls and had a hearty meal of boiled potatoes, fried chicken livers and salad. The girls chatted happily among themselves and asked us questions about life in the UK. When one of the girls learned that I had a background in science, she said ‘That’s good, you can help me with my chemistry homework.’

In the junior school we saw the new greenhouse – in reality more of a cross between a greenhouse and polytunnel – with a profusion of vegetables starting to show. Work had started on a new outdoor lean-to to provide extra covered space.

We had a quick visit to the craft workshops where the girls make everything from brooms (they have a special device for forcing nylon bristles into holes in a plastic block to form the head of the broom before a handle is attached) and small items of jewellery such as braided bracelets and earrings.

The girls are smiley, friendly and happy, quite inspirational given that their lives are so much tougher than ours.”