Tierra del Olvido is setting up an ecological educational project in three communities along the Yanayacu river, an affluent of the Amazone river, 130 kilometers from Iquitos, Peru.
The inhabitants suffer serious problems. For example, the level of education is very low. Children receive five months of education per year. During the rainseason, teachers can't get to the villages. Pupils stop going to school at the age of 12, 13, when they get married and have to start making a living for their own family.
To break this pattern, we want to set up an ARTS & CRAFTS CENTER where children can participate in workshops on carpentry, shoemaking, bead work and sewing.
In this way they will learn a craft they can directly apply to improve their standard of living.
The communities also lack a motorized boat to transport the children to the school. The communities are at least half an hour apart. In case of an emmergency, for example when someone gets bitten by a snake, they need a boat to get medical aid. Without it, they die..
Other projects concern clean drinking water, constructing latrines for better hygiene, and the improvement of diets through vegetable gardens near the school.
Our projects are set up together with the communities of San Juan de Yanayacu, Junin and Ayacucho. The villages consist of 40 to 45 families with each six to seven children.
The people mainly live from fishing, and grow yucca and mais. Next to this their diet consists mainly of bananas and rice.
The communities don't have access to medical aid. They use traditional medicine to cure their illnesses. Because of the very poor diet people suffer life threatening diseases such as diabetis, tuberculosis and dysentery.
Another grave problem is alcoholism amongst adults. Many men spend their day drinking rum or masato, a beverage made of yucca. The young men imitate their fathers and follow their unfortunate example.
The people in the area belong to the Cocama indians. After contact with the first colonists, in the 17th century, the indigineous people gave up their language and lost many of their customs. Antropologists nicknamed them 'the invisible natives'. They feel embarrased about their true identity and associate themselves more with the dominant culture, abandoning their own values. One of our aims is to help them re-evaluate their customs and culture, for example through the rescue of their art work.
