San Pedro de Casta: A Village of Transformation

Originally written for Globe Aware.

On hot summer nights, the coastal strips of Lima, Peru are dotted with beach-loving partiers, soaking up the moonlight and twisting and shaking to the rhythm of deep techno beats echoing through the air. The plazas are filled with families out for a night stroll, historical monuments glow on the cityscape, and entertainers ring out in song and dance, bringing cheerful grins to amused onlookers.

High up above, in the quiet stillness of the vast Andes Mountains, lies a tiny village tucked away in a remote corner of the rugged peaks. In San Pedro de Casta, a town of only a thousand people, families gather around their stoves to keep warm, resting on dirt floors as the evening fog rolls in.

In the morning, these families will wake with the sun and set to work on the land. There are crops to be tended to, cows to be milked, water to be collected. And the children are needed for help.

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Thousands of years ago, San Pedro was a lush plateau with green landscapes sweeping over the mountainsides and bountiful water sources bubbling plentifully. Over the years, the climate changed and the water dried up. What’s left is a rugged, dry land, with no real water source except what melts off from the mountain peaks in the winter. While this water is better than none at all, it is limited, dirty, and unharnessed. Collecting the water each day proves to be a difficult and burdensome task for the villagers, and what is collected isn’t even clean.

Without clean and sufficient water, the village suffers severely. Villagers struggle to grow crops in the arid climate, so what does grow is mostly used for sustenance rather than as a financial resource. Typhoid and waterborne illness are rampant among the villagers, and children are frequently infected with parasites and diseases. Lack of water also creates a cycle of malnutrition for the livestock and thus the villagers, leaving 80% of San Pedro’s children malnourished.

Water is an essential human right. Every human being on earth deserves access to clean, safe water. And currently the water available to the villagers of San Pedro is neither clean nor safe. The quality of life in San Pedro would exponentially increase with proper access to this basic human need.

A few years ago, Globe Aware volunteer, Beth Karbe, traveled with a few friends to help out in the village of San Pedro for a week-long volunteer vacation. During their time in the village, these women experienced firsthand the difficulties of life without abundant clean water and saw the effect it has on the people.

Their time was rich, full of culture exchange and understanding, and even included the opportunity to join in on a special village ritual before departing. Beth would tell anyone who visits the village of San Pedro to beware: upon departure you will not be the same person as you were when you arrived. The joyful and determined spirit of the people of San Pedro will open your eyes to a type of people many humans will never meet. In fact, ask any Peruvian about the small, isolated village, and most will be unsure what you are referring to. But to those who have been and have seen the mystical wonders of this ancient mountain town, intrigue, delight, and joy light up their face when they think back on the experience it offered.

For Beth Karbe, interaction with the San Pedro villagers left her wanting to do more to help. Teaching the village children, working on construction and improvement projects for facilities, and providing a heater for the local school were all great accomplishments the volunteers saw during their week-long trip, but Beth could not shake off the community’s need for water. She knew that since clean water was not available to the village, she was going to have to Bring it!

Bring Water! became the name of the new project Beth initiated throughout the next year to help fundraise $22,000 for the village of San Pedro. This money would supply innovative, top of the line water filtration systems within homes and community facilities in the village. The resources were even able to extend beyond San Pedro and provide water filtration systems for numerous villages in Ghana as well.

The donations have been made. The water filters are ready. The people of San Pedro are waiting. This June, Beth Karbe and a group of volunteers will be returning with Globe Aware to San Pedro once again, this time to bring clean, safe drinking water that will permanently improve the quality of life for these villagers. The great news? Many hands are needed and we are still looking for extra volunteers to help!

Join us June 29th – July 6th for this incredible trip and get a chance to meet the wonderful villagers of San Pedro yourself. In participating, you will get to see the amazing result of years of hard work and planning come to fruition in a way that will transform an entire community.  And who knows, maybe San Pedro won’t be the only thing transformed.