Shopping in Huaraz - Part 2 -

Buying groceries is not the only interesting shopping activity, just about anything you can imagine is available on the streets or in the central market place. Here are a few examples.

Clothing and back packs.  We think that they have to take all those things inside every night--what a lot of work!

More clothes, different wall.

Another clothing store next door to the one above. Also, notice the belt salesman on the right.

Sidewalk shoe store.

More shoes on the sidewalk.

A mobile belt saleslady enjoying a popsicle on a sunny day.

Another belt salesman.

You can also buy furniture on the sidewalk and other items offered by this group of vendors. Check out the cool hats.  And as you can see, the sidewalks are really not used for walking--we have to mostly walk in the streets, at least down in the main market area.

This is our favorite kitchen supply store and the owner. As you can see, he has a little bit of everything, much of it stacked on the floor in front of the counter.

Not all street vendors are downtown. This merchant set up on the corner one block from our apartment. There was a big volleyball tournament at a nearby school that day and lots of people came, providing a sales opportunity for these vendors.  These are basically cheap kids' toys.

It was about lunchtime on a Saturday, so what better time to set up your hot meal stand for all those hungry folks following the volleyball games.  The yellow things in the square plastic tub are potatoes, one of the many varieties of potatoes here.  Not sure what the other foods are.

Why not get your teeth checked and your eyes examined while you shop? The medical profession is not afraid to use bold advertising. 

Shopping for food in Huaraz -

Recent posts have contained a lot of text and few photos. We would like to alter that trend. We have been collecting photos of the varied and interesting food sources where we get our weekly groceries. There are no supermarkets, malls or Walmarts; so we go to various small vendors in and out of the large central market. We also have several grocery stores that actually carry a variety of items in one place and have familiar checkout cash registers.

We'll start with one of the grocery stores that we shop at regularly.

This is Novaplaza, the second largest grocery store.

This is the guy who checks your bags when you enter the store and places them in the lockers behind him while you shop. This is at Trujillo, the largest grocery store in town that carries the basics but does not have any meat or fresh produce.  Well, they do carry lunch meat and hot dogs.

Here are some of the fruit carts, which are on every street near the central market.

Fresh fruit

Motorized fresh fruit

A closer look at the motorized fruit vendor.

Besides bananas and pineapple, you can see mangoes, pineapple, chirimoya and other local fruits.

Have a strawberry! Our favorite photo. We bought some, soaked them in disinfectant and they were delicious.

How about some fresh watermelon! Note the vendor does not have a hand on his left arm.  We see people eating individual slices of watermelon and pineapple in a bag all the time.

Now for some veggies, meats and other items that are available at the markets.

One of Sister Oxborrow's favorite veggie vendors in the central market.

The carrots here are great, very tasty, even the large ones, which are usually a little woody in the States but not here.  They only have red onions here.

You can also purchase your veggies along the sidewalk if you wish.

Or in the middle of the street.

And if you are hungry while you are shopping, these ladies will fix you a plate of chocho, which consists of a variety of white, round bean, tomatoes and onions.

Here's more on chocho from an article in "Nutrition Unplugged" by Janet Helm, a nutrition journalist and registered dietician.

"Quinoa isn't the only superfood to emerge from the Andes Mountains. This grain-like seed, a staple of the Incan diet, rose to fame in the U.S. for its impressive protein content, whole-grain/gluten-free goodness, and 'ancient' pedigree. Now there's another ancient food from the Andean region that's about to emerge as the newest superfood. Chocho is a legume that's been a core component of Ecuadorian and Peruvian cuisine for ages. This dense, white bean is rich in protein (even more than quinoa and soy beans), contains healthy fats (omega-3s) and is high in fiber and minerals. Lots of good stuff comes out of Peru. Besides quinoa, we have Peru to thank for potatoes."

Sister Oxborrow at her favorite meat market, well actually we do buy some packages meats (when they have them) at Novaplaza but this lady has good hamburger and roasts and in spite of the appearance, the meat is clean and fresh.

This is our cheese and honey vendor. The dog was just taking a break from picking up scraps of meat at the various meat vendors. Although under roof, the large central market has many entrances and dogs come and go at will and no one seems to mind.

Although we buy our bread from the grocery stores or the bread and pastry stores, street vendors like this lady are common. She is brushing away the flies from her breads.

Have an egg! We have purchased from these vendors once or twice but generally buy our eggs at the grocery store. They come in cartons of 15.

We'll end this gourmet tour with this photo of "lechón", or oven roasted pork. With the seasoning that's added this meat is delicious. We ate it for the first time at the Bishop's birthday party, which we posted several months ago. We bought about 4 lbs. and have frozen some for future use. Of all the lechón vendors, this lady was recommended as the best.

News from the archives -

You have possibly noticed that our blog production has dropped off considerably since we received stake Family History callings at the end of May. We have been busy every weekend and many of the evenings. 

This past Sunday we visited and taught four wards in their combined Priesthood, Relief Society and youth class, starting with our ward (Central) at 10:00, then traveling to the Haurupampa Ward at 11:00 and back to the Centenario Ward at 12:00. We went home for lunch and then finished up the training with the Huaraz Ward at 4:00. 

Three of the wards meet in the chapel but the fourth, Huarupampa, meets in a rented building about 10 minutes from the chapel. Transportation was a concern since there are only two cars in our ward. Fortunately, the Elders Quorum President was there and had his car so he drove us, the Stake President (who does not have a car) and a member of the High Council to the Huarupampa building. Sunday evening we went to the home of a ward member and trained a family of six on indexing. It was a long but rewarding day.

We have been asked to train all 40 young single adults (ages 18 to 30) in the stake on indexing before the end of July when our stake is hosting a 4 day YSA convention here for the YSA from the  Huanaco and Lima Independencia stakes. One of the activities is to see if they can index 5,000 names during the convention. We have our work cut out for us.

Here is a follow-up on some of the interesting things we have seen and done lately at the archives.

First of all, we are now working with the Nikon 800 color camera that our trainer, Juan, has been using and evaluating since we arrived. It is a little easier to use since we don't have to adjust the lighting but is a little slower to capture the images. Since he has a high production rate goal, is better that he is on the faster B/W camera. He also wants us to have experience with the color camera. It is interesting to see the images in color--lots of colored stamps and different colors of ink and papers.

We continue to try and read some of the records as we photograph them. There is often more to the story than just the cold facts and dates. In the records we are doing now there are many, many more deaths related to traffic accidents. That would be expected in the 1960s when there were many more vehicles. In one book there were nine deaths reported the same day and another had eleven, all from two different accidents--probably a bus or truck hauling people.

One couple died in a fire and another couple was struck by lightning. Apparently quite a few people die from lightning strikes during the rainy season. There have been a number of deaths from drowning, gunshot wounds, and suffocation.

We have also seen reports of TB deaths, colic, and many people have died from pneumonia. You would expect that antibiotics would have been available for pneumonia by the 50's and 60's. Two sad entries show two sets of twins that only lived a few hours, but there are not nearly as many "naci-muerte" (born dead) as in previous years.

This week we will start the books that contain the data from the 1970 earthquake in which 20,000 people died here in Huaraz. We have no idea how they would have recorded all those fatalities.  Please don't think of us as morbid talking about all these deaths--it is just that is what we are dealing with all day.

The photo below was taken from the death records of Huaraz for the year 1955 (the year Elder Oxborrow graduated from high school). It is a statistical summary of the deaths for the year. We think it is fascinating how they classified people--although maybe not politically correct by today's standards. It is also interesting how many people died without medical assistance.  Below the photo is a translation of the summary.

The 1955 summary of deaths for Huaraz.

[Translation]
Demographic statistics of deaths during the year 1955

Adults -  272      Males -     255       Urban -   197        Legitimate -  403
Minors -   48      Women -  256        Hospital - 33        Illegitimate - 108
Infants - 191                     511       Rural -    281                            511
             511                                                511

White race -     19         With medical assistance -      116
Mixed -          286         Without medical assistance -  395
Indigenous -   206                                                    511
                     511

An interesting discovery this past week was finding the oldest book in the archives. It wasn't even listed on their inventory list. It contains the death records for the City of Huaraz from 1888 to 1891. Part of the cover is bound with real leather and the book is in good condition considering it is 126 years old. There are two entries to a page as you can see in the photo at the bottom.

The oldest book in the archives - 1888. Notice the real leather binding.

The label on the oldest book.

We reached two milestones this week. On Monday, we took the 70,000th image since we arrived. Those records will soon be available to many Peruvians on FamilySearch.org to enable them to search for their ancestors.

On Thursday this week, we will have completed 5 months in the mission. We cannot believe we have been in the mission field that long. It seems we just arrived in Huaraz a few weeks ago.

Politics, water buckets, epidemics and "Mamita" -

Last week Tony's sister, Kathy, asked if our "job" was getting monotonous. We told her that yes, sometimes, like all jobs it is pretty routine. However, we have gleaned some interesting information as we turn all those pages and take a digital image of each one (55,738 through today). For example, in the first books we did we noticed that well over half of all the deaths were infants or children under two. We felt so sad for all those parents. As we continued through the years, the infant mortality rate went down considerably--possibly due to better health care and we saw more elderly people listed. 

One day we noticed in the 1940 death records of Huaraz that the cause of death of five men indicated they had been executed by the military. A further note stated that they had been court martialled by the army and sentenced to death. We also noticed that there was a cholera epidemic in the Chimbote area in the early 1940's with many deaths.

For a change of pace, this week we have been doing marriage records of a small town named Pallasca in the northern part of this province. These books are small in size (about like a small bound notebook) and in content, an average of 10 - 20 marriages per year. We did 47 books in two days, which dated from 1938 through 1994 when the government began entering vital statistics on computers.

But for Marilyn, one of the most interesting things we noticed was that in 1918 - 1919 there was a flu epidemic here with hundreds of deaths.  She remembers reading in Grandma Rawlins' history that she and Grandpa had to wear face masks when they applied for their marriage license about that same time in Logan, Utah, because there was flu epidemic there also. Apparently it was a world-wide epidemic. One book we did contained 200 pages with a death entry on each page and covered only two weeks in 1919 where normally 200 pages covers four to six months.

Recently we have been doing the 1940's and 1950's death records for Huaraz. The cause of death for many of these people simply says; "unknown cause, without medical assistance", so we don't know what was happening then. We are curious as to how the 70,000 deaths that occurred in the 1970 earthquake and landslide will be recorded.

One of the other things we have noticed is that the paper is very different from year to year and printer to printer. Most books since 1900 have pre-printed pages and the officials only fill in the individual data for each entry. Some books have had paper as thin as scripture paper and others as thick as butcher paper. One mayor in 1920 actually had a stamp for his signature. I think he is the only one so far so he was pretty much on the cutting edge for his day or lazy, not sure which. The mayor signs every record along with other officials of the municipality where the information was recorded. Some of these records will be easy to index because the handwriting is so clear and others not so much--with poor handwriting, water damage and faded ink.

So, just in case you were also wondering if we were getting bored with this assignment, this is probably more than you wanted to know. But since each book is different and some very challenging to photograph--getting the focus and lighting correct can be tricky-- we really are not bored yet. 

It is exciting to be part of a worldwide effort to record and save the vital records of the human family. We quote from an article entitled "Indexing is Vital" which appeared in the December 2013 Ensign magazine.

"Volunteers worldwide have indexed (digitized) more than one billion records since 2006, but there's a lot more work to do. Billions of additional records are waiting in the Granite Mountain Records Vault in Salt Lake City, Utah. And beyond that are the records found in other archives across the globe, which the Family History Department is photographing at the rate of about 35 million digital images per month."

It is exciting to be able to add our "grain of sand" to the effort.

On another front, not long after we arrived in Huaraz we noticed in the headlines in the newspapers on the newstands that there was an investigation of the president of the Ancash Province related to the murder in the city of Chimbote of a former official from the Ancash administration. The capital of the province is Huaraz and the provincial offices are located here. The archives where we work are part of this administrative complex. Not long after, it was announced on radio (which are always on in all the taxis and colectivos--some with music and some with news) and in the newspapers, that an official investigation had also begun of the finances of the province and that an audit would be done of all the offices.

We learned later that the Peruvian government is charging the provincial president and 15 to 20 of his cronies with murder, theft and fraud in the disappearance of US$ 250 million (that's dollars!) from the provincial accounts over the past seven years of the current administration. Included in the charges are the illegal payoff of contractors, who in addition submitted inflated invoices to the provincial government, the purchase of computers, vehicles, etc. for personal use with government funds, and other related racketeering acts.

Ancash has several large open pit mines which operate 7/24 and royalties and taxes from these mining operations go to the regional/provincial government, the remainder to the federal government in Lima. Thus the province has a steady revenue source from these funds. We had heard from the locals and continue to hear, that there is much corruption in both the provincial and the city governments in Peru. Most were not surprised at the amount of the theft nor the murder accusations, but were encouraged that anybody from the federal government was actually going to investigate it. However, some say that even the investigators and the auditors may be in cahoots with the provincial leaders and doubt that an honest audit and investigation will be undertaken.

Things appeared to get serious about two months ago when federal police showed up in riot gear at the entrance to the complex, which is also the entrance to the archives. They have remained every day since in various numbers from 15 to 20 initially, to 8 - 10 now. In addition, a busload of auditors arrived from Lima and has been at the complex ever since. They inventoried  equipment in our area of the archives about 6 weeks ago. An interim president of the province has been appointed and the previous one was in court last week where formal charges were filed. It will be interesting to see where this leads. The locals thinks he will do jail time, but are not sure that the incoming officials, both the interim and the elected replacements this Fall, will be any more honest. "Maybe for awhile until they learn how to embezzle and not get caught!" is a typical comment we hear.

Four weeks ago, the water was turned off to the entire complex. In addition, all temporary and non contract employees were dismissed at the end of April. Rocío, a young lady in her early twenties, who worked in our section of the archives, was terminated. We miss her. The other five employees in the archives have remained but apprehensive of their job security. We estimate there are about 100 - 150 employees total in this entire provincial government complex. They told us that the water had been cut off because the provincial government did not pay the water bill due to the freezing of all funds during the audit and federal investigation.

So, for three weeks, we, and all the other departments, caught rain water in small buckets which were then brought into the bathrooms to flush the toilets and wash hands. Fortunately, it was still raining about everyday so there was enough water. However, about two week ago as the rainy season subsided, they brought around large barrels full of water and placed them outside of each office area. We then filled our bucket as we passed by on the way to the bathroom.

BYOB - Bring your own bucket.

Last week, the water was turned on and the employees said it was at the direction of the new acting president of the province. We were all quite relieved that we could stop the bucket brigade. There is always something interesting to write about in Huaraz.

We will close with some information on our "vending machine" whom we call "Mamita". She sets up her snacks, fruits and drinks everyday by one of the buildings in the complex. We call her Mamita because she started calling us "Poppi" and "Mommi" not long after we arrived. We greet her almost every day and occasionally purchase a snack from her.

Mamita and her "vending machine"

The two mamitas in their hats.  As you can see, Mamita is not very tall.