POVERTY & RICHES IN PIURA

Farmers returning home- Ayabaca

PIURA is a land of unique algarrobo trees, a variety of mesquite similar to the carob, and it is the region with the most equatorial tropical dry forests in the whole Pacific.

My enclosed garden - Piura

These eco-regions carry a unique variety of orchids, birds, reptiles, plants and mammals. Piura is known for the best and oldest lime-lemons in South America (they use them in everything and taste nothing like our limes or lemons) as well as South America's finest mango (tropical dry), which I do not like.
With Lambayeque, it is the original home of Pima cotton. Piura also produces bananas, coconuts, rice and other fruits as local income.

Its development has been favored also by the petroleum found in the ocean of Talara Province, fishing is blessed by two ocean currents, silver mines are common and phosphate plants popping up along the coast.

Farmers

It is not mine to get into the the politics of a nation I do not live in. In my visits to Piura I hear what the locals say, and as anywhere, they complain about government not doing enough. My friend Cliff who brings me to Piura with his wife Judy, says he has seen great economic improvement in the past six years, compared to ten years ago. In 2011, amidst an ongoing global recession and against a historical backdrop of political violence, social instability and economic vulnerability, Peru grew its GDP by 6.9 per cent.

Rural women buying bread
(Jeremy grabs some for us)

According to government statistics, less than a third of the Peruvian population now lives below the national poverty line, compared with around half in the early 2000s. But for many hundreds of thousands it is not fast enough. The poorest of the poor in Peru are in the arid Andean highlands, where a large majority of the indigenous Quechua and Aymara communities live below the poverty line .

I remember when Jeremy and I were trying to track down weavers on the coast, we came across some pretty rough areas with dirt roads, no plumbing or electricity, grandparents raising the children while both parents worked menial jobs, and yet there was always amazing hospitality and graciousness.

Many agencies, local and from abroad, are working to help peoples in rural areas to better their lives, especially in better agricultural practices.

Rural school- note desert

Women & children getting water

Here I present some photos I took of the contrasts of this area. For me the riches went far beyond the materialism I found in the "upper echelons" but was found in the people themselves.