San Roque

We left Nauta this morning after a beef stew and rice breakfast. We set off in the speed boat which is around three times faster than our previous boat. It kept breaking however as water got into the engine.  I read ‘Little Women’ for the majority of the journey. When we were near San Roque we found out that we only had 7 gallons of fuel left.  This is not enough for us to get back to Nauta, so we would have to work something out. We then arrived in San Roque which is a village on the Maranon. When the boat pulled in loads of children surrounded us. They were fascinated by seeing two white people.  The children would have never seen a white person before. White people are known as Grecos which derives from green girl. As white people were thought to all have green eyes.  Due to folk law and myths regarding white people, we had to be wary. Old traditions claim that white people used to cut off the faces of Peruvians. White people were also thought to cut off the fat of villagers and steal things.  Freddie and Louis got off the boat first in order to find the mayor of the village. They then asked him for permission to stay in the village. The mayor granted us stay and we were shown to a hut which we could set our tents up in. The hut had some charts on the wall which seemed to be put in place by LAN and UNICEF. The charts displayed children’s weights in the village. And there was also a list of all the families that lived there. The village has 450 inhabitants. By the river I saw a couple of children with the condition Kwashiorkor an indicator of protein malnutrition.  The village seemed very poor and although there were strategies in place to help the children, some still seemed to suffer.