First Rounds of Surveys

Yesterday I went to Media Luna accompanied by Daniel, the new projects coordinator at Nexos. We went to meet with Zenobio with the intention to write down some goals and to ask when he would be able to help us navigate the community to complete the survey that was started a few months ago. Daniel and I found Zenobio in the same rushed state as the previous visit and he told us to come early this morning so that he could guide us through the community. So we left Zenobio to his fields and wandered around the community for a little while to gain some sense of direction.

We returned to Media Luna this morning a little before 7AM to meet Zenobio with our map and list of community members in hand. He went through the list and told us who had been surveyed before, and who no longer lived in the community. The extensiveness of the community became clear as Zenobio pointed in any and all directions when describing which houses we had to visit. Zenobio was not able to go with us due to his obligations to work on his chacra (field).

After easily finding a few families who were not interviewed we had to go farther to find more houses. Once we were in the highest part of the community we encountered families with different problems than those who lived closer to the main road. While almost everyone in Media Luna relies on agriculture for their livelihood, some people have more opportunities to obtain work outside of their agricultural practices. This may be caused by the size of each family's field which affects how much they are able to produce and therefore how much they are able to sell. Most of the households that were farther away from the main road that we interviewed had smaller plots of land and therefore were more dependent on that land to produce the necessary alimentation for their families and usually did not produce and excess that they could sell.

As these households earn less money, they discussed certain social problems that the other families did not. We asked about the children’s attendance to school but also asked if the interviewee was aware of any children in the community who did not go to school, in addition to asking if their children go to school. We expect that by asking some questions in an indirect way that we will be able to secure honest answers. This is extremely necessary if we are to know the reality of the community and not have to waft through answers that may be what they think we want to hear.

We completed seven surveys this morning over the span of four hours. The following days will most likely be the same as the community is very spread out and half of the families have already been interviewed.

This afternoon Daniel and I are going to Cusco to meet with a doctor from USAID to discuss the possibility of using a diagnostic survey he’s created. This survey has more to do with determining malnutrition and other health issues. If we are able to acquire this diagnostic survey we may have to start over again with the community but it will be very valuable in determining their medical needs. Medical care was determined to be the principal need of the community after the first half of the survey was completed by Mariajosé and Igor.