I left CPeru very shortly afterwards to live in a hotel, Heather and Megan also left to go travelling. I never saw Heather again (a pity because I liked her), but Megan later returned to Cajamarca to be with her boyfriend Yuri. Yuri is a talented folk musician and a native of the narby town of Celendin. He frequently brought his guitar along to volunteer parties to provide entertainment. Songs which people could sing along to, accompanied by Marco striking out a rythym on a wooden box.

As for Carla and her son, I´ve never seen or heard from them since. My suspicion is that none of us know the full story about her and why she acted the way she did. When I knew her before she was so kind to the kids, but at CPeru she didn´t help the kids in any way. My own pet theory is that she was encouraged to steal the money and destroy the organisation by Bruce Thornton the founder of Bruce Peru and that she went back to work for him again afterwards. Bruce was paranoid and nefarious and I wouldn´t put it past the man to do something so nasty. And if it were true that Carla did it on Bruce´s orders, it wouls still be one of the least far fetched stories told here.

The Tuesday after Carla was sacked a new volunteer coordinator from Ireland called Paul arrived. Paul arrived too late to save CPeru, but he went on to play a pivotal role in the formation of a new charity in it´s place, now called Inca Wasi. He is also involved in many of the sub-plots of this story. Paul is a tall, slim ginger-haired and energetic lad from Dublin. He´s a kind, good natured and exceedingly patient man which is a very necessary atribute to live in Peru. However he also a bit of a dreamer I think and although he had many successful ideas at Inca Wasi he also had a few too many pie-in-the-sky ideas which had little chance of ever succeeding.

While I was still at Inca Wasi, and feeling pretty miserable about the situation, I decided to get drunk on my own one Thursday evening. I knew that on Thursday evenings people often gathered in the main square to drink, dance, play guitar and sing together. I sat on a concrete bench in the plaza until the small hours drinking a bottle of pre-mixed vodka and lemon. Disgusting stuff but it´s a chap way to get drunk. I walked back to the centre to go to bed but I couldn´t get in with my key beause the bolt in the lock was too stiff. Stupidly, instead of knocking on the door to get let in I decided to take a drunken walk to see the city at night. It ws about 2am or 3am and I found the streets deserted until I encountered a group of transvestite prostitutes hanging around on a street corner. As I turned the corner on the opposite side one of them approached me and offered sex. I said no and turned to walk away but he folloed me and then grabbed me in an embrace. I was so drunk I thought he was just a woman with a husky voice. He had long curly hair, make-up, breasts and dressed like a woman, I suppose the adam´s apple should have given it away sooner though. But I had no idea what was going on. Eventually he turned and walked away, but then in a hearbeat my survival instinct kicked in. I realised he had taken my wallet with all my cards in, everything except my passport. As he walked away I followed him and managed to take my wallet back but he grabbed me in a strangle hold and choked me. I tried to shout out for help but I couldn´t draw breath. His friends toook my wallet off me again. They ripped it open took the cash out (only about 8 dollars) and tore the watch off my wrist. But then they laughed, said thank-you and walked off. I had a lucky escape I suppose. There was nobody else around, they could have kidknapped me and forced me to withdraw money from an ATM with my bank card for example. I was really stupid to be walking around the streets on my own late at night carrying all my cards and cash on me. But I learned to be more careful in future.

I was a bit shaken up but unhurt. I walked back to Inca Wasi and luckily Heather was up to let me in. I recounted the story to her and then went to bed, still a little bit in shock. Over the proceeding few months I saw the transvestite on the street several times (although always in daylight hours. I was also robbed again twice and assaulted a further time into the bargain during my time in Cajamarca. All this despite my learning a harsh lesson at the hands of the transvestites. I tryed to stay away from trouble but sometimes it just found me.


To Paul´s great credit things began to improve at the centre almost from the moment he arrived. I felt that he took charge of the situation very early on and that the others (Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco) all followed his lead. I think that if it wasn´t for his enthusiasm and leadership the centre would have shut down permanently. I also believe that Paul deserves the majority of the credit for forming the new charity which emerged out of the charred ruins of CPeru. One of Paul´s first tasks was to meet with an official from the ministry of labour, but that was already a lost cause and CPeru were forced to pay Carla a large compensation fee for employing her then sacking her without a proper contract of employment in place. Later that day the volunteers plus Marco and Roger had a highly-charged meeting where they decided to set up a new charity in place of CPeru. Paul, Marge, Susanne, Roger and Marco would be the trustees of the new charity and they decided to call it IncaWasi.

I was fed-up and disillusioned with the whole thing and I decided that I wanted no part of it. Also I wanted to concentrate on our Alfalfa. I counselled Roger against becaoming too involved with IncaWasi. He promised me he wouldn´t and to be fair he kept his word on that. Despite the ups and downs IncaWasi has become a well established charity and very successful at helping some of the poor people in the barrio. Paul, Roger and all the others did a fine job and made something beautiful out of a very ugly situation.