Five Feet, Nine Inches Above Ground

Where a house is built and the high god explored

To my gentle and dedicated readers, my deepest apologies for abandoning you in February 2025 in Portugal. Seventy years of life caught up with me and I had to deal with it in my own way. Unfortunately, that excluded this blog. However, I am back with a new adventure in conjunction with the Pure Art Foundation of Québec. https://pureartfoundation.org/ You check out their web site in English or French for all the details. The short explanation is that a group of 33 volunteers is here in Manantay, Pucallpa, Peru building a house for a family of approximately ten people plus supporting other programmes of the Foundation. They have a central location in Manantay District called The Hub. It provides many services for the poorest of the poor. If you have any doubts about how good we have it in Canada, I suggest you make the trip with Pure Art: your life and point of view will be changed forever.

It was an 8 hour direct flight from Montreal to Lima with Air Transat that got us that far early Saturday morning. That was followed by a late morning flight of about an hour from Lima to Pucallpa. We checked into our hotel and, there being no rest for the wicked, we headed out to The Hub to have a look at a brand new building across the road. It’s a multipurpose building with washroom facilities that attracted the attention of the local politicians and the bishop. You will see more of that later. The building is referred to as La Cancha.

We also stopped by the one and only house being built this year. Sometimes there are three or four houses built in the space of a week by several teams of volunteers. The foundation, floor, frame and roof are in place. We have the task of nailing tongue and groove boards onto the frame built of the hardest wood ever – bends nails out of shape, no problem! Followed by a coat of yellow paint.

It’s Tuesday evening as I write this blog. I’m safely back at the hotel waiting for dinner. The house is nearly finished interns of the siding. Tomorrow, we all take a day off to travel by riverboat to a Shippibo village. More about that in another post. Dante and I met when I was here in 2020. He has known the McKinnon family since they first began coming here. He’s a great translator between English and Spanish and has his own private English language school here in Pucallpa. we have remained in touch since then and I have “helped” with on line classes. The interior of the Hub has developed over the years. It consists of several buildings that house a childcare centre, a sewing centre, medical facilities and a large meeting hall. The areas amongst the buildings are filled with beautiful plants and trees. They are a blessed relief from the muddy morass that used to happen when it rained.

Sunday was the day the Cancha was inaugurated with all due pomp and ceremony including song and dance numbers provided by children attached to the Foundation school programme.

We headed out as a group early in the day in our wonderful bus with 60 km/hour air conditioning. There was a short stop in the centre of Manatay to pick up our police security guard so I had a chance to take a few photos of the local flora.

The inauguration!

I didn’t get many photos because my phone was rapidly losing battery power in the heat. Something I hadn’t foreseen and I didn’t have my power pack with me. The champagne bottle on the door was suspended in a traditional Shippibo pot that actually kept the shards of glass in place when hit it with the hammers.

the temperature is in the mid 30’s Celsius and sunny although today started out as overcast. I’ve been employed cutting board lengths with George Ellerbeck. He did the measuring and I did the sawing. I think we cut most of the boards for the house. It’s very nearly finished and ready to paint.

That’s my post for today. Will provide more after our trip downriver to the Shippibo village, San Juan. The beauty of the lilies to close the day. Actually, trumpet vine, I think.