If you like what you see here – please consider buying the book to help me support the children of Peru. To read more about the book please go to the “Visions of Peru” Book page.

Click on the image about to purchase the book.

This is Washington – affectionately, Washi

He was our guide on the trip but he is so much more than that. We all grew to love him, and to admire his tenacity and passion in helping his people, whom we also came to love. With money we raised prior to leaving for Peru, and his help – we were able to directly affect the people most in need, sometimes in remote areas. I saw first hand the poverty and suffering this people live with, yet they smile and offer us food when we enter their home. You can read and see his story and theirs in “Visions of Peru”.

I met Mama Sentuza, 84, who can barely see and who lives in the dirt and rock house she’s lived in her whole life. She has no running water except the stream beside her home, no electricity, no health care, and no help – except for Washi! You will meet her and see inside her home in “Visions of Peru”.

We met two children that tagged along with us during an afternoon visit to some Inca ruins. We learned how their story so very closely mirrored Washi’s own story, and how his has turned out with a happy ending thanks to the generosity of a lady name Mama Sharon and how hopefully with Washi’s help and guidance theirs will too. Without help, their story is sad and bleak. Four children being supported by their mother. The dad is gone and they live in a small one room house with only the clothes on their backs, no beds to sleep in, no money for school supplies, no money for food. This is the story of literally 100s of children and women in small towns everywhere in Peru. They are forced to beg for food, or sing for tourists – as they did for us, as Washi did some 20 years ago – just to survive.

We took 500 pairs of shoes to a mountain village and put them on the children’s feet ourselves. I saw first hand how bad the need is, and for such little money (to us) we can do so much good. For $1 a pair, they simply cannot afford the luxury of new shoes when they’ve outgrown them. The support and sharing I witnessed amount those children was awe inspiring. The older ones cared for their younger siblings and did without if there was none for them. I watched them help each other find a new pair to fit and give their old pair to a younger child that didn’t get any. Much can be learned from these people!

PURCHASE THE BOOK NOW

Traditional publishing is very expensive and you have to make 100′s or 1000′s of copies and deal with sales, distribution, delivery and shipping. So I was not able to go that route at this time, but Blurb.com has provided me a means to make this dream a reality. It comes with a higher price tag, but I can assure you that 100% of the profit I make from all sales of this book will go directly to Washington to help the children.

Think of your book purchase in this way. You get:

• A gorgeous coffee table book full of over 200 of images the scenes and people of Peru, taken by an award winning photographer
• To feel good about helping the very people you see on its pages
• A tool for gratitude to remind yourself daily, how much you have when so many in the world have so little – and yet they are happy
• To make my dream come true, and help Washi with his dream of a better Peru for his people. One at a time!

How can you NOT fall in love with these faces?! I did

You CAN make a difference – please help! Buy one or more copies of the book. Give it as a gift for that hard to buy for friend who also likes helping people. Give it as corporate gifts or rewards for staff or clients. Buy it for anyone you know that’s ever been to Peru and has been touched by it as I have. Buy as many as you can – and then spread the word to others please.

If you cannot get a book, you can also help by passing along this story and link to this page. Put it on your Facebook wall. Twitter about it. Email it to all your friends and colleagues. In order to make this happen we need to reach as many people as possible. I can only do that with your help.

Thanks for listening.

PURCHASE THE BOOK NOW

Visions of Peru

By Darlene Hildebrandt

Book Preview

In your thin scruffiness,
black and white against
sand and stone, I think
of your well-groomed, fattened
relatives guarding luxury
in North America, as you
guard for the hand in the south,
that feeds you, no matter
how sparse, the dry bone.

- Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

Old Woman

old woman
on your face lies a gift of fields
stories unfold in the pleated furrows and long tales spill
across the white fence of your smile
phrases slip easy through narrow gaps
where pickets have fallen away
and I lean into the clear space of your calm contentment

I roam free in the gift of your eyes
ponder dimensions of the dusk you now inhabit
while the ripened sun spins out of your path

I am drawn by the gifts you carry in your hands
parrafin tapers antiqued and bent
and the bronzed shelf of your arm
warm against my back

Primed for your last hour
you are comfortable
in the history of your bones

- Barbara Mitchell

you are the definition of endurance
standing firm against the backdrop of your native country
and I am the same
wedged between the busy streets and avenues of my own

we are no different really, you and I
your eyes a watercolor of secrets
tracking survival from the dusty grounds
pulling in a wish, inventing a dream that might save you
while my own secrets flock to my eyes
from the weathered places I track daily
a lost mother, a broken union between man and woman
things too painful from the past pushing in

we both stand in our dry surroundings
contemplating life through the history of our fortunes
yet we are not broken by the paths we are forced to take
we breathe scraps of hope into our skin
and the flush of them covers us
makes us into something strong
turns us into a signpost of resilience.

- barbara mitchell

Still Life

From your rock-hill
view, are you looking
into desolation,
or dreams?

Do you see blurred nothingness
in green spurts rising
from continuous sand?
Or is your vision inward,
colored like your rainbow-poncho?

Do you breathe more than arid-air?
Do you thirst for: the cities, the jungle,
the rainforest, the Andes?
Can you see up to Machu Picchu?

Are you in thoughts of Quechua—
meditating about Intihuatana
(the place to which the sun is tied)—
the great sundial?

Are you silently worshipping
the Sun-God?

Or are you just being
hungry in what you know,
posed in a moment
of your routine
without dreams?

- Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

Hands of Time

The toil of your life
is carried in your hands in
the earth stains upon and
under your fingernails
as much as in the thinning
gold wedding ring around your
wrinkled finger.

Your hands in their tired
silence upon your lap
go beyond language barriers;

and words are not needed
to tell your story.

- Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck

Layers

Your image overlays an image
of my daughter, your age,
posing like you on a sun-heated rock;

her youthful beauty glistens
in the riverside spray, dancing
in the sunlight, the look
of affluence on her skin, while
the dust of your surroundings
is worn with poverty
on your skin.

She is looking outward, like you, but
your eyes draw in sand stone scarcity,
while her eyes draw in abundance;

she is wearing a blue hat, the blue
of a cloudless sky, a crisp Canadian
mountain morning, blue
with endless expedition;

even the layered stones
behind you seem empty
in the uneven cracks, where
no moss, or vine can emerge
with flowering life, yet
life is in the clothes you wear,
ancient with story and survival;
and you in your orange hat
are cheered color: a bloom
of hope in the parched
Peruvian backdrop.

- Sandra Mooney-Ellerbeck