newjerseynewsroom.com

BY GREGORY J. RUMMO

When Clifton resident Jorge Marin talks about his father and the mountain village in Peru where he was born, his eyes well up in tears. "I remember as a young boy waking up early in the morning, often finding my father sitting alone in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee in his hand. He would be crying; his mind filled with the memories and the regrets over what had happened years earlier."

Marin's father, Fidel left the mountain village of Cajamarca when he was just 14-years old to work with construction crews building the roads that would ultimately connect this mountainous region with Lima, Peru's capital city.

"He left home in search of his heart," Marin explains. "He married mom when he was 21 and the two of them returned to the mountains for their honeymoon. What he learned was that during those seven years of his absence his mother and one of his brothers had died."

"They had nothing," he adds. "No one living in the mountains of Peru did. And because of that, it was my dream to return some day and do something really special for the children that still live there."

We're sitting together in Panera Bread on Route 23 in Wayne. I'm sipping a coffee while Jorge savors a bowl of broccoli and cheese soup-his favorite. In between spoonfuls, like his father years ago he has to choke back the tears, which makes it more difficult than normal for me to catch everything he's saying through his thick Peruvian accent.

But these tears are tears of joy.

Jorge returned to Peru's mountainous region of Ancash last summer with a group of about a dozen members from the Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson. I was among them. We trekked for a week, often sleeping in tents at night in sub-freezing weather, to visit three Quechua villages in the northern extremes of the Cordillera Blanca, Peru's snow covered mountains.

His vision became the catalyst that led generous individuals and several small businesses to donate almost six thousand dollars to purchase buzos y zapatillas — sweat suits and sports shoes — for almost 500 children living in the remote valley of Quitaracsa.

It is an amazing story of a series of well-choreographed events working together in perfect harmony from start to finish.

Jorge's sister, who lives in Callao, a suburb of Lima, contacted a local clothing manufacturer where everything was produced, boxed and delivered to her door several weeks before we arrived from Newark on the evening of June 10 on the 10:00 p.m. non-stop Continental flight.

The bus that would take us from the airport in Lima overnight to our hotel several hundred kilometers north in the Andes Mountains was already waiting in the parking area outside the terminal when our flight landed. Jorge's sister, with the help of members from her church, had brought all of the boxes of clothing to the airport in several small pick-up trucks. They had loaded it on to the bus so that we could leave immediately.

From Lima to Huaraz

After having just flown eight hours, we boarded the bus for the second leg of the journey-another eight-hour trip-overnight. The first three hours took us north along the coast on the Pan American Highway. This was followed by a four-hour climb on a two-lane highway through the southern Cordillera Negra. It's a dangerous road that starts at sea level and snakes back and forth; one hairpin turn after another, until cresting at 13,350 feet at the Conococho Pass. Mercifully, we slept through most of this.

We arrived at the pass a little before sunrise and took a break to stretch our legs. The southern Cordillera Blanca rises up in the distance and the early morning rose tinted hues were just starting to brush the summit of Huascaran, Peru's highest peak, some 100 kilometers to the north.

An hour later we arrived at our hotel in Huaraz, the largest village in the Callejon de Huaylas, the immense valley that splits the Andes into two separate ranges.

From Huaraz to Racauy

After acclimatizing for several days-which included a number of practice hikes, one up to 15,000 feet-we loaded the clothing along with all our gear into a large truck meant for transporting livestock. Then we piled into a camioneta — a small passenger bus — for the hair-raising ride north along another highway of sorts that follows the Cañon del Pato (Duck's Canyon.) This road is the main thoroughfare through these parts-an amazing consideration in light of the fact that for much of the way it is a single lane dirt road winding along the side of a mountain 1,000 feet above the Rio Santa. Adding to the anxiety were the more than two-dozen tunnels, carved out of the bedrock seemingly by hand through which we drove. Only the headlights cut through the dusty darkness until finally sunlight revealed the far ends.

Our procession crossed over the valley floor on a bouncing metal bridge spanning the Rio Santa where Duke Power maintains a hydroelectric plant. From here, we began the ascent through the northern Cordillera Blanca. The van bucked and swayed as the engine strained against the steep incline. Every so often we passed a statue of a saint, a crucifix or a bunch of plastic flowers that had been lovingly placed in a hollow in the rocks. We all knew what that meant and tried to think pleasant thoughts while praying silently for our safety.

Jorge sat in the back with his oldest daughter, Tiffany. She was too terrified to look out the windows, so instead she buried her head in his chest, sobbing uncontrollably until finally we turned off the road that hugged the edge of the mountain and headed into the interior valley.