living

Living Conditions of the People of Piura

This page is not intended to be representative of how all of the people of Piura live, Piura has many wealthy and middle class citizens. This page represents how a large percentage, perhaps half of the population, lives. These are the people that the church and people in the U.S. are helping.

Most houses are 400-1000 square feet. There are various neighborhoods around Piura where these people live. Some neighborhoods have paved roads, electicity, water and sewer services and garbage colection services, some have a few of those services and some have none. Some homes are build with brick and concrete while others are built of bamboo or wood. Some people own their property while others are essentially squatting on government owned land. This is risky because the goverment periodically needs to use the land and may bulldoze the houses on it.

Inside homes, most have dirt floors, although a few of the concrete houses have concrete floors. Occasionally, I�ve seen bamboo houses where they have layed a brick floor, without morter. Nearly every home has religious decorations adorning the walls. Air conditioning and heat is non-existant. Mud walled homes insulate more than bamboo homes and it can be fairly cool inside one when it is hot outside.

Cooking is done either on a small woodburning hearth or with a propane stove, if the family can afford it. Some houses may only have one or two light bulbs and some don�t have any electricity at all. If electricity is not available in a particular neighborhood, a family can rent a large battery to power the lights.

Indoor plumbing is very rare. Most neighborhoods have various places where residents can fill up water jugs. Bathrooms usually consist of a few bamboo walls surrounding an opening to a sewer pipe behind the house, sometimes they put a toilet over the sewer pipe and use pour water in the bowl to flush it.
People in bamboo houses take sponge baths as showers and bathtubs usually require more water and water pressure than they have available.

This is an older well established neighborhood with nearly all of the services mentioned above.

This is a newer neighborhood with none of the services except garbage collection.

The people need to boil their water that is obtained from the city lines as it is not clorinated. They appear to get enough calories, but it becomes obvious that they are lacking in proper nutrition when small children that look like they are 6 or 7 tell you that they are 10, or an old person that you assumed is 80 tells you he is 63. They also drink a lot of "chicha", a ferminted corn moonshine that people make in their homes. Sodas are usually drunk for special occasions as they are out of the price range for most of the people to drink all the time and you rarely see these people drinking beer or liquer as it is prohibitively expensive.