Ask Oscar...

Life has been difficult ever since I can remember. When I was ten, terrorists came into our area of the sierra, killed all our family's livestock, and took my father away and I have not seen or heard from him since. I don't know what happened to him and wish he had been there as I was growing up.

My wife, Gloria, also had to endure the terrorists who were stealing our land. Life for her has been very difficult as well. Gloria can tell of fleeing to the mountains and living in caves for fear of the terrorists who were incredibly brutal toward women. Because of all this, Gloria never had the opportunity to learn how to read or write, but is learning now thanks to a teacher in La Libertad where we now live.

Because life was so difficult in the sierra, I went to Lima searching for a better life for my family with the hope of one day returning to the sierra and creating a better future there. For over a year, I lived in cardboard boxes in the city and ate anything I could find because there was no work available since so many others had also fled to the city.

After almost a year and a half, I found a storage shed at the school in La Libertad which they allowed me to live in and call my home. Several months later, I brought my wife and two of my three children from the sierra so we could be a family again. Since Gloria didn't speak Spanish, but only Quechua, the mountain people's language, she had to learn Spanish by hearing it and repeating it. It has been difficult, but her Spanish is getting better.

Our son, Daniel, was born in La Libertad making our family six, since one of our sons remains in the sierra at this time. We had another son, but he died while we were still living in the sierra several years ago. Perhaps things would have been different if there had been access to more medicine. Daniel has some problems with breathing and his lungs, but with little medical available and the costs so expensive, we do what we can to manage.

With the arrival of the computer lab next door to our house, we were overjoyed. We weren't convinced it would even happen until the day the computers arrived. Today, I'm learning how to use a computer and so is the rest of my family. There is so much information on the computer that I never knew existed. I feel like I can find out anything if I search for it on the computer.

My family is very grateful that we can learn how to use the computers. As I learn more, my hope and dream is to return to the sierra with my new knowledge and create a better life there for my family and all the families in my community. I may not have very much, but I'm happy and I'm looking forward to the day when my family and I can return to a better life in the sierra.

Ask Joseph...

I could tell you that life here is a lot like life in your country, but it isn't that way. As a child, I grew up in Indepencia, a very, very poor town where most lived in buildings that looked like they would fall down at any moment.

As a little boy, life was crazy and I never knew what might happen next. My father was not very nice and it wasn't always safe in my house. When I was nine, I was sent to the orphanage because my family couldn't take care of me. It wasn't the greatest place, but it was better than living at home or living on the streets.

I lived at the orphanage for nine years. I had a place to sleep. I had food to eat and I went to school there. I was an okay place to be. During my last year at the orphanage (I was 18 at the time), Matt Jeppesen came to work at the orphanage as a volunteer in 2007-2008. I don't know why, but he liked me and we became good friends. He even taught me English and now I speak pretty good English thanks to him.

When I had to leave the orphanage, I had no job and no place to go. I tried going back home for a little while to live with my mother, but that didn't work. Matt had been encouraging me to go to college, but I didn't think I could do it. He kept working with me and encouraging me and even helped me with my pre-college school work even though he was back at his college. Since I kept in touch with Matt, Matt worked things out so that I could help with the computer projects they were doing since I wasn't able to get into college just yet.

Right now, I'm hoping to come to Wisconsin for a few months and learn more English so that I can return to Peru and get into college and become an English teacher. It will be quite an experience, if my country will allow me to leave for a time. I am hoping it will work and thanks to Matt and others, a kid who grew up with nothing, could be a college student in 2011. What a great thing everyone is doing to help me.

Aware of that reality, we asked Oscar, age 32, who is married with four children, and Joseph, age 19, who spent 8 years at the orphanage to tell us about life in Peru.

Below, you get a glimpse into their world, into a world that is difficult to comprehend even when they tell it from first-hand experience.