Peru: Women combine invention, tradition to improve rural diets

Although Huancavelica is the poorest region of Peru, it has more than just poverty, malnutrition and unmet needs. There are also women using their creativity, efforts and traditional indigenous knowledge to improve the diets of their families and communities. "Have you ever had coffee made from chuño (freeze-dried potatoes)?" a young villager asks with a smile before introducing this reporter to the creator of this culinary invention, Marina Huamaní. She lives in Padre Rumi, a village in the district of Paucará in Huancavelica, a department (province) in south-central Peru, where 86 percent of the total 400,000 inhabitants live in poverty and approximately 45 percent of children are malnourished. The provincial capital of Huancavelica, in the rugged Andean highlands, is 450 km southeast of Lima, and Padre Rumi is a three hour drive away over a rough road. Huamaní puts no importance on her talent in the kitchen. But thanks to her culinary skills she has been able to come up with a number of recipes based on a wide range of highly nutritional traditional products that are playing a crucial role in fighting malnutrition in her community.