Hampi Warmi Wasi

The highest dream of Hampi Warmi since its origins back in 2008 through KillaWarmi project has been of having a community-based midwifery home/ woman’s medicine center. In 2014 we built a women's community center in Ancash for the women themselves to administer it, but many conflicts arose between them and we had the learned lesson of the importance of having a center for Hampi Warmi on its own for the continuity of our focused work & vision, and as a reference for replication. Been now settled back in the Andean Mountains of Cusco, in the Sacred Valley, this dream seems more close to been manifested, as well as different key people coming into place to co-create and develop further this long-time vision: that of having a physical space in Andean land which can serve as a home for protecting and serving Woman Medicine. 

This isn't reduced to physical "medicine", but to the whole sense and cultivation of well-being in one's life and community-life that we in the Andes understand as true Medicine. Hampi Warmi has focused on girls and women and their empowerment for all these last 10 years. This doesn't mean that this center won't include the wellness too of their children and families, but that we keep women at the center. Thus the name of the center, Hampi Warmi Wasi, House/ Home of Woman Medicine. This will serve primarily as a safe space where especially rural community women can gather, for educational purposes, for sisterhood, ceremony and ritual, to revitalize Andean female medicine wisdom (including herbal knowledge), and to Remember together our strength and Medicine as women.

The first thing to be implemented in this space will be a WiseWoman library (we already have many of the books!).  All of Hampi Warmi's workshops and programs will be shared in this center/ home - around menstrual/ pregnancy, birth & postpartum/ menopause consciousness, attending as we have all the female reproductive life cycle. The doors will be open as an advisory/ consultation space for reproductive & sexual health, and gender issues, including gender-based violence. 

In alignment with Mamantin's program (see Mamantin post), the mid-term vision is that this center will amplify itself to include a midwifery home space, for midwifery care, births included, and "Healthy Woman" medical care in general. The care provided will be based in the midwifery model of care and have a clear intercultural approach, braiding this model with safe Andean birth practices & techniques and herbal support when needed. The participation of Andean midwives is part of this prayer. The vision is that this midwifery home space will serve too as a local intercultural midwifery training center for community aspiring midwives. 

A Moon Temple will be "planted" next to the center.

This initiative is to be developed in the years to come in the Sacred Valley in Cusco, led by Hampi Warmi and its partners. But it is clear in this time that the steps towards this have to start now. So now the first step is finding and getting the land for this community dream in order to start planting the seeds. 

* For more info please email cynthiaingar@gmail.com  ** Donations for the land to be made to Hampi Warmi's PayPal account via: hampiwarmi@gmail.com