Friday, January 27, 2012

A sloppy proposal...


This week I was proposed marriage during a drinking circle, by an elderly mad who was intermittently falling asleep on himself and accidently spitting on his shirt front.  On my way out of Bambamarca on Sunday afternoon with my family the mayor of my town called me over to a store front near the paradero (the location where the trucks pick up and drop off from my town, each town has their own specific spot in Bambamarca).  I decided to join the drinking circle, because it was the first time the mayor had expressed interest in talking with me.  He had previously been really good at brushing me off-so I gladly walked over.  I want to be this guy’s friend, because he could be a great asset for any projects I start.  Also the political system in Peru seems pretty convoluted in general and I am going to need some help figuring out how to get through all the paperwork to get projects off the ground.

I’m pretty sure the mayor and his new regidores where at least one beer case deep when I joined up, so I didn’t get in a lot of serious business talk with the mayor.  However, he did offer to help me with funding t-shirts as a surprise for my English class students.  Also he said he was really happy to have another volunteer in the community and was looking forward to working with me.  It was actually the mayor’s elderly uncle who proposed to me.  He woke up and simply told me that he wanted to marry me.  Then he proceeded to try to spit on the ground, but miss and hit his shirt.  It was ridiculous-such a great moment.  I excused myself from the drinking circle and caught the next truck up the mountain. 

The rest of the week was English class in the morning and encuestas in the afternoon.  Except on Monday, after class I stayed in bed the rest of the day.  On Sunday in Bambamarca before the drinking circle my host dad Joel treated everyone to juice in the market.  I am convinced that the juice was with crude water and that’s what made me sick.  My family thinks it’s because I blew them off at the paradero to stay behind and join the mayor’s drinking circle.  I need to mention that ‘juice’ in Peru often means water blended with fruit.  My host grandma in Lima used to make me ‘juice’ all the time.  It was always hot, because she boiled the water. 

This week I started learning how to crochet.  My mom has taught me before in the states, but I didn’t retain it from lack of use.  My Peruvian mom is teaching me how to crochet a ‘fondo’ for a skirt.  The women all wear their skirts with a crocheted layer underneath for warmth.  I guess I’m going to start dressing like the locals.  When I finish up my fondo all I’ll need to do is go out and buy a campo skirt.

I also had a scabies scare this week.  I am waiting to hear back from the Peace Corps doctors.  I have been waking up every morning for the last month and a half with bites on my waist and ankles.  It wasn’t really that bad, until recently the itching started waking me up in the night.  So I called the doctors and based on my symptoms I may have scabies.  Pretty gross, huh?  Anyways, I’m emailing a picture of my spots and the doctors are going to look at and try to figure out if I’ve got scabies, ewww.  ***Please do not let scabies deter anyone potential visitors!!! I promise it is unusual even for Peru!****  Also sidenote-I’d also like to state for the record that I bathe and I’m a clean person.  Just in case people were thinking I’m disgusting for having scabies…but hey, I wanted to be Peace Corps volunteer and this is just a part of the experience, right?

Friday I came into Chota for my friend Ellie’s birthday.  There wasn’t cake so we had birthday churros, which were very delicious.  I also got to go to Serpost.  Thanks for the letters; Mrs. Moran, Mom, Aunt Jenny, and Ally.  Also thanks for the packages; Kwapis, Racizzle, Snow White, and Nana.  I am especially excited about my new copy of Bridesmaids.  I don’t think the rural Peruvian women at my site will be able to handle it, but my fellow volunteers will sure appreciate the humor.  Thanks again.

Chau,
kb  

Some of my students working on drawing community maps.

In Cajamarca with the other cajachicas.

These ladies are preparing the food for the post swearing in ceremony lunch.

Cuys to be cooked.


The mayor and his regidores being sworn in last week.

A series of pictures of my host dad Joel goofing off at the internet cafe while he is waiting for me to skype my family.  I caught him watching these little boys playing their video games.



More pictures of the market in Bambamarca.




This is how full the trucks are when we drive to and from my site into Bamba.

more cute pictures of my students


Saturday, January 21, 2012

Vacaciones Utiles 2012


This was my second week of English classes.  The first day only 5 kids showed up; including my brother and cousin, now my class is somewhere around 32 kids.  It’s getting a little crazy.  I like to think that it is most important that the kids are having fun and socializing, because if I focus too much on how their English is progressing it gets depressing.  The older kids are great.  They can focus on a topic, they aren’t afraid to raise their hand, volunteer, or say words out loud to practice pronunciation.  The younger kids can be very timid or very wild.  I get boys that can’t sit still and girls that won’t make eye contact or answer direct questions.

I get most frustrated with the kids that won’t speak during class.  I try to be patient, but it really bothers me.  For example on Tuesday a fresh group of new kids showed up and one little girl wouldn’t tell me her name.  When I asked her in Spanish ‘what’s your name,’ she would just look away and not respond.  I don’t really know what to do with her and I still don’t know her name!  The other trouble with the class is that new kids are coming in everyday, which means that they are more than a week behind the rest of the class.  This is why my focus is on making my class fun. 

Most days after class we play fútbol, the llama game (which is a sort of a competitive elimination style dancing game), or watch cable t.v.-yes, that’s right at the primary school in my little town they pay for expensive cable.  I’m not really quite sure how spending money on a big t.v. and cable benefits the students, because from what I can tell the kids are not usually allowed to watch television.  I try to keep the classes light, but it would be really awesome if the students did retain some of the topics we learned. 

In trying to be the ‘fun’ teacher I pass out lots of candy when kids volunteer answers and participate in a positive way.  Bingo gets kind of painful, especially when the kids don’t even bother to learn their numbers in English.  They go wild for bingo, go figure.  I had no idea that bingo was so much fun.  I don’t even give out prizes for the winners and they can’t get enough.  I keep threatening to take bingo away if they don’t really learn their numbers, but I haven’t followed through yet-so I don’t think anything will change. 

I’m still working on the encuestas.  It seems like every time I go out into the community for an afternoon of door to door surveying I meet more of my extended family.  I’m starting to wonder just how many siblings my grandparent’s have, because it’s getting somewhat ridiculous.  In Peru, and latin culture in general, people have two last names.  One name from their father and one from there mother.  So the only people that you could share your two name combination with are your siblings.  Parents have different names than their kids.  For example, my host mom’s last names are Bazan Medina, my host dad’s last names are Caraujulca Garcia, and my host sibling’s last names are Caraujulca Bazan.  When I explain to people in my community how last names work in the states; typically women change their name when they get married and kids usually only get their father’s last name, they always say they are sorry for me.  They are sorry, because I lost my mother’s name and when I get married I will loose my father’s name too.  Their concern was kind of oddly sweet.  I also sort of agree with them.  Their system, however annoyingly long the names become, seems better.

On Thursday night the rain was so strong that it started coming through the ceiling during dinner.  Before we knew it the dirt floor in the kitchen was streaming with water and we made a run for it back to the sleeping area part of the house to check on the rooms.  My room was fine only some water on my cement floor, but for the water to pass to my room on the first floor my sister’s room was flooded on the second floor.  My family says that the volume of rain we have been receiving is due to the El Niño effect, which sounds familiar and yet I feel the need to google it when I have internet. 

On Friday I was invited to the swearing in ceremony for the mayor about 15 minutes before it began.  The mayor won the election back in November and has been working in the position for the past 2 months, yet the official swearing in was yesterday.  I was the only gringo in attendance and one of the few females that had been invited.  I stuck out, to say the least.  An elderly woman sat behind me and spent the entire time touching my hair and holding my hand, but she talked to me and none of the men would.  She put her shawl on me because she said I looked cold.  She came on very strong.  However, I put up with her and now I have a new friend.  When I got home after the 2 hours of speakers and the giant lunch of guinea pig, rice, potato, and beer, my sister Diani told me that this lady keps fruit trees.  Diani and I are planning on going over to Nellie’s house to visit her on Monday and we’re crossing our fingers she gives us lots of fresh fruit.  Now, that is how to make valuable contacts in your community!

I posted two new videos on youtube; the links are below.  I’m a little embarrassed about the video of my room, because it is really super messy.  I am planning on buying some more shelving or something-I think that will help.  I’m not such a dirty person, I swear!




Jennifer and I at the serpost in Chota with our special deliveries from the U.S.; twizzlers and bacon.


Saturday, January 7, 2012

slow week

What did I do this week?  I know it is not necessary to write on my blog every week, but it makes me feel important to imagine that my family and friends are reading what I write.  Life here in the sierras often feels kind of dull, but when I try to look at it from my Ann Arbor, MI perspective I like to pretend it’s all really interesting.

These past 2 weeks I’ve been working on getting my surveys done in the community.  I spend my mornings and afternoons going door to door asking people: ‘do you have a moment to do an encuesta with me?’  First of all, houses out here in the campo are not along a main road with sidewalks and driveways.  I’m walking through fields and hoping that the women are at home, because often people spend their days out of the house in their fields or up in the mountains in the Haulca.  The Haulca is this other region I hear a lot about it, but I don’t really know much.  It seems to me that the majority of the people in my town have second homes (more like summer cabins; without electricity or water) and additional fields up in the higher altitudes of the Haulca.  My family apparently has potato fields up there and this week my brother, cousin, one of my sisters, grandpa, and aunt went up there to harvest or plant or something.

Anyhow, I walk from house to house hoping to catch someone at home to survey.  I have learned that it is campo courtesy to call to the house from a certain distance to alert people to your presence.  Not only is it a courtesy, but it also often helps with the dogs.  If I call up to a house the owners will call their dogs off and I won’t have to use my umbrella to smack any dogs in the head.  Some of my peers also swear by traveling with a pocketful of rocks, but I have found that when it comes down to it I’m not such a good shot when a dog is barreling towards me.  Some women; and it always seems to be women that are home during the day, are noticeably startled to see a gringa on their property, but others are very excited to see me.  I guess when you live out in the campo spending your days doing a lot of physical labor and hanging out with your kids, a stranger walking up to your house and asking to talk with you would be kind of exciting. 

My surveys are pretty boring and I wrote them to be very simple, because I knew that the majority of the adults in my town did not finish primary school.  Many women are illiterate and pretty much anyone over the age of 50.  However, even in my attempts to make it simple I didn’t take some important things into account; words like auto esteem, early childhood stimulation, and even a question like ‘with what frequency does your family eat meat?’ throw them for a loop.  It could be my accent or it could just be the vocabulary words I chose.  It’s hard not to think in English before writing something like that in Spanish and besides I’m not fluent yet in campo Spanish.

My favorite women to interview are the old ladies who can’t understand me very well, but they just want to talk to me.  It’s frustrating, because I want to hurry up and get on to the next house and at the same time I find it so humorous.  I catch myself making small talk with Peruvian grandmas outside of their homes usually sitting on wooden benches, while grandkids, cats, dogs, and guinea pigs scatter.  I sit on my bench and smile to myself while I look into leathery kind faces, missing teeth, and unwashed clothes and hair are a given.  Even though we sit close, she can’t understand my accent and I hers.  Sometimes if I’m lucky an older grandchild will have gathered around as our audience and can help translate my words for her grandma.  She’ll say the exact word that I had just said, but without fail grandma now can magically understand.

Sometimes the women like to offer me food; usually gross food.  I ate cold potato soup, cold milk (which is a no-no because it means it hasn’t been boiled i.e. campo pasteurized,  this particular mug of milk must have been really fresh, because I pulled a cow hair out of my teeth as I walked away from the house, no kidding!), a bag of radishes, and some bread -just this week.  Almost always I receive open invitations to visit anytime, which is very encouraging.  Last week I was invited to lunch on Saturday and another man invited me to go visit his bee hives he keeps a little further down the mountain.  It’s funny how often people ask the same few questions; ‘are you accustomed to Peru yet,’ ‘where are you from,’ ‘are you related to Annie?’ (the PCV that lived in my community before me).  On the whole I feel like I am getting to know more people and I also know the community a lot better. I’m trying to memorize names and which families live in which sectors of San Juan.

On one of my house visits for the surveys I met a woman named Yaggie.  She is the same age as me, with 2 little boys, a husband, and a big field of potatoes and corn behind her house.  It freaked me out slightly.  I’ve also met mom’s that were younger than me, but she and I are the same-yeeeeeeesh!  It’s the grandmas that are truly my people, not these girls my age with kids.  Is that really judgmental of me?  I guess if I had to put words to it, these women make me feel like I should be back in the states working on getting my career and ‘real’ life started, not bumming around Cajamarca on my Peace Corps excursion.

Next week I get to start teaching English classes, but apparently the solicitud that the primary school director and I presented in Bambamarca has not yet been approved.  So the other classes that the vacaciones utilies were supposed to include might not get funded.  I’m still going to teach though, because I wasn’t going to be getting paid anyway.  I bought my crayons, markers, and chalk-I’m ready.

This week I also visited Flor, the woman who the health post asked me to look out for during New Years weekend.  She apparently had her baby on New Years Eve; just her and her mother.  I’ve visited twice this week, because the health post is too busy to go visit her.  She and the baby appear very healthy.  It’s a girl named Rosita Melina.  It seems that everyone in the community knows that I have been paying special attention to Flor and her baby.  It’s a relatively small community so there is a lot of gossip.  Women come up to me on the street to ask me about Flor’s baby; ‘what’s the baby’s last name?’ is a popular question.  Flor is scandalously unmarried and the gossip is that the father of the baby is a married neighbor man of hers. 

So that’s what I did this week.  I spent a lot of time sitting around asking people if they had had diarrhea in the past 15 days and trying to explain ‘self esteem’ with my limited Spanish vocabulary.  I officially-in the eyes of the community-have befriended the town home wrecker Flor and baby Rosita.  I read a really good David Sedaris book.  And I also washed all my bedding with bleach water in an effort to mass murder the bed bugs or fleas or whatever it is I have.  It was a slow week.  Hopefully English classes will prove to me more noteworthy. 

Chau for now!
kb     

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Peruvian New Years

Peruvian New Years

In Cajamarca, Peru the people celebrate the New Year by burning dolls made out of old clothes and straw.  My brother and cousin made a Viejo or old person to burn and called it President Ollanta Humala.  They worked on it all week.  I took lots of pictures.

In the afternoon yesterday I made an apple pie at the request of my family.  I made a trip into Bambamarca in order to buy the cake tin to bake it in-according to my mom Dalila I paid too much for the tin, but that happens a lot here.  The vendors see me and raise up their asking prices for things and I have no idea what is a good price for a cake mold so I just paid.    While I was in Bambamarca I noticed that everywhere I went the street vendors where selling yellow underwear and grapes.  On New Years it is lucky to wear yellow and buying a new pair of yellow undies is a popular way to celebrate.  The grapes are for a tradition that I heard about, but no one participated in San Juan.  At 11:59; the last minute of the year, you are supposed to try to eat 12 grapes.  If you can eat all 12 you’ll have good luck for 2012. 

My grandparents sell bread in San Juan and they are one of the few families that have an oven.  My uncle and two of my aunts helped me get it all put together and my uncle tended the fire for the clay oven. We had a big family dinner on New Years eve; cow head soup.  It was very similar to the soup we usually have for dinner potatoes and rice, but this time it had big hunks of bone and meat.  It wasn’t my favorite thing I’ve eaten here.  At dinner I tried to explain about New Years traditions in the U.S.  I told them about watching American football on New Years day, watching the ball drop, and how at the strike of midnight you are supposed to kiss someone. 

After dinner my family started up with the dancing-err lack of dancing.  They kept bugging me to dance, but no one else would.  I guess they wanted me to do a special performance or something.  I danced a little and tried to get the others to join in.  I finally got fed up and started teasing them all for being too scared to dance in the privacy of their own home no less.  Although my little speech did not inspire any dancing, it did put an end to their endless badgering me to dance.  Also I could laugh a little more about it once I got it off my chest.

My grandparents, aunts, sisters, and I stayed up waiting for midnight so we could watch the burning.  We watched what can only be described is the Peruvian version of Dick Clark’s New Years Eve special, but 10 times more busty almost naked women than in NYC.  It was kind of bizarre to watch a show with all these pin up girls running around with my aunts in their traditional conservative clothes; knee-length pleated skirts, button down shirts, with sweater, straw hat, and poncho for the cold.  All the Peruvians I have met are so conservative, yet the host of the show was a cross dressing man-yeah cross dressing is really big with male comedians here.  Peruvian television is crazy.  My family here in Cajamarca doesn’t watch a lot of tv, but in Lima it was on all the time.  Game shows were the favorite in LimaSing If You Can a game show were contestants try to sing with crazy things start happening around them; getting dunked in freezing water, wrestled by a professional wrestling team, fire shooting out of the floor in a ring around the microphone, was my favorite. 

At midnight we braved the cold to go out into the plaza and burn those effigies.  There was a group of young guys already 2 cases of beer deep when we got there.  When I took my camera out to shoot the burning dolls they all started coming over to offer me beer and ask to have their pictures taken with me.  Later the drunk guys asked my sisters and I to dance.  My sisters wouldn’t, but I said ‘sure’ and to my delight so did my grandma.  So my grandmother and I danced the night away with the drunk guys, my brother and cousin set off fire works and ran off into the night with a posse of boys, and my sisters went home. 

In the morning I woke up to find out that my brother’s dog had had it’s puppies.  Apparently he stayed up practically all night with her to make sure everything went okay.  Despite my being the madrina it appears that Witman has the final say in the names.  So far he seems to be leaning towards; Snoopy, Scooby, and Lassie.

Today the whole family came into town (Bambamarca) to try to skype with the former volunteer who lived with my family 2 years ago.  We didn't get a hold of him, which was disappointing.  I did manage to take a couple pictures of Bambamarca on market day-which I had previously been too nervous to do.  I was always afraid to take my camera out by myself, but with my whole family I wasn't as worried.


The big city; Bambamarca.

Earlier in the week I did a formal interview with the director of the secondary school.  He asked me to take his picture with some of his many awards.  Is it just me or does he look like Warrio from Mario Bros video game?  (that's what I call him in my head)

The clay oven and bread making assembly line.

I'm pretty sure this is 3 generations of cats.  They're just watching us work on the apple pie.

My aunt Rosa helping me cut up the apples.

Witman with one of the Viejos.  This one in particular looked like a drunk  hunched over (which happens the morning after any town fiestas believe me) and I think Witman's pretending to be drunk too.

With another muneca to be burned later on in the night.

The President Ollanta effigy the boys made.




Edwaur did dance for a minute with his Viejo.



This was the 'meat' in my uncle Heladio's dinner.

yuck!

This is how we eat meat in Cajamarca.  Uncle Heladio takes a great big bite for  the camera and my dad Joel is laughing his butt off.

New Years Eve family dinner.

Witman with all the left over bones to feed to the dogs.

Left to Right: Aunt Rosa, Diani, Me, Abuelita, some kind of tipsy guy,  and in front my other sister Idelsa.


It was really foggy out and the pictures didn't turn out too well, but at least it wasn't raining in full and we could still light stuff on fire!





More pictures of market day.  They don't do it justice though.