Sunday, July 22, 2012

starting over

I guess I forgot how fast the first few weeks go by when you get to a new site. I am meeting new people, learning names, finding my way to new places around town, trying to find a new routine and understand my new host family's routine, and generally following around Laura the 16er volunteer who has been in Peru exactly 1 year longer than Diamond and I. Every night by 9:30 I can't keep my eyes open I'm so tired. I got kind of sick this week. Which is weird since I expected here in the 'city' things would be way more hygienic than they were previously in the campo. Maybe, I had resistance to those campo germs after 7 months and now there are new bugs shocking my system.

Diamond and I hiked up to a community called Ayaque on Wednesday morning. We went up there with a woman who works for an NGO in the area; she and her co-workers do personalized house visits for every pregnant woman and mother with a child under 1 year. It is quite impressive what these PREDECI people do going door to door bringing the healthcare to the people hardest to reach. I have included some pictures below of the path up to Ayaque. For the record when people told me that Ayaque was nearby I was not expecting a 2 hour hike. First it was about 45 minutes of switch backs that went straight up the side of the mountain and after reaching the top we still had a ways to hike in. I was still a little sick the day of the hike and I had a horrible moment where I thought to myself: this is it, I'm going to poop my pants right now. Practically every volunteer has a pooping of the pants episode and I have so far managed to avoid one. The climb almost got me. It was a close call, but I'm still in it for that bet I made.

When we finally got to Ayaque, Yovanni the PREDECI promoter we were with told us that the people in Ayaque have no electricity, no water, and no latrines. Ayaque sounds like a great place to do some construction projects paired with health promotion classes; hand washing, safe water, nutrition, tooth brushing, and hygiene. Even though the families in Ayaque are extremely poor, people still offered us food when we visited their homes. It is a Peruvian custom to invite people to eat and it is a sign of your thanks. The more food you are given the more appreciation you are being shown by your host. So for a very poor family to offer you food it is a very important honor and it would be highly offensive to turn them down or not to eat it all. It's something that we volunteers often joke about amongst ourselves. If one volunteer buys a beer or food and offers to share with you, and then you offer to pay them back (since we are all pretty poor here), they can always play the 'I just invitar-ed you, therefore you aren't allowed to offer to pay me' card.

At one of the homes the woman in charge of the household offered the three of us; Diamond, Yovanni, and I, huge heaping mugs full of cooked gourd. It is kind of like eating the guts of a pumpkin cooked up with a bit of milk and sugar. This dish is almost always served cold and people spit out the black shells of seeds onto the ground while they eat. It doesn't taste bad per say, but I did not want to eat such a giant portion and I felt really sick already that day. Yovanni silently whipped out a plastic bag from her backpack and when our hostess wasn't looking she would quietly quickly shovel her chiclayo into the bag. The three of us were sitting on a long wooden bench against the side of the house, made out of a board of wood balanced on a rocks and covered with a handwoven blanket. After I had scooped out most of my chiclayo into the bag I switched mugs with Diamond, but then I made a grave mistake. I didn't keep a good hold of the plastic bag and big glob of chiclayo fell out plopping on the ground. Diamond covered for me right away by moving her feet to block the spill from the view of the family. Then I had to nonchalantly scoop up the mess without the family noticing. Yovanni and I had almost gave it all away with our suppressed laughter at my clumsiness.

Later on Wednesday Diamond, Laura, and I went to the town down the road called Conchan to visit another volunteer friend Ellie. It was so cozy to have a group of us. Ellie showed us around her town and we went back to her house to cook dinner. We attempted to make burritos. I elected that we use lentils since they are cheap and easy to find here, but none of us had ever cooked lentils before. They turned out a little tasteless, but avacado, homemade tortilla, tomato, onions, and tobasco sauce made up for it completely. Also Ellie invitar-ed us some homemade peanut butter and apples, which tasted like America! It was wonderful. Ellie taught us how to make homemade granola for breakfast the next day in her host families electric oven and we drank real coffee-not the instant stuff I drink daily while I imagine all the free coffee I drank at Sweetwaters before I left. 
The next morning we worked on painting a sign that Ellie is making for a library project she is doing in her town. We played What a Girl Wants in the background on my laptop-it's an old Amanda Bynes teenage girl flick about a girl who grows up with her single mom, going to England and finding her dad, who turns out to be Brittish semi-royalty Colin Firth. It was nice to just pretend to be in the states for a while. Ellie even had a recent Glamour magazine that her mom had sent her. I was in heaven.

This week went by fast. Things are still a little awkward around the new host family, but they are very friendly so I'm sure it will turn out fine. I feel optimistic about project work especially with Diamond here too. My host brother is still following me around a little too closely, but I am confident that I will become less interesting as the newness wears off. This week I received emails from U of M, Michigan State, and Oakland medical schools with links to their secondary applications. I'm still waiting on Wayne State-which is were I really want to go when I get back.

Chau for now,
kb

market day in Tacabamba, from left to right: Diamond, my host brother Sergio, Ellie, Me, Laura, and in front Rinaldo and Angie-Laura and Diamond's adorable host siblings.

On our house visits in Ayaque




pictures from HIVAids classes Diamond and I are helping Laura with. 

This is a game that helps demonstrate how the imune system works.

okay, so I uploaded this picture badly.  However, this is the trail up to Ayaque, the white pathway up the mountain.

my host bro Sergio and some neighbor boys climbed up the hill above my new home with me.  There is a big white Jesus statue up there.

view from Jesus' feet, again there's Ayaque path



Friday night we attended a beauty contest.  Although there were only 4 contestants the whole thing went on for over 3 hours.  Between the 3 times the girls walked for the judges, local kids did dances, poetry, sang songs, and did what they called 'dramas'-those were the most painful.  Laura was asked to be a judge.




teaching the HIV/Aids class with high school kids


views from my room; below is the main living area.  the stairs lead up to my room and under the stairs is the bathroom.  the sink is on the left side.  the door at the bottom of the stairs leads to the kitchen and restaurant in the front of the house.



my room, it's a little messy right now.  I'm hoping to get a bookshelf soon, that'll help a lot.



Saturday, July 14, 2012

Site Change

Since the last time I posted on my blog a lot has happened. The strikes and protests in Cajamarca escalated and 3 protestors were killed on July 3rd. On the 4th an official 'state of emergency' was declared and the people of Bambamarca flooded the streets to protest the killings. The military police used tear gas bombs to dissipate crowds. One local man was shot in the back while he was trying to run away from a tear gas bomb. The following day Peace Corps decided it was getting a little too crazy and the regional coordinator for Cajamarca; Jose, came to take me and my two site mates out of the district.
By that time Peace Corps had told me that they were moving me to a new site about 3 ½ hours from Bambamarca. They also decided to move another volunteer from my training group who also lived in a town surrounding Bambamarca; my friend Diamond, and we are now going to be site mates. For several days Peace Corps had the Bambamarca area volunteers stay at a hostel in Chota; this is where we go for regional meetings and it is also were the closest Serpost is located, and wait until we were cleared to return to our sites to pack up our things.
During those couple days waiting I was able to go visit my new site Tacabamba, with Jose. There is a current volunteer Laura who lives in Tacabamba right now-she has been in Peru exactly one year longer than Diamond and I. So I will get to have 2 site mates for the next couple months until Laura finishes her service. Tacabamba is very different from the town I lived in before. The streets here are paved, everyone has indoor plumbing, there is a police station, internet, this town has it's own market, and the majority of people have cement floors instead of packed dirt. The poverty seems to be much less here, but then again Tacabamba is a district capital. In other words I went from campo to city in less than a week! So long bucket bathes, hello freezing cold showers, but at least it's a shower!

The process of finding a host family was a bizarre experience. Jose asked Laura to recommend nice families and then we would go door to door explaining the situation. Jose's little spiel went something like this: 'You know Laura, she lives and works here in Tacabamba as a Peace Corps health volunteer, well there are 2 new volunteers that are coming to Tacabamba. They lived in the Bambamarca area but with the strikes and protests we had to move them for safety reasons. We are looking for a host family for these 2 other volunteers and they will be here for a little more than a year,' it kept going, but you get the idea. It was such a strange experience to go door to door asking people if I could live with them for a year. And a lot of people kind of said 'no', nobody flat out said 'no' except for this very nice elderly couple and even they changed there minds after Jose talked their ears off for a half an hour.
That is something about Peruvians that I love and hate; they always tell you what they think you want to here. It's true in the states too, but sometimes in the states you interact with people that just say it like it is and I so appreciate that quality. If you don't want some strange foreign girl to live in your house for a year or so, then speak up and just say 'no' it is completely understandable. These poor families didn't even get any sort of heads up, because Peace Corps made this whole transition for Diamond and I such a rushed priority.
I was lucky enough to find a family at the end of our first visit to Tacabamba. My new family is very nice, but it is still awkward getting used to each other and trying to form a new routine. My last host family had hosted another volunteer and even having had that experience it was still very weird for the first couple months. I have only been here since Wednesday the 11th and I am trying to remember how long it took for me to get comfortable the last time.
This new family consists of a host mom Rosa who runs a store and a restaurant, a host dad Sergio who is a police man, a 15 year old sister Yossi, and a 12 year old brother also Sergio. Last night I met one of the older children who has his own family and he has a wife and 2 kids. Since my host mom runs a restaurant it seems like she feeds armies of policemen and construction workers who for some reason or another do not cook for themselves. I haven't quite figured out the eating schedule for the family, but I was hoping we would eat together as a family and it doesn't usually work out that way. There are also 2 young girls-I'm guessing in their late teens or early twenties (remember Peruvians have one less year of highschool so these girls are probably recent grads)-that do all the cooking and washing in the restaurant. The are very sweet and are pretty much a part of the family. I hope to make better friends with them so that I can maybe cook for myself a little more. At the moment there is an awkward dynamic of me not knowing what to do or how to act and I just come into the kitchen and wait to be fed when it is meal times. I worry that they think that I think that I just expect them to serve me, really it's more like I don't know how to act about the whole thing yet.



Yesterday, Laura, Diamond, and I went to a meeting at the municipality building and heard a presentation from the director of the health post about potential projects. I had mentioned to him the first time we met that I was interested in working with older adults-which technically is not a Peace Corps goal, but I find it to be very interesting. The director of the health post is a very young doctor-he's maybe 26, and it seems like almost all the employees at the post are very young. The doctor made an announcement at the meeting that I wanted to work in 'salud de mayores' or 'old person health' and introduced me to the doctor in charge of that area. I'm not sure if anything will pan out, but it is exciting to have the opportunity to do some projects in this area.



When Diamond, Jose, and I were leaving my host family in San Juan last week with the Peace Corps car stuffed to the gills with our things there wasn't enough space for Diamond and I to have our own seats. Diamond sat on my lap and sat on the container between the two front seats where the driver can store maps or their sunglasses. I thought I would impress Jose with some of my Peruvian slang that I learned from my San Juan host family and I announced that I was sorry my butt was too big for Diamond and I to share the seat. The vocabulary word that I used for butt was one that my San Juan host mom Dalila used on a daily basis in the house. She would tell me every day that her backside ached from working so hard and I thought it was just a normal slang word for butt. However, as it turned out the word that she was using is extremely vulgar. Jose practically drove the car off the road because he was laughing so hard that I used that word. I was taken by surprise, because no one in my family had ever given me any indication that it was a bad word. That is the kind of stuff I will miss about my previous family-they are kind of like the equivalent of Peruvian rednecks and I loved that about them. None of the other volunteers had a host family that taught them all of the most horrible slang words or ever got into trouble for accidentally swearing-which happened to me on several occasions. I'll miss that, and I know that it will take a lot of time to get to that same level with the new family or they could just be way less inappropriate than the other family. That would be so sad.

All in all, Tacabamba seems great. It is going to take me a while to re-settle all over again and the idea of starting from scratch with a new family just makes me want to go hide in my room. Luckily the kids are really sweet. Especially the 12 year old, who came to my door this morning before he left for school to ask me if we could play Uno again tonight and was very interested in reading Harry Potter with me. I cried so much on the night we went back to my site to pack all my things, it was Diamond, Jose and I in the Peace Corps car. I don't know that I will ever feel the same connection with this new family that I had with my inappropriate gross first family that loved to tease me like crazy. I will miss them so much. I was surprised that I felt sad even about leaving the dirty little dog Pon Chon Chinita, but she is always so happy to see me and always comes and sits by me when I would go outside to read. I'm hopefull that those first 7 months in San Juan weren't for nothing and that they will help me here in my new site Tacabamba. Plus, I keep telling myself that it's only 5 more months until I get to come home for Christmas! That should go by fast.

Chau for now,
KB

P.S.

A work in progress-I am trying to write a silly song about Tacabamba. Other volunteers have made music videos and songs about their sites or regions. So far I have 'there ain't no bamba like Tacabamba,' it's catchy right?