It's been getting pretty busy around
here since the last time I posted. Last weekend was the first ever
Pasos Adelante Congress in Chota. Pasos Adelante is a series of
classes written by Peace Corps volunteers for teaching youth various
life skills. The course covers topics from; leadership, decision
making, self esteem, sexuality, good communication, HIV/AIDs, STIs,
how to use contraception, to basic anatomy of human sexual organs.
The conference was planned for kids that had finished the Pasos class
and had interest in continuing work with their Peace Corps volunteer
as a youth health promoter.
Laura; the Peru 16er whose site Diamond
and I have invaded with our site change, did a gigantic Pasos
Adelante project with the entire student body of the high school in
Tacabamba. The municipality and health post came together to agree
that the class was a great idea. They came together long enough to
see the project started and then left Laura to teach the 500+
students on her own. When Diamond and I got here in July Laura let
us help out with some of the classes. It was super helpful to feel
useful and to get out of the house when I first moved sites. I
really appreciated getting to do the classes.
So all three of us invited 2 kids each
to go with us for the weekend long conference in Chota way back in
the first week of September. And last week; the week of the
conference, we were scrambling to find our kids. Part of the problem
was that teachers have been on a nation-wide strike since that first
week of September, also there was the town party so kids flaked out
on bringing back their permission slips for that time too, and
finally people flake out because that's how things operate here.
Since teachers are on indefinite strike lots of families just up and
left town for impromptu vacations. Laura lost her two kids that way,
I lost one of mine, and also I just couldn't get a hold of the other
girl I invited.
***It blew my mind the idea that
people could just up and leave the way they did. I still can't kick
my American way of seeing the world. I understand more of how
Peruvians see the world, but just think about living in a reality
where you don't have to clock in and out of work. Here your 'job' is
whenever you want to show up and whenever you want to leave. People
work in the fields, or open a store in the front of their house, or
drive a mototaxi when they need cash. It is so different here and it
still gets to me sometimes.***
The kid I lost to an impromptu vacation
was my 15 year old host sister Yossi. I invited her, because I want
to get to know her better. Also admittedly I wanted to suck up a
little to my new host family. She was excited until one morning I
went downstairs for breakfast and my host mom Rosa told me that big
Sergio, little Sergio, and Yossi had left on a vacation to go visit
big Sergio's family. I asked about when they would come back and she
said she didn't know. So 2 days before the event I was frantically
scrambling to find more kids to bring. I thought it would be more
difficult to get parents to agree to let me; someone they don't know
at all, take their kids for 3 days 2 nights of this health promoter
conference in Chota 2 hours away from Tacabamba. It turned out not
to be such a big deal to get parents to sign those permission slips.
In the end we scraped together a good
sized group of kids and we made to the conference. The event was so
much fun. It was kind of like being a summer camp counselor for a
weekend, except that the kids were attending lectures that we put on
instead of doing arts and crafts, archery, and canoeing. It was a
really great bonding moment for us volunteers, but also for the
teens. At the end of the camp the kids from the various sites where
volunteers live were signing each others notebooks like yearbooks.
It was really sweet and I am really excited to work with our group
from Tacabamba.
After the conference Jennifer and I
went down to Cajamarca to meet up with a friend of ours from our Peru
18 training group. Christina called me and said 'I need a vacation,
I bought a bus ticket to Cajamarca,' about 3 weeks ago. I was
excited to see her, drink boxed wine, and go to the grocery store.
Going to the grocery store is a really exciting activity for us
volunteers-we know it's kind of pathetic, but just walking around is
kind of like being in America, ha! Ellie came down to meet us and
we got to watch American football while eating real cheddar cheese.
Also we went to the Inca Baths. The
Inca Baths are the most famous tourist attraction around Cajamarca.
Mom and I visited them when she was here in May, but we just looked.
This time we got in the water and it was really fun. Outside are the
giant stone baths full of those bright colored bacteria/fungus that
grows in hot springs. There are also several long buildings filled
with small rooms with tiled bath tubs. For just 6 soles we had a hot
tub room for ourselves. The faucet let in boiling hot water from the
natural hot springs. And for the group of us it was heaven. I don't
think I have taken a bath since I was in the states. I have a cold
shower in my new site, before I had stand in one bucket and pour
water over my head from another bucket, and whenever I stay in a
hostel I get a hot shower. A real bath though, I don't think I have
seen a bathtub in Peru.
On Wednesday I went with my regional
coordinator Jose, Alonso (his title is Program Specialist and he is
pretty much my favorite person from the Lima office), and Barbara
(the third year volunteer who lives in Chota and did all the planning
and organizing for the awesome Pasos conference) on a site
development visit. The next group of health volunteers arrived in
mid-September to Lima, just like how I did last year. So right now
Peace Corps is finalizing the sites where these new guys will
live/work. It was really interesting to see the process of site
development. We made a meeting with the mayor (who flaked out and
never showed up), with the health post (they were a lovely group of
people all very excited to have an extra person to help with health
promotion), and visited 2 potential host families.
On Saturday Diamond and I gave a
training class for the local community health promoters. In each of
the surrounding communities there are supposed to be at least 2
health promoters. These people volunteer to serve as a point of
contact for their neighbors when they have health questions. The
health post uses these community health promoters to help them gather
information and do door to door promotion. Even though we had to
plan the class from this super boring manual from the Ministry of
Health the class was still pretty fun. This months topic was child
health. We reviewed nutrition, hygiene, domestic violence, how to
prevent accidents (please store your machete out of reach of your
two year old,), and danger signs
(which symptoms are bad enough you better take your kid to the health
post). I think most of it was pretty common sense and therefore a
little boring for the promoters. However I learned some good new
vocabulary words and got to test a carrot cake recipe on the class.
When I
got back from the health promoter class I was tired and just wanted
to sit around in my room not speaking in Spanish. My host brother
Sergio had other plans. He really wanted to eat a pineapple that I
brought back with me from Cajamarca. My friend Christina gave it to
me to bring back, since she lugged it all the way from her department
and we never got around to eating it at the hostel. I told him I
wasn't hungry and we could eat it later, but he's 12 so he kept
pushing. Then I lost my temper a little and told him I didn't have
to share with him since it was my pineapple (so much arguing over a
stupid pineapple). I thought I had won the battle, but about ten
minutes later I heard a little knock on my door and Sergio asked me
if I was ready yet. So I told him to go ahead and eat it without me.
He looked uncomfortable, so when he left I thought that he wouldn't
do it. Later I checked the fridge and saw that little Sergio called
my bluff. That entire pineapple was gone. I couldn't help
but laugh to myself, because I had invitar-ed (invited) him so I
couldn't get upset or be surprised.
Now that I am starting to feel busy I finally feel more useful.
Diamond and I are still waiting to hear back about funding for the
latrine project. Although now we have a modified plan; if the mayor
of Tacabamba decides it's not in his budget then we will ask his arch
enemy the mayor of Chota for the funding. It might be kind of
awkward pitting them against themselves, but it's better then those
60 families getting passed over again.
Thanks for reading! Chau for now,
KB
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| Group shot of the first ever Pasos Adelante Congress |
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| Condom race |
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| Health promoter class in Tacabamba |
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