Tacabambina Baby: Welcome Peru 20

This week was the regional FBT or field based training for Peru 20. The new health volunteers came up on Wednesday. It felt like we had been waiting so long for the newbies. I was so excited our bosses in Lima decided that Diamond and I would be allowed to host the 20ers, because at first they told us they weren't sure about it since we have only been in our new site for a few months.

The first big training activity we had planned was at Jennifer's site. We were going to take the 20ers on house visits for Jennifer's improved cook stove project moms. Since Diamond, Ellie, and I were all going to get paired up with a new volunteer we went out to Jennifer's early to find the houses so that we would know them the next day with the 20ers. The dogs are really bad at Jennifer's site. Jennifer's host family dog followed us around while we visited the homes that we would need to lead the new volunteers to for practicing house visits. Her poor dog was attacked by a couple of much bigger dogs and Jennifer had to carry him for a while after since he was too scared to keep walking.

One of our goals as health volunteers is to work with moms on 'healthy homes' projects. Healthy homes is a pretty broad goal, but it almost always involves house visits. Especially where I live in the sierras hygiene is often lacking in rural homes. It's often really basic stuff to Americans, but if you think about how it was drilled into us as kids and if you imagine if it never had been it makes more sense. Also there is a lot of extreme poverty and understandably brushing teeth or buying a new bar of soap is not the top priority when kids are malnourished. Another important part of the situation is that women here are overloaded with all the information from the Ministry of Health about how they should be; you should be washing your hands, brushing your teeth, washing your vegetables before you cook, you shouldn't let your cuys (guinea pigs) run around loose on the floor in your kitchen, and the list goes on. These women have it all memorized; when you ask them the questions they know the answers. However, they are not necessarily practicing the hygiene rules that they can regurgitate on command. That is where Peace Corps volunteers come in, part of our goal is to visit homes to observe, motivate, and pressure moms into actually making healthy changes in their homes. That is why house visits are so important.

After a long day of walking around in the campo in rubber boots (so uncomfortable and also so much foot sweat, yuck) we caught a van out to Tacabamba. On Friday Ellie had the trainees in her site; they taught a sex education class in the high school and learned about library projects. Saturday morning Diamond and I had a community health promoter training session to give, but since the trainees were visiting they planned it all. They were so creative and they made the class so interactive for the community health promoters.

In the afternoon on Saturday we hiked out to the community where Laura did her latrines project so the trainees could see how a completed project looks. We stayed out in Solugan to attend a community meeting with Laura; it was the final meeting of her project. Like all meetings it ran long and by the end it was dark. Laura and Diamond's host family had called moto-taxis for us to get back to Tacabamba, because the hour long hike back would be difficult in the dark. Then it started to rain. There were 9 of us with the trainees, Laura, Diamond, Ellie, Anghie (Laura and Diamond's little host sister), and I. However, only 2 moto-taxis made it out to Solugan. So the first wave of 6 left for Tacabamba and Laura, Ellie, and I waited. While we waited we were invited hard boiled eggs, hot chocolate, and tamales.

In the end another moto did not come for us, so we just started walking. Very quickly we were completely soaked, but it seemed really funny at the time. We caught a ride from a truck that went by when we were about 15 minutes out of Tacabamba; I am still surprised he allowed us in his car since we were soaking. It was about 10:30 pm when we got back to Tacabamba. Ellie and I sloshed over to my host family's home knocking and shouting for someone to let us in (I did not have a key to the house yet, but I made one the very next day). No one would let us in and I had accidentally left my cell phone in my room; it was the only place where I had my host parent's phone numbers. So we had no choice but to go to Laura and Diamond's host family and ask if we could stay the night. Laura and Diamond gave us dry clothes and we staying in an extra room. It was pretty memorable drinking tea dressed in Laura and Diamond's clothes and laughing about how ridiculous the whole thing had been.

On Sunday, the last day of field based training, we took the trainees to the health center to paint a mural with our youth health promoter group. Diamond and I had asked the teens to draw us a sketch of the mural so that we could scan it and use the projector to project it on the wall, but they all flaked out. Lindsay; one of the trainees, luckily offered to make a sketch for us to use. So we projected Lindsay's drawing up on the wall and let the kids go for it with pencils and later paint. We still have a lot of work to do on the mural, but it was a good start.

Finally on Sunday afternoon we had the newbies go with us to Laura's world map class. We watched some movie clips about Peru with the kids, played some games, and talked over the kids in English about how the planning and execution of the project went. It was a nice relaxing time with a group of great kids. We of course all danced Gangnam style or 'horsey dance' as well as the 'funky chicken' dance with the kids. When it was time for the trainees to leave town we were in the middle of heavy rains. We waited for a bit, but it didn't let up at all. By the time we made it to where the vans pick up and drop off everyone was soaked. I felt terrible Diamond and I got them all cold and wet before they had to travel.

My favorite part of us walking in the rain to see them off was how all the people would shout at us 'you're going to get wet.' The Peruvians all seemed to stop whatever they were doing to just wait inside for the rain to stop. They shouted at us from under the protection of the overhang of their tin roofs. While they shouted at us I just kept smiling to myself, because we were already completely soaked in a way that I would have thought was apparent. Yet, they kept advising us to get out of the rain since we would get wet. It's cultural moments like that that really make me laugh, because as an American I am always in a hurry to get somewhere and I refuse to change my plans just because of a little rain. Here in Peru people have a different perspective and I admire their more laid back views about time, schedules, appointments.

Anyhow, all in all I think FBT went really well. I am so excited to have the new volunteers up here in northern Cajamarca with us. They are wonderful people. I have some pictures below.

Thanks for reading and chau for now,