Youth Camp coming up: Imagine a Peru without Machismo!

Howdy everyone,

While I miss home (*read double ply toilet paper, hot showers, cold milk and cereal, just kidding) and have been thinking about all of you a lot, I have been doing well here in Peru. I have had the fortune to be involved in many different projects and events that have made me feel proud to be in the Peace Corps.

Most recently, my sitemate Diamond and I wrote a grant for the annual youth camp with all the other volunteers in the department of Cajamarca. The event, called camp VALOR (value), is a three day event where we will do workshops over self-esteem, leadership, healthing life-habits, and vocational orientation for high school boys from all over the region (we also do one for the girls ). We will also be doing team building games and even have a panel of local professionals present their careers. For many of these kids, they have never even left their home towns, let alone attend any kind of leadership conference or camp. In the past this has been one of Peace Corps Peru's most successful annual programs for youth.

However, the only way we are able to run the camp is to get donations from both local communities and family and friends back home. The idea is that if we can get at least 40% of the money/materials necessary from local counterparts, then we will do our best to find the rest from other sources to make it all happen.

If every volunteer does their part then the amount I need to raise is minimal. So here is where I humbly ask for your help in making this camp a success and to give these youth leaders an opportunity of a lifetime; an opportunity that could lead them to a better future.  This year we picked the theme of the camp to be 'Imagining a Peru without Machismo' (sexism).

If you would like to donate (even a tiny bit helps us get there) please simply follow This LINK to an official United States Peace Corps web site where you can not only donate but see our progress to our goal as well as read more about camp VALOR.

I can't thank you all enough for the support you have already given me during my service and I thank you in advance for your continued support.

Sincerely with gratitude,

kb

Cusco vacation

It has been a while since I wrote blog post and a lot has happened.  My family came for a visit during their spring break.  We went to Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu.  It felt amazing to spend so much time with my family.  Although I will admit I was a little bit stressed about money during the vacation.  It’s one of those annoying little things about vacations, but also about living in Peru.  There is this constant presence of this awareness of people trying to rip you off.  Sometimes it is small things; like a taxi driver charging more for gringas than he would for Peruvians, but other times it feels bigger.  Through Peace Corps I have official Peruvian residency and there are a lot of times when there are 2 prices for archaeological sites or even plane tickets. 

There were a lot of hiccups, but overall it was a great visit.  Some of the highlights include: a llama spitting in my face (you always hear about it happening-and it did, it was gross but really funny), crazy tour guides whose ‘factoids’ proved to be a less than true when we googled them after the fact (one lady told us that the stones that made up Machu Picchu were partially held together by magnetism…that was a big fat made up fact), almost losing the expensive somewhat irreplaceable train tickets (but we found the electronic versions on my email), and the race to see who could hold out the longest without getting sick. 

I am embarrassed to admit that although I was not the first one to get sick I did get pretty sick and before it happened I may have been doing a lot of trash talking.  ‘I’ve lived here for a year and 7 months street food doesn’t scare me, and yeah, I’ll eat that salad off your plate, I can’t believe you are worrying about those ice cubes’ I was tossing around a lot of talk, but then I got super sick.  ***Thank you Debbie for the Immodium***

Machu Picchu was probably the most beautiful place I have been to in my life.  It gave me that feeling that the Grand Canyon gives you-it is just so beautiful that you cannot believe it is real.  Except that Machu Picchu is manmade so it is different.  Those crazy Incas were some determined and hard-working engineers, because it seems that they could not have chosen a more difficult place to build a city.  And tour guide Edith was wrong-those blocks were not even a little bit held together by magnetism.

Anyway, now it’s back to site and back to work.  I got permission from the director of the elementary school to do some cute activities with the kids in 5^th and 6^th grade about self-esteem and peer pressure.  I am going to work with the health center in Tacabamba on a project about Early Childhood Stimulation.  I am going to focus on moms with babies under 1 year.  The youth health promoter group that Diamond and I are doing together is doing really well.  And the sex-ed class that I am doing at the high school in El Naranjo (the town 2 hours walking distance with no electricity) is kind of rocky.  I am planning on attempting to bribe them into participating with candy.

So things are going well right now.  Hopefully I’ll have some silly cross-cultural anecdotes to write about next time.  The best one I had this week was having to eat 3 ears of corn on a house visit so as not to offend the woman who invited me food.  That was rough-thank goodness we only eat corn at 2 out of the 3 meals a day (just kidding).  Thanks for reading.

Chau for now,

kb