This week half of Peru 18 health volunteers attended In-service Training (IST) in Piura.  Piura is a departamento northwest of my department (Cajamarca) and although we are next door neighbors it took about 17 hours to travel to our destination.  During this particular training event each volunteer brought a socio comunitario with them; someone in their community who they plan on working with on projects.  The trip itself is a little stressful, but throw in the responsibility of making small talk with someone from your town and the awkwardness of them not wanting to eat breakfast for example because the prices seem very expensive compared to prices in the campo was hectic. 

Before we left I was really worried about so much time with my socio for the 3 days of training.  I brought a Rogerio; a man who is involved in Juntos in my town, with me to Piura.  I didn't know him very well before the training.  We sat together on the overnight bus and in the morning I found him sitting in a different seat.  He told me I was snoring to loud for him to sleep-that was a little embarrassing.  Then at breakfast the whole group of us 5 volunteers and 5 Peruvians got to know each other better.  We talked about food; which is a pretty easy topic generally speaking when I can't think of what to talk about with Peruvians food is my go to, and I told everyone about how my family in northern Michigan hunts and eats lots of different animals.  In Peru we eat guinea pig so I didn't think turtle soup would cause such a commotion, but Peruvians and Americans alike were disgusted and/or intrigued. 

Anyhow, now I feel like I can joke around with Rogerio or ask him for help with a project.  We bonded over 3 days of rural technologies trainings in the heat.  They split us up into small groups and in the groups we rotated each day on a different topic; gardens and small animal husbandry, latrines, and improved cook stoves. 

One of my favorite things we did was on the gardens/small animal husbandry day, we learned how to deparasite turkeys and chickens.  We had spent the morning making beds for a garden and two different types of compost in the yard of a local family and in the afternoon the instructors showed us a cheap anti-parasitic medicine for dunking the birds.  I'm not sure if turkeys lack the muscle lining in their esophagus or if it is just a nervous/stress response, but when I picked up a turkey it just began vomiting everywhere.  It was really gross and funny to see the turkey's continuous stream and the poor guy only had water and corn kernels in his stomach.  Then I had to dunk the poor guy into a basin of water, he was very unhappy by the end of his bath.

On the cook stove day was spent the morning talking about theories, but in the afternoon we built an entire stove.  We went to a family's home and they had prepared adobe bricks and mud.  I was surprised how fast the construction process was-it only took us about 3 hours to build a bricked wood burning stove.  The improved cook stoves are made out of adobe bricks, mud, and rocks.  The stove top is metal and there is a metal chimney too to funnel the smoke outside.  There is a big push in the Peruvian Ministry of Health for the construction of these stoves, because it reduces respiratory problems for women by making conditions less smokey and it burns more efficiently with less firewood.  

The whole event went really well.  In the evenings we would come back exhausted sweaty and sunburned.  The place where we stayed had a pool and a lot of the volunteers played in the water in the evenings for the 3 nights we were there.  On the last night Peace Corps presented each of the socios a diploma or certificate saying that they were trained in rural technologies and we took lots of pictures.  

The trainings were good, but more importantly the socios seemed to feel more confident in their abilities to lead projects back in the communities. A lot of the people who attended had never traveled outside of their departments before and I could see a really big change in my socio in the course of only 3 days.  By the last day he was raising his hand all the time contributing his thoughts and ideas.  He was generally more outgoing.  I am really happy I had the opportunity to spend some time this way with someone from my town.  It is difficult sometime for people in my town to really get to know me, because we don't have much in common and they don't really know why I'm here in Peru.  Rogerio got to really see what Peace Corps is about and meet a ton of other American volunteers.  I think it helped him understand me-errr my job a little better.  Also it made it more clear that any project I might do is NOT my project, it is in fact the community's project and I am merely a facilitator.  That is a really big deal that someone in my town knows that is how it all works.

The second half of the week we are in the city doing a training/workshop on how to plan and execute projects in our communities.  The socios went home, but we'll be here until Saturday.  This half of the training is more like theoretical behavior change, goal setting, project writing, and grant writing topics.  

I am looking forward to getting back to Cajamarca and getting out of this heat!  It is brutal here.  On the bright side this training is helping me to get my project plans organized and it feels a lot easier to work out ideas with a group of other volunteers than by myself in my town.  When I get back to Cajamarca I'll be able to get started on a planning a big scale health project and although I am nervous I also feel relieved to just get going with it all.

I have a lot of mail to send out-sorry I'm running behind.  I'm blowing through my paychecks pretty fast so I might email in response to some.  Also pictures below!

Chau for now,

kb

happy volunteers waiting for our combe (van) to take us out to do our construction projects

Katie H. brought her host mom as her socio comunitario

the town where we did the training is called La Union

the landscape is super different from Cajamarca

the municipality or city hall of the town where we worked had portraits hung up all over, we thought this one was funny-Peruvian Jeff Goldbloom

group shot with the cocina we built on the left

Rogerio receiving his certificate

Allison and Ellie talking with the kids at the home were we built the latrine

the baby's name is Lazarus, like from the Bible his older sister told us

the lone male volunteer Matt with baby Lazarus, there are several other guys in  Peru 18 but they have split us into two groups and they'll receive this training in May.

goofing off on the bus