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?
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