Diamond's Birthday, breast feeding marches, peruvian humor, and fish holes

This week has gone by relatively fast. On Monday was our site visit with Emilia-that was a long day. Then on Tuesday Diamond and I went up to Ayaque with Yovani. Also Diamond's host family threw her a special surprise birthday breakfast. Laura made pancakes and shared the Costco size maple syrup her family brought for her when they recently visited. Plus, the host family made tamales and birthday cake.

The Peruvians weren't super impressed with the maple syrup which was disappointing since to us it was like eating a taste of home. We sang happy birthday in English, then in Spanish, then a verse I didn't recognize, and finally they told Diamond that she had to take a bite out of the cake. This was the first time I have heard of this tradition, but where I lived before in the campo people don't usually have cake on their birthdays since almost nobody has an oven.

Diamond, Yovani, and I hiked up to a nearby community called Ayaque. Diamond and I are planning on doing a big latrine building project in Ayaque. Things happen slowy though so right now we are spending time writing up a draft of a plan and accompanying Yovani on her house visits with mom's in Ayaque. At the end of September we have a community meeting lined up in Ayaque and we are planning on getting families signed up to be involved at that time.

In the afternoon on Tuesday the three of us; Diamond, Laura, and I, went to the health post to give a presentation to the doctor and nurse in charge of child health about Peace Corps. Our boss Emilia asked us to do the presentation in an effort to get the health post to work with us more. They are very understaffed and don't really work with us very much. It seems like they can't bring themselves to take the small amount of time to coordinate with us volunteers, and if the would we could do a lot of great promotion work basically for them. We're talking work that the health post could take credit for on their monthly informes to the ministry of health, but the health post will not take the time to plan and coordinate with us. It is super frustrating. I hope the presentation helped.

On Wednesday in the afternoon we went out to a community with Melva another Predesci facilitator. Predesci is this amazing NGO that is funded by the regional government of Cajamarca. They work in rural health promotion; focusing in on pregnant women and women with children under 1 year. They are pretty much Peace Corps health volunteers on steroids. They are Peruvians so they speak the language, know the system, and they have very specific jobs to carry out designated by their NGO-unlike us volunteers since when we show up we are supposed to work with the community to develop a project that the people want.

The Predesci representatives are currently working on forming these groups called CODECOs; Comite de Desarrollo Comunitario or Commitee for Community Development, in the small poorer surrounding communities outside of Tacabamba itself. Diamond and I attended, because we thought it would be a great way to observe how to organize a working commitee since we are going to need to form 2 commitees for our latrine project. The community that we went to was the one where Laura did her latrine project and she needed to talk with them about some upcoming visits they would be having.

The meeting started really late, but when it finally started it was productive. It was really helpful for me to see how Melva ran the meeting and helped the people get themselves a little more organized. The idea behind these commitees is that now the people can represent themselves a little more. Instead of waiting around for the municipality in Tacabamba or for an NGO to come in and give them construction projects, they can now go directly to the municipality themselves with their requests and ideas. As a volunteer our job is to kind of hold our rural community's hand through the process of asking the municipality for money and working with the health post. The goal is that by the end of a big project the community can organize itself more and work together to do community projects. Sometimes it is a bit of a foreign concept here; to join together and get things done for the community as a whole.

Anyhow, at the end of the meeting I was able to make a short announcement about doing an older adult health class. I was surprised by how much interest there was. We'll see if the people actually show up to my meetings, but I now have a list of 15 older adults that way they are interested in coming to educative sessions about how to take care of their health. I am super excited to work with them. I think our first session is going to be on diabetes.

Yesterday I talked with my old host mom Dalila for the first time in a while.  She asked me how I was doing, I asked how the family was doing, and I also asked about how my 3 'boyfriends' were doing.  In San Juan my host family had this running joke with me that I had 3 boyfriends; the director of the secondary school, the care taker of the primary school, and our 105 year old neighbor.  The director of the secondary school was sort of friendly with me, but he always managed to avoid me when I needed to work with him on coordinating for the youth health promoters.  I privately liked to call him Warrio, because of his mustache's striking resemblance to the video game character.  The primary school care taker is a really nice guy-he even gave me an exta set of keys to use during my english classes.  The 105 year neighbor man is named Delphin which means dolphin in Spanish.  I met him when I was doing my community diagnostic report, because I interviewed him to ask about how San Juan was founded. 

I asked Dalila about how my 'boyfriends' were doing and she told me that Delphin had died.  I expressed that I was sorry to hear the news  and while I was talking she quickly replied 'he's not dead, I was just kidding.'  I have to give Dalila a lot of credit, because she totally get's me.  I was shocked that she made a joke like that, because it is so outside of what I consider to be 'peruvian humor' and it was hilarious.  The conversation ended with me promising to go visit San Juan next weekend.  We are planning on eating Priscilla my favorite pig.  I only hope that I get there early enough in the day to give her a good belly rub before we eat her for dinner!

Also yesterday the kids had school off.  I really couldn't tell you what the holiday was and neither could my brother Sergio.  There is this wierd hole in the floor where Sergio is trying to raise fish that he caught in the river.  It's really big and nicely tiled on the inside.  Maybe it was once a water tank of some kind.  Every once in a while my host mom Rosa asks little Sergio (that's what we call him, not to be confused with his dad; big Sergio) to wash out the hole in the floor where the fish lives.  This is so bizarre on so many levels that I had to take a picture. 

My understanding is that the end goal is for the fish to become big enough to eat and they can begin breeding them for a continuous supply of fish at the restaurant.  However, I have never seen anyone open that hatch to the fish to feed them.  To clean the fish tank/hole Sergio has to bale out all the water and catch the fish in a bucket.  The hole is much deeper than he is tall, so he practically has to swim during parts of the process.  I took a picture, becuase it just struck me as so ridiculous to have a hole in the floor where you keep fish.

Chau for now and thanks for reading,
kb

I added this picture as a reminder of what the kitchen was like when I lived in San Juan as a juxtaposition to the beautiful kitchen in Tacabamba at Diamond and Laura's host family's house.

This is a view from during our walk back down to Tacabamba from Ayaque

Diamond and I

a parade for the week of 'lactancia materna exclusiva' or 'exclusive breast feeding'

this mom's sign says that babies under 6 months should only drink breast milk not cow's milk

Sergio cleaning out the hole in the floor where the river fish live.

Diamond's surprise birthday breakfast.

pancakes with maple syrup!

Ancash Adventures

July 28^th is Peruvian Independence Day and volunteers get to take 4 free vacation days. I felt kind of guilty going on vacation when I only have been in my new town for 2 weeks, but I also really wanted to get out of Cajamarca for a while. A couple other volunteers planned the whole vacation to a department called Ancash. Ancash is internationally known amongst big time hikers and moutain climbers. The capital city of Ancash; Huaraz, is a pretty touristy place. We wanted to come for a visit to eat delicious food and try to do a little hiking. We have been talking about the bagels and micro brewery beer for months amongst ourselves in Cajamarca. (bagels are really hard to find and there is a cafe in Huaraz known amongst the volunteers for it's awesome breakfast food-especially bagels)

It is a long trip between Cajamarca and Ancash. First I had to get myself to Cajamarca city which took about 6 hours of bus rides. Next I took an overnight bus between Cajamarca and Trujillo; a bigger city on the coast. The following day I had another night bus to catch between Trujillo and Huaraz, but it left me with a day of waiting around by myself in Trujillo. Trujillo is a big city and I don't know it too well, but I found out that the grocery store in Trujillo sells green tabasco sauce, Heinz ketchup, and Snyder's brand pretzels. I was super excited to eat a big mac at the McDonalds-I hadn't eaten McDonalds since last year before I left the states. Peruvian McDonalds unfortunately does not have a dollar menu, but along with ketchup and mustard you can also serve yourself aji or peruvian hot sauce on your burger or you can have an Inka Cola instead of a Coke for your drink.

Thursday I finally made it to my destination Huaraz, Ancash. I met up with 4 other volunteer friends; Ellie and Jennifer also from Cajamarca, Allison a U of M grad too who lives in a department called Piura, and Julianne who lives in Lambayaque. The first thing we did after we put our things down at the hostel was to go eat bagels and drink good coffee. We spent the rest of the day walking around Huaraz and planning which hike to go on. We ate delicious Indian food-I know can you believe it Indian food in Peru!

On the second day in Huaraz we woke up at 5am to catch a combe; which is sort of like a extra large van that serves as the main form of public transportation, out to the national park where the girls had picked a hike. The hike was to a glacial lake called laguna 69, and it was supposed to be about 3 hours from the trailhead. The driver we had hired to drive us up to the park from the main highway where the combe let us off told us that we needed to meet him back at the trailhead at 3pm because he said the park would close at 3:30.

I'm not an experienced hiker, none of us are. The altitude got to us fast. The views were amazing and we were so determined to get to the lagoon. We started out the hike with a young Czech couple, but they passed us pretty early on. The directions we received from the driver were that after the first little lake it would only be about a half an hour until the big lake. So when we reached the first lake exhausted and freezing we just kept walking. The trouble was that the trail was pretty much unmarked after that and we were starting to run low on time.

So the sad part is that we did not make it up to the laguna 69, because we were starting to get worried about missing our car out of the park. Plus, we were exhausted and the trail was unmarked so we weren't even sure if we were climbing the right trail. We went back to the little lake to eat a packed bologna and cheese sandwiches. It snowed while we ate.

I got it in my head before we went to Ancash that I wanted to do a naked lake jump. It's something that a lot of volunteers do and I thought I should do it since I probably won't have another chance to jump in a glacial lake. It was very cold and I didn't really jump in. It was more of a fast dunk during which I shouted curse words. I cut my foot on something in the lake, but I didn't notice until we got back to our hostel. I must have been too cold to feel it very much. When we got back my sock was full of blood.

On our third day we went out to visit 2 other volunteers that live in Ancash. Their site was beautiful. We cooked lentil burgers and sweet potato fries on Katie and Ben's cocina mejorada or improved cook stove. It was so nice to see them. Katie and Ben are a married couple. Katie is a health volunteer and Ben is an environment volunteer. Their home was so cozy and nice. They are so happy and that made me feel good.

And that was the last day of vacation. After that Ellie, Jennifer, and I did the 2 days of overnight bus back to Cajamarca. In Trujillo we met up with another volunteer Christina and we all went to see the new Batman movie at the theater, and it was IN ENGLISH!!!!! We also walked around the stores in the mall and it felt like we were in the states a little bit. Especially, this one store called Sodimac which is bascially Peruvian Lowes or Home Depot.

The rest of the week was mostly uneventful so I'll just include highlights. My new host brother Sergio turned 12 and we had a really nice family lunch. He and I made a banana bread for a cake, but he also had some cake that his mom bought from a bakery. He also got a new puppy for his birthday. It is the tiniest dog I have ever seen. I worry she is too little to be away from her momma yet, but they assure me she'll be fine. Her name is Lulu and she is so little she doesn't even know how to eat food yet. Most of the roof guinea pigs that my host family raises are bigger than her.

Diamond and I got our first real assignment. We planned and gave a very successful training session for local health promoters. The topics were good communication, how to plan a class or training session, and how to do a good house visit. In Peru home visits are emphasized for more rural communities, but the health posts are often too overwhelmed with patients to go out and do door to door promotion. Local volunteers are supposed to get trained and help work as an extension of the health post, but it doesn't usually work that way. In my previous community the health post would claim a list of names as trained health promoters and gather the money from the ministry of health to fund the program. However, those people didn't actually attend any trainings or do any health promotion. It was just a way for the health workers to get a little extra money for parties or buying lunch.

I finished up all my secondary medical school applications, except for Wayne State I'm still waiting on them to send me theirs. I am so lucky to have my amazing Mom, Dad, and friends Carol, Laura, and Diamond who helped me proof read all the essays. I really appreciate all the help.

Also Diamond and I went to Conchon to visit Ellie to inaugurate her new gas cook stove. We ate sweet potatoes and tea for dinner. And I learned how to make a fishtail braid on Ellie. It was a good 2 weeks.

Chau for now,

kb

the pictures are a little out of order...

Dinner at the Indian food restaurant Chili Heaven

views during the hike

Host sister Yossy and brother Sergio at the family birthday lunch

Lulu the world's smallest dog

Lulu meeting a baby guinea pig

Diamond and I at our first real charla or talk

preping for the lake jump

lake jump surprise

Jennifer said that this donkey stunk

Jennifer and I rode the whole way up to the national park in the trunk of this guy's car to save a couple soles.  Boy was that an uncomfortable ride.  The road was really bad and one point the driver even had to pull over to change a popped tire.

visiting Katie and Ben in Shirapucru