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!