Peace Corps loves it's acronyms

This week is my first Peace Corps In-Service Training or IST.  All the volunteers from my training group in Lima (we’re Peru 18, the 18^th group of volunteers to come through the training center since Peru was re-opened for Peace Corps my President Toledo and I can’t remember what year that was).  We haven’t seen each other in 3 months and we are spread out all over the country in very different climates, cultures, and completely different Peace Corps Peru experiences.  It is exciting to see everyone again.  It’s like our own private little America when we get together.  It kind of feels like summer camp with our training schedule; we have all our meals together, we room together, and activities all day.

I live out in the campo (campo= country) and up in the mountains in Cajamarca.  I have animals and lots of green plants around me, but the technology and development in my area is significantly less than the volunteers that live on the coastal desert climates.  The population of my town is about 4,000, but there are people that live in very urban areas with much larger population size.  It is really interesting to compare notes with the other volunteers on their experiences.  On the coast they have toilets, showers, and internet, but they also have HIV, a whole different type of desnutrición from all the processed food, and they have to live in the heat, yuck!  I’m feeling really happy with being a Cajamarquina right about now; I’d pick sierras over desert any day of the week.

Our IST is in a costal tourist town.  The beach is nice, but beyond the main drag of surf shops and restaurants is just desert.  There are mountains all around, but they are barren dirt mountains-like the ones in Lima.  On Sunday after getting off the Saturday night bus we went to the beach.  It was amazing to get some sun and go in the water.  I think the majority of us have gained some weight during the first 3 months, and all the potato bellies came out yesterday.  I got to show off my flea bites too. 

Last week my cell phone was robbed and I went into Bambamarca to do the police report or denuncia.  Then I had to go to Serpost to send a hard copy to Lima.  In Chota I met up with some of the other volunteers and my friend Jennifer Cobb received a very special package.  Her mother sent her a device that allows women to pee standing up.  The extra special part was that the package came in on International Women’s Day.  So she opened it up in Serpost and the two Peruvian employees were very interested.  Jennifer had to explain to these two Peruvian women the pee funnel her mother sent her in Spanish while Diamond and I laughed our butts off.

Later that day on my way back to my site an elderly woman grilled me in the truck on the way back up to my town.  We went through the usual interrogation I get from the Peruvians; why are you here, where are you from,  how old are you, do you have kids, are you married, are looking for a man, do you like Peruvian men?  My usual response is no I am not interested or looking for a man, but just for the hell of it I told her I did like Peruvian men and I was looking.  This woman was so excited.  She told me she was going to give me a man.  The verb she used was ‘regalar’ which translates to ‘to gift’, so she is going to ‘gift me a man’.  I have never met this lady before, but now she knows who I am and where I live.  I guess we’ll see what happens with the man-gift situation, the ball is in her court.

Anyhow, although they are keeping us busy this week for the training, I am thoroughly enjoying my time here.  We have nice comfortable beds, sun, beach, showers, and high speed internet.  Plus, I am not eating rice and potatoes at every meal!  I’m speaking English and swapping external hard drives.  Aren’t you all glad to know your tax dollars are hard at work putting up this volunteer in a hostel on the beach of La Libertad?!

I should be able to update soon with all this internet, woot!  Thanks for all the mail; Aunt Linda, Mom, and Sesame.  Expect some letters back. 

Chau for now,

kb

I can't believe it's already March!

This week went by really fast.  On Monday I had my site visit with the regional director for Cajamarca, which went really well.  On Tuesday and Wednesday I spent the days finishing up my encuestas in a sector of my town that is about a half hour up the mountain from my house.  I have never done so many door to door surveys in such little time before.  I was so determined to get them done, that I actually encuesta-ed 11 families on Thursday between 9am and 12pm.  Typically I get about 5 done in 3 hours.  That’s right, I am a super volunteer.

So I finally finished my community diagnostic report and I just need to get my Spanish proof read.  The director of the elementary school told me he’d help me out with it, since I typed up a solicitude back in December.  He’s not so handy with typing, but I’m crossing my fingers he’ll just sit with me and read through while I type the changes.

On Thursday I hung out at the health post and attended a meeting for the gardening project that I am going to be helping with.  I also started work on finishing drawing a world map that the previous volunteer; Annie, started but didn’t get the chance to finish.  She drew out a grid and painted the ocean.  She even finished South America, most of Africa, and Asia.  It was the northern hemisphere that my host brother and I finished up sketching in block by block. 

Next week we’ll start painting the countries in, and I’m a little nervous that somehow we’ll mess it up.  I couldn’t find washable paint at the hardware store (or ferritería).  I’m crossing my fingers we don’t get too dirty and don’t smear the map.  I’ll try to take pictures.

Next week is going to be really busy, because the first week of the month is typically when all the various groups in town have their meetings.  On Monday night (first Monday of the month) I am going to go to the Ronda meeting with my host day Joel.  The Ronda is basically this highly organized neighborhood watch type system.  All the men in the community need to send someone in attendance to the meetings and depending on how much money your family can pay-they need to spend several nights a month patrolling the streets after dark.  There are no police where I live, but the Ronda does a good job of keeping crime down. 

The Ronda meetings are all men and they begin at 8-8:30pm and last until usually around 2am.  I’m not looking forward to that, maybe I can figure out a polite way to make my spiel and get the hell out of there before it’s the middle of the night.  My goal is to introduce myself and give a short explanation of Peace Corps, but also to try to introduce the idea of a campaign to improve the water system.  The Ronda is in charge of the water and right now the vast majority of the kids have parasites, because the water is untreated.  If the Ronda got itself organized and motivated the people, funds could be raised to buy powdered chlorine to sanitize the drinking water.  Then on Tuesday is the meeting for Juntos in Tucupampa; a independent sector of my town, and I’m hoping to work with them the way I am working with Juntos in the other sectors of San Juan.

On Wednesay I am going into Chota; a neighboring bigger town about an hour away, to go to Serpost and so I can meet Hayden’s friend.  One of the other volunteer’s best friend from college is coming to visit her and we are all excited to have some American time and just to meet her. 

Thursday and Friday I need to get the map finished up.  And Friday in the morning I am going to my friend Diamond’s site for a parade and charla, she and her health post are putting on for International Women’s Day (which was actually yesterday, but we’re on Peru time here).  Then Saturday I am leaving town with the other Cajamaraca training group 18ers to go to a Peace Corps training event in a big city in another department.  We are all super excited to get out Cajamarca and see how the rest of our training group is doing in their various departments throughout Peru. 

The main thing is that time is finally starting to speed up.  I feel like I am a little busy now.  I’m almost starting projects (we’re talking about gardening, but it hasn’t begun yet) and at this point I recognize practically everyone’s face and know some names.  I guess what it is-I’m starting to feel like a real volunteer.  I’ve got a long ways to go, but it’s a nice place to be. 

Don’t get me wrong, I still day dream about visiting Michigan, seeing friends and family, and just living like an American.  I can see now that these months before I get to come home and visit in December will go by much faster than these painfully slow first few.  I spend all week looking forward to skyping on the weekends.  Which is sort of sad and pathetic, but it almost feels like I will need to give up more of my American self in order to make room for Peru in my life.  So maybe I’ll start cutting back on my skype time and spend my weeks looking forward to cooking with my host mom or Frisbee with Witmanskpye-let alone give it up, but it’s something to think about.

Chau for now, I hope to update next week after I get back from Trujillo.

kb

Post paint war shot.

We hung out on the balcony for a while in the morning shooting passersby.

Cajamarca 18ers

Jennifer Cobb and I figured out how to use the public transit in Cajamarca city.   I was pretty proud of us.

Pictures from Carnivales that I promised

 

 

Cajamarca 18ers in the plaza after the paint fight

with our serious fight faces

The whole crazy group of us that went out in the paint suits

Me, Jennifer, and Diamond

Another week of rainy season, woot!

When I got back to my site on Monday from carnivales in Cajamarca I was really sick.  I am sure I caught it from one of the kids in my English class, but everyone in my site thinks that I partied a little too hard at carnviales.  There is this overwhelming belief amongst Peruvians that if you get wet or cold you will get sick.  I even got that from the health post workers-who should know better- ‘you’re sick because you played carnivales and got all wet.’  It frustrates the hell out of me, but trying to explain in spanish how bacteria and viruses work is exhausting, so I smile and agree.  Why yes, you are exactly right.  I got wet in Cajamarca playing carnivales and that is how I got sick.  I lost my voice because I screamed when the Peruvians shot me with their super soakers and threw buckets of paint on me.  It solves so many problems to just agree-I perfected this trick when I worked at Sweetwaters and customers would argue with me about what they had ordered versus what I had heard them order.

So I did not work on encuestas this week, because the poor Peruvians have enough trouble understanding me when I have my voice let alone my 2-pack-a-day-sounding- scratchy-cough voice I had this week.  Instead I finished the rough draft of my diagnostic.  In writing the first draft a lot of holes in my information came to my attention.  For example, the majority of the people in my town at first glance appear to be subsistence farmers, however, I know that people have money.  They don’t have a whole lot of money, but they have to have some cash in order to send their kids to school, pay for electricity, and buy rice imported from the coast.  The people in my town must be selling their crops or their animals, but I don’t really know much about it and I need to find out more.  It’s silly stuff like that, but it really makes a difference in gaining a clear understanding of how things work. 

I also spent a good deal of time traveling up and down the mountain to get the t-shirts I ordered with my English class.  There was a whole lot of drama with buying them, because unlike one of the previous volunteers I didn’t personally buy the shirts for all the students.  Instead I told the kids that I could cover 3 soles if they could cover the other 7 soles, because there were 35 kids throughout the 2 month class and did not want to spend 10 soles a kid.  I knew that the 7 soles would deter some families, but I was surprised that some families were angered at my asking for contributions.  In the end 8 students purchased shirts, I bought 1, and my friend Jennifer (also a volunteer here in Cajamarca) bought a shirt.  Several times this week I went down the mountain, walked to the printing business and was told they would be ready the next day.

Finally Sunday the shirts were ready.  So when a Peruvian business tells you your shirts will be ready on Tuesday, what they really mean to say is they’ll be ready the following Sunday!  Uggg.  The reason I was in such a hurry to get the shirts is because those 8 kids have been popping up around town all week asking me ‘are the shirts ready?’  It was all worth it though, because when I walked to each kid’s house today with the shirts they were unbelievably excited.  My host brother and cousin jumped up and down while stripping off the shirts they were already wearing in order to change. 

Today my regional director came to visit my site and see how I am doing.  My family seemed a little nervous about impressing him.  Dalila, my host mom, was going to cook guinea pig for lunch.  Now, that is a big deal, you don’t cook guinea pig for just any old occasion.  FYI-for anyone who may have been thinking about coming down to Peru for a visit, Dalila has informed me that if I should have visitors we will definitely get to eat cuys (guinea pig)!  She told me when my whole family comes down next year she plans to slaughter my favorite pig (I named her Priscilla) in their honor…I don’t know too many people who have had pigs slaughter in their honor.  It would be quite the bragging right.  Although I do believe my friend Jason Fernandez has had 2 pigs slaughtered in his honor; 1 for high school graduation and 1 for college graduation.

The site visit went so well.  Jose visited the health post and we discussed ideas for health promotion projects with all the staff.  It sounds like I am going to focus on 3 main project themes; malnutrition, clean water (last year they tested all the kids in the elementary school and 100% of the kids had parasites), and a youth health promoter program (peer educators in sex ed.).  The projects are all large scale, but I have a ton of Peace Corps resources plus the support of the health post workers.  We were briefly able to chat with the director of the secondary school and he expressed his receptiveness to the peer educator program.  The previous volunteer already did training with a group of high schoolers, but they haven’t started actually teaching.  So I just need to reinforce what they already learned, cultivate more peer educators, and figure out a way to set up a committee of parents or adults in order to ensure that this program continues after I leave.

I have already heard from my site mates; who completed their first year in December and live about a 40 minute walk away, that the municipality of Bambamarca wants to coordinate with me on doing a improved cook stove project.  Part of receiving a new cocina mejorada (improved cook stove) is attending educative classes in health topics; handing washing, nutrition, vegetable gardens, small animal husbandry, clean water, auto esteem, family violence prevention, etc..  The parasite problem appears to be the most difficult.  In order to successfully make a change in the water system of my site, everyone in the community would need to be on board and willing to do some work.  I expect that coordinating with every organization in town will be tough, especially considered my level of Spanish.  Anyhow, the visit went really well and I feel so motivated after all the day’s discussions of change.  I am the last volunteer the work in this community so I plan to make my time here really count!  I feel like I have a lot to do, but that it is all totally doable-it's an awesome feeling.

 

Chau for now,

kb

*I promise to post pictures when I have better internet-right now, I can't get them to upload.

Dancing lots of Huayno

Here is the link to the video of Jennifer Cobb and I dancing at Carnivales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcU4hyK9_QQ

Cajamarca Carnivales!!!!

It’s been a little longer than usual since I updated my blog.  Last week I ended my English classes.  We spent the week playing and making crafts.  For Valentines Day we made cards.  Although my students failed to learn any vocabulary, we made a giant mess and had a lot of fun.

On Thursday I had a little clausura or closing ceremony for the end of vacaciones utiles.  I didn’t really plan a whole lot, but I spent Wednesday afternoon baking banana bread in a bubble oven.  Bubble ovens are portable electric ovens that are popular amongst the volunteers.  In the campo families do not bake a lot, there are 2 families in my town that have large artisan clay ovens and they bake all the bread.  One of those families is my host grandparents.  I was supposed to get time to bake my cakes in their oven, but they flaked out on me.  So I hit up the previous volunteer’s host mom to use the oven she left behind to her family.  I was worried that my cake (or queque in Spanish) wouldn’t turn out in the electric oven, but it was actually very easy to use.

Then my actual clausura ceremony was pretty lame.  I fed everyone my banana queque and gaseosas (or pop, or if you’re not from the Midwest: soda), and I made a small pretty bad speech.  We took some group photos and the kids played soccer.  There was some drama, however, since one of my students found a cell phone on the school property and wanted to keep it for herself.  She claims that I told her she could keep it, and to be completely honest that could have happened.  When I don’t understand something I usually respond with ‘yeah, yeah’ and during class time I have 30 + kids asking me questions and pulling my attention in a gazillion directions.  It ended up that I had to walk out to her house and explain to her parents that I needed her to return the cell phone she found since it was found on school property.  I went to the local radio station (which is in my host grandparent’s house, they rent out a room) and organized an announcement about the missing cell phone.

This weekend I came down to Cajamarca with all the other volunteers for carnivales and we also technically had a regional meeting.  Carnivales is pre-lent celebration and Cajamarca is famous for being the biggest party in Peru. My understanding is that the rest of Peru doesn’t celebrate a carnivales a whole lot, but here they take pride in their carnivales celebrations.  There are a lot of activities for carnivales, but the main event is paint day.  In Cajamarca city there is one day when everyone throws paint on each other in the streets.  There is paint and water being thrown, and then everyone marches through the streets to the plaza de Armas. 

The other Cajamarca volunteers and I bought paint suits.  We found a hardware store and bought giant white plastic suits that zipped up the front.  On Friday night Jennifer and I decided to wear our suits out to dinner-even though the paint didn’t start until Saturday- and there were lots of live music in the plaza de Armas.  We danced in the plaza and a large crowd formed around us.  It was so much fun.  For the rest of the night people waved to us and whispered things like ‘oh, wait they might dance again’ or ‘oh, look the gringa dancers.’  There is also video evidence of the second time Jennifer and I danced-it was staged and therefore not even close to as epic as the first dance, which was spontaneous and more silly.

Saturday morning we woke up early to get ready for paint day.  Paint day was incredibly fun, but also a bit stressful.  A group of us volunteers all dressed up in our paint suits went out with water guns to join the streets filled with people ‘playing carnivales’.  It seemed that Peruvians traveled in groups and each group would have a drummer, people with buckets of paint, and buckets of water.  However, we were also traveling in a group-drummer deficient, and it felt kind of like a street war with paint.  After a certain point all the groups converged into this giant march of people through the streets of the city.  The streets were closed for the march and everyone continued to throw paint and water.  The Peruvians were vicious with their paint, but we quickly gained confidence to attack back.  The worst was when they would come up behind you and smear paint in your face or pour buckets down your back.  We were pretty good targets though in our white suits and easily identifiable as non-Peruvians. 

It was the craziest party I have ever been to-just a giant good natured city wide paint fight.  There was one really adorable moment when kid hit me in the face and I stopped to try to wipe it out.  I was attempting to shoot myself in the eye with my own water gun when this little boy pushed through a wall of people yelling 'what are you doing, not in the eyes?!'  He came up to me and wiped my eye clean with a little cloth he had tucked away in a pocket.  A little boy stopped and wiped paint out of my eye-it was the nicest thing.  There was another instance when a two guys grabbed my arms and the third guy poured a whole bucket of paint water down the back of my suit while I screamed.  I have never seen anything like it and I can't wait to come back next year.

Luckily the paint that everyone uses is water based and washes out.  I think it will take a couple days to get all the paint out of my scalp and ears, but the suits protected my clothes and body.  Unluckily, people don’t stop throwing paint after you are done ‘playing carnivales’.  We went back to the hostel after 4 hours in the sun and changed out of paint suits and when we left to go find food we all got nailed with more paint. 

Overall it was a fun weekend, but not so much a relaxing break from my site.  Not to mention it seemed like the 4 other Peru 18 girls and I were all different kinds of sick.  One friend called the Peace Corps doctors and based on her symptoms they told her she may have some kind of bacterial infection.  Another friend was up all night vomiting and a third in gastrointestinal distress.  Diamond and I were both coughing and hacking all weekend.  I don’t know about Diamond, but I know exactly which kid in my English class got me sick-his name is Nilton Ruiz Caruajulca.  It was kind of pathetic, but we still pulled it together to have a fantastic time.  I was sort of proud we came together that way.  I feel like I need another 3 day weekend to recover!  Now that classes are over I can’t procrastinate any more with my report that I have to write up about my community.  Boooo! 

So, I’ll write again soon, but it may be a challenge to think of anything interesting to blog since it’ll be reports and interview for me for the next few weeks.

Chau for now,

kb

P.S.  Thanks for the mail; Nana, Aunt Jenny and Alyssa, Aunt Linda, George Wilson, Breanna, Sesame, and Ainsley.  It was very thoughtful and sweet of you all to write to me-keeping the jealously alive amongst all the other volunteers since I always have a ton of mail.


If you like puppies than you're going to love this;

http://youtu.be/mrhr71Q7Yhg

This is a video of a really pretty view I found on a walk with my dog;

http://youtu.be/vlDm2qbGfEo

***There is also an amazing video of Jennifer Cobb and I dancing at Carnivales in our painter suits, but it's still uploading.  I'll post the link as soon as I can.

Eduar and I posing with Snoopy and Scooby.

I never thought I would become a dog person in Peru of all places (the dogs are really dirty here and a lot of them seem to want to bite me), but this little dog follows me when I go on house visits and keeps me company.  

My class making Valentines Day cards.

this little guy in the front is named Edder-he's pretty cute huh?

group shot with our valentines 

the whole class (well, the kids that showed up) to my clausura ceremony

with my girlies

with my boys

the Plaza de Armas of San Juan de Lacamaca-the center of my town

There is an abundance of animalitos in my house right now; 3 kittens, 2 puppies, and a duck.  My favorite was when the puppies figured out how to fight back when the duck tries to bite them. 

El Niño effect, Star Wars, and my grandma's most impressive reproductive abilities!

Not much has happened this past week or so.  I’m still doing my English classes in the mornings from 8:30 – 12ish and in the afternoons I am supposed to be working on my encuestas (aka surveys).  I thought we were in rainy season before, but ohh no-it’s just the beginning.  Now, the rain is day and night.  It’s not really strong rain all the time, but it’s enough that clothes never dry on the line, creeks become rivers, everyone is cold all the time-because they can never get completely dry, everything is reduced to mud (including the floor in the kitchen), and the ceiling is leaking.  Not that I’m complaining, but this rain is making it awfully difficult to continue procrastinating writing my community diagnostic report.

My host dad Joel says that the rain is the El Niño effect.  Which sounded very familiar, but I felt the need to google it just for good measure.  Sure enough northern Peru gets extra rainy during the summer on years of El Niño effect.  The rain is not only interrupting my very important encuestas; ‘have you or anyone in your family had diarrhea in the last 2 weeks?’, but it also is really bad for the crops.  As a non-farmer I would have thought it was a good thing to have extra rain, but actually it is killing crops.  And in a community of subsistence farmers like mine-it’s pretty serious.

(pretty good online map: http://maps.grida.no/go/graphic/climate_impacts_of_el_ni_o_phenomenon_in_latin_america_and_the_caribbean )

This weekend my host uncle came to visit from Cajamarca city.  My host mother’s youngest brother is 22 years old.  Only 1 year older than my host sister-it’s a borderline Father of the Bride situation.  I was astonished that my host grandmother Nicida had babies for a span of 20 years…my family found my astonishment to be very funny.  I got them back though, when I showed them Star Wars episode IV.  It took a while for them to get into it, but after the aliens and violence really picked up they were all convinced that Star Wars is awesome.  I bought a dubbed DVD in Chota a couple weeks ago.  It has all 6 movies on one DVD!  Ya, gotta love Peru if for nothing else but the abundance of ripped off DVDs for only 3 soles.

I started a croquet project- I am making a ‘fondillo’ to wear underneath a skirt.  The women love that I am learning to croquet, they think it is so funny.  I get a lot of ‘look at the gringa croquetting!’  They also all find it very funny that I am planning on wearing the same kind of skirt all the ladies wear, but I figure I’m going to be here for 2 years I should give the Peruvian way a shot. 

This week I attended a meeting with a Ministry of Health sponsored program called Juntos for Peruvian moms with kids under the age of 15 or so, who live below the poverty line.  They asked me to start a biohuertos or garden project to help with the malnutrition problem in my town.  I can’t help but be a little skeptical about the value of another garden project.  Everyone in my town farms and they know much more than I do about planting and growing crops.  After 4 years of the previous 2 volunteers’ garden projects, why does no one keep a vegetable garden?  If these people have been continuously inundated with projects for growing vegetables to promote nutrition and they are not continuing their gardens, than I am left with the pessimistic sour feeling that they don’t really want to grow gardens they just want free seeds.  They can most definitely sell veggies in the market in Bambamarca-and when I go door to door with my surveys the response to my question about ‘how often does your family eat vegetables?’, is typically once or twice a month.  I need to get myself to see it in a different light, but I guess with all this rain I am only seeing the cynical side of things.

I can’t start my gardening project until the rain settles down, because the earth is just mud right now.  I guess I better get going writing my dreaded diagnostic report.  I realize it has been over a year and a half since I wrote a paper like this; it is supposed to be about 25 pages (and it’s in Spanish, good grief). 

Now I just need to get a hold of some Star Trek and see which ones the Peruvians like better, that would be really very enlightening.

Chau for now,

kb