Tragically I didn't get to eat Priscilla the pig

Last weekend I visited my San Juan host family for the first time since I moved sites. I was really nervous and excited to see them. I missed them a lot my first couple weeks in Tacabamba and I continue to call my host mom Dalila every week to check in. However, I was nervous that things would be weird or that they would ask me about building an improved cook stove. Previously it something we were discussing, but it was always a topic that felt uncomfortable for me. I knew that the family probably had enough money to buy the materials and build there own improved cook stove, but they wanted me to do it for them. It always left me torn between wanting to do something nice for this family that I love, but also feeling a bit used.

Lucky for me the stove building conversation never came up. I was only in San Juan for a quick visit. Apparently too quick for us to eat Priscilla. Now that was disappointing. I went out behind the house gave Priscilla a good belly rub and said my good byes, and we ate rabbit for dinner instead. When I asked Dalila she said she though I would be staying through Sunday and they were planning to kill Priscilla on Saturday. Boooo!

I got to hang out with Witman and Eduar. We played frisbee and read Harry Potter. It was really nice. When neighbors passed the house or saw me walking around they asked me where I had been. I felt sort of frustrated that my host family hadn't told people that I had left. Unfortunately I was unable to make a public announcement or really say good bye in my town since the move was rushed. It was sort of like Diamond and I were evacuated. Diamond wasn't even allowed to pack her own things for the move, her host family packed all of her things and sent them down from her town by ambulance. The week that we left people in Diamond's previous site were attacking unknown cars with rocks and so our regional coordinator was afraid to drive up to her site in the Peace Corps car.

So that was also disappointing to find out that nobody in San Juan knew why I left or where I had gone. People just kept asking me when the next volunteer was coming and I had to tell them that Peace Corps had shut down their whole district for volunteers. There will be no more volunteers in the Bambamarca area for until Washington decides it is safe again. I found out that all the kids in the district will have to repeat a year of school, because they have missed so much during these protests and strikes. It's really sad. Especially when I think of the 6^th graders I taught English classes with, they were all going to have their promociones this December or graduation. It is a really big celebration. Kids get special presents and new clothes. There is a huge party and at night the whole community is invited for drinking and dancing all night long.

So the visit was nice. It felt good to see my family and I fit right back into my spot. I just felt a little sad for leaving them all over again. I hope that Witman and Eduar can make it to University some day and I worry about how will I keep in contact with them all. I almost forgot that I very briefly saw my enamorado or boyfriend while I was in San Juan. Good old Delphin; 105 and still walking the streets (err- it should be street, there's really just the one), and I gave him a good hand shake. I know his daughter better and her I gave her a greeting cheek kiss with a hug, but him I've have only met once for an interview about the history of San Juan. Anyhow, my host family thought it was hilarious that I went up and greeted him. I only wish I had thought to ask for a picture with him-it would have been super awkward to ask him, but I bet he would have gone along with it and I'd have the evidence.

I came back to Tacabamba and Diamond and I had a big meeting at the municipality on Monday morning. It turned out not to be such a big deal as we thought it would be. We had to wait for an hour and a half to be seen. When we were brought in it was in front of one regidor instead of all of the regidores and the mayor was also not present. We talked to the regidor Lisandro about our project plan and budget. He told us he could have an answer about the funding by mid-October. So it leaves us still waiting to get started, but things move slowly here and I try to keep telling myself that we now have a foot in the door.

This week the teachers went on strike. It is a nation wide strike, because the Peruvian government has passed some kind of law that the teachers need to take an exam every year. This new round of teacher strikes has brought up a lot of interesting conversations with neighbors around Tacabamba. Teachers only work about 25 hours a week here in Peru. Most public schools have classes from 8am to 1:30pm everyday. There is vacation from mid-December through March 1^st as well as 2 weeks off in August. What my neighbors tell me is that a lot of the teachers in the public schools lack any type of higher level education. In Peru to qualify to be a high school teacher, you only have to have graduated high school. Now the rules are changing and the government wants to move towards hiring teachers with bachelors or masters degrees. The trouble is what will they do with all the teachers that are working right now? It seems unfair to me to toss them out of their jobs, but also not really so fair to the students to have a teacher that doesn't have higher than a high school education.

So with the latrines project on hold and no sex-ed classes happening with the teacher strike it's been slow around here. Also next week is the town party in Tacabamba and everyone is just getting ready this week. Everyone is making last minute improvements on their homes so that they look nice for the fiesta. Also from what I hear lots of families will be opening up their homes to rent rooms to accommodate the huge influx of people that will visit for the fiesta. I haven't heard anything from my host family about people staying at the house with us, but there are 2 extra rooms that could potentially be filled for the fiesta next week.

This week I finished up with my secondary applications to 3 schools in Chicago; Loyola, Rush, and University of Illinois, and the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. With all this free time I have been obsessing and worrying about getting in somewhere. I'm pretty sure I won't hear back for months so I am trying to stop thinking about it in every free moment. It is just so exciting to fantasize about coming back to the states, going to school, having an apartment, and feeling like I have control of my life.

Here in Peru most of the time I feel powerless. It feels like I can't do anything right and I don't understand how things work. I still don't feel like I can express myself when I want to have a meaningful conversation with someone. It's like in the US when someone doesn't speak English very well and you know they aren't stupid, but it is so difficult to look beyond their bad language skills to give them a chance to show you who they are. I totally understand people's reactions to me here in Peru and I just wish I could take back all the times I thought a certain way about people I met in the states that weren't totally fluent. I guess this means I should crack open my grammar text books once in while here, huh?

Also this week Diamond and I made pickles. It turns out pickles are surprisingly easy to make! In 2 weeks we'll be feasting on pickles, yeah!

Thanks for reading and chau for now,

kb

here's a list of some foods I miss:

cold drinks and drinks with ice

cereal and cold milk

bread; sliced bread, whole wheat bread, rye, sourdough, toasted bread

cheese (that isn't wet farmer's cheese, I'm talking stinky cheese that tastes so good and gives you terrible breath)

baby carrots and peppers

hummus

salsa

pickles*but in 2 weeks I'm gonna eat some

Mexican food, Thai food, Indian food, Middle Eastern food-any kind of spicy foods

BBQ anything, hot dogs taste weird here-I just want to go to a baseball game sometimes

greek yogurt

good beer

mom's lasagna, chili, black bean soup, that pasta salad with the artichoke hearts, homemade jam

brewed coffee- not that instant nescafe, yuck!

root beer

and mostly I miss cold drinks or milk with cereal

foods that I know I'll miss from Peru:

choco sodas

humas

aji

all the delicious new kinds of fruit that I've never seen before in the states; grenadillas, guanabana, surco, lucuma, maracuya, that weird cactus fuzzy fruit,

beet salad

chicarrones

cerviche if it's done right

maybe cuy...but chicken is probably better

With my boys Witman and Eduar, plus a couple favorites from english class Dresli and Nelver

Harry Potter times

in Tacabamba

the street where I live
 

I live here!  At Restaurante Yossy.

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

starting over

I guess I forgot how fast the first few weeks go by when you get to a new site. I am meeting new people, learning names, finding my way to new places around town, trying to find a new routine and understand my new host family's routine, and generally following around Laura the 16er volunteer who has been in Peru exactly 1 year longer than Diamond and I. Every night by 9:30 I can't keep my eyes open I'm so tired. I got kind of sick this week. Which is weird since I expected here in the 'city' things would be way more hygienic than they were previously in the campo. Maybe, I had resistance to those campo germs after 7 months and now there are new bugs shocking my system.

Diamond and I hiked up to a community called Ayaque on Wednesday morning. We went up there with a woman who works for an NGO in the area; she and her co-workers do personalized house visits for every pregnant woman and mother with a child under 1 year. It is quite impressive what these PREDECI people do going door to door bringing the healthcare to the people hardest to reach. I have included some pictures below of the path up to Ayaque. For the record when people told me that Ayaque was nearby I was not expecting a 2 hour hike. First it was about 45 minutes of switch backs that went straight up the side of the mountain and after reaching the top we still had a ways to hike in. I was still a little sick the day of the hike and I had a horrible moment where I thought to myself: this is it, I'm going to poop my pants right now. Practically every volunteer has a pooping of the pants episode and I have so far managed to avoid one. The climb almost got me. It was a close call, but I'm still in it for that bet I made.

When we finally got to Ayaque, Yovanni the PREDECI promoter we were with told us that the people in Ayaque have no electricity, no water, and no latrines. Ayaque sounds like a great place to do some construction projects paired with health promotion classes; hand washing, safe water, nutrition, tooth brushing, and hygiene. Even though the families in Ayaque are extremely poor, people still offered us food when we visited their homes. It is a Peruvian custom to invite people to eat and it is a sign of your thanks. The more food you are given the more appreciation you are being shown by your host. So for a very poor family to offer you food it is a very important honor and it would be highly offensive to turn them down or not to eat it all. It's something that we volunteers often joke about amongst ourselves. If one volunteer buys a beer or food and offers to share with you, and then you offer to pay them back (since we are all pretty poor here), they can always play the 'I just invitar-ed you, therefore you aren't allowed to offer to pay me' card.

At one of the homes the woman in charge of the household offered the three of us; Diamond, Yovanni, and I, huge heaping mugs full of cooked gourd. It is kind of like eating the guts of a pumpkin cooked up with a bit of milk and sugar. This dish is almost always served cold and people spit out the black shells of seeds onto the ground while they eat. It doesn't taste bad per say, but I did not want to eat such a giant portion and I felt really sick already that day. Yovanni silently whipped out a plastic bag from her backpack and when our hostess wasn't looking she would quietly quickly shovel her chiclayo into the bag. The three of us were sitting on a long wooden bench against the side of the house, made out of a board of wood balanced on a rocks and covered with a handwoven blanket. After I had scooped out most of my chiclayo into the bag I switched mugs with Diamond, but then I made a grave mistake. I didn't keep a good hold of the plastic bag and big glob of chiclayo fell out plopping on the ground. Diamond covered for me right away by moving her feet to block the spill from the view of the family. Then I had to nonchalantly scoop up the mess without the family noticing. Yovanni and I had almost gave it all away with our suppressed laughter at my clumsiness.

Later on Wednesday Diamond, Laura, and I went to the town down the road called Conchan to visit another volunteer friend Ellie. It was so cozy to have a group of us. Ellie showed us around her town and we went back to her house to cook dinner. We attempted to make burritos. I elected that we use lentils since they are cheap and easy to find here, but none of us had ever cooked lentils before. They turned out a little tasteless, but avacado, homemade tortilla, tomato, onions, and tobasco sauce made up for it completely. Also Ellie invitar-ed us some homemade peanut butter and apples, which tasted like America! It was wonderful. Ellie taught us how to make homemade granola for breakfast the next day in her host families electric oven and we drank real coffee-not the instant stuff I drink daily while I imagine all the free coffee I drank at Sweetwaters before I left. 

The next morning we worked on painting a sign that Ellie is making for a library project she is doing in her town. We played What a Girl Wants in the background on my laptop-it's an old Amanda Bynes teenage girl flick about a girl who grows up with her single mom, going to England and finding her dad, who turns out to be Brittish semi-royalty Colin Firth. It was nice to just pretend to be in the states for a while. Ellie even had a recent Glamour magazine that her mom had sent her. I was in heaven.

This week went by fast. Things are still a little awkward around the new host family, but they are very friendly so I'm sure it will turn out fine. I feel optimistic about project work especially with Diamond here too. My host brother is still following me around a little too closely, but I am confident that I will become less interesting as the newness wears off. This week I received emails from U of M, Michigan State, and Oakland medical schools with links to their secondary applications. I'm still waiting on Wayne State-which is were I really want to go when I get back.

Chau for now,

kb

market day in Tacabamba, from left to right: Diamond, my host brother Sergio, Ellie, Me, Laura, and in front Rinaldo and Angie-Laura and Diamond's adorable host siblings.

On our house visits in Ayaque

pictures from HIVAids classes Diamond and I are helping Laura with. 

This is a game that helps demonstrate how the imune system works.

okay, so I uploaded this picture badly.  However, this is the trail up to Ayaque, the white pathway up the mountain.

my host bro Sergio and some neighbor boys climbed up the hill above my new home with me.  There is a big white Jesus statue up there.

view from Jesus' feet, again there's Ayaque path

Friday night we attended a beauty contest.  Although there were only 4 contestants the whole thing went on for over 3 hours.  Between the 3 times the girls walked for the judges, local kids did dances, poetry, sang songs, and did what they called 'dramas'-those were the most painful.  Laura was asked to be a judge.

teaching the HIV/Aids class with high school kids

views from my room; below is the main living area.  the stairs lead up to my room and under the stairs is the bathroom.  the sink is on the left side.  the door at the bottom of the stairs leads to the kitchen and restaurant in the front of the house.

my room, it's a little messy right now.  I'm hoping to get a bookshelf soon, that'll help a lot.

Site Change

Since the last time I posted on my blog a lot has happened. The strikes and protests in Cajamarca escalated and 3 protestors were killed on July 3^rd. On the 4^th an official 'state of emergency' was declared and the people of Bambamarca flooded the streets to protest the killings. The military police used tear gas bombs to dissipate crowds. One local man was shot in the back while he was trying to run away from a tear gas bomb. The following day Peace Corps decided it was getting a little too crazy and the regional coordinator for Cajamarca; Jose, came to take me and my two site mates out of the district.

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 11^th 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?