a world where nobody likes to say 'no'

Diamond and I are currently leading a teen group at the high school in Tacabamba.  The group is made up of kids that want to be peer educators.  It has been kind of a nightmare trying to get the permission we need to have the kids in our club teach sex-ed in the high school.  Plus, the kids are definitely not dedicated enough in showing up on time or participating during meetings for me to feel too guilty about it not happening for them.  Instead we have compromised and made the group kind of an extracurricular health promotion group.  Last year we painted a mural in the health center and held a movie night for the entire student body.

This year the kids in our youth group had a big idea; a school wide soccer/volleyball/chess tournament.  We invited each section (kind of like homeroom, except that they just spend their entire day with the same classmates-everyone does the same electives on the same schedule) to form teams.  The idea for this event was from the kids in our group and in theory they were supposed to help us organize the whole thing.  They did help a little, but Diamond and I ended up doing most of the work. 

So for the past couple weeks we have been doing all the preparations.  And for the past two Saturdays Diamond and I spent the whole day at the tournament.  Not one kid ever said ‘thanks’ to me.  Instead I got a lot of kids showing up late, arguing with me or whining about how they didn’t get to play more games, and I was particularly upset when the kids couldn’t bother to stay for a short announcement I was making at the end of the tournament to thank the other adults that helped.  I admit I shouted after the kids while they left that they were being ‘rude turds,’ but I shouted it in English just to make myself feel better. 

I guess technically the event was a success, kids showed up, a couple adults came through for us, and our peer educator group was on display for the school.  However, I feel so frustrated at how the students treated me and the other adults that showed up.  I feel really frustrated that the Municipality promised to give prizes to the winners and they are so disorganized that they can’t get around to doing anything.  I also feel really frustrated that the kids won’t participate in a free soccer/volley ball tournament unless there are cash prizes available-that was so surprising to me.  When I suggested we buy the winning teams ice cream cones or chocolate bars I was laughed out of the room by my peer educators.  They were adamant that kids wouldn’t show up unless there were cash prizes (and they were totally right).

After the tournament wrapped up on Saturday, Diamond and I helped decorate the church for her host sister’s wedding.  The party that night was really fun.  It started  late because of the rain.   Diamond, Ellie, and I were basically cater waiters for the event.  Since we didn’t start serving the food until late and the house was so crowded the dinner wasn’t served until around 10:30pm.  The drinks were being served earlier on empty stomachs, so by the time we were weaving through the crowd with trays of food everyone was pretty drunk. 

There was a lot of dancing.  Although my experience has been that people from Cajamarca do not hug a whole lot, with the alcohol flowing I got a lot of hugs from Diamond’s host family members and some of my host family members that were guests.  Ellie and I stayed until 1:30am and walked back to my host family’s house.  Diamond told us that the party went on until 4:30am and that her host family woke up to make breakfast at around 8am.  I don’t   envy Diamond not being able to fall asleep until 4:30am because of the loud music and dancing outside her door.

The next day; Mother’s Day, there were a lot of celebrations.  The funny thing about the celebrations for Mother’s Day was that most of them involved a group of men sitting around and getting really drunk.  On the corner near my house my adult host brother Ivan and a group of neighbors were camped out most of the afternoon.  Every time I left my house the would call me over and I would do the Peruvian finger wag ‘no’.  I baked my host mom Rosa a banana bread and magically we became best friends.  I really need to bake more often-my host family likes me a whole lot more when I make them cakes. 

I also tested out a theory about making excuses to avoid undesirable social situations on Sunday evening.  Sunday night there was a kind of a block party near my house for Mother’s Day.  They were blasting loud music in the street and drinking.  I knew I did not want to dance or drink again, but I also knew that everyone would try to pressure me to do so.  I have been watching The Mindy Project and in one episode a character says that someone has diarrhea to get them out of an unwanted social situation.  So when the waves of ‘come one, just come to the dance for a little while,’ ‘just drink a little bit with us,’ started rolling in I simply said I couldn’t because I had diarrhea. 

My excuse didn’t shut down the invitations as fast as I would have imagined.  I had to fend off questions like: ‘why don’t you just take some medicine?’ or ‘how bad is it really?’  Eventually though I successfully employed the theory of shutting it down with diarrhea.  Who says that TV isn’t good for you?  It applied to my real life!!!

Sorry for being gross.  Also sorry for being so complaining lately…I am trying really hard to be more positive.  There are so many great things about Peru the country and it’s people, but I always catch myself focusing on the negative stuff.

For example who’s to say that the whole nobody says ‘no’ here thing is bad?  Those men on the street inviting me to drink or my host family pressuring me to come out dancing with them are just examples of the social practice of nobody-ever-says-‘no’.  They have to keep inviting (or in my perspective pressuring), because you can’t say ‘no’ or take ‘no’ for an answer.  You have to have an excuse or you have to say ‘I’ll come by later’ and then just not do it.  That is how things work here.  As much as it annoys me when it happens in the context of no one showing up to a meeting I called, it is a relief to know that when I flake out on other people that they will not be offended since that is just the way things are here.

Anyhow, thanks for reading and chau for now,

kb

here are some action shots of the tournament

my host dad taking his typical afternoon nap

picture of the kitchen at the home I live in now in Tacabamba

pictures from a visit to my previous site San Jaun

this is a typical kitchen, big difference huh?

showing off all the food we made

sometimes I can't believe that I lived in a place like my first site

 

feeling introspective this week

This weekend I went into Chota for one of my allotted regional capital visits every month.  Chota is not very big, but it does have a Serpost and good internet.  Chota is a 2 hour van ride away from Tacabamba.  The roads are pretty bad, but I don’t notice as much as I used to when I first got here.

It was a nice visit this week, because several other volunteers were also in town and we were able to spend time together.  On Saturday morning at our favorite cheap breakfast place it felt like we were being continuously accosted.  First there was an elderly women begging for money from all of the people eating in the restaurant.  We shook our heads no and kept up our conversation in English.  She lingered for quite a while and made her way back to us saying a phrase that every volunteer I know hates, ‘no seas malita,’ or ‘don’t be bad’ (*in the dictionary to call someone ‘mal’ that way it translates to ‘evil’- so maybe possibly it means ‘don’t be evil’).

I hate when people say this phrase to me and it is always when they want me to do something that I don’t want to do.  When that lady came back for the final word to us ‘no sean malitas,’ I guess I overreacted a little, because I told her it wasn’t necessary to call us ‘malas’ and that we in fact were not ‘malas.’  I probably should have just let her have that last word. 

The next person to accost us was a man who apparently had a sign reading that he was deaf, but I did not notice his sign at the time. He approached us and put small cards on the table in front of each of us.  2 of the other volunteers warned me not to look too much or touch the card, because if I did this man would expect me to pay for the card.  Inside the cards there might be jokes or puzzles, but if you look at them you have to pay the man.  So we all avoided looking at the cards in case he would mistake it for interest in buying them.  The man waited for a few minutes and then made his way around picking up all the cards off the tables before he walked out.  Only he forgot one of the cards on our table, so I shouted after him to let him know he forgot his card. 

Those other people at the restaurant probably thought I was such a jerk; first telling that lady off and then yelling at a deaf man.  When the third and final person came around to beg from us I just shook my head no and tried not to think about how I told that poor old lady off before.  It felt like I had been pretty harsh.

This week a lot of drama unfolded with my sexual education class in a small town 2 hours walking distance from Tacabamba.  When I first went to this town to ask for permission from the APAFA (parent association) of the high school, they were very suspicious that I worked for the mines.  We spent about 30 minutes talking about what Peace Corps is, who pays me, why am I in Peru anyway, and why do I want to teach their kids.  At the end of the grilling they decided that they would give me permission to teach their kids on Monday afternoons.

A couple weeks ago when another obligation came up on Mondays I thought nothing of asking the kids from my class in El Naranjo to just meet on Tuesdays instead.  My logic was; in a community with no electricity and no running water what other activities/obligations where these kids going to have.  As it turned out when the parents realized that I had changed the day of the week of my class without asking their permission they were very offended. 

I received a phone call from the director of the high school informing me that the APAFA was unhappy with me and wanted a copy of my contract with the Municipality.  I don’t have a contract with the Municipality I work for the U.S. government, but either way that didn’t sound so good for my classes continuing.  My friend Ellie helped me brainstorm how I could find a solution that would make everyone happy-I don’t know what I would do without other volunteer’s help in these situations.  So I typed up a schedule for the rest of my classes and dropped them off at the director’s house so that he could pass them out to the kids and they in turn could show their parents. 

I only received one more angry phone call from a parent, but I was able to explain that it was a misunderstanding and that it was not my intention to offend anyone.  I think that everything is all cleared up, but I guess I won’t know for sure until next week.  It is frustrating when people are so uncommunicative with me, but expect me to be super communicative with them.  The situation is not ideal.  Normally a Peace Corps volunteer works in the community where they live, the people know and trust them, and they are able to receive community support for whatever activities they are doing.  In El Naranjo the people may or may not still think I am a spy for the American mining companies and I do not know anyone (except for the 22 teens in my classes and the male nurse who is never available to work with me).

It is not fair for me to march into this town and expect for them to just get on board with some stranger teaching their kids.  It is not reasonable for me to expect that the people from El Naranjo are going to understand how I have structured my classes or why I want to work with their kids in the first place.   I had imagined after living here as long as I have that I would be fluent in the Peruvian world view, but sadly I still am not.  A lot of the time I can anticipate how people will react, but I don’t understand their logic still.  It is funny how deep our American way of thinking is engrained. 

We are taught from a young age in the U.S. that if you work hard you can achieve anything, we should strive to leave our country better for the next generation, and we are personally responsible for our success or failures.  Here in Peru; I imagine from generations of struggling to survive in extreme poverty, the ideas above are unknown.  When Diamond and I worked on developing a latrines project for 3 months only to have the Municipality tell us they would not be funding the project (after they strung us along, everyone month they would tell us come back next month we’ll let you know about the budget) the reaction of the families in our project was: ‘the Muni misled us again,’ and ‘remember how last time they said they would do a project and they never did.’  They weren’t even all that surprised and they certainly did not appear to be as angry or frustrated as I was-or at least they did not express it in a way I would recognize as anger.  It seemed more like complacence. 

Things are fine the way they are, why should we change?  This is how things have always been and it was good enough before so why not now?  When promises of change are made they often are not kept by the people that make them.  One really important thing I have figured out is that I cannot want it more than the people I want it for- or rather people have to want to change or else I am just smacking my head against the wall and feeling like a failure. 

Whew, that got kinda serious, huh?

Thanks for reading and chau for now,

kb

Youth Camp coming up: Imagine a Peru without Machismo!

Howdy everyone,

While I miss home (*read double ply toilet paper, hot showers, cold milk and cereal, just kidding) and have been thinking about all of you a lot, I have been doing well here in Peru. I have had the fortune to be involved in many different projects and events that have made me feel proud to be in the Peace Corps.

Most recently, my sitemate Diamond and I wrote a grant for the annual youth camp with all the other volunteers in the department of Cajamarca. The event, called camp VALOR (value), is a three day event where we will do workshops over self-esteem, leadership, healthing life-habits, and vocational orientation for high school boys from all over the region (we also do one for the girls ). We will also be doing team building games and even have a panel of local professionals present their careers. For many of these kids, they have never even left their home towns, let alone attend any kind of leadership conference or camp. In the past this has been one of Peace Corps Peru's most successful annual programs for youth.

However, the only way we are able to run the camp is to get donations from both local communities and family and friends back home. The idea is that if we can get at least 40% of the money/materials necessary from local counterparts, then we will do our best to find the rest from other sources to make it all happen.

If every volunteer does their part then the amount I need to raise is minimal. So here is where I humbly ask for your help in making this camp a success and to give these youth leaders an opportunity of a lifetime; an opportunity that could lead them to a better future.  This year we picked the theme of the camp to be 'Imagining a Peru without Machismo' (sexism).

If you would like to donate (even a tiny bit helps us get there) please simply follow This LINK to an official United States Peace Corps web site where you can not only donate but see our progress to our goal as well as read more about camp VALOR.

I can't thank you all enough for the support you have already given me during my service and I thank you in advance for your continued support.

Sincerely with gratitude,

kb

Cusco vacation

It has been a while since I wrote blog post and a lot has happened.  My family came for a visit during their spring break.  We went to Cusco, the Sacred Valley, and Machu Picchu.  It felt amazing to spend so much time with my family.  Although I will admit I was a little bit stressed about money during the vacation.  It’s one of those annoying little things about vacations, but also about living in Peru.  There is this constant presence of this awareness of people trying to rip you off.  Sometimes it is small things; like a taxi driver charging more for gringas than he would for Peruvians, but other times it feels bigger.  Through Peace Corps I have official Peruvian residency and there are a lot of times when there are 2 prices for archaeological sites or even plane tickets. 

There were a lot of hiccups, but overall it was a great visit.  Some of the highlights include: a llama spitting in my face (you always hear about it happening-and it did, it was gross but really funny), crazy tour guides whose ‘factoids’ proved to be a less than true when we googled them after the fact (one lady told us that the stones that made up Machu Picchu were partially held together by magnetism…that was a big fat made up fact), almost losing the expensive somewhat irreplaceable train tickets (but we found the electronic versions on my email), and the race to see who could hold out the longest without getting sick. 

I am embarrassed to admit that although I was not the first one to get sick I did get pretty sick and before it happened I may have been doing a lot of trash talking.  ‘I’ve lived here for a year and 7 months street food doesn’t scare me, and yeah, I’ll eat that salad off your plate, I can’t believe you are worrying about those ice cubes’ I was tossing around a lot of talk, but then I got super sick.  ***Thank you Debbie for the Immodium***

Machu Picchu was probably the most beautiful place I have been to in my life.  It gave me that feeling that the Grand Canyon gives you-it is just so beautiful that you cannot believe it is real.  Except that Machu Picchu is manmade so it is different.  Those crazy Incas were some determined and hard-working engineers, because it seems that they could not have chosen a more difficult place to build a city.  And tour guide Edith was wrong-those blocks were not even a little bit held together by magnetism.

Anyway, now it’s back to site and back to work.  I got permission from the director of the elementary school to do some cute activities with the kids in 5^th and 6^th grade about self-esteem and peer pressure.  I am going to work with the health center in Tacabamba on a project about Early Childhood Stimulation.  I am going to focus on moms with babies under 1 year.  The youth health promoter group that Diamond and I are doing together is doing really well.  And the sex-ed class that I am doing at the high school in El Naranjo (the town 2 hours walking distance with no electricity) is kind of rocky.  I am planning on attempting to bribe them into participating with candy.

So things are going well right now.  Hopefully I’ll have some silly cross-cultural anecdotes to write about next time.  The best one I had this week was having to eat 3 ears of corn on a house visit so as not to offend the woman who invited me food.  That was rough-thank goodness we only eat corn at 2 out of the 3 meals a day (just kidding).  Thanks for reading.

Chau for now,

kb

1 year olds have the coolest birthday parties

March 9th was the regional meeting for all the volunteers in Cajamarca.  It takes roughly 7 hours to travel from Tacabamba to Cajamarca, but it’s worth it when all the volunteers get together.  When we gather it feels like for a little while you can just relax.  Only a volunteer would understand when your host mom tells you that you got that cold because you took a shower at night, or when the municipality lost your document for the 5^th time, or when you walk 2 hours each way for a meeting that no one bothers to show up for.  In Cajamarca there is a big grocery store where we can buy cheese, peanut butter, and pringles.  It always feels like a mini vacation when we go to Cajamarca.

On the way back from Cajamarca Diamond and I were invited to Ellie’s host sister’s daughter’s 1^st birthday.  Kaory’s birthday was a huge event.  Diamond and I showed up a little late, but we jumped right in.  Every kid in the whole town was invited for this party.  There were snacks, music, some older cousins dressed up like Minnie Mouse and Strawberry Shortcake, and I think there were at least 8 cakes.  We arrived in time for the ‘hora loca’ or ‘crazy time.’  Ellie’s job was to pass out whistles, paper masks, headbands, and other party favors.  My job was to shoot confetti over the whole crowd from this tube that opened kind of like a role of Pilsbury crescent rolls.  Also I tried to take pictures on Ellie’s camera.  It was wild, dancing, kids fighting for favors, and so much fun.  I am definitely planning on having a ‘hora loca’ at my wedding, just maybe minus the whistles.

After the ‘hora loca’ it was time to pass out jello cups, then sandwiches, then sing happy birthday, cut the cake, the piñata (which by the way was not the way we do piñatas in the states; the small kids where shuffled forward so they wouldn’t get trampled and then the bottom of the piñata simply was pulled out by an adult), and finally each kid upon exit was handed a balloon with a picture of baby Kaory’s face printed on it.  Each activity was executed by a team of adults that included Ellie, Diamond, and I.  Some parts were accompanied by a special song; happy birthday, there was an ‘hora loca’ theme song, and also I believe there was a piñata time theme song.

I overheard Ellie’s host sister and mother talking about food running out, because there were some party crashers.  Apparently some mothers from a nearby community were passing by and had their kids walk into the party.  Since the all the kids in Conchan were invited, the doors were open and everything was so wild, I guess checking invitations or saying something to the party crashers directly was not something they were willing to do.  In the end it all turned out okay, it didn’t seem like they ran out of snacks or had to exclude any of the kids whose moms invited themselves.  After all the towns children left it was time for the adult party.  We all got big plates of rice, potatoes, and chicken with chicha morada drink (a beverage made from blue corn and sugar).  Then it was time for huayno dancing and drinking circles.  Of course Diamond, Ellie, and I really brought our best dance moves and broke up the huayno with some old favorites; the shopping cart, sprinkler, running man, etc. 

Huayno dancing is basically a two-step.  Depending on the person there may or may not be arms involved, but if you are really into the dance it is a lot of jumping around.  I like it because it is easy and everyone can participate.  I don’t like huayno, because when you dance you are not supposed to make eye-contact with your partner.  This is not something people have told me, but rather something I have learned from observation.  If you watch a line of people huayno dancing everyone will be looking at their feet, to their side, anywhere except for the person across from them.  It is kind of funny to watch.

This week started off kind of slowly.  At Monday afternoon exercise class I was the first person to arrive and the municipality turned out to be closed.  I waited for a little while, but no one has attended the class except Diamond and I for at least 3 weeks.  Well, not counting the time that my host brother Sergio and his friends came to the class-it was really cute.  The point of the story is that Diamond and I had heard so much positive feedback about doing an aerobics class.

It was not surprising that no one showed up, but for some reason I just started crying in front of the building.  A guy that I recognized as an employee of the Municipality was watching me and I told him about how everyone I had spoken to had told me how much they wanted aerobics classes, how Diamond and I had paid for radio spots advertising the class, how we had printed copies of calendars to pass out, and still no one would come to our classes.  He told me that the people of Tacabamba are ‘verguenzosos’ or ‘embarassed’ to say ‘no’ to me.  I never thought that that would be something that I missed or wanted to hear, but I really do miss people just saying ‘no’ when they don’t want to do something.  I hate how people say ‘yes’ and then just don’t bother to show up.  I fall for it every time

Later on in the week I walked out to Solugan; the community where my former sitemate Laura did a latrines project, to talk with the teniente (an elected community leader recognized by the municipality).  Ronnie is a very polite kind family man.  I went out to Solugan with the intension of pitching the idea of my ‘old person health’ classes, but Ronnie had a long laundry list of things he needed help with.  The stuff he was asking for wasn’t about getting free stuff, or English classes, or agreeing to project work he had no intention of following through on.  He asked me for small things that would make a big difference in his community and it made me feel so happy to be asked for real help.

At the end of Laura’s latrine project there had been some materials left over and the community voted on what to do with the extra latrines.  One of the extras was going to be built for the local kindergarten so the kids didn’t have to hold it during class time.  However, due to the location of the kindergarten and some disagreements from neighbors about building a latrine on their land, the latrine would have to be built in a tricky spot.  Ronnie asked me to help them get one of the municipality engineers to come out to help them build.  They needed some professional advice and Ronnie was having trouble getting anyone to help him out at the Municipality building. 

That afternoon when I got back from Solugan I went into the Municipality talked with one of the engineers I know, got the name of another engineer who knows about latrine construction and water table stuff, and wrote up a formal document asking this engineer to go out to Solugan to help.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m a gringa, because I live in Tacabamba, or because I am really not so ‘verguenzosa’ to be pushy and make a fuss, but I was able to get the ball rolling for Ronnie and those poor kindergarteners in just a couple hours.    

Ronnie also asked me about the possibility of doing a cuy hutch building project.  Almost everyone I have met in Cajamarca raises cuys.  In the more rural communities (read: poorer) a lot of times people just have all their guinea pigs running loose on the kitchen floor, which is really unhygienic.  However, if people are really poor or also really stubborn they will argue and argue with you that their cuys die from cold when they take them out of the kitchen.  Maybe that is true, but even if they put all the cuys in a hutch that was in the kitchen it would still be so much cleaner.  Ronnie told me that people in his community were too poor to buy all the materials needed to make hutches to get their cuys off the kitchen floor, but could I help them ask for materials from the Municipality.

Asking for money from the local government has been a super frustrating pass time of mine since I moved to Tacabamba, but what Ronnie was asking me to do was to teach him how to do something for himself and his community.  This is what Peace Corps is supposed to be all about; helping people learn how to do their own projects.  Most of the time I feel like I am shoving Peace Corps project goals down people’s unwilling throats-especially when I work with moms on nutrition and hygiene.  People are busy, why should they care what some foreign girl with bad Spanish has to say about how they should live their lives, I totally understand why they do not want to come sit in a class that I am giving.  This is different though.  This is his idea, his project; he wants to work with me to learn how to do this for his community on his own in the future.  I am going to teach Ronnie how to write up the documents that he needs to ask for money and I’ll sit in the municipality with him waiting to get face time with someone to whom we will pitch the idea.

On some level I am worried that this might not work out, because nothing really does seem to work out how you plan it to.  However, I am going to give it my best pushiest without verguenza gringa shot and we’ll see if we can get the wire mesh and nails to build the hutches for the families in Solugan. 

Although, it’s all still in the planning phase right now I feel more hopeful.  And if I can’t get anything to really work at least I know I tried my best and it’s not time to give up yet.  Rainy season makes everything feel so difficult; your clothes don’t dry on the line, people don’t show up to things because they don’t want to be out in the rain, and also hiking in mud out to a community tires you out so much faster, but school started 2 weeks ago and the health Center is finally done with their work plan for 2013 (even though ahem, we are ¼ way into the year).  So, maybe I will get to be a good volunteer in the end.  Fingers crossed my sex ed classes don’t fall through at the high school.

Thanks for reading and chau for now,

kb

PS: I wrote this blog post last week, but we had no internet.  Some updates include: I have permission to teach sex-ed in a rural high school in a community called El Naranjo.  It only took me about an hour of the 4 hour long parent association meeting to convince the community that I was not in fact a spy working for the American mining companies that work in Cajamarca.  I start classes on Monday.  Ronnie never called my back and I haven't heard from him in about a week.  I wrote up all his documents and we are ready to get this engineer thing going whenever I get his signature.  Tomorrow is Palm Sunday or Domingo de Los Ramos-I am so excited for the procession and religious ceremony.  Pictures to come soon!

Here are some pictures of Kaory's 1st birthday celebration:

Ellie passing out the goodies the wild kids

during the hora loca

the Peace Corps ladies with Diamond's host momma Adelaida-one of my favorite people

Photo opportunity with the birthday girl and her cakes

Ellie with the balloons with Kaory's face on them

the pinata, plus you can kinda see the camera crew (really it was only 2 people; one person with the camera and another with the light) to record the whole event

post- hora loca we are all exhausted and the place was pretty much trashed.  So then we danced all over and drank a lot of beer of course.

 

giant glossy poster with Kaory's face on it, check!  They nailed it!







 

 

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Quick visit

This last week I spent in Ann Arbor.  I only had one interview, but I am still on the wait list at 3 other schools.  The interview was a MMI or multiple mini interviews, and it wasn’t as stressful as I would have imagined.  I am very lucky that I was able to come in for any interviews at all, because it is so expensive to travel and there are a lot of restrictions on out of country travel in Peace Corps.  Let’s just say, my bosses in Lima were not too happy that I was coming back to the U.S. so soon after spending 3 weeks at Christmas out of site. 

The interview was at 8:30 am in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan which is about 2 hours from my parent’s home in Ann Arbor.  So my dad offered to drive up with me the night before and stay at Motel 8.    The whole drive up we spent talking about potential interview questions and how I should answer.  I was nervous.  I think it was partly because when I skype called all my schools the week before to remind them I would be in the U.S. and ask for interviews the response was that several just rejected me on the spot.  So I was feeling like I wasn’t such a worthy candidate.  After all, an admissions counselor at Wayne State told me that “no respectable medical school would accept someone with grades as low as yours,” and things like that stick no matter how hard to shake it off. 

The best part of going with my dad was that when we arrived in Mt. Pleasant at around 9:45pm he looked at me and said ‘we need some snacks.’  We went to the grocery store he let me pick out chips, cookies, and beer.  It’s like we are the same person sometimes.

The next day I woke up and found myself in a room full of people in suits.  I was one of 4 or 5 other candidates/interviewees that showed up not in a suit.  They stuck as all in an auditorium and let sweat for about a 15 minute wait, but it felt way longer in my head.  I could hear people all around me making small talk; an activity in which I excel and enjoy to participate in, and I just sat there in my head freaking out.  Then came a moment when the admissions people passed around a microphone and asked each of us to introduce ourselves; name, hometown, where you studied, and where you live now.  I was happy for this moment, because as nervous as I was I knew that it might intimidate the others that I flew in all the way from Peru and that I am a Peace Corps volunteer.

On some level all volunteers know that people back at home are impressed by what we do.  The secret is that we volunteers (maybe I should only speak for myself) feel like big fat fakers.  Day to day life in Peru doesn’t feel so impressive.  I came into Peace Corps thinking that I would make big changes or at least I would be able to see the difference I had made….whatever that really means.  Then you show up and you realize; the reason a country has invited Peace Corps volunteers is probably because those kind of changes are so difficult to make happen. 

That is not to say that I regret joining Peace Corps.  This week I went to my sister Jessie’s school and spoke in front of 2 classrooms about Peru and about Peace Corps.  I think they were 7^th and 8^th graders.  One kid; who I suspect was prompted by her teacher, asked me if I would do Peace Corps again now that I know what it is like.  Any volunteer can tell you that that is one loaded question.  On the one hand I have received this amazing once in a lifetime experience to live in another culture, learn another language, I am seeing the world from a different perspective, and I’m supposed to get to help people too. 

On the other hand I constantly feel disappointed in my accomplishments, when I am really honest with myself I feel this sort of indifference to project work sometimes and I think it is my way of not getting too invested so that when my work falls apart I don’t feel so hurt as I used to let myself feel in the beginning.  I don’t want to be a drama queen here, but that kid really got me thinking.  Why did I join the Peace Corps?  And it reminded me that I worked very hard to get here.  I spent 2 years applying to get here and now I’m here living it while complaining about how difficult it all is for me.  Isn’t that why I wanted to do this in the first place to push myself to do something challenging? 

So, now it’s year 2 and I feel like I need to really do something I can be proud of, but I also don’t want to set myself up to be disappointed.  I need to find a way to feel satisfied with the small things that I have accomplished.  And they feel very small.  However, who knows how those small things will affect someone in the future.  After all, the people that I have met in Peru have caused a profound change in me-simply by including me in their lives.  So it’s not such a stretch that I might have changed a couple people’s ideas along the way.  So my goal for myself is to think about what I have done here in a more positive way and to adjust my expectations for this year without giving up before I even try again.

Whew, sorry for all the heavy posts recently.  Here is a interesting cultural tidbit to offset the seriousness and complaining nature of the rest of the post:

The week before I came back for the interview I was hanging out with the host family and some neighbors in front of host mom Rosa's store.  The power was out so everyone was sitting and talking instead of watching television.  Host aunt Elva decided she wanted to take a ride on the neighbor's motorcycle just for fun.  A lot of people have motorcycles where I live and there are often multiple riders. 

I remember when I first got to Peru I was shocked when I saw a baby on a motorcycle.  Yes, in fact I do know that 'a baby on a motorcycle' sounds ridiculous.  Sometimes the baby is strapped to the mother's back or if the baby is a little older they can sit in front holding on to the handle bars from between the legs of the driver.  Either way it is a little scary-no longer shocking to me, but still scary.  Anyway, host aunt Elva put Iban on the motorcycle with her.  Iban is 2 years old.  He sat between her legs and griped the handle bars (is that what you call them on a motorcycle?). 

They got about a block away and just fell right over.  Don't worry no one was seriously hurt.  It was scary, but no one was injured.  According to Elva, Iban didn't lean into a turn and started to slide off so she shifted her weight to break the fall tipping over the whole bike.  Iban was scared and so his mom took him to a neighbor's house to be 'cleaned'. 

So this is where the interesting cultural tidbit comes in.  In Cajamarca most people I know are believers of modern medicine, but they also believe in curandismo to some extent.  I guess a 'curandero' would translate to 'shaman' or 'traditional healer'.  When kids are scared or upset it is common for them to be 'cleaned' by the curandero or sometimes by any old family member.  What I have seen and heard about is kids getting 'cleaned' with an egg or with a newspaper.  Someone will sort of run the egg or the newspaper over the kids body while saying-from what I can tell-prayers.  The bad energy will leave the child and go into the egg or newspaper. 

Curandismo is not really big here in the mountains, but on the coast it is much more formative presence.  I have heard about getting 'cleaned' with a guinea pig, which sounds kind of fun to me if not a little uncleanly. 

Chau for now and thanks for reading,

kb

 

*here are some pictures of my visit to Bambamarca at the end of January and a few from February.

making tamales for dinner in San Juan

the ladies helped me perfect my husk filling methods

this is where my previous host family makes cheese, with Dalila, Witman, and Eduar

Eduar's got Peace Corps and Michigan swag

goofing off with the cheese molds

waiting for a car down to Bambamarca

 

Some of my extended host family from Tacabamba lives in Lima and generously let me stay with them on my to the states for the interviews.  Host mom Rosa sent me with a package for little Sergio-I was surprised to find that it had an entire pig skin wrapped up inside.

I brought back Michigan shirts for all my host sibs (both families) after my visit home at Christmas

Dad and I went to Detroit during my week home

Detroit feels so big after Tacabamba

I thought the buildings were beautiful

behind me is Canada

We went downtown to see the Detroit Golf Show or something like that, it was pretty bad.  The auto show is definitely more fun.  Although there was a guy who my dad has seen on the golf channel talking about swing theory.  I mostly enjoyed walking around downtown and spending time with my dad. 

 

 

 

The good, the bad, and crying in public is ugly

This week I made a trip out to visit my first host family in San Juan.  I find the trip to be stressful.  It is about 3 hours of bus travel to get from Tacabamba to Bambamarca and from Bamba I waited for over an hour for a truck to fill up so we could ride up to San Juan.  However, once I got there it was a great relief.  I was greeted so warmly by my entire host family.  It felt amazing. 

I brought Witman, Eduar, and my host sisters (who weren't in town, because they are in University in Cajamarca) University of Michigan t-shirts.  The boys were so excited.  They wore them around the whole time I was there.  We walked in the rain to my previous sitemate's site to deliver something from Nate and Kelsey.  It took us about an hour each way, because of the mud.  We baked a chocolate cake.  I helped my host mom Dalila, host grandma Niceda, and some other neighbor women make tamales.  We ate a big family dinner.  We laughed, danced, sang, and were generally very inappropriate.  It was great. 

The next day I stayed through lunch.  After lunch I took Witman and Eduar down to Bambamarca with me to teach them how to use email.  We parted ways and I headed to the home of one of the nurses that I used to work with in San Juan.  She always invites me to her house.  Doli was very close with the previous 2 volunteers that lived in San Juan and she briefly host mom to a small business volunteer Josh, but he had a site change after a year.  Doli is a very kind woman and someone I really enjoy spending time with.  I didn't really get to spend time with her this visit, because she was frantically working on finishing the 2012 end of year reports for the health post. 

It was kind of an awkward visit, because I felt like I was just by myself in her house.  I hung out with Roymer her 5 year old son, but watching him play plants vs. zombies got old quickly.  I made a pizza, because she and I had talked about making pizza together.  We didn't eat it until 9pm.  The next day when I woke up her co-workers were back and I was sitting by myself in the kitchen again.  I decided to leave earlier than we had planned.  I just didn't want to sit around waiting, I felt like I needed to get back to site to get things done. 

So I guess writing this blog post isn't exactly getting things done, but it makes me feel  better.  It is a big effort for me to go visit Bambamarca; time, money, and it is sort of stressful bouncing from house to house with my stuff in a plastic bag.  It is really difficult when I am leaving San Juan and every one's response is to do this whiny nagging 'don't go, you only just got here,' and 'just stay another day, come on.'  It is nice to know that they love me, but it is hard when they do that to me.

I got to Chota today and I was really excited to finally call this woman from the admissions office at University of Illinois medical school.  She had called my parent's home phone on Friday last week saying that she needed to speak with me.  I tried calling her on Monday and Tuesday with no luck; she wasn't in the office and the second time the Internet was not strong enough to support a skype call.  Today when I called her I found out that all the urgency was about her needed to tell me that I would not be receiving an interview.  I was crushed.  I had worked myself up into the giddy happy fantasy that she was trying to get a hold of me to let me know that University of Illinois wanted to interview me when I will be home in February. 

I sent an email to all the schools where I applied to let them know that I would be in the U.S. in February and I was still very interested in an interview.  I thought I had gotten a bite.  I was so upset when she told me that my application was incomplete, because I only had two academic letters of recommendation.  When I was in school I didn't realize I need three and I got two; one from my biochemistry teacher who I really liked and one from my physics professor (because it was one of my only pre-med science classes that I got an A in and I was pretty surprised myself that I liked physics so much). 

I was kind of rude to her on the phone.  I was crying in the internet cafe, not a totally new thing for me-it's happened before.  Although, it has happened it is always humiliating.  I asked her why she couldn't have just emailed me the information.  Instead I was hanging on to this idea that I had an interview for 5 days and I had been trying to contact her for 3 of those days.  It just seemed unfair to me that it was so hard to get a hold of her when I am the one riding in a bus to get to the internet.  This lady probably has internet on her phone and she couldn't email me back Monday in response to the email I sent her on Friday.  (*this is what I think whenever anyone in the U.S. doesn't respond to an email quickly, "that person probably has internet on their phone what gives??)

So I cried for a while, bought myself a coca-cola and a chocolate muffin.  I feel better now, but worried.  I am so worried that I won't get in anywhere and that will mean that things won't go as planned.  I guess if Peace Corps has taught me anything it is to expect that nothing you plan will work out how you planned it to.  So what if I don't get into any of my schools?  I will deal with it and things will work out in a different way.  It is going to be okay. 

I am so lucky that I have such an amazing family and great friends who make me feel strong.  I am so lucky also, because I will get to have an interview at Central Michigan University in February.  Now, that one will go as planned I'm sure of it-I got a confirmation email itinerary and everything.  Sheesh the U.S. advance email itineraries are wonderful.  On the other hand coca-cola in Peru is made with real sugar...it's pretty wonderful too.

Thanks for reading.  Chau for now,
kb
*lots of photos of San Juan visit to come, I forgot to pack the cord for my camera-whoops.  Plus, my old person health class is on friday-I think it's going to be great!