Picking up steam

First, I recommend this article to anyone who would already agree with the fact that our President is violating human rights through his support of torture, and that that is an evil. Comparisons using Hitler and the Nazis are usually trite and misused, but the author of this article looks within and reflects on the role of German citizens during the Holocaust and now on our role as American citizens. Having to explain American life to foreigners on a daily basis makes me more sensitive to US government actions and abuses. It doesn´t make me proud to be an American when I´m eating dinner with my Peruvian host family and a picture from Abu Ghraib pops up on the nightly news. How am I supposed to explain THAT?

Anyway, this is the longest I haven´t written in my blog for. Partially it was because of Carnaval, which was way more fun than Christmas, by the way. At least, we partied longer. The parties during Carnaval are called "yunces," which involves climbing up a tall tree to tie plastic buckets or children´s clothes onto its branches. If there are no trees (like in Cactus´ site), you first cut down a tree from elsewhere and re-root it at the party site. Eventually, the band starts to play the Carnaval song. That´s when everyone stops dancing a tame version of Marinera with flags in their hands, stops dumping a huge fistful of baby powder on each other´s faces and hair, and starts walking around the tree in a big circle. One by one, someone takes an ax and starts hacking at the tree a few times. Then someone else goes. The first time I went to a yunce I left the circle because I would have a hard time justifying being an environment volunteer and then putting an ax to a tree. Screw cultural integration. When the tree finally falls, there is a HUGE mob rush towards it to grab whatever you can. It´s amazing how excited people can get about plasticware. It´s like a gigantic natural piñata, except the prizes aren´t a mystery.

On Tuesday of Carnaval, which is the big day, there were about 10 yunces in my town. I went to one. They get kind of old after a while or one, plus I had a lot of work to do. There were two groups, green and red. During the day, they had teenage girls holding big banners running around in red or green clothes with a marching band. They came into the Municipality and I danced Marinera with an employee who gets really into dancing since he´s from Catacaos, not here. So he dances for real, for fun, not tame and lame. We were the only ones dancing and everyone who works for the Muni came to watch us, of course. Then later in the evening, the groups ran around with men and boys dressed in their respective colors riding donkeys or horses. Some wore masks. Monkeys, devils, and I even saw a bunny. As they ran around town, we threw water on them.

Carnaval involves molesting your neighbor in a loving way. You throw water, baby powder, paint and, in Lima and Cajamarca I hear, garbage on people passing by. I liked the water and baby powder getting thrown on me because it was so damn hot! However, what a waste of water. My water conservation campaign is going to be a bit tough.

At night, there were a bunch of popular bands that play music hip to the region: cumbia, salsa, marinera, huayno. My host family and I went until 3am.

As part of our International Women´s Day Festivities, and as part of my strategy to work with people who are not my counterpart, I ran a workshop today for women on self-esteem. I was hoping to get at least 3 women for the adult workshop and 3 for the young women one. I mean, you have to have some self-confidence in the first place to admit through your actions that your self-esteem isn´t healthy. Well, the women came 1.5hrs late and the young women came half an hour late, so they became one group with a total of 10 women. Not bad. I think it went well...it´ll probably be a workshop I do a lot in the future, so it was good practice. The women were really sweet and looked pretty interested in what I had to say -- when my Spanish was good, at least.

It was also good practice public speaking in Spanish before my big presentation tomorrow for all the directors and teachers of the 13 or so schools in the District. I´m nervous, especially since I just realized that I´ll be using a microphone, which I´m never comfortable with, English, Spanish and definitely not Chinese. This is also my first introduction to my target audience: teachers and school directors. After thankfully realizing that I don´t have to teach kids, but rather should work on teacher trainings and supplemental projects with kids, I feel a lot better. Before joining Peace Corps, I was clear that I didn´t want to be a teacher. This also keeps my schedule flexible. However, I feel ready and my PowerPoint is really pretty because I peppered it with my photos from the Mangroves and of kids in the town. Hopefully there won´t be another blackout tomorrow when I´m scheduled to present!

I´ll be conducting a survey of teachers about their students´ barriers to learning, student backgrounds, resources in the classroom, difficulties the teachers have, the teachers´ interest in an environment program, etc. It´ll be interesting because each population center in the District is different from the rest. Also, I spoke to the man who runs the statistics office in the teacher´s department of the entire province. He expressed his concern to me about the parents´ roles in education. In particular, he thought the biggest problem was that parents send their kids to school either too early or too late. He pointed to datasheets reporting that a 21-year old was in a 1st grade class (same as the US, you´re supposed to be 6). There were other statistics showing similar surprising facts. I wonder how correct his statistics were. Often, numbers on a datasheet misreport reality. Hopefully, through the surveys, I will get a better understanding of the reality of the classrooms and of these kids and teachers. To me, the biggest problems is that some classrooms have a student:teacher ratio of 50+:1. Some teachers teach all the elementary students in a school. That sounds like a nightmare, and must be an unhealthy learning environment.

In other news, Christmas finally hit me! I got Mrs. Field´s cookies, Snickers cookie bars, a bio of Miles Davis, What´s the Matter With Kansas, a yoga intruction book, a calendar and NY Times crossword puzzles for senior citizens (ie easy to read big print and easy to solve). Plus, I got more of my CDs from home and my mom bought me Weezer´s Pinkerton album, which I lost and missed dearly. Prima also brought me a tasty souvenier of manjar blanco (kind of like caramel) from a trip. I should also be receiving a package (3 months after it arriving in Perú) from my aunt with lots of clothes in it very soon. Merry Christmas to everyone!