Amartya Sen, a previous winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, has written an interesting article proposing the international regulation of SMALL arms trade. I´ve never thought about that before, but it´s an interesting idea.

From one of my college friends ("Roommate For Life") who is a Peace Corps volunteer in Mauritania:

Do people do the whole birthday thing in Peru? There are no birthdays in Mauritania. Most often, people don't know when they were born, so all kinds of official documentation reads JAN 1st for everyone. They do know the word "birthday" thanks to 50 cent who apparently blew up world wide.

While the situation seems more prevalent in Mauritania, there are indeed a lot of Peruvians who don´t know their birthdays. It´s pretty sad to me, as an American, since the main cause is parents having too many children to remember the dates for every single one of them. They don´t need documentation until the age of 18, so they just plain forget. And so the birth of a person may never be celebrated...they will never have their special day or feel that excitement of a birthday present, birthday party, birthday greetings, birthday cake or birthday hugs. And they wonder why self-esteem is such a problem around here. Similarly, some parents don´t even name their children, especially if it´s an illegitimate child. There is a national government campaign for the children´s "right to an identity."

As for me, I ate my cake a day early and partied three days early...and since my parents have thrown me enough pool parties in my life, I will be fine without much fanfare. Anyway, I´m used to not being home for my birthday. :o)

In other news, I´ve found my ideal Peace Corps site. It´s La Tortuga, a fishing village of 3,500 people that is an hour away from my town, although it´s considered part of the same municipality. I also have to go through Piura and then catch a car in Paita to get there, so it takes me about 2 hours since I can´t go directly. It´s a village of artisinal (small-scale) fishermen right on the beach. I could smell the ocean walking out of the school. Extreme poverty is rampant there and they get water delivered to them by truck. One of their big dreams is to develop their village into a tourist destination because they claim their beachers are wonderful. However, I haven´t checked out the beach yet, so I´ll have to do some business research...It´s just so ripe with Peace Corps projects. I want to stay there for 2 weeks one time to do an environmental camp. And more!

we´re living in a globalized world, for sure

So over the weekend, Peruvian newspapers found it interesting enough to write about how Bush received a whip (valued at $125US) from the Hungarian president in addition to other odd gifts from around the world such as the "Worst-Case Scenario Handbook" after his second inauguration. It´s comforting to know that world leaders have such an endearing sense of humor.

In Bush´s favor, I´d like to let it be known, if you haven´t yet heard, that he has just established the world´s largest marine protected area! Let´s hope that it won´t just be a paper park, although US MPAs have been very successful, most notably those in Florida. This one´s in Hawaii.

As for my own life, things have been slow since my town just celebrated it´s 86th birthday. Peruvian towns take their Aniversarios seriously, so there were parades galore, including one to the cemetery to pay homage to the former mayors who have since died. One reason I think our education system is so weak is because the kids are never in class. Instead, they´re parading around or preparing some presentation for the million and two holidays they celebrate. I admit, I tried avoiding the celebrations since I´m just paraded out for the time being. However, I did see Los Caribeños one night, which is the most popular band in the area. The Municipality went all out and made it FREE, attracting scum from all parts of Bajo Piura. After coming home, I was getting ready for bed when I heard my host mom shouting "Auxilio! Auxilio!" -- "Help! Help!" I stuck my head out my window and saw a bunch of boys running up our street. From what they tell me, eight "rateros" from the neighboring town were chasing after one unfortunate kid from my town, throwing glass beer bottles and bricks at his face. They stole his jacket and one of his brand new shoes. I think that accounts for the splotches of blood on the sidewalk. Now, going to a free concert without an entourage seems extremely unappealing to me.... Luckily, the kid is OK besides having a streaked face. Every neighbor home early from the party poked his or her head out and convocated in the street in their pajamas discussing whether they should chase after the rateros or not. My host mom was freaking out, worried that the unidentified kid was her son. She was reassured that it wasn´t when he came stumbling down the street happily drunk with his friends...the first time he´s come home that drunk, apparently. Boy, he got a tongue lashing from my host mom. He was probably saved from a real lashing thanks to her earlier fright that he was being chased by 8 boys with bricks. The next morning my host mom walked by my room, tenderly saying "China" with a smile (which she often does), and the next second gave my hungover host bro hell for behaving like a man who does not want to be a good student.

That little anecdote shows two things: 1) that my host mom is a great woman who deserves our respect as a mother who doesn´t let her children fall on their faces, and 2) it´s sure great to not live at home when you´re in college!

new job career: translator

Last week I spent four days volunteering as a translator with Vision Health International (VHI), a US NGO that came over with a team of medical staff that provided free eye surgeries, exams, glasses and consultations in Piura. My friend, Tom, did it last year and he claims it made him very certain that he wanted to pursue a medical career. I haven’t changed my life’s dreams all of a sudden (although I was repeatedly called "doctora"), but it was by far a spectacular experience. As Tom put it, we spend two years working on projects whose results we may never see; development initiatives generally take a long time to create change. While that type of work is greatly needed and has its own merits, it gives you a more intense fuzzy feeling to see immediate results when you help change someone’s life. One day a man can’t see, the next morning he marvels that he can distinguish people’s faces around him...or that lady´s beautiful green eyes, as one old man put it. Most mornings I explained to patients how to take care of their eyes post-surgery and then went on to translate at eyeglass fittings. One morning I interviewed patients for their eye histories, which meant I chatted with the Peruvians coming in and offer them an attentive ear, which is my favorite job. Another morning I translated during consultations, which again let me hear their stories. Their stories were very telling of their lives: a construction worker was hammering and a piece of cement flew into his eye, another man was scaling a fish and the scale that got stuck in his eye gave him a cataract. Some stories were just weird: one man claims that he had been sleeping with his eye resting on the backside of his wrist and when he woke up, he tore his eye (in his words, “detached”) although the optometrist later told me she thought it was due to another cause he didn’t realize. It was extremely rewarding not only seeing post-operative patients on their first morning being able to see as well as the grateful faces of their loved ones, it was also unexpectedly rewarding to help people find eyeglasses, since in some cases it had the same effect. One shy adolescent teenager with an obvious low self-esteem problem had such bad vision, her mother said she would constantly fall as she walked around because she couldn’t see the holes in the ground, and she would get lost. Imagine how much more confident she must feel now that she won´t trip all the time. Some people just wanted to be able to read the Bible or the newspaper, or leave the house confident they wouldn’t get lost or run over. Kids wanted to be able to read the board without getting yelled at by their teacher to sit back in their seat, and parents wanted to help their kids with their homework. It was a neat experience because this is one reason why I wanted to learn Spanish – to get to know people completely different from me and learn more about what their life is like. In the video promoting VHI, someone commented that it’s the same for the doctors who came; this is the reason why they wanted to become a doctor in the first place – to help people. So I guess we all fulfilled part of our idealistic dreams in some small way.

On a depressing note, it was really sad to tell people we couldn’t help them either because their problem was incurable or because there wasn’t enough space on the operating list for them -- which was usually the case. Many kids with strabismus, which is an eye condition where the eyeball looks to the side, did not get operated on because older people with cataracts were prioritized. The reasoning went that cataract surgeries are faster since older people don´t need full-body anesthesia, and VHI could help more patients. While this is understandable, if you look at the long-term it’s more important to help kids than people in their 70s or 80s. However, like any NGO, VHI must also be susceptible to the politics of fundraising and the subsequent need to emphasize quantity, so the question becomes a bit more complicated.

On the other hand, I spent a good 7 minutes trying to convince an old man to get cataract surgery. He was one of the many old men who came through whose hard life was written on their rough and wrinkled skin. As soon as he heard the word "surgery," he became petrified and gripped both my hands tightly and pulled my face inches away from his as he pleaded to me not to operate on him. He looked like he was about to cry. I was on the verge of tears myself since the doctor had me translate dramatic things like "this might be your only opportunity for the rest of your life to see again" and his daughter went back and forth pleading with her dad to get the surgery and then pleaded to me recounting that his friend had received surgery but it made him blind, which explains his absolute fear of scalpels. After repeating to him that these are good doctors from the United States, well-trained, who have operated on thousands of patients successfully for many years, and that if he ends up blind there won´t be a difference anyway, his pathetic pleas of "please, Srta., please, no, no surgery, please don´t do it to me" became more insistent and I felt his thumbnails digging into my fingers and he pulled me even closer to his deer-in-headlights eyes. This was so unfortunate because there were so many people we had turned away, and here is a man who just doesn´t want it and will remain blind and dependent. Anyway, it was of course his decision in the end although it made me really sad to see him go.

On a lighter note, it was also a fun week. The VHI team included some of the surgeons´ kids in the age range of 20-30 who came along to help out, so we quickly made friends with some wonderful and interesting people, and I learned a bit about spas and majoring in enology. Plus, the entire team was full of fun folks with some spunk in them. There was even a pair of friends who were former Peace Corps volunteers in Ecuador during the 80s who had completely different experiences than we did. They were completely isolated from Peace Corps and virtually the rest of the world. Prima and I chatted with them in the anesthesia room – which had Girl Scout cookies – THIN MINTS, score…oh, and that same day I got to see some eye surgery on a kid with strabismus. I have some pretty icky pictures that I will be uploading to flickr as soon as I can. It was a unique opportunity and I even unwrapped a syringe for one of the surgeons, taking care not to infect it with my germs. It made me a bit nervous, even though the task wasn’t very hard. Now I know I can stomach watching eye surgery without feeling nauseous…although that will probably be my only opportunity in life to see it. Yay random life experiences!

Anyhow, now I know a lot more about eyes and cataracts and eyeglass fittings as well as more eye vocabulary in Spanish than I ever though I’d know! Plus, it made me feel really good about my level of Spanish. However, I don´t think I´d be a good translator because I didn´t stick to the script...the doctor would say "tell him we´re sorry we can´t operate because there´s just too many people waiting and it´s not that serious" and I would say in Spanish "Your cataracts are not very serious, so that´s good. (sounding really excited) We´ll give you some glasses so you can see better. They might get worse so you might have to get surgery one day." One doctor I was translating for got frustrated because he would try to say something to a patient, which wasn’t altogether incorrect. I would say almost the same thing but with a better accent and the patient would finally understand. Which is really funny, because that’s how I felt when I first arrived in Peru. Oh, and I had my first dab into hands-on medicine. I dilated a bunch of people’s eyes. At first, I sucked at it so I had to put drops in their eyes a second time, but I think I got the hang of it.

I encourage anyone with old eyeglasses laying around to send it their way, although I´m not sure how that process works. There weren´t always enough glasses in the right prescription...and as the flickr pictures will prove, many of them are very old-fashioned and ugly. However, send the ugly ones their way, too, most people over 40 just wanted to see! And while you´re at it, send them some sunglasses!

a new chapter for Perú

Yesterday was Election Day...and unlike what everyone and their mother, including foreign media, were predicting, Ollanta Humala did NOT win. As yours truly predicted right from the very first round of elections, Alan García of the oldest political party in Perú, APRA, won by about 11%. I knew I should´ve bet money.

Anyway, as my host parents told me, independent of the electoral winner, things will get more expensive. Neither candidate was exactly a shining candle of hope. I guess looking at Peruvians´ choices for president makes me feel better about the choices us Americans had in 2004. So Perú is entering into an uncertain future. My optimistic side likes to remember that when Alan García was president in the 80s, he was only in his 30s...now that he´s much older, maybe he´s learned not to spend, spend, spend in such an irresponsible way that it leads the country to another 5-digit level of hyperinflation. I do believe he means well. He just better find a good economic adviser. At least his rhetoric has been rational enough and investor-friendly. I´m no expert, but he has been promising a lot in terms of social programs. Making promises that you don´t keep was the mistake of the outgoing president, Alejandro Toledo. As most developing countries realize, it will be a challenging task to balance supporting effective social programs while maintaining economic progress and stability.

Speaking of which, my political nose is incredibly strong. Besides predicting correctly that Alan would win, I have been saying the following ever since Kerry conceded on that dreary morning a few Novembers ago: BUSH DID NOT WIN 2004. Finally, more and more articles are coming out about all the questionable electoral results in certain parts of the US as well as stories of manipulation and trickery...and now Robert Kennedy has written a thesis on the subject for Rolling Stone. Mom always told me I had a good nose. Hmph.

OK, enough bragging. The past few days have been extremely busy, yet very interesting. In Perú, there is a governmental organization that runs the elections as well as teaches people how to use the ballot -- since voting is mandatory, it´s a responsibility of the state to do so, unlike in the States where PACs and NGOs and the entire world spend gazillions trying to promote civic education and participation. It´s called ONPE, and I´ve made friends with the team in my town since they´ve been here for months. They invited me to go watch the voting process as well as take pictures (they eagerly jumped in photos themselves). That was pretty cool...one of those things that would be extremely awkward if I didn´t know most of the people working there and voting.

The voting is done in public institutions -- mostly schools. I went to both schools in my town, with the pretext that I was dropping off lunches for the volunteer election workers (my host sister and host uncle). Voters are separated into different groups -- kiiind of like wards -- and siphoned into different classrooms to vote. In each classroom is a "Mesa," which means a team of volunteer election workers and a corner with a secret ballot. Voters fill out the ballot with a pen, drop it into the ballot box in front of the Mesa. At some point, they need to make a fingerprint of their middle finger. Whenever I asked someone if they´ve voted yet, they showed me their middle finger. Oh, cultural clashes are so fun. Anyway, no chads or faulty computers involved here! And somehow, it seems like a better system than in the US, especially since the entire country uses the same voting system.

On a different note, today was World Environment Day, and it went extremely well. All the schools showed up. Some kids were dressed up as flowers and trees. I wanted to hug them silly, they looked so cute.

I´ll be uploading pictures onto flickr when I get the time.

giving birth to stars

This morning started off pretty dismal, since the man with cataracts in both eyes didn´t show up to go to the eye surgery screening. However, one little girl with "estrabismo" (she´s cross-eyed) arrived with both of her parents. So we only took advantage of 1 out of 5 possible people who could get free eye surgeries from my town. How pathetic.

Thankfully, when I got to Letirá to do the filming, my day perked up. First of all, I really like going to the high school. When I first started going there, I was slightly putt off because they used to just giggle at me and stare, which is the normal response of adolescents to my foreign face. I´m very used to it, but it doesn´t give me a fuzzy feeling inside or anything. Now that they´re more accustomed to seeing me, they will surround me and I can joke around with them. They´ll ask me a ton of eager questions, the same ones that everyone else asks me and that I patiently answer a few times a day (no joke - the downside of living in a large community)...however, they are the only ones who have ever asked me how to say words in Chinese. What´s really interesting to me is that they can pronounce Mandarin a lot better than Americans can. Plus, they get the "Ching-I Hwang" part of my name pretty right, since it has a Spanishy-sound. They´re good kids. Unfortunately for the camera, they are really shy and did not speak very loudly when being filmed. It was probably their first time ever being filmed, so it´s understandable. Letirá is supposed to be a place with a lot of machismo (a form of sexism) and low self-esteem. So hopefully, this will give them a little boost of confidence. I think whenever you do anything different from the normal routine, and especially anything public, you feel more capable.

Besides the kids, parents were invited to help with cleaning up the community. There were about 15 who showed up -- go parents! We interviewed one woman and one man, and they both were very eloquent albeit shy...and at some point in their interview asked the mayor for more support maintaining a clean environment. I joked to the camera guy that the mayor´s going to forbid me from doing this project again. Then the school director, who is in love with the Peruvian system of official documents, came and took us to the primary school. The camera guy filmed the little tykes, too, and I just used it as a fun photo op.

My goal for future environmental projects: less teacher influence, more student work. By that I mean the science teacher basically gave the kids a script to say. And the communications teacher kind of fed them ideas behind the camera. The point of a project like this is to promote more creativity, critical thinking and confidence in the kids. Although they mean well, the teachers need to take a step back. This is a common issue throughout this country that utlizes the "I speak, you copy it down" method of teaching. In the future, I am going to have to take the teachers by the hand and do some of the explaining to students myself, just to make sure the students benefit the most out of them!

Tomorrow they´re going to show the news report and environmental commercials. I hope it turns out ok, but no matter what happens, I´m satisfied!

Check out my flickr site for pictures from the past month or so.

Yesterday I stayed in Piura longer than expected. I bought copies of Ice Age I and The Little Mermaid. Hopefully I can get my computer hooked up to the internet tomorrow so I can download the DVD driver or whatever it is...I tried doing that today very unsuccessfully, and it made my afternoon suck bad. Anyhow, the reason why I stayed in Piura was to try getting in touch with the doctor who is coordinating the free eye surgeries. I needed to arrange an appointment for the patients from my town. However, he was so busy, his staff kept on telling me to call back in less time than it takes me to get home (I can´t call him from my cell phone)...so I stuck around and had dinner with Cactus. When I hopped onto the combi back home, my host sister, "Reina", happened to be on there already. She was on her cell phone with our other host sister, who told us to go buy bread. So we got off, taking advantage of our opportune meeting. Being in Piura alone at night is not a great idea for females. It was actually my first time running around Piura with anyone from my host family, so it was one of those uneventful moments that are just incomprehensibly pleasant. For the next morning´s breakfast, we bought bread that was still hot, as well as cold cuts and yogurt. We ate almost everything in the front seats on the combi while we were waiting for it to fill up and depart. Meanwhile, the cobrador (the guy who collects money and hustles) slowly wiped the windshield just to stare at us maniacally, giving us something to laugh about as we played with the radio finding good salsa music. As we left Piura, "Hotel California" came on the radio, and we sang what we could along with the driver next to us.

Today, on the other hand, was stressful. Besides trying to coordinate the multitude of activities and projects I´m working on right now so they won´t fall apart (quite possible), a mayor and a regidora from a neighboring town popped into the Municipality to ask me to do a series of talks for youth and separate ones for women on self-esteem and other topics related to a healthy and happy life. I really wanted to decline, but I couldn´t bring myself to say no. My counterpart who happened to be there didn´t help because he indirectly pressured me to accept. And somehow I just can´t say: "No, I don´t care about your youth or your women. They can continue having babies at 13 and falling victim to alcoholism for all I care. Go back to your damned town choking with extreme poverty." Not like I will make much of an impact if this is going to be a short-term project, but I really like doing this type of work - the type that touches on people´s lives. Yet there is so much work to be done in my District, and so many people here that I will never get the opportunity to work with, that I feel guilty working elsewhere. And for such a long project! My counterpart suggested I do something until November, but I was like NO, 3 months, twice a month. I am still pretty opposed to the idea because the development model of Peace Corps is that you live where you work...we will lose that element of trust and friendship by "contracting" me this way. I will be an outsider, and won´t be as effective. My strategy to compromise the situation is that I will repeat the program in my own District, and perhaps towards at the end bring both groups together for an exchange of experiences discussion. Let´s just hope that the group I get will be interested, and I will enjoy myself.

Ahhhhhh, too much stuff going on. I am spreading myself too thin.