somewhere i have never travelled,

correction

2007-02-27T19:00:00.000-05:00

Oh, and I should correct a previous post where I claimed that we found a wounded and dying blue-footed booby. I have been corrected and it is actually a Peruvian booby. I´m getting better at bird identification, but I still have a long way to go!

It was still in the same spot as two weeks ago when we went to the mangroves yesterday. However, this time it was decapitated: without a head. Quite dead. The poor thing!

drama

2007-02-27T17:49:00.000-05:00

My host sister, in the eyes of the people from my town...eloped. Yes, that´s right. I know someone who has eloped. I never thought I would be able to say that: "My host sister eloped". That just seems so much like something from the ´50s. But alas, in this corner of the world, when a woman moves in with a man, they become husband and wife. And since my host parents are so completely stubborn and traditional, they drove Reina to the point of desperation as to humiliate her family and elope with the man she loves, rather than endure the man her parents want her to continue dating.

The irony of it all is that when my host parents got married themselves, their own parents, who disapproved of their love, were not aware...until my host grandmother noticed her daughter was pregnant.

Despite the shame of having a daughter elope and the mixed emotions of feeling betrayed by your offspring, things had been quiet in the house. I think my host mom cried every once in a while and tears welled up into her eyes when we told her she should go say happy birthday and "I love you" to Reina when it was her birthday. My host dad now gazes at his newborn granddaughter with an empty silence.

On Sunday night, I was trying to eat the usual Sunday night special of fried chicken and french fries that normally gives me major indigestion, when a car drove up and in walked Reina with her new "esposo"! The brazen couple stood in the doorway, Reina mustering a pretty smile for her cousins, grandmother and aunts looking on. I got up to give her a little kiss on the cheek and one cousin gave them chairs to sit in by the doorway. Besides that, nobody came to greet her or to say hello. They all just kind of stared at her with gossipy curiosity. Her parents were in the kitchen. My stomach turned when her father went upstairs without a word. Eventually, but late enough to make a statement, my host mom came in and sat down with her newborn granddaughter without looking or speaking to them. Instead, she apologized to me for not having invited me to a church retreat. I told her it was FINE. Then she finally spoke to her daughter uncomfortably for a moment, then said she´d go call her husband. My host dad sent for them to go upstairs, thankfully.

They talked for about an hour and I have not a clue what was said, not said, decided, not decided. However, the sullenness of the house remains, especially considering that my host sister with the new baby finally went to go live with her husband, so now my host family is suddenly down 2 daughters. 1 daughter and 1 son remain. Everything seems really quiet.

Besides for home life, things are good. I went with Cactus again to the mangroves for her environmental education program with youth. Unfortunately, there were no flamingoes, but there were plenty of other shorebirds! I will be working on a wildlife guide of the Mangroves with the biologist and we are working on taking good profile shots of each species, which will be a chore since there are 100 of them. As such, we decided to walk out of the Mangroves instead of catch a ride with Cactus and her crew to take more pictures. It turned out to be an excellent idea! We detoured first to the beach area to the north of the mangroves where we found a group of turkey vultures working on a dead dolphin that was still bleeding: recently dead. It was pretty small and I of course, have no idea why it died. Apparently, this is normal.

We are trying to perfect the art of taking pictures through a telescope, as our field equipment is limited to his telescope and my Canon Powershot SD630 with 6.0 megapixels. It´s difficult to get good shots since focusing and aligning the camera with the telescope lens is a skill I have not mastered. We got bad shots of sanderlings, yellowlegs, and different species of herons, terns and seagulls.

On the way out through the dry forest (bosque seco), we looked for an endangered species of bird, the Peruvian Plantcutter, which we excitedly discovered in the forest adjacent to the mangroves in October. There are only about 600 individuals of this bird between the departments of Piura and Lambayeque of Peru. The discovery was big news for these mangroves, as becoming a RAMSAR site of international importance was more attainable in light of it.

In the geological remains of a deep, dried up river bed that is now a crevice of the Earth, we spotted a goat separated from its herd, a Peregrine Falcon, a Red-backed Hawk…and then a fox ran by us without us noticing until we saw it below us! It was good to get some nature into me and to hike a bit...I have a lot of work to do before I can hike the Inca Trail to Macchu Pichu with Parijat in August!

A few things

2007-02-15T17:56:00.000-05:00

So to update the entry below: My host sister, Jenny, actually has gallbladder stones, so it is totally understandable why she was in so much pain and wanted to cry. I was mistaken. Although I still think I would be driven insane if I had her life.

Well, if my life isn´t driving me insane, these kids from the Environmental Workshop certainly are. On Tuesday, I sent them home 40 min early because they were uncontrollable. They couldn´t even form a circle. Ohhhhh, they are at that age: when girls don´t want to be near boys but at the same time they´re hitting each other and play-fighting just to flirt. At the end of the session today, I drove them out again (but we made it to 5:00, just on time) because they erupted into a knocking-the-boys-on-the-head-with-your-notebook war. And of course, the boys took advantage of the opportunity to reciprocate. Oh, the hormones.

Nevetheless, the exercises I tried out on them DID work. This time, I was able to get them to practice the "mirror exercise" (one person is the mirror that does exactly what the other person does). And I EVEN got them to practice it pair by pair in front of other people. It was hard for them to concentrate, especially since their peers chose to whistle and make smart comments at them...but it was an impressive first step at gaining confidence doing something while everyone is watching you, anyway. They did OK when I made them make different faces: happy, angry, sad, annoyed...and I knew they were not going to do this one, but I ended it on "in love". From there, we did little sketches. I tried to get them to do something they would find amusing. So the boys did sketches where one person stole the other´s girlfriend. They really liked that one. And I have no idea what the girls did since they wanted to all work together and I didn´t have to hold their hands to create their scenario. Unfortunately, their giggles and mumbles and turning their backs to the audience didn´t help me understand what storyline they had created. Oh, well. The point is that they actually performed SOMEthing in front of their peers. Although I had to start each group at least 3 times each, since one member inevitably lost control of themselves and hid their faces in their notebooks or took a seat. Fernando settled on just making really loud grunting noises instead of doing the scene. Kids are so strange.

Asides from that, my mangroves are doing really well. I went on Friday with a group of Cactus´ environmental camp kids. Cactus works in a really rural, poor area of lower Piura. Her town is actually composed of people who moved the town to an entirely new site because of the last significant El Niño event in 1998. For one of her girls, it was the first time seeing the ocean. That´s one of the perks of being in this line of work: offering new experiences to people who otherwise might never have had that opportunity. After I gave them a briefing about the mangroves on the hill where you can see a panorama of the area, we went down to a clearing in the mangroves. Luckily for them, there was a group of bright pink flamingoes within meters of the shoreline. That was a special treat for them, and for me.

Ever since we corroborated fishermen´s assertions that there is a wild cat living in the mangroves (which we doubted earlier) with our own eyes, I have been looking into the mangroves searching for it. It´s called the gato montés, and is a very shy cat that usually inhabits higher ground. As I was looking for it, I found a blue-footed booby just sitting there! The poor thing must have been wounded because it did not look alarmed at our presence, which is rare. It´s location was also rare: it´s hardly ever found on the shore in my mangroves -- they´re always on open water here -- plus they usually rest in rocky areas. It seems to have just given up since it is defenseless without wings that work. My "Mom, can I keep it?" side wanted to take it home and try to help it, but my skeptical scientist side knew that was just going to mean heartbreak and a big mess. I could just see the face on my host mom if I had brought it up. "Well, you said you liked birds!" haha. But alas, I believe that the booby eats small silverfish like herring and anchovies, and I don´t think that includes the canned version.

Anyway, that was the adventure for the day. Then we walked south to the beach side where a woman aggresively approached me trying to practice English. So annoying!

I´m a camp counselor...ah, identity crisis!

2007-02-15T17:50:00.000-05:00

I WROTE THIS A LITTLE AFTER THE POST BELOW:

A word of advice: if you select kids for “leadership potential” by interviewing them and seeing who responds the most articulately and intelligently, you get a group of independently-minded savages.

OK, I exaggerate.

But not by much.

We started the Environmental Workshop for a group of 16 kids I selected last week, mostly 11-year olds. The first day went relatively well, despite that the kids imitate their parents and arrived an hour late. I tried a little game on them to test their creativity and teamwork abilities. They split into two groups, and using only what they had on them at the moment, see which group could form the “longest line”. Some kids started opening their notebooks rather than simply placing them closed shut. Some of the boys even took off their shirts to make a longer line, which is when two of the municipal elected officials decided to come in to take a look. Oops. I did another activity to warm them up. First, they introduced themselves. Then I made them do a second round, but in a loud voice. The person who presented themselves in the loudest voice won a point for their team. I didn’t think it would work since kids here aren’t used to being silly, but it worked out better than I thought. Most of the girls just introduced themselves at an audible volume – as opposed to inaudible. Some of the boy just made a face as if they were shouting but what came out was still a hesitant, pre-pubescent plea. Only Fernando, who is THE only black boy in the entire town, gave me a strong presentation that matched my own shouting. That was the first activity to get them ready to do plays and theatre.

The next day we took them to the Mangroves to do a few learning activities. Of course, they only wanted to play. I tried really hard to get them to observe, discuss within the group and figure out some differences between shorebirds and songbirds. One of the girls told me that shorebirds seem more friendly (“amigable”), which I liked. We were getting somewhere. Unfortunately, the rest of her group was wandering off like sheep. Another girl figured out that the white shiny stuff on the mangrove leaves is salt. Girls are definitely smarter than boys…

After I couldn’t take the wandering kids and the vicious mosquitoes anymore, we took them to an area of ankle-deep water, despite the fact that I promised an overprotective parent three times within one week that her only daughter will indeed, NOT enter the water. I figured if she yells at me, at least her daughter got an afternoon of happy memories. Plus, her daughter couldn’t have drowned unless she shoved her head in the mud. Luckily, this girl was one of the few who didn’t cut her feet on the mussels in the water. Despite the protests of my fellow Peruvian facilitator, César, “they’re fine, they don’t need band-aids”, my North American instinctive fear of overprotective parents made sure to wash out every single one of their cuts, throw some antibiotic ointment on and bandage it up before leaving, even though I knew the band-aids weren’t going to stick to the wet feet of children. I don’t want any parents knocking down my door. Despite that, I did actually receive one concerned mother at my door…Fernando forgot his soccerball in the truck. However, cutting short the educational activities turned out to make it a more memorable afternoon. Some of the boys found a fisherman’s net full of crabs. César took advantage of the opportunity to teach them that it’s important to let the little ones go. All the kids got really into freeing the little crabs from the nets and tossing them back into the water. And then other kids tried to get out the big ones, which they then tossed live into their Tupperware that used to contain their lunch to bring home to their parents to cook. I don’t know who the net belonged to, but he didn’t get a catch that afternoon….

I never wanted to feel like a camp counselor, but I guess that’s what I signed myself up for. I’m not going to miss this experience, but I don’t think I’ll regret it either. I’m going to start them on theatre activities soon. Thanks, mom and dad, for the theatre and dance classes when I was a kid!

Family issues

2007-02-15T17:42:00.000-05:00

THIS I WROTE ABOUT A WEEK AGO BUT HAVEN´T POSTED IT YET. HERE IT IS:

So I’ve been meaning to write in my blog for the past week or so, but the internet here has been very spotty…argh, I took unlimited cell phone minutes and dependable, fast internet for granted in the US and now I miss it like crazy.

Life in my house has been getting interesting and slightly telenovela-like (telenovelas are Latin American soap operas). My host sister’s newborn baby has been making my host mom a nervous wreck. My host mom takes full charge of it, telling Jenny to get the baby ready for a bath because she’s going to bathe it, asking Jenny if she forgot about the fact that she has a baby because Jenny didn’t give it her daily vitamin pill, etc. All this has created a very tense environment. Perhaps it’s scaring away the father of the baby, who I very rarely see.

A few days ago, I heard my host sister Daní crying to her sister on the phone about something and I thought someone had died. It turns out that she was just worried because her mom was having heart problems – a rapid heartbeat despite that her pulse and pressure were normal. This was in addition to a slew of other problems she’s been having, mostly linked to her worrying about this person and that person, even resulting in her having thoughts about death. My friend suggested that she’s depressed, and I do believe he’s right. The woman NEEDS to calm down and stop worrying and making everyone else insane. In the same conversation we had with my host sister, Reina, about how her mom is depressed and should go to the gynecologist to perhaps take hormone pills since she’s menopausal, Reina confessed that she recently broke up with her boyfriend of 3 years. As this was strongly against her parents’ wishes, she received some physical punishment from her father and her mom is freaking out about what other people will say. Apparently if you’ve already had a boyfriend you can’t find another decent man. All of this wasn’t a surprise to me since I’ve known that Reina has wanted to break up with her boyfriend for a while but her parents didn’t let her. Furthermore, a few years ago, she had another love interest, but her parents didn’t let her continue seeing him since that boy was going to be a fisherman, which is a job without a future. What DID put me in shock was her confession that she wanted to escape the house before her father returned from Lima. My friend guessed that she had a new love interest, and I suggested that it was an old love interest. She blushed and looked down. I was intrigued at her bravery and determination in the face of a confining home environment, yet worried at who this bloke is and whether she’d become another abandoned mother. Overall, however, I was decidedly ambivalent, just rooting for her happy future. When I came home, she was absent. In the morning, she was missing. However, nobody looked worried so I asked where she was. Apparently “she’s traveling” and in the city of Talará, which I know from word-of-mouth, is not exactly a city anybody vacations to. My guess is that since she was asking her mother to visit her aunt in the big city of Chiclayo south of here, they settled on a compromise and Reina went to visit her Envangelical aunt. I don’t know where her new man fits into the picture, but I’m glad she got a bit of breathing space.

And THEN today Jenny started to have pains in her stomach while breathing. It was such a strange location and Jenny was breathing so oddly that I thought almost immediately that she’s feigning something. Her mom of course starts flitting about talking about how she was never sick as a girl. Jenny’s aunt came. I think she knows a little bit about traditional medicine (which is full of outdated and erroneous beliefs, such as how opening the window ajar because it’s about 90 degrees F in the room is very bad for Jenny – they think the same for newborns and basically raise babies in greenhouses! That’s why they can take the hot weather much better than I can). She asked Jenny if she wanted to cry. Jenny nodded her head. “Well you’re all tight inside, just cry, don’t worry!” Jenny started bawling, her face showing more anguish than pain. I had no idea what to do so I just stroked her head and her arms, looking on with pity. In my opinion at the moment, Jenny was suppressing the panic and helplessness she feels now that she realizes what being a wife with child will mean to her in life: a ball and chain that does not let her reach what everyone wants in life – to be happy. All of her life, she has always known that one day she will get married and have a baby. Maybe she thought that was her mission in life, and it would make her happy. Unfortunately, her husband is never with her (and I don’t know what he’s doing if he’s not with her), her mom is stressing her out, she never leaves the house unless she goes to the doctor, and she’s dealing with the normal paranoid issues of a new mother.

What a life.

i´m back, i´m back, you know it

2007-01-25T18:56:00.000-05:00

After receiving various complaints on my silence from various angry wannabe procrastinators at home in the US, I have decided it is time to get my writing back in gear.

So much has happened, I couldn´t possibly summarize it all. Most importantly, I have had a few successful environmental education events for kids. For example, in October we celebrated "World Bird Festival" by starting first with giving talks about bird biology in every single 6th-grade classroom in the district, even trucking in the few kids from the poorer, rural annexes. In total, we (or the biologist who did almost all the talking, hehe) talked to almost 250 kids. Then we sponsored a drawing contest where the kids had to identify a few birds from their community and identify all the body parts, which they learned about during the talk. The prize was a trip to the Mangroves...we chose about 12 from each school, a total of more than 60 kids. They were "little scientists" for the day, using a telescope and identifying birds using a bird ID book, as well as painting their surroundings and playing a predator-prey-refuge game. I realized that the 11-year old age-range is my favorite because they are young enough to be fascinated by the natural world without inhibitions but old enough to not make me feel like a babysitter. They loooooooved that telescope. They keep talking about that telescope.

Now I am starting a program for a group of 15 kids in about that age range that I´m selecting right now. The purpose is to develop their leadership potential through activities building their communication, decision-making and teamwork skills, creativity and self-esteem as well as to learn about the environment and become little experts on the Mangroves. They will apply these skills and knowledge through carrying out activities in the community: painting walls with environmental messages, performing plays, using the radio and TV to communicate with the public, etc. The idea is that one day, these kids will be town leaders. Through this small group of kids, I am hoping to take a baby step towards improving the future of the local environment by addressing current problems: dearth of participation from the general public, awareness of environmental issues and strong, effective, knowledgeable leaders. By fostering a culture of community service in these kids, I hope to change THEM so that in the future they can be strong leaders. We´ll see how it goes. I hope I get results...at the very least, I´m excited to start! And I thought I hated kids.

Just in case, I should mention before my mom gets her hopes up that I am still fervently anti-baby. I like borrowing kids for a few hours, and then sending them back home to their parents. My host sister, Jenny, who got married in September, just gave birth to a girl a few weeks ago. It´s really cute, but less fascinating than I thought it would be. Pobrecita Jenny is following a tradition (I suppose it´s a tradition -- my host family does things out of the norm a lot) where the mother is supposed to stay inside with the baby 24-7. The dad comes and pops in for a few hours sometimes. Ugh. That is so unacceptable. He is surely working for many of those hours, but I highly doubt he´s THAT busy. And why doesn´t dad receive some of the responsibilities of having a baby, hm? In this culture, not breast-feeding is unheard of, so I suppose he can´t wake up and give the baby a bottle while Mom sleeps. But at least be there for moral support and love, sheesh.

If anyone likes to surf, chill out in a very laid-back town with a few American-type restaraunts and a lot of yummy Peruvian seafood (CEVICHE), Huanchaco, which is a beach community next to Trujillo, is awesome. And it´s cheeeeeeeap. I stayed in a decent hostel for 20 soles a night (conversion 1 nuevo sol = US$3.20). And there are a bunch of places that offer lunch specials ("menú") for 5-10 soles where you get ceviche, a main dish and a drink. There are more expensive places, too. Such as the delicious seafood restaraunt in which I broke out my American credit card for a meal so I could evaluate prices using American eyes (so damn cheap!) rather than Peruvian eyes (so damn expensive!). Thumbs up for going there for Christmas, although I´m still broke broke. Especially after realizing that TWO of my 100 sol bills are COUNTERFEIT. dammit!

In other news, nobody from the US has visited me yet. I´m a loser, thanks. That, or everyone will come in my second year and I´ll never be in site until I´m gone for good. Hm.

That was pretty decent to revitalize this blog, eh? At least you all had something to read instead of writing that memo for your boss.

Feeling at Home

2006-08-03T20:14:00.000-05:00

Sometimes traits that can be annoying can be a blessing. Take, for example, my host parents´ habit of repeating stories they´ve already told me. When I first arrived, I could only understand part of what they were saying. Now I can understand it all! Or at least, for the few details I don´t understand, I can ask for clarification of without being too annoying or disrupting the conversational flow. Also, interesting new details always pop up.

After dinner tonight, my host parents again took off full speed ahead into a conversation about the ´83 El Niño. What I didn´t know earlier though, was that my host sister, Jenny (the one getting married) was born amidst the storm when the sky had descended so close to the earth, it made the rooves tremble at its thunderous warning that the world was about to end. They caught rainwater to cook and clean, a novelty here in the desert. Watching the news on TV, they realized how fortunate they were for clean water as their counterparts in countries on the other side of the globe looked on at the useless black floods charging through their unfortunate towns. Although the rains were so heavy that a woman who lives across the street got swept away by the temporary sea outside and survived only by clinging onto an uprooted tree until reaching safe ground, nobody´s life was claimed. After 8 months of living in their house, I´ve earned the right to hear about how my host grandmother had hoarded sugar and gas in some abandoned houses up high. This enabled them to escape the fate of less cunning households, who got their supplies taken by the Municipality for distribution to other people who lacked those essential supplies. Whether you call that being smart or selfish is your call, but at the very least realize the equation is complicated by the cultural concept of the role of a mother and the poverty they were trying to escape.

Onto another subject, staying at home during the Peruvian Independence holiday was rather uneventful. What may have justified my decision to waste free vacation days, I missed for a long bike ride (although that bike ride felt pretty damn good). You know how I´ve been complaining about how I´m sick of parades? Well, that made me decide to miss the school parades. I thought it´d just be another boring parade, but I saw the taping on the local TV station, and it was ridiculously lavish. There were itty bitty girls dressed in piles of lace and chiffon waving at the crowd on top of large overdecorated floats. Nevertheless, I´m nowhere near heartbroken for having missed it.

What was even cooler was the Peruvian government´s Independence Day parade. There were soldiers hanging out of helicopters, officers dangling off the front of tankers, women soldiers performing shaky arabesques on the back of speeding motorcycles and even dogs walking on two legs and jumping through two burning hoops! On a more political note, Michele Bachelet, the new female president of Chile accompanied Alan García at the parade, who entered office on Independence Day. It´s another confirmation that Chile and Perú will try to develop stronger political and economic relations. This is a wonderful idea, but the relationship is marred by Peruvians´ lingering bitterness of Chileans due to the late-19th Century War of the Pacific, which was essentially a territorial dispute with Chile. For example, my counterpart advised me to change the name of "Chilean flamingo" to "Flamingo" on one of the bird factsheets I made to prevent wounding the children´s national pride. At the governmental level however, it doesn´t seem to have much effect.

Kids

2006-07-25T19:58:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I want to kidnap all the growth-stunted kids I know and feed them a feast of fruit, vegetables and meat. And bake them banana bread. To my American eyes, they look like starving mouths running around chirping "Feed me! Feed me!", although they´re so used to not eating enough, it´s normal to them. I remember when I was their age eating Chef Boyardi snacks in between 3 bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch or oatmeal breakfasts, pizza tater tot chocolate milk apple lunches, big T-bone steak Chinese veggies dinners and bowls of fruit late at night. I bet they eat about a third of what I did at their age. Sometimes I´ll give them fruit if they´re in my house. Once they asked me to buy them bananas, which I happily did (they didn´t ask for cookies or soda!), but that´s just a drop in the bucket. I still don´t understand what my host family has against me serving the remainder of my dinner to the growing kids. It´s definitely a cultural thing. Growth stunted people are all around me. That´s why it´s so difficult for me to guess people´s ages. I thought a co-worked was 13 but he´s my age. I´m more than a head taller than he is!

It also still pains me when the host family disciplines the children when I don´t think they need to be disciplined. I think it´s so important for kids to be loud and silly sometimes...that´s why childhood is the happiest time of your life. You´re the most uninhibited that you´ll be in your lifetime. You feel free. I don´t think you should make kids stop being happy unless they´re being spoiled or bratty or rude. Yet another cultural thing. Although I don´t think we Americans could ever agree on how or when you should disclipline children.

My host sister, Jenny, is getting married on September 23rd. Every day another issue comes up. Invitations, her dress, the location, the band, etc. This is going to be a huge bash. I guess that´s appropriate since she´s marrying someone relatively wealthy, rich for this community. He even has his own car, and he´s not even a cab driver. Of course, when there´s a pause in the wedding-themed conversations, someone in the extended host family inevitably turns to me and asks, "So when are you going to get married? Maybe you´ll fall in love with someone here in town and you´ll stay. How many kids do you want?" To which I reply with an unanimated smile and, if I´m in a mercurial mood, a wisecrack. Still haven´t been able to drop the "0" bomb. 0 kids I want, 00-00-0000 is the date I´m getting married. Living in Perú has confirmed that even the angelic kids aren´t welcome in my life every hour every day every month every year. Even Mariuliú, who hangs out on my bed with me like we´re best friends, sings me all the songs she learned in school, asks me to sing songs in English, listens with fascination as I read to her pages and pages of my English-language novel out loud, and tells me that tomorrow we should go to my house so we can visit my parents...even she has her demonic moments.

This week is Fiestas Patrias, the Peruvian Independence Day. Of course there have been parades all week. Most of my friends are using our free vacation days. Since I´m going to BRAAAAAASIL with my (biological) family in mid-August I´ve decided to lay low and stay in town. I don´t regret it at the moment since it´ll be nice to just spend time getting to know my host family even better and read and chill out.

it´s a cruel, cruel world out there

2006-07-14T20:48:00.000-05:00

You wanna know what breaks my heart? Working in the development field, trying so hard to support the efforts of poor people improve the quality of their lives, watching how slow the process can be and how much is at stake...and then reading about how countries are bombing each other, targeting airports and main roads, and in a few seconds, making an entire country suffer. And for what? And then what does my government do? Say some inarticulate wishy-washy crap that is the equivalent of an endorsement. We like bombs! Go ahead and make more people in this world suffer! We have! It´s great!

My government is a heartless beast.

lookin´ back

2006-07-10T17:41:00.000-05:00

So it´s been seven months in site. After spending some quality time with PCV friends in Piura this weekend, I realize that we all have the same thoughts running through our troubled minds: "OK, grace period is over, what will I be doing for the next year and a half??" When we first started, we were reassured by the fact that you´re not supposed to "know what you´re doing" until 3 months in when you start defining your project...but it´s still not definite. After a year, you´re supposed to feel a lot more settled in and understand what your role will be. Now that we´re in between, I feel like I just graduated and now need to decide what to do with my life. Like I better figure it out now before I look back at my 2 years in Perú and ask myself why I squandered my time as well as hard-earned taxpayer money. It´s good to talk to friends and ask ourselves the same questions at the same time so we know it´s normal to be unsure.

For me, I´ve been trying to sipher through what has potential to be a long-term project and what I´d be happy doing. Many people view Peace Corps volunteers as idealistic freaks who just want to be altruistic. Not true at all for most of us. Idealists we may be, but I certainly didn´t come to sacrifice myself nor did I come for purely altruistic reasons.

So what are my plans?
1) I´m going to follow-up with teachers to support them in using an experiential method of teaching that we´ve offered workshops on. It´s called "Enseñanza de la Ecología en el Patio de La Escuela" and the Audubon Society promotes it, in case you´re wondering. I went to one school today to see it in action for the first time. It was cute to see the kids outside playing with ants and presenting findings to scientific inquiries. One thing I definitely want to support the teachers with is the art of graph-making. They are atrocious at deciding what graphs to use to represent data. Not too important, but it pains the nerdy side of me.

2) I´m going to work with a school to create a garden where they can do all sorts of lessons about the environment, the hard sciences, language, values, math, nutrition, culture, etc. It´ll be fun working with the kids and rewarding to see things grow. It will definitely be an organic garden. I like this activity because there is a lot of room for creativity and ingenuity. Plus, I like working with this school. The director, teachers and kids are great (even though this is the failed recycled paper project school). My dad thinks it´s funny I´ll be doing a garden, probably because I didn´t show any interest in his garden growing up...well, except to eat fresh tomatoes and strawberries.

3) Creating a youth environmental leadership club. Working with youth will be much easier and rewarding than working with adults. They have more time and energy, and are more easily molded. Again, there are a trillion things I can do with them, so I´m excited about it. TV or radio shows, mural painting, kids clubs, public awareness campaigns, community service, advocacy, educational plays, etc. And if you were wondering about this right after reading my last entry about how I hate adolescents...well, the kids in my town are different from the kids I´m working with now. They are more confident, there is more gender equality, and I´m going to work with a slightly older crowd. I´m going to start a "leadership day camp" during their week-long school vacation in early August.

4) Working to improve management of the Mangroves with the Municipality...and an NGO I´ve been working with that has extremely limited capacity and needs a lot of help. Unfortunately for them, they don´t recognize it. Why do they lack in capacity? Poorly defined leadership structure, poorly defined vision or mission, activities are determined by funding rather than what´s needed, extremely weak links with the community they are trying to help, no concept of civil society participation, very little technical background for the work they´re doing, lack of group cohesiveness except among the group of friends who started the NGO, and in my opinion, they even lack passion for the community. It seems a bit paternalistic, perhaps because they are relatively richer folks who live in Piura, the city. I´d prefer not to work with them, but that would be irresponsible since I think this would be part of my job definition. Besides, they are doing work here and they have funding. Plus, I studied the world of NGOs...I should probably utilize my background in it. It will be difficult since I don´t particularly like the "leadership", so it´ll be an interesting personal experience I guess.

That´s probably a lot already, but there´s some other stuff I want to do, such as making that book about birds of the Mangroves with a teacher activity guide. It seems badly needed. And figuring out possibilities of alternative incomes for fishermen...especially the artisinal ones. My counterpart wants to start aquaculture activities, but that is a very bad idea. If we raised shrimp, we´d cut down the mangroves. If we did freshwater fish, we´d be using up badly needed water here in the desert. I´d also REALLY like to figure out how to work part-time in La Tortuga, the artisinal fishing village on the beach an hour away that is still part of my Municipality (see one of my previous entries). OK, so obviously I still haven´t figured it all out. But at least I´ve given up on trying to work with teachers at every single school to develop their environmental lesson plans.

OH, and of course many people have been asking me about what World Cup Fever has been like here in Perú. It´s been relatively tame, but there is definitely still a Fever. I´d say it´s like a 99 degree F fever. For example, when I met the mayor of La Tortuga, he had us finish our conversation in a room that actually had the games showing. Everyone tried watching the finals, or at least listening to them on the radio. And of course some lucky kids got new Argentina or Brasil jersies. Although South America didn´t advance to the finals, everyone still watched excitedly...for the love of the game. The "Cerveza (Beer) de Perú," Cristal, had a huge campaign about how they will be donating money trying to build up Perú´s fútbol team so in 4 years, we can live the dream...so drink more beer, make Perú proud. Great message.

what´s goin on

2006-07-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

1. I hate adolescents, but then again they´re so funny and predictable. What are they most excited to learn about during my program? Duh, "HABLAR DE SEXO" in big letters on their journal entries. And in small letters "I don´t know a lot about it." Hm. Wonder what they think I´ll actually be talking about. Makes me think I actually have to have sex ed class instead of just What Will Happen If I Have Sex Now class.

2. I hate adolescents. The boys don´t even want to hold the hands of the girls so we can do the human knot. Although eventually, they did it in a half-assed way.

3. I hate adolescents. They can´t even say their names to a rhythym during our warm-up activity. They´re too shy! I have a lot of work to do with these campo kids.

4. Some adolescents are so cute. Then again, one girl had to leave early to cook dinner and wanted her friend to walk with her (in this society, no girl wants to ever be in public alone), but her friend didn´t want to leave. And I´ve started to realize that even though they pretend they´re not listening to what I´m saying about passive, agressive and assertive behavior, they actually are paying attention...with their right ear.

5. You want to know why the Peruvian education system sucks? Let´s start by counting the number of weekdays there is no school because of holidays. Then count the days when they´re just getting read for parades and doing arts and crafts projects. Then consider that every teacher gets one day off a week, in addition to weekends. Then count the days the teachers decide not to come to class. Then count the days students decide not to go to class. Then count the days parents keep their kids home to work or for some reason that shouldn´t keep them away from school. Then count the hours when the teacher leaves to talk to someone. Hmmm....

2006-06-26T20:05:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-19T20:58:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-13T17:56:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-05T17:31:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-02T15:05:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-06-01T20:48:00.000-05:00

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.

2006-05-31T15:37:00.000-05:00

Today I went with a few women from a local NGO to almost all the schools in the District inviting teachers to a workshop about a teaching methodology for ecology ("Enseñanza de la Ecología en el Patio de la Escuela - EEPE") that is propagated by the Audubon Society. Since I live in the community, they are depending on me to do a bit too much. They were surprised that I hadn´t contacted all 20 teachers on the invitee list I put together. Please. It was hard enough to get all 20 names, representing all the different schools in the District. There are so many teachers, and I certainly don´t know them all much less have time to go from school to school telling them about the workshop. Things are getting a little overwhelming. At the very least, I ended up going to two schools I´ve never been to before. I really like the directors in 2 of the rural caseríos. They act as both director and only have one other teacher there to help them teach the entire school. As you can guess, that is a challenging task. However, they maintain their humor and seem more motivated to teach than some of the directors of bigger schools, and to teach well. They both complained that the PC volunteers didn´t go to their schools to do "Tito, el Tigre Tonto". I told them before the end of the school year we would...ooh, promises I´m not sure I can keep. We actually were going to do it at one of their schools but nobody was there when all the volunteers arrived, so we instead did it at a school in my town that actually sent me an official document while I was gone requesting our presence.

In other news, I started reading the most gigantic book possible about Mao. It´s co-written by the author of one of my favorite books, Wild Swans. What a terrible, terrible monster he was. I already knew that, but the more I read, the more I wish he would´ve been shot as a kid. And I´m only on page 30.

communication barriers

2006-05-30T17:43:00.000-05:00

Today I went to the secondary school (high school) in Letirá, one of the caseríos of my town where I am working on the environmental commercial spot project. Unfortunately, the teachers just did not understand what a commercial means. After a while hanging out with the teachers and the kids, they showed me the "practice runs." Hearing that word made me believe that they understood the concept. Especially since I had said things like "it´ll be an opportunity for them to practice their communication skills" (one of the classes taught in Perú), and "a chance to use their creativity" and of course "just like you see on TV." However, once they started organizing the kids for practices, I realized that what they actually ended up doing was starting different environmental activity stations...recycling paper, burying trash, cleaning the bathrooms and making environmental signs. Right. I don´t know how that happened, but I am so used to unexpected failures now that I wasn´t fazed. "How about including a message...like while the team is working, one person explains why it´s important that that they do that activity, why is it important to take care of the environment..." The teachers looked kind of confused. I´m not really sure what they were thinking...how could you have a competition between different environmental activities? Who works the hardest? I have no clue, but all I know is that something environmental will be filmed and hopefully by Friday when the camera crew comes, they´ll have speaking parts.

stories of triumph

2006-05-29T16:20:00.000-05:00

This past week, a group of 6 volunteers did "Tito, el Tigre Tonto," our play about self-esteem, in 5 different schools over 2 days. I was nervous the night before the premier since it was in MY site, and the star of the show got a little "loosey-goosey" on box sangria before our first practice at 10:30PM, 3.5hrs later than planned. Despite that, it turned out really well. Everyone from the kids to the directors to the woman from the Municipality who helped me coordinate everything seemed to love it! I have a small part (thankfully) but get to help Tito rock out at the end to this song "Rebelde", which is a popular teenie bopper song around here from Mexico. We never had time to come up with some hot choreography, so basically Prima (who plays Tito) and I just look like fools lip syching in the beginning, swaying back and forth and then try to grab kids to dance. The Peace Corps doctor came with us both days and even filmed the first showing on his camera...so one day, if you´re lucky, you just might be able to live the magic.

After being out of site for a week because of the plays and a Peace Corps workshop, I was eager to jump back into community life! On my first day back, I went with my host family to a party at a chapel located in the middle of the chacras (farms). Nobody could really explain to me the purpose of the party...it was something like honoring the cross of something. Yup. There was a cross adorned with some banners, looking very pretty. Unfortunately, I didn´t bring my camera. And I am still kicking myself for not bringing it...after eating a second lunch and feeling like my stomach was either about to burst or barf, the hostess asked me to dance with her son. I didn´t realize it was the first dance and it was to Marinera. They handed me a white handkerchief, the band started playing, and my dance partner broke out some fancy footwork, stirring up the loose sand beneath our feet as about 100 people looked on. I just kind of danced like my host family always dances (which was wrong, but acceptable) and waved my arms and the handkerchief around, extremely confused about how to dance. If I had been even the second pair to go, I would have been ok, but I had no precedent! Oh, well...Anyway, after 2 other couples danced, they did this activity called "Subiendo el Palo Balanceado" which is basically, "Climbing the Balance Stick (Balance Beam)". Except the Stick was propped up on one end with a short stubby branch and on the other end by a branch about 10ft high. 3 little boys kept on trying to climb up the Stick in bare feet to reach the top where there were 7 shirts hanging on a pole. That was the prize. I knew one of the kids, Juan...he´s an 8-year old orphan who gets into fights, but every time he sees me he comes right up to me with a smile as wide as his face and the brightest eyes possible, and says my name so sweetly. I was really, really rooting for him to win. One by one, they climbed, swayed and fell, somehow always landing on their feet. As time went on, they noticeably got closer and closer, keeping the audience in suspense. It was a classic boyhood ritual, framed by a swarm of hovering dragonflies and flowering cotton fields. This went on for about 20 minutes. Juan kept on getting really damn close but would look up too soon, or look down at somebody, or get really excited and smile, then fall. I think everyone else watching was also rooting for him. And then, finally...Juan did it! He got high enough to grab the pole and hang on. He grinned radiantly down at everyone, as they in turn looked up at him, cheering. I was so happy, a few tears came to my eyes because he looked so damn happy. And I severely regret not being able to take a picture of his unforgettable moment of triumph. The contest wrapped up with a dance between Juan holding the pole with shirts on it and one of the hostesses. He looked happily overwhelmed. I was just standing on the sidelines bursting with pride.

Tonight, I celebrate the birth of the mayor at another party. It sounds like it´ll be a lot of dancing and passing the vaso (drinking beer). I´m definitely bringing my camera this time!

unexpected events make my life interesting

2006-05-19T19:45:00.000-05:00

One of my host mom´s aunts died of cancer recently. I guess they didn´t invite me to the funeral because who wants to go to a funeral for fun, especially right after another funeral of a friend? However, I have been able to witness a little of what happens during the aftermath of a Peruvian death. There have been a few family members drifting in and out of the house dressed completely in black. Peruvians wear black for a week straight after the death of a family member although if husbands or other close loved ones die, women may choose to wear black for a year or so.

One night during dinner, a diminutive woman with observant eyes walked in wearing all black. She sat down to eat with us, without an introduction. With some difficulty and awkwardness, I have grown accustomed to the lack of (or extremely late) introductions to strangers. Before beginning her fish broth, she put her hands on both sides of the bowl and said a full minute´s worth of grace. I didn´t really think anything of it, nor of the fact that she inserted a lot of "thanks to the glory of God" phrases into her conversation. But like the good member I am of the newly formed PC-Perú Agnostic and Atheist Diversity Club, I immediately felt a tad bit less at ease when I found out she was evangelical. "Please God, please don´t let her ask me if I believe in God" I mumbled to the non-existent God in my head. Turned out to be an extremely interesting night, instead of painful.

She told us about how her father received God at some low point in his life and apologized for having failed his marriage and been a bastard, and made everyone cry cry cry and now he´s gone to heaven. Unfortunately, her brother never received God before his death so he´s in hell right now. Next she explained that the town of Talará once had a lot of money, more than Lima, but God doesn´t like sinners nor fornicators so now it´s a craphole in ruins. That lead to her complaining about the price of food in Sechura and how it´s much cheaper in Talará. In fact, she was trying to buy a fish in Sechura and the guy told her it was 3 soles. She informed him that that was overpriced and an injustice, you think the only thieves are in banks and state offices, no, YOU also are a thief, and God sends thieves to hell. She got the price she wanted. So since then her sister decided she should do the shopping. Anyway, she´s gone, I think, so no more getting blessed by God every time I walk out of the door. Which would´ve been alright but I don´t know what to say or do. "Thanks" and smile? Hope so. And no more hearing chanting, thinking it´s some calm peaceful prayer and then all of a sudden, "FFFFTH-UERZA!!!" mumblemumblemumble"FFFFTH-UERA!!!" and imagining that someone´s face just got spat on. And wondering whether my host family also thinks she sounds more like she´s practicing black magic. (Or that she has Tourette´s.)

At 10am this morning, the local school was supposed to make recycled paper. I had provided the teachers with instructions and brought them materials. Part of the materials included mesh with a wooden frame. I thought the Municipality would find it easily in Piura but it turns out that they had to scavenge up a big dirty wooden frame from the Municipal tool shed, sawed it up to make it the right shape, and industrially stapled the mesh onto it. It was a 3-man effort. Carrying this heavy thing to the school, I felt like my dad had just went out of his way to make sure I could complete a school project that really should´ve been a relatively simple task, like he used to do.

Anyway, I was supposed to work with 3 teachers (3 classes), representing 2 different grades -- about 100 kids. Right. Well, first of all, I didn´t realize that I was doing anything but taking pictures and giving them advice. Then as I was waiting for the teacher to figure out where to do it so we could plug in the blender, the kids who were running around bezerk told me all the teachers were in a meeting. "Uh, I guess I´ll just start" I told the teachers. Obviously, it was a disaster. Hell no, I can´t control 100 Peruvian kids running around with buckets of water and shredded soggy newspaper without any teachers present! Especially since the other grades decided to leave their classrooms and join in on our Lord of the Flies fiesta. Plus, I think I´ve used a blender once or twice in my life. Nervous that kids were going to push each other (since they were) and water would splash over the electrical sockets, I tried calming them down with an improvised mini discussion about trees and trash and the environment. After the 2nd batch of blending the soggy newspaper, I noticed that there was smoke coming out of the blender base. "That´s not right," I said. "No, it´s normal!" the kids shouted. Kind of wanting them to be right since the blender looked like a cheap piece of crap, but extremely doubting that smoke coming out of an electrical device was alright, I did one more quick batch after waiting for it to cool down. So we made 2 ugly sheets -- ugly since the mesh box thing was way too big for the project. But I didn´t tell the Municipality lest I hurt their feelings.

After making two sheets and pounding it with a brick, I started to leave because I was 30 min late for a meeting at another school. I didn´t sign up to be a substitute teacher. Plus, it was extremely necessary that I complete these meetings within the hour. It would´ve been fine if I was free. Well the kids had already been doing this a little earlier, but as soon as I stopped the demonstration, the kids started going AWOL in a soggy shreded newspaper war. Some kids were sweet and took the cloth we were using as part of the project to wipe me clean before my meetings. Then I realized that my satchel was locked in the admin office since the secretary had left to Sechura without telling me, and the director was in a meeting at the Municipality. I quickly and desperately told one of the kids I knew to bring my satchel to my house when the director came back, borrowed money from my host aunt across the street, and hopped a mototaxi to the next school feeling extremely grimy. Then I walked back home for 20 minutes in the afternoon sun without a hat or sunblock, which was definitely not the plan.

Damn disorganized disinterested schools that sneakily get me to take over their students which results in soggy crap getting thrown all over the place. At least the kids are loveable despite it all.

Due to sisterly demand...

2006-05-17T11:28:00.000-05:00

...a new entry, one month after the last.

I AM WORKIN ON:
- A small book of the birds that you can see in my mangroves. It´s for schools to use with their kids so I´m trying to make it cute, interesting and funny...but it´s not like my Spanish is perfect now, so we´ll see how it goes. The biologist I work with has a lot of editing to do...haha. I decided to do it because a) no one else was, b) the biologist is too busy, c) a lot of info about birds is in English, d) the teachers were asking for more info about the birds.

- June 5th is World Environment Day. We´re planning clean up campaigns in all the caseríos and my town itself as well as marches.

- Movie Night. Probably Finding Nemo or Ice Age. That is if I get my laptop (which I just brought over from the US!) to be able to play DVDs again.

- Getting high school kids to create their own environmental commercials. We already spoke to the local TV station and they agreed to film them and play them on TV. Not sure how it´ll turn out since I spoke with the communications and science teachers in one of the caseríos and they´re like, ok come back and we´ll let you know. So I´m not sure what that means -- if they understood my idea or if they like the idea or not. Peruvians around here are not very expressive, so it´s hard to know what they actually think.

- Still working on the "social network" idea, but it´s on hold until after June 5th or something.

- Preparing to translate for some eye doctors from a US NGO, Vision Health International. They´re going to provide free eye surgeries for people of extreme poverty who have correctable, yet debilitating, eye problems. One of my friends who did it last year said that he got to see a lot of the surgeries. And that there were all these old farmers coming in and not showing any signs of pain when they had a huge needle stuck into their eye. And then this 15-year old kid got the same thing and howled in extreme pain and nearly broke my friend´s hand. Shows how tough these old farmers are. And how being non-expressive is part of the culture. The most exciting part right now is that since I´m volunteering, 5 people from my town get to be recipients of this surgery. I´m working with the Centro de Salud to pick them from the 2 poorest towns in my District. It´s great because I don´t do too much with those schools, so now I have an in with the community. Hopefully I can visit these people afterwards and start projects with them. Gradual change that affects a lot of people is more effective to meet development goals...but being able to directly affect the lives of 5 people in a big way is going to be really rewarding.

- Us volunteers in Piura have a theatre group together. We´ll be premiering our first play in two schools in my town next week. It´s about this tiger that can´t do anything right and everyone, including his own mom, makes fun of him. Then he finds a guitar and starts rocking out, and everyone loves him, giving him a new burst of confidence. And then yours truly, Gaby la Gata Guapa (the hot cat) invites him to rock out at her birthday party. It ends in a rock song and dance number that I will be choreographing with Cactus...it´s about self-esteem. It makes me cry.

- Selecting 20 teachers for the first of 4 workshops on an experiential methodology of teaching kids about ecology, propagated by the Audubon Society. I´m working with an NGO in Piura, the biologist included. I´m supposed to already know all these teachers, which is not the case. I might know half. Hey, this site is really big. Apparently, by the 4th one I´ll be able to give the training myself. Yeah right. Each workshop is 4 days. Hopefully I don´t have to go to all of them. I won´t have any weekends left to do laundry and write the book!

OTHER PARTS OF MY LIFE:
- Hm. Well, I ate a caramel Cadbury egg today as a reward for finally washing my filthy sheets. That was delicious.

- The farmers are on work stoppage today, so the town is dead. In other areas they blocked the roads and stuff so now no cars can come through. I was hoping for some crazy antics and good photo ops, but everything is just calmer than usual.

- Mother´s Day involved the women drinking and dancing by themselves and shouting merrily and being the silliest I´ve ever seen them be. Then as the day progressed, the men got drunk, the women didn´t let themselves get drunk, and it got a little ridiculous. My host mom kept on telling Mila´s husband (Mila is one of my best friends here with the cute kids) to dance with "La China". I figured out today that she did that to stop him from drinking more, and dance instead. It was a bad ending to a happy Mother´s Day because he, like most fishermen around here, has an alcohol problem which leads to him becoming a violent bastard. He used to hit Mila, in front of his kids, too. Apparently this subsided once their daughter was born. No wonder the 8-year old boy, Edwin, is so quiet and introspective. He will just walk into my room and not say anything, even after I speak to him. He´ll just smile.

...Mila is going to give birth again this month. Hopefully, it´ll be a girl. If it´s a boy, it´s possible he´ll get violent again...Oh, and on another note, I stationed myself next to Mila and made sure she didn´t drink any beer. She didn´t want to but people kept on pushing it on her. Hmph. I might have to start a "no drinking if you´re pregnant" campaign!!

- To end on a better note, Saturday night the Municipality celebrated Mother´s Day by raffling out 300 presents to mothers. I was on the lineup to present the presents to the mothers, so I got to give them a little pat on the shoulder, the awkward greeting here if you don´t give a kiss on the cheek. Some kids did some dance numbers, which will inspire me when I choreograph the Volunteers´ hot dance number...

And that´s a month in a big nutshell.

LN

2006-04-17T09:36:00.000-05:00

I miss Ellen.

(By the way, disregard the below post. It's factually wrong.)

Class War

2006-04-10T14:54:00.000-05:00

Results are in...the secound round will be: Ollanta Humala vs. Lourdes Flores Nano!

Ollanta received around 30% and Lourdes a little less than 25%.

Alan García fans were given a big let down because when tentative results came out at 4pm, he was leading Lourdes by 0.3%. Official results came out some time between 9 and 10:30 -- I was in bed, reading.

As far as I can tell, the presidential race will become a class issue. Ollanta is seen as the candidate of the poor, the laborers struggling to survive under the oppression of the free market gone mad, American imperialism and accelerated globalization. Lourdes is seen as the cautious, pro-business, pro-investor candidate, although she tries to wear jeans and no makeup to seem more like one of the common people. I think the 24% of the population who voted for Alan García and his pro-worker APRA party are definitely voting Ollanta. Maybe some will think Ollanta is too revolutionary, or they want to vote for a woman who is free of rumors of human rights violations, which Ollanta has plaguing his campaign. However, my bet is on an Ollanta victory. Another factor is that about 13% of the population voted for the 4th and 5th parties, which include a centrist and the wife of Perú´s ex-Japanese President. So there may be some Lourdes votes there.

By region, who voted for who:
Lima region: L
Sierra: O
Northern Coast (including Piura): A
Southern Coast: O
Selva (Amazon): O

Some people believe that Lourdes would gain more votes if she weren´t single, which makes her an atypical Peruvian woman. There are rumors she might get a beau, which I think would be a disgraceful move.

There´s a month left, so the situation can be completely volatile....we´ll see.

Minus one day left

2006-04-08T14:15:00.000-05:00

Elections are tomorrow, which means that as of yesterday, nobody is allowed to sell or consume alcohol. I was wondering whether Peruvians actually adhered to this law. I got my answer yesterday when a car whizzed by our house with drunk men yelling something incomprehensible, and when my host cousin arrived at our door happily intoxicated.

Because voting is mandatory in Perú, and because you have to vote where your state-issued identity card is registered, there are apparently a lot of people travelling these days to their hometown. In Lima, we learned that there is a big squatter population that is denied these identity cards because the government says they are living illegally. So some of the poorest people are unfortunately disenfranchised.

What will happen? Will Perú have it´s first female president? Will an ex-commandante add another country to the "New Latin American Left"? Will an ex-president regain his post after fleeing the country he left in economic ruin? The only thing you can count on is that we won´t know the results until May because there will surely be a second round where the top two candidates duke it out.

Speaking of elections, I usually get some funny questions. Do you speak English since you´re American, did you fly to Perú, did you have to study Spanish to speak it. And now that it´s election time, I´m getting a new one: are you going to vote? Where are you going to vote? I tell them, no I vote in the United States. And eventually comes the question, oh do people vote there, too? Yup. For president, not until 2008 (and to myself I think, "unfortunately").

Closely following the Peruvian presidential elections, religiously reading the free Newsweeks we get, quickly skimming through the Common Dreams news articles I receive daily and occasionally reading the NY Times online has been making me think...when I get out of Peace Corps, it will be 11 months until the 2008 presidential election. Right now, I think I will travel in South American until Christmas and then live, work and vote in a swing state (pending that the candidates and the race turn out to be important enough). Either Michigan or Florida, if I can figure out a way to make it happen, which shouldn´t be too hard. Originally I wanted to move to NYC to be with family and be in a city I love, but it´s only for a year. The hard part would be paying off my student loans while making a most likely crappy salary. Coming to the realization that I might not be making a decent salary for another year out of Peace Corps, I then made a list of all the destinations in Perú I want to hit up before leaving and the vacation days I have, so I can reasonably estimate how much I should dig into my personal savings to fund my travels. So if anyone is planning on visiting me, now is a good time to let me know where you want to go so I can write it into the 3-year plan, haha.

On a different note, I am written about in the Peace Corps - Perú volunteers magazine. My friend wrote an article on public breast-feeding and how strange it was to her at first. She told a story of how I was trying to bargain down the price of some straw mats. When the women mentioned that she had children to take care of and pointed to a baby breast-feeding behind her, I caved in to the probably too-steep price. So now everyone knows I´m a sucker. (No pun intended!!)

they never listen, do they?

2006-04-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

Well that makes one friend-couple that didn´t listen and decided to set a wedding date for BEFORE I return to the States!!! Hmph. And I was the one who serenaded them from the East Quad courtyard on their first date with Marvin Gaye´s "Let´s Get it On" freshmen year, even though they didn´t actually hear me and Mary Fitz helping them get their funk on. Ah, getting old! But not until May 2007! Congratulations, Megan and Mike!!!

In other news, the political climate in Perú has suddenly started to resemble American elections...yes, folks, that´s right. The political commercials of candidates smiling with the Peruvian flag flapping behind them shaking campesino hands to the tune of triumphant, patriotic music has suddenly found the company of NEGATIVE ADVERTISEMENTS. Lourdes Flores has come out with a new ad, which basically has the message: "You wouldn´t want to walk backwards (dramatic image of Alan García amid protestors during his 1000% hyperinflation days) and you wouldn´t want to go downwards (dramatic image of Ollanta Humala stomping violently on somebody in his military days)...ascend with Lourdes Flores (her smiling and waving in front of the flapping Peruvian flag to the tune of triumphant, patriotic music). And I saw another negative ad for the congressional race. Would I be too paranoid and conspiracy theory-loving if I suggested that Uncle Sam is involving itself in the last week until the Peruvian election? Maybe. However, I wouldn´t be surprised. If Humala wins, this will be another strong force in the Latin American anti-US government leftist trend. Despite the close race, most people are predicting Humala to win. Including the fortune teller on the morning news, although apparently 3 other fortune tellers had predicted Lourdes Flores to win...anyway, this is a fascinating moment, at least for me.

In some personal news, I can now say I can assemble bicycles without help! I didn´t even have an already assembled bike for reference. My Peace Corps-issued Trek bike was boxed up in my room until yesterday, when I finally decided to get some courage and put it together without help, which wasn´t coming. The front wheel was a little tricky because there were tiny parts needed to assemble it that came in a separate box without instructions. And the pictures and instructions in the booklet were terrible. However, I am most proud about being able to assemble the front-wheel brake. That was really confusing and Cactus had told me that the brake was probably a part that I´d want to get help with because it was really hard. After staring at the pictures for a long time and trying to figure out what the random parts and holes and everything was for, I played around, hoping I wouldn´t break anything, and finally got it! So I went on a victory ride yesterday and today. Thanks to this desert plant that scatters nail-like thorns everywhere, I got a hole in my tire on my bike´s maiden voyage and I had to take my bike today to my new friend, José, who fixes tires for 2 nuevos soles (less than $1!!). He ironed on a patch using this big rusty machine. Is that how it´s done in the States? Well, now I know what a bike tire consists of.

Today I also had a very succesful meeting with all the school directors from the District. After introducing myself, I had them list the environmental problems they believed were the most important to confront in their school communities. Then after explaining my plan that was developed with some directors and the Municipality, we had a brainstorming session where they significantly improved the idea. So I guess that´s a green light from them on the whole "social network" idea where representatives from all the different community sectors get together to confront development issues. During the meeting, I patted myself on the back for finally being able to understand 90% of the meeting, after half a year in Perú! Of course, the part I didn´t understand was followed by the non-rhetorical question, "what do you think?" I deftly squirmed out of that situation by turning to the rest of the directors and confidently posed the question, "well, what do the rest of you think?" haha. I can add "can facilitate a meeting and pretend to understand a conversation when I really don´t" to the resumé.

sweat and tears

2006-04-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

On Thursday I accidentally walked at least 2 miles through urban desert with the afternoon sun declaring war against my white China skin. I don´t know why I didn´t just get a mototaxi to chug me around from Becara´s Puesto de Salud (Health Post) to the primary school to the highway, which I missed because I took the wrong road, and decided instead to go to the next caserío´s school to talk to the director but they were in a meeting, so then back towards the highway to wait for a bus back to town. As I walked, fully aware of the blisters growing on my suede-clad feet and my sunglasses sliding down my sweaty nose, I decided that I was walking for four reasons: to save money, to exercise, to see the town more intimately and to let the people in the community get used to my being there. In retrospect I think I was just being stubborn with myself for no good reason. However, I did notice that the streets were pretty empty. Probably because it too frickin hot to be outside.

This morning, after I sweated out every drop of water I have in my body hand-washing my clothes, I went to the Centro de Salud (Health Center) to talk to the nurse in charge of a Health Ministry program called "Escuelas Saludables," or "Healthy Schools." She seemed receptive about doing a training workshop for teachers about the topic of hygiene, so hopefully the interaction between the Centro de Salud, Puesto de Salud - Becará and the primary school in Becará will unfold beautifully. I think my primary role in the community will be to foster communication and collaboration such as this, between different sectors in the community. So this is my first big step towards that goal. As I walked down the dirt path back home, I started to actually feel like an "agent of change," and giggled to myself because that´s a really cheezy phrase.

Yesterday I hung out in Piura with my friends, like we do on most Fridays, and saw Brokeback Mountain. At first the storyline seemed kind of forced but as it went on, it drew me in. As expected, there was some snickering from the sparse audience during the love scenes. In Perú, the LGBT presence exists in small corners of Lima and, once, the nightly news that flashed shot after shot of gay couples in Lima kissing on the street. I guess the main message of the “newspiece” was that gay couples exist in Lima. And that they kiss. My host sister was certainly shocked by it. She looked at me with a look of disgust and I was completely caught off-guard. I think I responded to her look with a look of contortion. Like there was no emotion conveyed through the look, it was just a look. Not exactly prime time to start talking about gay rights, although I would like to do so in the future. I think I will just tell stories about some of my friends who are gay in a casual way. The newspiece reminded me of the Kiss-outs (is that what it was called?) that they had on campus every year. The other PCVs in Piura and I did not expect that the movie would even show in Piura. Well, change comes slowly. At least it´s on its way!

I came home to an empty house except my slacker host bro was there, watching TV, waiting to go out to see his girl. After eating some guanabana yogurt with a banana (yum), I exercised by running around the house, one of the luxuries I have of an empty house. At 10:45, they finally came home. Apparently, it was the birthday of my host sister (the one who moved out) and she had invited the family to Piura for dinner after I left the house for Piura myself. At 10:50 my host mom called me downstairs to eat roast chicken and french fries they brought home for my dinner. I politely declined, as I had just been crawling under my mosquito net for bed when she called me. I don´t understand them sometimes, how can they expect me to eat chicken and fries after my bedtime?? Oh well. At least they understood that I didn´t want to eat at the moment.

my raging leftist side is emerging

2006-03-27T16:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was an usually intellectual day. First, the guy in town whose job it is to teach people how to use the very complicated voting ballot asked me about the Electoral College, ballots in the US and whether I thought voting should be mandatory or not, like it is in Perú. Eventually, I was going off in rapid-fire Spanish. I think I kind of scared him because I was getting a little passionate about it all. Then at night, as I was waiting for my parents to call me for FIVE HOURS, my host sister´s new fianceé(there hasn´t been a wedding yet)/husband(she lives with him so people call him her husband) and I had a long conversation about fishing and the decline of fish populations, agriculture and the organizations of farmers in the area, irrigation and the institutions involved, why the US hasn´t signed Kyoto yet (I went in depth on that one while pointing out that we haven´t signed a lot of important conventions, like on human rights) and about the Peruvian presidential elections which are coming up on April 9th. Oh well to that whole mission of Peace Corps that volunteers are ambassadors of the government´s good-will. I like to keep it real. Government and the people, very different entities. I think my host family was giving each other looks like, "wow, I guess the China is passionate about politics."

But it´s all cool. Apparently, my host parents are voting for Ollanta Humala, the most leftist candidate who has a chance. Even though one daughter is voting Lourdes Flores, the moderate conservative female candidate. However, I honestly don´t have a strong opinion on the Peruvian elections because I just don´t know enough about the candidates. Ollanta Humala is coming through Piura this week and will maybe be stopping in town. I gotta go tell him: "hey, if you become prez, don´t kick out Peace Corps, aight? we cool?" Just kidding. That might give Peace Corps a heart attack. And that would be really bad of me to talk to a presidential candidate, because I do believe that it could be manipulated politically. I gotta watch my back! Right now the three candidates still seem to have an equal number of votes. Peruvian law mandates that the winner must have more than 50% of the vote, so there will most likely be a second round in which the top two candidates will fight it out.

So I didn´t mention a critical part of my work plan: to form a committee comprised of municipal authorities, schools (directors, teachers and maybe students), the governmental health centers, parent´s organizations and other social organizations (Mother´s clubs, Fishermen Associations, etc.). That will be the bulk of my work, since as you may imagine, that will take a lot of time. Basically, it´s institution-building or creating "social networks" or whatever terminology you want to use. We´ll see how it goes.

I´m starting to work on this coalition building goal by meeting the people at the Centro de Salud (Health Center) in town. Since my Becará teachers are starting on the issue of hygiene, it will be great to get the involvement of the Centro de Salud, which is in my town, as well as the health post in Becará. Possible activities related to the objectives they have been proposing include having the kids go to the Centro de Salud to research the most common ailments in the community and learning more about issues relevant to their own little world. We can also get guest speakers in classes or have people come to give a talk or training to the teachers before they start lesson planning.

In other news, it is a BITCH to get to Becará. Fishing season has started a little early. As such, the fishermen are gone. Since fishermen take up secondary jobs in public transportation during the off-season, there is a huuuuuuge lack of public transportation right now. After waiting an hour for a collective car to pick me up, my neighbor who was waiting with me got picked up by a truck delivering ice to keep octopus fresh. They offered me a ride, too, so I finally was able to get to the school. Along the way there were a TON of people on the right side of the street waiting for transportation.

It was a lot easier to get back since I finally realized that there´s a collective car stop near the school that leaves towards my town. No more waiting on the side of the street with my handkerchief over my head for shade wondering what I´m doing here in the desert for 35 minutes anymore! In the car, a mom asked me if I was teaching at the school. She told me that her daughter had come home from school and told her that, "There´s a girl who looks very ´China´ with extremely white skin who is really pretty coming to work in the school." And so they´re all wondering what I´m doing there. So I guess I´m famous in Becará, thanks to the chatterbox kids!

They said this day would come after 3 months

2006-03-25T11:04:00.000-05:00

And, indeed, it did. The day when I would feel like everything is coming together.

I´m really excited about the prospects of my primary project. Finally, I have a clear idea of what I´m actually going to be doing for the next two years! So on Friday I got this brilliant idea from the NGO that Cactus works with: use schools as a development agent. Soon, I will be working to form commissions of teachers from all 10 primary schools in the District. This is important because there are three types of teachers, each with a different teaching strategy: the "unidocente" who teaches the ENTIRE school him or herself, the "multigrado" who teaches multiple grades, and the "polidocente" who teaches one class and one grade. The commissions will have the responsibility of doing things like performing a big diagnostic of the community, working on a District-wide environmental curriculum, planning environmental projects and involving the community. The last two commissions will be the focus of my work. Basically, through the schools, I will be working with the community on conservation and other development issues (nutrition, hygiene, self-esteem, gender equality, etc.). Meanwhile, I will be working with that big fishing caserío, Becará, as a pilot program. I have been told by two different people that this is a great idea because there are many organized and potentially active associations and groups of women, men and youth in that community. On one Saturday in the future, I will be going around Becará with the secretary of the Municipality, who also happens to be a leader in the the caserío, to meet other leaders that I can work with in the future. The teachers at the school also seem pretty interested in working on environmental issues and with the community. They are eating up the information I have been translating and adapting for them from this wonderful book called "Developing an Environmental Curriculum in Schools," which I got in the mail thanks to Peace Corps. I´d be completely lost without that book.

The director of the environment program in Perú also came to visit my site on Thursday after a regional training conference we had in Piura. It was reassuring that he thought my strategy was good. This is important to me since my project is different from the other environment volunteers´ projects because I am working in a "community" of 15,000+ people, with 10 primary school and that covers a huge geographic area. It´s a lot larger in terms of my target population -- some volunteers are teaching in one school with 30 kids total -- and I don´t have any counterparts that will actually be working hand in hand with me. When each volunteer presented his or her project, most people´s counterparts spoke more than the volunteer about the project or were the ones that came up with the work plan. I don´t even think my counterpart could explain the work plan right now, haha. But I am definitely not complaining -- I did ask for a "difficult" site with a lot of independence, after all, as my director reminded me. He also asked me if I would be bothered in the future by not being able to form any intimate bonds or observe the personal development of a group of people, like most volunteers will, thereby losing out on the "real Peace Corps experience." I told him I think I´ll be able to see that happen, and if I don´t, as long as I see changes and believe that it was more or less effective, I´ll be happy. So no dramatic vignettes about this kid I worked with or that woman who I developed a bond with in the future. Maybe.

At my site, my director and I had a hilarious conservation with my host parents in which they proceeded to complain about how their son is in love so he comes home late instead of studying so they lock him out and he bothers the whole family with his knocking and whistling all night long and how their eldest daughter is anti-social and doesn´t want anything to do with potential lovers and suitors and how they tell her she has to talk to me every once in a while and how there are kids in town who are alcoholics and the fishermen booze up during the closed season when they can´t fish and are bored. All in all, it was a pretty good sketch of my life in town.

After he left, I rushed back to Piura because my friends convinced me I had to join them to see "Walk the Line", the Johnny Cash movie, on its first day out in the theatre...even though I had already been out of site for 3 nights due to this training. It´s true that there is such thing as "out-of-site guilt" when you feel guilty for not being in site, even if it´s for something reasonable. So at almost 9 at night, I guiltily returned home, but not before calling my host mom to tell her I´d be home later than planned, since she´s a worrier. She was the only one there when I got back. After serving me dinner, she told me so much about the family I never knew: that they lived in Lima for 5 years, that my host sister once had to attend University classes in Piura until 10:30 or 11 at night so my host mom had to nervously find a place for her to stay in the City since she couldn´t safely come home that late, that another daughter once overslept on the combi and by the time she made it back home my host mom was in tears, and that the "padrino" called my host dad that day to tell him that he had to start working that very same day...so he´ll be fishing for the next two or so months. Just like that. Gone the same day. What a crazy life. What a miserable job. They thought he was going to leave around April 15th.

Anyway, things are looking good. Except Rese lost the MSA elections by less than 300 votes, perhaps due to some election fraud by the "winning" party. The capacity of Michigan´s campus politics to mimic U.S. national politics never ceases to amaze me.

i knew it all along!

2006-03-16T18:55:00.000-05:00

I never doubted that Kerry truly won the 2004 election....

Read this, from the Miami Herald.

That´s settled, if I don´t like the Democrat running for Prez in ´08, I will be fighting to fix the electoral process.

tidbits

2006-03-16T17:45:00.000-05:00

Today, a crazy man on a bench told Prima that she needs to watch out for the "communists" because they´re watching her, and that they´re everywhere in our department of Piura.

Around the same time that happened, I immersed myself into the Peruvian ocean for the FIRST TIME. I can´t believe it took me half a year! It was "rico," as Peruvians would say. Fish were jumping around me everywhere at every moment. Cactus got really burnt.

I am sitting in on an ornithology research seminar to pick up more ideas on what I can do with kids about birds. As we went through equations and calculations, I was reminded of how nice it is to be OUT of school.

Speaking of which, school has officially started in my District. Unfortunately, this is the closed season for fishing, so the fishermen can´t send their kids to school until mid-April, when they start to make money again. So only some schools are actually functioning right now.

This morning I went to a teachers´ planning workshop at an elementary school in one of the caseríos. As the director introduced me, he asked me to join him in front of all the teachers. And then he sat down. I was totally unaware that they wanted me to lead an environmental curriculum development workshop. I had just been planning on seeing what they wanted me to do in the future. So I babbled a lot about my proposal and environmental education. After some comments by the teachers, we decided to choose the themes they wanted to discuss during the school year. I´m going back to the school 3 times in the next two weeks. I will meet first with 1st and 2nd grade teachers, then 3rd and 4th grade and then 5th and 6th grade. Whew, that was a sticky situation turned better. I´m excited to work there! The teachers seemed very laid-back and eager to incorporate the environment in their lesson plans. They understood and were passionate about the importance of enviro ed, which will make my mission a lot smoother.

Now I don´t know if I should continue working with each of the TWELVE schools in my district individually like that or form a committee of all teachers of certain grades within the District. I will probably do the latter. However, it´s a lot of coordination!! I am super busy now. Too bad Peace Corps is pulling us away from site two days next week for a training. Awful timing.

unexpected little acts of friendship

2006-03-11T20:51:00.000-05:00

Today was such a sweet, simple day. After spending all day locked in my room poring through a really helpful tech manual on developing environmental ed curriculums, I decided to go on a little jog/walk through the farms again today. On the way, I passed the hostel where my PCV friends stayed during the Mangrove Festival. Three girls who were about 12 years old asked where I was going and if they could join me. Of course I said yes. After getting permission from their mom, they came with me. First, we stopped by the canal so one of the girls could clean a gash on her knee that was dripping with blood. I´m not really sure how clean that water is, but it´s better than not cleaning it, I guess. As we chatted and strolled down the farmland-lined path, newly green thanks to a new planting season and recent rains, I learned that they´re not from this town. They learned how to say 20 Peruvian names in English. Then we ran for all of 30 seconds. They were wearing flimsy flip-flops (and out of shape). Oh well, making new friends is much more important than a healthy heart. When we stopped, they pointed to a beautiful tamarind tree, which I didn´t recognize. Tamarind trees are taller than most trees growing around here. They have many small bright green leaves, which turn brighter with the 6PM summer sun descending behind. Then we stopped and threw rocks at the tamarinds, hoping they would fall. Since I´m a lot taller than they are, they kept on asking me to shake various branches. We did this for about 10 minutes. My aim isn´t all that good. I learned that tamarinds actually look like brown peas! Inside the "pea pod" the fruit looks just like a dried peach -- and tastes like it, too! Yum.

As we headed back since it was growing dark, a mototaxi sped by with two of my friends from the Municipality in it. They waved furiously at me and stopped the mototaxi. "Come with us to Bernal!" So I hopped in, we dropped off my little friends at the entrance of the farmland, and I went to Bernal for the first time. Bernal was about a 15 minute mototaxi ride from where I got picked up. We arranged to get a band for the Mayor´s birthday party in May. I sat in a house that I thought looked really beautiful. There were plastic flowers and elephant statues and a tree that reminded me of Autumn in Michigan or New Jersey and kitchy stuff everywhere. And then I wondered whether my taste in interior decoration is turning really tacky after just 6 months in Perú. After our business was done there, we took the long route home to stop by a big town to eat cake. I wished that my counterpart had arranged my homestay to be with one of these two women instead of the family I have. I like my family and think that they´re good people. However, they would never randomly bring me on a little trip like that and then buy me cake. That´s partly why I´m in my room way too often.

Onto a different subject, I had a cultural identity crisis today. I read an insert in Newsweek written by an "Indian-American" author who won a Pulitzer Prize or something. She was writing about being Indian-American and growing up being loyal to the old identity but hoping to fit into the new one. At first, I read and thought it was kind of interesting. I could identify. But it´s all the same old first generation experience stuff I´ve read before. Then she ended with something that made me gasp aloud. She talked about how the Indian part of her is critically linked to the presence of her parents in her life. And how when they pass away, she will become more American than Indian. And I realized that it is the same for me. I had a small panic attack. I really wanted to call my sister and talk to her about this revelation, that I really had realized my whole life, but never thought about so bluntly. I mean, I always wondered how I´d manage to have my kids grow up speaking and listening to Mandarin. I solved that problem when I decided not to ever have kids. Now I´m thinking more about how my IDENTITY will be really different when I´m old. I will be more American than Chinese. That´s the reality. I´ve never really cared about aging as much as I do now.

puppy love

2006-03-09T17:48:00.000-05:00

There is a little golden red dog laying by my feet, even though the computer center is one of the few places in my town where you won´t find dogs ever. He is my family´s dog, Cookie. He decided to start following me around town. Yesterday, he celebrated International Women´s Day with us and was running around the stage as we were decorating. This morning, he ran (and peed) inside the Municipality office until I picked him up and took him out, walked back home, and only returned when he wasn´t in sight. I guess it´s easy to fall in love with me since everyone else kicks him, shouting "¡PASA!", and gives him the cold shoulder. I pet him behind the ears and even let him sit on my lap when he looks relatively clean.

So my presentation to the teachers and directors of the District went well considering that I couldn´t use my beautiful PowerPoint Presentation (AGAIN), this time because the computer was with people who arrived late due to heavier than usual rainfall. My PowerPoint was my strategy to seem really professional and knowledgeable, yet fun. Oh well. At least I wasn´t too nervous since I didn´t have to do it in the auditorium with a microphone.

The surveys we got back have been giving me mixed opinions, and I´m kind of lost as to which direction I should head. Many teachers complained about lack of classroom resources, and in one caserío, this included no bathrooms. They also confirmed that poverty affects their mission, although lack of motivation of students and parents also ranked pretty high on the list. I was happy to note that many primary school teachers were willing to devote 10+ hours to environmental lessons, and asked for teacher trainings. Maybe it was sampling bias, but they seemed very receptive to introducing an environmental education program. Except for the teacher of "religious studies", who didn´t seem too enthused. I was also asked to attend a curriculum development workshop at a primary school of one of the bigger caseríos next week. Another teacher also told me that she lives in Vice and could help me with the Program!

The night before March 8th, International Women´s Day, we organized a march incorporating a competition of "antorchas." I didn´t know what that was until I arrived. It´s like paper lanterns, but they use reeds and either a special type of paper or plastic bottles. Since I was one of the two judges of that competition, the "antorcha" of a women in a bikini using re-used plastic bottles won first prize. I was a little biased towards the creative use of re-used material. Second place was to a house that had a picture of women working in a factory on the side, third place went to a boy who made a sign with a poem thanking and giving due credit to women, and then there were stars, a huge cake, a chicken, a face that said "Women in Action!" and plain plastic bottles. It was one of those nights when I just felt so accepted and integrated into the community, and touched by the smallest gestures. I got to walk in the front line of the march because the Regidora told me to hold the Peruvian flag with her. The kids also went crazy for me and my camera that night. I translated 30 Peruvian names into English for them. It´s been a really good week!

Picking up steam

2006-03-06T17:35:00.000-05:00

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!

The circus is in town

2006-02-22T10:26:00.000-05:00

The circus is in town. I can´t wait until they leave. Why? First of all, I hate clowns. I don´t like things with masks or painted faces that make them look maniacal. Second, they have found it necessary to play the same 20-second advertisement sound clip for 3 hours straight every day they are here, from last Sunday to tonight. And then since it´s just down the road from my house, I hear everything that goes on all night long. The only good thing is that they randomly play some Indian music, which I like. That Kenny G version of "My Heart Will Go On" that they play twice in a row (whenever someone plays that song they have to play it more than once)? Not so much.

Yesterday, about 12 mototaxis went by my window in a motorized parade, complete with trumpet players playing from within the mototaxis. They were supporting APRA, one of the 25 political parties that have presidential candidates in the April/May election. APRA´s presidential candidate is Alan Garcia, a former Peruvian President who was responsible for extreme hyperinflation, where the price of everything increased significantly within a few hours. Every Peruvian recounting those days gets understandably animated and dramatic, remembering the impossibly long lines they waited in, hoping to be able to buy some corn before the price went up by 300%. Despite this, the last I heard was that he was pulling at number 3 in the polls. And he´s putting up a good fight. His fans are very organized, and he also is getting suspiciously more air time than other candidates. I think he might have the most walls painted with his name on it. Which is a feat. Almost every wall here is covered in paint supporting either Alan Garcia or the top two candidates (as of a few weeks ago), Ollanta Humalla, who is rumored to possibly join the Hugo Chávez crew if elected, and Lourdes Flores, who was pulling at number one. If she wins, she will join the growing number of female presidents/premiers around the world, such as in Chile and Germany. Unfortunately, she´s very conservative. But, you know, I´m not supposed to take sides here. Not publicly, at least. All in all, Perú has a chaotic and crazy presidential history that will be very interesting to watch as a new chapter unfolds.

My scheme is working

2006-02-19T16:50:00.000-05:00

So two entries ago, I hinted that I was planning to do something that would rid myself of ridiculous secretarial duties. Well, the plan is underway and working out beautifully!

The plan was to start working more with women´s organizations -- I learned that there are 32 in the Municipality, 22 being Club de Madres´, which organize Soup Kitchens that offer low-cost meals. International Women´s Day is March 8th, and I knew that my town would celebrate, since we´re so organized. I was right. After nearly begging the the president of the Women´s Committee, a Regidora (politically appointed town leader, powerful), that I wanted to help them with those activities, we had a meeting this past Tuesday. Sadly enough, only 9 people showed up. The meeting started with a few women blaming the Regidora for not sending out the meeting invitations sooner. It makes me reflect on how e-mail has made working in the US so efficient. Another small "cultural shock" I noticed was that after introducing the meeting, the Regidora sat down and had one of the MEN who work at the municipality run the rest of the meeting. Ooh, that would never happen in the US, especially since we were organizing what we should do for International Women´s Day.

After the initial tension, everything turned out very friendly. I left extremely hearted about my role in the community. I met new leaders, suggested ideas that they voted to keep on the agenda, and volunteered to run a self-esteem workshop for adolescent girls. It truly lifted my spirits -- that is the environment I hoped to work in -- one of mutual respect, exchanging ideas and organizing something useful. Plus, I haven´t seen or TALKED to my counterpart since Wednesday. Ah, I feel so liberated!

VDay Love

2006-02-14T21:56:00.000-05:00

Love from the KIDS, that is, hehe.

Today I grabbed 3 of my nearby PCV friends and presented 2 skits/plays in a nearby town. First, we did a skit I wrote up really quickly this weekend about a balanced diet. Perú uses 3 food groups. I pretended to be a news reporter. Using my fake mic made out of toilet paper rolls and a black plastic bag, I interviewed Prima, who pretended to be a nutritionist. Then, we had the audience "feed" Bad Girl and Good Boy. Good Boy grew, felt like he could run a lot and had a shield that warded off the toilet paper roles we threw at him that said "gripe," which is the flu (or a cold). Bad Girl didn´t grow, felt weak, got sick when we threw the toilet paper rolls at her, and even though she ate corn, nothing happened since she didn´t eat a balanced diet. It went pretty well. We improvised a lot, which was fun and made them laugh.

Then we did the handwashing skit, AGAIN. However, I changed roles and was the parasite. I ran around with my snorkeling mask and laundry gloves on. I think everyone laughed more at the fact that it was really foggy with my sweat rather than what I was doing. At least they laughed! And most importantly, I think they learned.

I don´t fool myself into thinking that they´re going to eat well and wash their hands now. Behavior changes take months or years or effort. However, I have to trust that some good came out of it...it lifted all of our spirits and we fulfilled the cultural exchange part of the Peace Corps mission, at least. After we presented our skits to the women, we talked to them about our work as well as what they do. It´s really rewarding to do development work in a community that probably has never had another American work there previously. The regidora (a political appointee, powerful) who organized the event is really interested in getting a youth development volunteer there in the future. No matter what happens, it probably won´t be the last time I work there now that they know I´m 10 minutes away.

All in all, a good date with the kids and mothers. I cherish any chance I get to actually do development work rather than writing official documents! Plus, I got to meet really sweet people from a nearby town while hanging out with really good friends. What more could I ask for?

feeling used

2006-02-11T18:25:00.000-05:00

Why do I feel used?

1. My host family thinks I´m big money. I told them I asked a friend to help me put my bike together and they suggested that I ask our neighbor to do it. Then I started to get a funny notion and asked them, "Is he going to charge me?" And they basically said, "of course!" like that was a silly question.

Prima thinks that´s "way out of line," which shows a huge difference between her rural and poor, yet extremely generous community and mine. But then again, her family doesn´t charge her a cent. She buys them marmalade and some other things every once in a while. Yet they are a family who recently got their clothes stolen as they were drying outside and now don´t have an extra change of clothes. My family recently built a second floor to the house, tiled the entire place up with gorgeous tile, painted the inside and outside and charge me 340 soles a month to live here. I am a renter, not part of the family.

2. My counterpart. Again. Yes, complaining about him again. Now I am supposed to write "informes," which are like this official document requesting a meeting between a biologist, an NGO, me and the municipality. Why am I the one who is supposed to write that??? And I am also supposed to write an informe to get a clean-up crew out to the beach and garbage cans installed. I tried explaining to him that I was hoping to get the kids I´ll be working with to ask the mayor (while I forewarned the mayor and ensured his consent) to make them feel more empowered to help the environment. No, it´s urgent, he says. Write an informe.

I am a personal assistant, a secretary, a right-hand man and a sugar daddy.

Don´t worry, I have a crafty scheme up my sleeve. I´ll keepy you updated if it works.

RESE FOX FOR PREZ!

2006-02-09T20:50:00.000-05:00

I am so excited, a little tear came to my eye just now. My good friend who I spent countless emotionally draining (stressful is an understatement) hours with during my last year in college trying to making PIRGIM a real chapter at the University of Michigan is running for student government President. If she wins, the biggest failure of my life will all of a sudden adopt a totally new meaning. Although I am usually an optimist, I hadn´t been able to find any satisfying meaning or justification behind that failure. However, if she becomes Presidenta of the student government, I will feel like I went through the worst hours of my life for a reason. Justice will be had! And she will be such a good Presidenta, I have utmost confidence in her competence and judgement. She has a really tough race it seems, but I know that even if she fails (which she won´t because she is a highly skilled campaign organizer and highly likeable), this party has great potential to gain momentum from this election cycle.

MSA PRESIDENT RESE FOX! Ah, I love the sound of that.

I give this day 5 out of 5 stars just for that piece of news!

It´s raining in the desert!

2006-02-06T11:55:00.000-05:00

Today I woke up under my mosquito net to the sound of rain falling steadily outside. Listening to rain in the morning gives me such a peaceful, rejuvenated feeling, that everything is tranquil as the sky is nourshing the earth. I missed the rain. I thought I wasn´t going to get any of it for the next two years, which has been the case for the past year or so in these parts. It´s even more exciting to see the rain since the authorities have been freaking out about the drought, which is not so good when agriculture is one of the principal economic activities in Piura. In addition, as I can verify just by tasting the salty tap water, fresh water sources (groundwater) are depleted. Hooray, for rain!

February 2nd was World Wetland´s Day, as I´ve mentioned in previous entries. At the end of the day, I thought, "what a typical Peace Corps experience."

Thanks to my counterpart bringing me to Piura to do nothing but wait and kill time for 6 hours the previous day (I was supposed to translate a document, even though I ended up not having to do it, arghhh), I had been up until midnight working on a PowerPoint presentation chock full of photos of different wetland types from different countries around the world. I was excited to show the kids all the beauty that there is in this world, reminding them that the world is a lot bigger than Piura. Having learned from the Mangrove Festival, I went to the Municipality early to double check that everything was ready -- the two big buses, the cookies, soda, drawing materials, opening up the auditorium and more. Then they told me that there was a blackout until 11am that day. So all those hours and love spent on this presentation were in vain. Oh, well, that´s what I get for depending on technology and electricity in Peace Corps. Then the people collaborating with us decided to change my plans at the mangroves when the kids were getting off the bus. I had planned that they would engage the kids in the kite-flying and drawing competitions while we took 10 kids at a time for a nature walk. What ended up happening was the different groups of 10 kids each got their own guide, either from INRENA (Nat´l Resources gov office), the biologist, or myself. I was disappointed because we never pre-planned what educational content to dispel nor did we have enough binoculars and telescopes for every group to have their own, so it was really disorganized. I had wanted to make sure all the kids learned about wetlands in addition to mangroves, the importance and threats to mangroves, and what they could do to protect them. Oh well. We also ended up in a different spot than I had planned for since my counterpart told the driver to go somewhere else, even though I had told the driver where to go and he understood where I meant. So we were not even located close to the mangroves. Then, none of the adults helped me make sure the kids stayed out of the water, so most of the day was spent letting the kids fool around and have fun. I´m not opposed to fun, but I really wanted it to be an educational day as well. However, the kids really loved using the binoculars and telescopes. So did the adults who came to help supervise. Plus, there´s always World Water Day on March 22nd!

I saw two movies this weekend: Jarhead and La Mujer de mi Hermano, which is written by a Peruvian author. I definitely recommend Jarhead. Liked it a lot. Wasn´t another stupid war movie depicting how everyone dies but all it really does is wow people with visual effects. Instead, the movie focused on the messed up psychology of Marines during Desert Shield, and there were no scenes of limbs flying mid-air and bleeding. La Mujer de mi Hermano was alright, but the book is much better. I´m in the middle of it right now.

I walked in the desert for 3.5 hours on Saturday with two engineers from INRENA to map the GPS coordinates of the protected area. I got a sunburn on my face with a sexy sunglass line. I saw a wild goat, an iguana, lots of lizards and lots of sand. No foxes, unfortunately. The engineers asked me whether I´ve ever taken a wilderness survival course, haha. I was ready with a white long t-shirt, hat, sunblock, insect repellent, a Nalgene-full of water, sucking candy, a plantain, and two handkerchiefs. Nope, I said. Just lots of hikes through the jungle.

I´ve uploaded more photos onto my flickr site. I like them!

Viva San Jacinto

2006-01-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

My weekend pretty much rocked and left me sleep deprived. It was the central weekend of a two-week long celebration for my town´s patron saint, San Jacinto. Boy, did they go way out for this guy. There was a band, or sometimes 3 different bands, parading around town all week long. Thanks to them, late night festivities, and the constant bombardment of bombaderos, or firecrackers that sound like gunfire and scare the living tso tso out of me, I haven´t been getting much sleep lately.

On Friday night there was a Marinera and Tondero competition in my town. Those are traditional regional dances that I had seen briefly but never fully appreciated until I was blown away by the competitors that night. Highly influenced by the Spanish colonizers, Marinera is a very fun and flirty dance. Dressed in ultra-feminine gowns and fervently waving a little white handkerchief, the women tempt their partner with intricate, quick footwork, sensuous hip movements, and mischievous glances. Also waving a white handkerchief, the meticulously dressed men playfully attempt to charm the women. I fell in love with the dance, and relished the competitive atmosphere. Most of the dancers were from out-of-town. Listening to their parents and dance instructors whistling and rooting them on by shouting, “Eso, eso, eso….” reminded me of my childhood dance competitions. Competitions are great because the adrenaline rush heightens the performance of the dancers, and you can tell they´re feeling the love from the audience. Some of the dancers were about 5-years old and just double the size of their hats. I spent the majority of my time taking pictures, which was a challenge because of the constant movement. However, my new best friend in town pushed us through the throng of onlookers and in front of the front row, which is where I spent my time filling up my memory stick.

She also managed to get me in basically the front row of the best show in the world: Burning of the Castillos. At first, I thought it was going to be a repeat of New Year´s where “burning” meant creating a normal orange fire of the uncontrollable bonfire type. However, when I walked into the plaza on Saturday night I saw 3 huge structures that were at least 4 or 5 stories tall made of reeds and a material that burns in various colors that sparks – not burns – in various impressive ways. As it moved along the carefully choreographed pattern, the white, green, red or blue spark slowly moved along the flammable material. Then just as I was thinking that the spark had died, these spinning things would start going crazy, spewing colored sparks everywhere. Even though I started in the 3rd row of the show, eventually I was in the 1st row, thanks to the fact that everyone in the first 2 rows ran away to avoid getting burned. Being the super courageous woman I am, I stayed for the love of photography (that was a joke). I took really great pictures and somehow managed to not get burned at the same time! It was the most amazing pyrotechnic show of my life, and not just because I was in the hazard zone. Sometimes words would start burning (“Viva San Jacinto”), or the cord connecting the three Castillos would light up the length of the plaza and send sparks flying downwards or upwards or in vertical circles or in horizontal circles, or shoot up various types of fireworks – you know, the 4th of July type that get sent hundreds of feet up into the air – in carefully timed succession. What really impressed me is that none of this used any sort of electronic, high-tech equipment. It was just thanks to the genius creativity of whoever made those giants in the next town over.

OK, now it´s time to talk about more sacrilegious things I´ve seen. At this rate, after 2 years, I´ll be able to make my “Top 10 Most Sacrilegious Church Moments” and have hundreds of moments to choose from. Anyway, so there was this competition between bands before the Burning of the Castillos. The bands, which could have been your average American marching band complete with drums and brass instruments, competed facing each other in the entrance of the Church. The only reason why this was eventful enough to report in my Blog is that one band thought it would be entertaining to have two girls in jewled hot bras and beaded thongs dancing and shaking their booties as they played. Naked butts shaking in front of Church. Hmmm…I couldn´t not say something about how ridiculous I thought that was, so I double-checked with my new best friend whether she thought it was abhorrent as well. Yes, she said. They´re not from here, but the people from here think it´s really disrespectful. Whew, I´m not this ultra-conservative weirdo.

Currently, there is a group of people dressed in Carnival-esque masks and costumes running around town with their own marching band (that has a wonderful jazz saxophone player!). They´re called “diablicos.” Some of them are dressed like devils, some like women. The only one who doesn´t wear a mask is this little boy that doesn´t smile -- he looks like he´s had a troubled childhood, in fact -- dressed in a white angel costume with wings. Anyway, after the sweatiest, most claustrophobia-inducing mass this Sunday, where kids and parents kept on pushing and shoving us poor church-goers who came late standing uncomfortably in a throng in the back of Church, we went to watch the diablicos. They were in the plaza with their band doing some crazy devil dance that involves a lot of hopping on one leg, and for one of the devils, hysterically laughing in a sadistic way. Unfortunately, I caught their attention when I took pictures of them. Being the mischievous a••holes they are, one of the devils started to pretend to use his cane to pull me into the center. At first, I laughed along and shooed them away. Then they chanted to me the theme campaign song of ex-Peruvian President, Alberto Fujimori (obviously, and oddly enough, he is Japanese). It goes like this: “Chino, chino (double-time now) chino, chino, chino.” That´s when I started to get a little annoyed. It´s kind of creepy to have a masked devil chanting “chino” at you amidst a crowd of Peruvian onlookers. To make matters even creepier, he started to bust through the crowd in front of me to really pull me into the center. I wailed in a meek and friendly way, “NOOO” and moved away without losing my temper. I mean, everyone was looking at me, so I couldn´t say, “BACK OFF, YOU FREAK,” which is what I really wanted to say. Regardless, I was irritated and a little confused about the whole ritual.

Today, the diablicos are marching around town again. They stopped in front of the Municipality, where I was waiting to talk to my counterpart on the second floor. I watched them from the window along with other employees. Despite my best efforts, they caught sight of me. So I hid, but kept on watching from a little corner. Then, I turned around and there he was, the stuff of nightmares, looking for me. Ah, you freak, go away!! Now that he had entered my workplace deliberately looking to annoy me, I had no problems running from him into the typist´s office, shutting the door and squatting so he wouldn´t see me through the window. I didn´t get up until someone told me he left. It amused the Municipality employees, who were laughing -- with me, not at me -- so I wasn´t as bothered as I could have been. However, if I encounter that loser again, and he tries to do his stupid devil dance and drag me into the center with his stupid cane, I swear I am going to knee him in the frickin´ groin.

I´ll be putting up pictures soon. They should be good ones. You have to see some of this stuff to understand what I´m talking about.

Oh, and HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!! I was so busy this weekend, I didn´t mind missing one of my favorite celebrations with my family. Go year of the Dog. My mom told me that my aunt told her that she read in the newspaper (of course) that Boars will find a new boyfriend this year. I told that to my host family and one of the sisters said, "Maybe to someone from town." Nope, not a chance, sorry. I joked to her that if that happened, they would post the news in the community´s newsletter.

missing my music

2006-01-24T17:28:00.000-05:00

I am pathetic. I haven´t been able to save up enough money from my monthly allowances to buy a stereo. I´d buy new batteries for my discman, but then I´d get the headphones all sweaty, it´s THAT hot now in Piura. I just want a basic little stereo that plays CDs and maybe even the 2 tapes I brought (Johnny Cash and Social Distortion). There´s a little over a week left to January, so the next time I´m in Piura, I´m going to buy it since I have about 350 soles left, and the cheapest stereo I´ve found is 169 soles. I am on the Amazon website playing the little preview clips of The Slackers songs. I wish they would come play in Perú rather than Brazil. Now I wish I brought all of my CDs with me - it would have been worth the weight.

I think part of the reason why I´m dying to listen to my own music is that I have been going to parties all weekend and into this week as well for birthdays and weddings and such. Which means I have been listening to the same 30 songs over and over again, some of which I like, some which I find very annoying. My favorite is called "A Sabor a Miel," if you´re interested. I don´t know the band name, but the lyrics go más o menos like this: "A sabor a chocolate que me gusta, a sabor a caramelo que yo busco..."

Going to a lot of parties means I have been drinking a lot of sugary chicha morada, Pilsen beer and people´s backwash (remember how I explained that we "pass the glass" so you pour yourself a little bit into a glass, chuck the last drop onto the floor then pass it on to the next person). Remarkably, I am not sick. All of these parties are with the same people from the extended host family...which is cool because I am finally figuring out how each person is related and which kid belongs to which couple and feel more comfortable with the cultural procedures. Also, I walked into my host aunt´s house yesterday and discovered that there is a picture of me dancing with her husband from Christmas posted on their cabinet. Mind you, this couple is probably into their 60s. I don´t get the shady vibe from him, although it was weird to see that picture of me on their cabinet.

In terms of work, I have been organizing and planning the Municipality´s World Wetland Day celebration, which is Feb. 2nd. The program we came up with is to start with a slideshow showing wetlands throughout the world, which I´m creating right now using PowerPoint. Then we´re going to the Mangroves, of course. My counterpart expects that 100-150 kids will come. God, help me. So then I decided that due to the quantity of little brats we´ll have to control, we will corral them all into a little section of the beach where they will draw the mangroves and play with kites that they bring from home. The kites were my counterpart´s idea...they did a kite-flying competition last year, so they of course have to do it again this year, although I convinced him that there´s no reason to make it into a competition. At first I was like, where is the educational value in that?? But now that I am in a less stubborn and crabby mood, I think it´ll be cute. You gotta work within the culture, within the system sometimes. The random people like a school teacher and the community psychologist suckered in to help us by my counterpart, who never fails to prioritize political sucking-up over pragmatism, will supervise them and facilitate those activities. In the meantime, we´re going to take kids 10 at a time on a guided educational visit. I´m working with a bird biologist who has been studying my mangroves for the past 7 years. This guy also happens to have the same name as the famous Mexican-American grape boycott organizer! Obviously, he´s really cool. Since he´s working with us, I thought it´d be nice if he were able to catch some of the birds to do a show-and-tell with the kids. That kind of activity is common in the U.S., but they don´t do it much here in Perú, even though they have such a rich biodiversity to boast about. INRENA (the gov agency of natural resources) is also going to loan us a few pairs of binoculars. Of course, we´ll explain why the mangroves are important and all of that good environmentalist stuff. Even though at first, I felt overwhelmed by starting such a big project the day after the Festival was over, I am really excited now. Plus, I have been able to pull myself together to once again, feel calm and collected about dealing with my counterpart. I recognize that I am lucky that he is always so eager to do activities, even though we don´t always agree on how to do it. And when we are in a meeting together, and they come around with a tray of cookies, he takes a handful like he´s never eaten cookies before, which gives me the freedom to do the same... :o)

Quick update

2006-01-22T15:56:00.000-05:00

Over the weekend I spent a good chunk of time uploading pictures onto flickr, finally. You can check out more views of training, the mangroves, my room, the kids from my extended host family, and shots from the Mangrove Festival.

Yesterday I went to the after-party of a wedding, this morning I went to a memorial of the death of my host dad´s brother, and tonight I think I´m going to a birthday party. Basically, I´ve only been here less than 2 months and already I´ve seen almost all the major life rituals.

Today I also went to Sunday mass. As my mind was wandering off, half-asleep, 2 male dogs ran under the bench in front of me and tried very persistently to copulate with a poor female dog. In church. In front of a little boy. Well, that sure woke me up.

The end.

Workin´ like a caballo

2006-01-17T17:58:00.000-05:00

After "raising the national flag" and singing the national anthem - of which I proudly know 60% - on Sunday, my town released the marathon runners and cyclists, who competed without me, all the way to the mangroves. It´s about 18km. Although a lot of people were hoping I´d do the bike race, I decided it was a very bad idea considering my body had already been through enough stresses during the past few weeks. Plus, I wasn´t sure whether or not I still had the Nasty-D. So I rode in the municipality truck with the Queens of my town and the two neighboring towns. About 10 different photojournalists precariously stood on the back of the truck looking for the perfect action shot. There were about 20 people in the marathon, some of who were in their teens, at least one father-son combo, and about 3 women. I was upset that Prima didn´t run the marathon, because I knew she would do well and kick most of the boys´ traseros. However, she was feeling some out-of-site guilt, so she passed it up.

After a delicious and Nasty-D-friendly boiled chicken and rice lunch, I went back to the mangroves with my host family in a mototaxi that was so slow, the last-placed marathon runner could have beat it to the beach. When I woke up, the beach beyond the mangrove area was completely saturated with people, food stands, trucks, taxis and a band that few people were dancing to. It was amazing how many people were crammed onto the beach, which reminded me of the Jersey Shore. I craved funnel cake like nothing else. My host sister thought it was too cold to enter the water. So as of today, I still have only entered my feet into the Peruvian ocean. I´m pathetic. The mayor estimated that there were 12,000 people there. The newspaper estimated at least 5,000. Sound like the U.S., anyone?

On Sunday night, the extended host family kids opened my door with me thankfully not undressing behind it, and proceeded to play with the puppets from our mangrove puppet show. Which was cute until the 5 year old ripped off one of the heron´s legs, which I dealt with very well. Then they started rolling around in my mosquito net, which I usually roll up into a bag but had been too lazy to do so that particular day. No rips, however. So as I usually do when I start panicking about my material goods in Perú, I asked the 3 kiddies whether they wanted to draw. My childhood collection of crayons was one of the most brilliant things I packed. I think I´m a very cruel big person. I laughed pretty hard when the 7-year old boy scared his 4-year old sister with the puppets, which she apparently developed a fear to during our puppet show. Then he had a lot of fun putting on my laundry gloves and made lobster claws, which she also was afraid of. I laughed both times. I´m mean. However, I admit that I had a lot of fun with their rampant childhood imaginations that made my room into something more exciting than McDonald´s stupid Playland.

My plans for the rest of the week involved 3 things: sleeping, laundry and reading. And maybe going to Piura to pick up my long-neglected mail. Basically, me time. Because my body and my spirit needed it, dammit. Unfortunately, my counterpart called me at 8:50AM on Monday telling me to go join him in Piura for a 9AM meeting with the regional government. My head felt light for lack of nourishment and a diet that has my jeans riding lower than ever before. Plus, I was pissed at his a) lack of articulation and clarity when speaking to me on the phone so it took me forever to understand him, b) lack of telling me in advance about this meeting, and c) telling me, yet again, to do something that I had no idea what it was about nor why I was doing it. Shamefully, I was pretty excited when the secretary told me that the truck was in Piura and there was no money to send me to the meeting. No hard feelings. Really. I read 225 pages of The Nanny Diaries, which one of the volunteers left on my floor. Sorry Jeff Sachs, not in the mood.

OK, so one day of "me time" was all I got, but thanks to not talking much to anybody yesterday and Cipro, I´ve lost my loogies and gained my bathroom dignity back. Back to my counterpart driving me nuts. And scaring me. Apparently he wants environmental workshops in every single school in the municipality at all the different grade levels. That´s about 18 schools, and a ton of classes. No chance I´ll get to learn who the kids are nor be able to notice any sort of behavior changes. Hmph. No asking my opinion on the subject, no asking me what I hoped to accomplish, just telling me what we´re going to do. And by "we," he means WE. ME AND HIM. ME AND HIM DOING THE WORKSHOPS. TO GE THER. Uhhhhhhhh uh. I refuse to work with that high blood-pressured, anti-timeline-ed, anti-strategic planning-ed litterbug on environmental workshops. I had planned to work independently more or less after the Festival. So it´s just me, myself and the China, honey. That´s what I´m going to tell him. Soon.

Becoming Flaquita

2006-01-14T18:57:00.000-05:00

I am so relieved the Mangrove Festival is almost done. This week has been highly stressful, although with really good moments in between. In addition, I am still getting over my cold and now I have the nasty-D. Yep, the all-too common ailment in Perú, the one where you´re running to the bathroom all the time. My host mom is really worried because I haven´t been eating too much. She says I´m going to become "flaquita," or a little thin girl. Fortunately, I was able to convince Reina that what I didn´t need to take was a laxative. Despite my hodgepodge of ailments, I have been staying in Piura every other night with the 9 volunteers who came to help me with the Festival, which means I have been getting very minimal sleep. It´s not every day I get to see these people. I slept all day today, and it was great despite that I have a million mosquito and flea bites that made me itchy and uncomfortable, and the worsening dry heat.

However, let´s talk about the good moments. The highlight was Wednesday. We did a puppet show in the morning called "Las Aventuras de la Flamenquita". It was about a newly-hatched flamingo trying to find its mother. As a heron, crab and fish join her in her search, she learns about mangroves and their importance. Then, a hunter comes looking to kill a flamingo (based on the fact that there are actually hunters from outside the community who come to kill flamingoes in our mangroves for sport). An actual mangrove character appears telling the little flamingo to hide in its roots, saving it. The crab was me, but I was actually a person rather than a puppet. It worked well because I was closer to the audience so I could prompt them when we asked how they could help protect the mangroves. I also had an easier time memorizing lines since I wrote the script. We also had a few strokes of brilliance in terms of backdrops and stage directions. Using a long table turned over on its side, we draped it in shiny green cloth, then used brown cloth twisted up in the middle that looked like a tree. Cactus, the girl playing the mangrove, then stuck only her head out on top during her part. She had a fake tree top stuck in her ponytail. It was hilarious (to us more so than to the kids). Then the hunter appears looking for a flamingo to hang on his wall, who is also a real person who entered from the back of the auditorium for dramatic effect. Eventually, he "fights" with the mangrove. However, the fight was the hunter punching the mangrove's head but the mangrove ducked or moved to the side. It was slapstick hilarious. It finally made the kids laugh. That was so satisfying. The hunter gets frustrated, the mangrove throws water on him, and he falls down and runs away.

Then we took the kids on a trip to the actual mangroves. A lot of parents also wanted to go with their kids, of course, so our bus ended up not being big enough. I spent about 40 minutes getting the bus over there, waiting for another truck which unhelpfully appeared completely packed with kids hanging off the trunk, and buying soda and crackers with the slow-paced municipality employees. First, we took the kids to a lookout where you can see a panoramic view of the mangroves. They were really fascinated by the amount of birds you could see up there. It was nice because most of the kids have been to the area, but never went to the lookout nor to look at wildlife, but instead just went to the beach area to bathe. As the volunteers led their groups in a game of "I spy" and told them about the rules (no throwing trash on the ground, no entering the water, no touching dead pelicans, stay with the group), I handed out cookies and soda, and coordinated the logistics. Then we went to a triangular-strech of beach with mangroves on the left where a flock of herons were resting. On the right was the ocean. First, the volunteers were supposed to do a "check for learning" by asking the kids questions they should´ve learned the answers to during the play. What are mangroves? Why are they important? What are some of the threats to mangroves? Volunteers who thought their group was especially well-behaved could then take their group to the actual mangroves to identify them. Then, the groups competed against each other in relay races on the flat sand. We did a crab walk, fox run (walk on hands and feet), and flamingo hop (one leg up). They loved it. After drinking more soda, we packed the kids up again and got them back to town. There, an art teacher coordinated a very detailed, formal drawing contest. The drawing contest idea was mine. Originally, I just wanted the kids to draw mangroves to reflect on what they saw. Simple stuff. Crayons and notebook paper. However, she took it to the next level, insisting that we have a variety of mediums like pencils, paint and crayons, and annoyed the hell out of me demanding more cups for paint, and complaining about how there weren´t enough supplies. I´m like, lady, what am I supposed to do about it now??? Feeling extremely exhausted, hungry and sick, I had enough of her demands (she had been pissing me off for the last two weeks, especially on my sickest days) and snuck away. Regardless, it was a great day.

Yesterday we did our third play. As I was trying to buy time because one of our actresses was late, I asked who had been to the previous two plays. A bunch of hands went up. I asked what they learned from each play and reviewed the lessons. For the most part, they were able to answer the questions perfectly, so that was a relief. We made the kids run around again, which they love and so do the moms. All in all, it turned out really well, despite a huge lack of preparedness on the volunteers´ part.

I definitely feel like I know the community better now, and they know us. The kids are more comfortable approaching me and like to ask how to say their names in English or other words. Now that the Festival is almost over, I don´t know what I´ll be doing with myself! I plan on resting for a week to get my health back. There is a possibility I might take advantage of the Asian Diversity group in PC Perú that offers free vacation days to go to Lima to celebrate Chinese New Year with the other PC Asians in Chinatown to eat dim sum. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, writing "dim sum" makes me want to go even more. However, I feel like I have been to Piura so often, I feel guilty about leaving my sight again so soon. We´ll see.

Speaking of dim sum, I´m hungry. Hopefully I´ll be able to eat more than jelly sandwhichs, which was my dinner last night.

I´m losing my voice

2006-01-07T19:29:00.000-05:00

I have been incredibly busy this past week coordinating details and running errands for the Mangrove Festival which starts THIS MONDAY. My counterpart also decided to leave to Lima this week. Good timing. Ahhh, why did they arrange the Festival to fall a week after the Christmas/New Year´s holiday??? We just started publicity late in the afternoon Friday. Hmmmm...I see where my most important role will be next year: PLANNING AHEAD OF TIME AND STAYING ON SCHEDULE. Unfortunately, most of the week I spent writing oficios, which are highly formal government documents of communication. A lot of hassle about nothing, really. I don´t know why they made me write them, of all people. Talk about stress and misplaced use of personnel.

Yesterday, I sat at the table with the mayor, a biologist who studies my mangroves, the director of the regional Natural Resources government office (INRENA), and two of the mayor´s aides for a press conference. Even though I had prepared a few short statements just in case, I was extremely relieved nobody asked me to speak or answer a question except one-on-one. Then we went to the visit the mangroves. It was more beautiful than last time. We saw a flock of a few hundred white birds fly up in a fluttering cloud from the ocean to the sky. I also decided that the mangroves are too far for me to bike to and be happy about it. Darn. On our way out, the INRENA truck decided to do some off-roading and got stuck in sand. We spent 15 minutes trying to get it out until a John Deere tractor came and pulled it out like a piece of cake.

Then after eating ceviche with the reporters, I went to Piura with the INRENA folks. We went postering. Ah, it reminded me of the good ´ol PIRGIM days, especially when the gray-haired engineer began tearing down other people´s flyers so we could use their thumbtacks to hang up our poster. And sticking posters in doors and other not-for-poster-use areas.

By the time we finished, it was dark. I was tired and starting to feel sick, so I stayed overnight in Piura. As usual, I was able to find other volunteers staying in Piura. We ate chifa, Peruvian-Chinese food, which is always an awkward experience for me. I know everyone´s like "oh, the China like chifa." It was decent.

This morning, I woke up from a terrible night´s sleep due to an abundance of mosquitoes and heat in my room at night, and now I´m losing my voice. Which is really unfortunate because I have to do three plays this week. The one I´m writing now has a migratory bird cameo that only says "Yo no sé" because it is a gringo bird from the United States. I hope it will make the people laugh.

Party all night...and every day

2006-01-03T17:54:00.000-05:00

Contrary to what I thought, New Year´s is a bigger holiday here than Christmas. On December 31st, I was incredibly bored during the day. Feeling bored here leads to borderline depression, so it was almost like a repeat of December 24th, except worse because I didn´t have any pants I wanted to get dirty on a hike and the internet site was closed without warning. However, at night things picked up for the best.

At 9:30PM I participated in yet another march, this time to the town´s auditorium. The mayor then gave a 2 hour speech recounting all the public works the Municipality did during 2005 and damn, it took about an hour. I was completely overwhelmed with everything they have done in just a year: installing lighting, paving roads, creating potable water systems, installing drainage systems, improving infrastructure within the soup kitchens and schools, planting trees, building plazas, throwing cultural and academic events, and more. This was really exciting to me because nothing seemed to be a frivolous expense and the Municipality is obviously working with a sizeable budget, which means my ideas may not be limited by money. And then the Mayor got really fired up and talked about how they have been fighting in court against a North American petroleum drilling company that drills within the municipality but doesn´t employ many local people whatsoever. They just won their case, which means this company has to pay them twice as much as they had in the past, which is amazing news that made everyone cheer. There is another drilling company working off the coast of the mangroves, I think Peruvian, that they´re fighting against as well. In addition, I learned that the Municipality isn´t privatizing their entire water system but rather are maintaining ownership of the water system itself. However, they are privatizing the management of the water distribution and fee system. There are 4 different companies competing for the management rights, which is the ideal situation that benefits community members because competition means lower prices for consumers. Having a private company manage the fee system also may lead to greater efficiency of service.

Hearing all of that made me excited as well as nervous: the bar is set pretty high already for me! I have so much respect for this Municipality and the Mayor. It just seems that they´re doing almost everything "right". Then, the Mayor started talking about the future. That is when he talked about how the mangroves are so important an American has come to live with us. "Ingeniera Carolyn Hwang del Cuerpo de Paz y la Universidad de Michigan!" and thus, U of M got a plug down here, and I am now an engineer. Then I got to stand up and wave to the 300+ people from town gathered there, so now more people know who I am. Good stuff.

Then we ran outside and there were hundreds more people gathered there waiting to start the party. A 10-piece band was there to help us ring in the new year. We all received 12 grapes and a little shot of cheap champagne from the Municipality. As it got to be midnight, we ate the 12 grapes for good luck, chugged the champagne and ran around giving everyone and their mother a kiss on the cheek and a "Feliz Año Nuevo." Unfortunately, I didn´t receive the wise advice from our Medical Officer until today. However, next year I am definitely doing the following:

3) If you want to travel more next year, you have to run around your block with a travel bag (a maleta). If you travel with a mochila, you can do it with that (I think). Here in Lima people do that a lot, and you see at midnight many people running around the block with maletas de viaje. Its fun and funny. (I have done it many times).

4)Very Very Important. In Peru, the lucky New Year color is YELLOW. So you have to wear something yellow. Here in Lima people use a yellow underwear. You cant buy your own underwear, someone else has to buy it for you or it wont work.

He later sent this out in response to a few e-mails he received from volunteers:

You have to get a NEW YELLOW UNDERWEAR. Wearing the same underwear for a few days until it gets yellow DOESN'T WORK. Go get a new one.

Anyhow, next, I cursed myself out for forgetting my fully charged camera battery charging in my room so I missed some great photo ops of all the firecrackers we set off and this spinning firecracker thing. Following tradition, there were also many dummies representing the Year 2005 burning in the streets. As you can imagine, I think I have cancer now after inhaling all those carcinogens from the burning plastic. It was a pretty cool sight, and I´ll download photos to flickr soon. For some reason, I´m not getting this blog to upload photos.

To my dismay, my family then left the party. To my delight, we went home to eat turkey, hot chocolate and panetón. As we sat watching an operatic performance on TV I severely missed not watching the ball drop in NYC, hearing Aude Lang Sang and counting down to midnight. Later, we collected the extended family and headed to the huge party. I danced a lot, as the family likes to point out these days. However, the dancing is super tame. You´re apparently not supposed to touch the other person after a few seconds into dancing and then only our feet and arms move, really. We called it a night at 4:45AM.

The next day we ate more panetón for breakfast and at lunch we started drinking again. Then the 70+ year-old man who boards at our house said he wanted to dance with the “Señorita,” by which he meant me. So we moved everyone upstairs and 1.5 hrs later, people started dancing finally with more family members arriving. So that party went until 9:30PM.

And then the next day I went to a small birthday party of a family member. It started with about 11 people sitting around the table listening to my host dad lecture the birthday boy (who turned 18, I think) about the importance of studying to find a decent job. “Or else you´re going to be a fisherman, like me,” he said ridiculing his life´s work. He then proceeded to talk about how hard it is to be a fisherman and how it doesn´t bring in enough dough to satisfactorily raise a family. Well, happy birthday, birthday boy. At least I got to eat the cake this time.

Now it´s back to work. 6 more days until the Festival!!! Wish me luck, I need it.

Cake is not meant to be eaten

2005-12-28T12:11:00.000-05:00

I give Christmas 2.7 out of 5 stars. Not great, not bad, interesting, yet I would have preferred to be home by far. I woke up the morning of the 24th hoping for lots of Christmas spirit and cheer. Turns out that Reina went into Piura for her college classes as usual, another one of my host sisters had to work, my host brother worked as well, and the rest of the family did other routine-type stuff. So I was left reading alone in my room. After reading about how Jeffrey Sachs ended Bolivia´s hyperinflation and brought Poland´s socialist economy back into the world market, I was feeling a bit nerdy and alone. So I decided to do two things that make me happy: download pictures onto my flickr photo blog to remind myself of the beauty I´ve seen, and then hike/run through a farmland-lined road to exercise, enjoy nature and meet new people. It worked like a charm. I hiked farther than I have in the past and discovered another bend of the river where it is wider and full of ducks, herons and fish. I met a woman who says she`s there every day selling alcoholic chicha to farmers, who I was happy to meet not because she probably contributes to the prevalence of alcoholism in my town, but because I´ll probably see her regularly throughout my next two years worth of hike/jogs.

Then I got home and started doing crunches on my nice straw mat in my room. Reina came in and said, "Are you ready because we´re leaving now." "Now now or like in half an hour now?" "Now now." So I was like, crap, and ran to the shower to rinse off really quickly, dashed back into my room to change and was ready in 15 minutes. More than 4 hours later, after eating a juicy delicious mango, getting frustrated because the phone card company was severely malfunctioning so I couldn´t call my family and a really long nap, we finally left the house. I thought we were going to midnight mass and that was still what my family was implying. We went to a nearby town to a party that celebrated the baptism of two kids. We were there until 1:30AM. Oh well, I guess I still haven`t had a religious Christmas. Instead, I spent the night denying extremely drunk men a dance, dancing with respectable men of the family I already knew, eyeing a cake that we never ate, unsuccessfully aiming my pee into this little drainage hole that was in the so-called bathroom, and eating not so tasty food. Although the turkey wing I ate, that had been ripped off the body with my host aunt´s bare hands, was pretty yummy. I hear in NY my family was eating the tri-colored cake cookies that are oh so tasty, so I´m jealous. All in all, I definitely did some bonding with the extended family, especially with the females because we´d laugh at each other each time one of the repulsive drunk men would ask us to dance.

Then I spent two Vacation Days in Piura with 5 other volunteers from my group. We did almost nothing but eat soft serve ice cream sundaes, drink fruit juices, check our mail and pick up packages, talk about Christmas and our sites, swat at swarms of mosquitoes, call other volunteers on our cell phones, watch King Kong in a really nice theatre, and just really enjoy each other´s company. I hated King Kong. I liked the middle part that was very Lord of the Rings-ish, and I love Jack Black. However, 1) It was extremely racist, 2) It makes me hate people, 3) King Kong dies and no one warned me.

So I´m back in my town, back to my counterpart asking me to do 5 non-logical things at once, including translating an article from the Economist about Chile, Peru and mining (how do you say foreign exchange in Spanish?). All in all, it´s kind of nice to be back. If anything, because I was getting out-of-site guilt, which I hear is inevitable. And especially because I´m totally dry on money.

Saying Bye to Childhood Memories

2005-12-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

Well, yesterday was quite an interesting day. My 19-year old host sister is this year´s Queen of the municipality (you know, like she won the beauty pageant). For that, she gets a code name in this blog: "Reina". So as part of her charitable duties, Reina was in charge of hosting a chocolatada yesterday. A chocolatada is when all the kids in the neighborhood bring their own cup for a scoop of hot chocolate and receive a slice of panetón and a brand new toy. My host family has been buying little plastic toys for days now but they were still worried that they would run out. People around here have on average 5 kids per family, but it´s not too rare to have a family with 10 kids. In other words, there´s a LOT of kids who need toys.

I came back an hour before showtime to help out. I found my host mom in the kitchen with this HUGE vat of water with cloves and cinnamon sticks in it. I helped her throw in 4 bags of powdered chocolate mix, 14 pints of milk and more than a bucket of sugar. Never again will I use a can opener. All you need is a big kitchen knife to pound two slits into the top of the can, and pour. We also used what I think was the stick end of a mop to stir it. I felt like a witch, aka very cool, stirring this big vat of chocolate with a huge old stick. Then I helped slice the panetón and stick it into individual baggies with my hands. So maybe I failed in making it a perfectly sanitary and environmentally friendly operation. Next year...

Free presents and food is something nobody can pass up. By the time we started, the whole street was full of kids with their moms or grandpas. During training, we hosted 2 buffets for our Peruvian host families. There we had witnessed the feeding frenzy of the Peruvians that made us all realize why in this culture the hosts serve their guests the portions rather than allow them to help themselves. And oh boy, I got to witness it again. Kids were crowding the door, pushing and shoving, reminding me of my younger days in the mosh pits at Warped Tour. A line was seriously out of the question. I swear one little girl was about to get shoved into the vat of hot chocolate. Eventually my host family had to admit to the kids that there are no more toys left. And then I remembered that I had brought a little baggie from home full of my cheap jewelery and trinkets from childhood. I ran upstairs to retrieve this, hoping at least some more of the niñas could get a Christmas present. I handed it to Reina and she took it, smiling. As I watched her give away my fake Mardi Gras beads, I felt a mad rush of people crowding me. The women of the extended family and my host sisters came up from behind and took the baggie away from Reina. They excitedly grabbed at the jewelery. I watched them try on my plastic rainbow rings that made me feel cool, my teddy bear ring with a heart carved into it that I never really liked anyhow, the first piece of jewelery I ever picked out for myself that my dad bought for me at a Chinese culture fair, a cheap silver necklace with fake white and blue gemstones that I ordered from my sister´s high school fundraiser, my silver butterfly-shaped bobby pins that reminded me of summer camp with Mary and Parijat, my clay necklace with a daisy painted onto it that I bought from Claire´s Accessories, a yellow My Little Pony charm that I used to play with, and more memories of my childhood. One by one, the ladies smiled their thanks at me, admiring their new prizes displayed on their fingers like diamond wedding rings. I finally sat down and drank some hot chocolate, feeling more surprised than annoyed. These were the jewelery pieces of my childhood. As in I wouldn´t wear them anymore. I brought them to Perú because otherwise I would have thrown them in the garbage during house cleaning. Rather than send more things to the landfill, I had figured I could reuse them to make little girls who lack money smile. Never would I have imagined that I would be seeing them on the grown-up fingers of my extended host family, to be reminded of these childhood memories day after day.

In the end, I´m happy that my jewelery was able to bring joy to others. Next year, maybe I´ll have mom send me more crap that we have in piles at home.

Christmas guilt

2005-12-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

"I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity.
Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom.
Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person.
I have a lot to learn from other people."
~ Eduardo Galeano

I read this quote at the bottom of a friend´s e-mail (sup marcia) and it made me think...of the conversation I had this morning with my host mom. "Do the volunteers from Cuerpo de Paz have a canasta?" Meaning, will you guys be giving away panetón, chocolate and presents to children in Piura. Nope, we´re not doing that. In fact, I think I have just enough money to get through the month before my next payday. I hope. I´m broke, I implied to my host mom. Nevertheless, it´s probably more than some people have in these communities. I feel a lot of pressure to give out presents. I feel that if I don´t, people will take me for an uncharitable, stingy Scrooge. Aren´t I here to help the community, after all? Hopefully, physically helping out with these events will be enough. But I´m still going to feel guilty. Maybe next year, I told my host mom, we´ll do a canasta.

So even though I don´t believe in charity in the US because of the impersonal, indirect and unsustainable nature of charity, maybe I´ll dabble in it here as I´m seeing the faces of these cute snot-nosed kids and their big eager eyes staring at all the toys. And then at me.

it´s christmas time, a desperate time of year

2005-12-19T20:55:00.000-05:00

La Navidad is in 5 days. That means only 5 more days left to sell as many candies, street food, wallets, burned dvds, soda, gum, or ice cream as you can. 5 more days left until the deadline of your assignment: to buy panetón for your family to eat, chocolate and milk to drink, and presents for the children.

I´ve been to Piura, the City, way too often these days. The smell of desperation permeates the sun-baked air. It´s a stifling reminder of the poverty surrounding me. At a time when street kids should be excitedly writing letters to Santa, they are knocking on my taxi window with their little boxes of gum to sell. Every time I go, the choking sensation feels worse. More people tapping on my shoulder, more items shoved in the foreigner´s face, more and more desperation confronting me. How different it would feel if I were in the United States.

I´m scared to go back to Piura. In the newspapers, I read about the increase of robberies, shootings, threats, fires, and other sensationalist items that are tricking me into thinking the world is a lot crueller than it really is.

At 4:30PM on Saturday, I boarded a bus after asking the guy who hustles customers and collects money (the cobrador) whether it´s going to Sechura. He hustled me on board. As we left, I was engrossed in my first Newsweek magazine that I get for free from Peace Corps. I excitedly read about Evo Morales, Bolivia´s future president. I am excited -- Latin America´s first 100% indigenous president with a rational-sounding socialist slant. 45 minutes later, I look up and I´m in Sullana. Wrong way. "Te engañó," says my host family. "He deceived you." All for a measly S/.1.50. The friendly couple sitting in front of me hustle me onto a return bus right after I get off.

Waiting for the RIGHT bus at 6:15 in Piura, I met a girl who lives in my municipality. She told me she´s 14 but she seems more like 12. Tiny, probably malnourished. She asks me question after question, the standard questions everyone asks me when we first meet, but more. She seems smart. She is. On the crowded bus ride that we finally catch after waiting for 40 minutes, I hear the cobrador argue with the people in the back that the fare is S/.3.00, not 1. I look back, and realize he´s arguing with my new little friend, completely hidden behind the huge floral funeral wreath that belongs to the old woman next to her. The cobrador is unable to convince her to cough up 2 more soles. I feel embarrassed for her, and want to pay the remaining 2. It´s in my pocket. But I´m held back by the advice we received during training: once you start acting as a sugar daddy, people won´t stop. You´re not here to help people with your money. We get off the bus together, me and my smart little friend. The cobrador gets our stuff off the roof and still argues with her about the remaining 2/3 of her fare. I guess I could have paid then. That night, I debated this until I fell asleep. But it´s one of those split-second decisions you´re forced to make either because of how fast it happens or because of your deliberate stubborn decision to not intervene. Whichever you choose to believe. Whichever makes you feel less guilty.

i can see you...

2005-12-18T17:15:00.000-05:00

I have been watching my dad and, sometimes, the side of my mom´s mouth for about an hour now. Webcams are a wonderful thing, even though they give me a twinge of homesickness. It´s really cute to just watch your dad blink for about an hour...and once in a while look really confused. We would be talking but the connection is staticky. I can hear their voices but can´t make out what they´re saying. I´m just really happy that they can still call me, so I can have a normal phone conversation with them. And still be able to verify that the mask and snorkel they´re sending me are the right ones.

"Alcohol is your enemy, God is your creator"

2005-12-16T15:28:00.000-05:00

Today the Municipality marched through the streets along with hundreds of little schoolkids in uniform against alcoholism, and I ran along with them for more than an hour under the cruel desert sun. Along the way, we tried our best to avoid the horse or donkey poop in various stages of freshness or decay as farmers shooed their little flocks of sheep out of the way. Mototaxis drove by us with kids standing on the back holding up more signs that said "Avoid alcohol and drugs, remember God." This tells you two things:

1) Alcoholism is a problem in my town. My host family tells me that kids as young as 13 are alcoholics. They catch fish, sell their fish to a middle man and then use the money for Cristal (Peruvian beer), not for their family or for food.

2) The Municipality and the community as a whole are very organized and will confront problems with dynamic solutions. I´m always impressed at how many activities the Municipality is responsible for and how well they understand the problems they face. The question is whether their solutions are effective. That´s where I hope to come in, as far as environmental conservation is concerned.

Now I know that my sunscreen rocks. It was also a good time to hang out with the other people at the municipality in a casual setting. I also met some more employees, so that made my week much better. Then afterwards, I had a cold one (Inca Kola, not beer!) at the local restaraunt with a few of them...and they invited me to try ceviche for the first time! Ceviche is raw fish, which is awesome because it´s like I´m eating sushi but not. My stomach feels fine right now, so I think it was clean. It´s a hit or miss dish. Today, it was a hit!

Then during lunch, a woman who works in the community with the local branch of an international development NGO, CARE, walked in and had lunch with me by chance. They have been working on water projects as well as trainings on hygiene and conservation. Their goals reflect my own, so it was very lucky for me that she popped in. She told me that the caseríos (see 2 entries ago) have water 2 hours a day, but that in reality, the quantity of water is sufficient. The problem is that there is a lot of water wasted through people washing their patios, leaving the faucet running, or not fixing leaks. Their solution has been to first make sure every house has a water meter so everyone knows how much water they´re using. Then, the municipality is going to privatize the water system so that people will have to pay for their water. In various communities worldwide, privatization has been hurtful to the water users in the past, cutting off their access to water completely or making them pay a good chunk of their salary for water use. However, if the charges and methodology of payment are fair, in this case, the results might be positive. It´ll be really interesting to see what happens. Another happy thing about my conversation with her: I understood the majority of what she said and was able to sound somewhat intelligent as I spoke.

Anyway, I give this day 4 out of 5 stars.

What I have been learning about myself

2005-12-15T15:20:00.000-05:00

- My body can adapt so that not only am I eating beef and chicken multiple times every day, sometimes enjoying it, and not getting sick, but I am also drinking a full glass of canned milk every morning. Despite some gas, it´s not that bad. I guess I´m not lactose intolerant after all.

- I will drink my glass of mango juice even though I already found 2 sugar ants in it and there are surely more on the bottom.

- I cannot work as someone´s secretary. My counterpart is always focused on what HE needs to get done so I end up getting commanded to make copies, capitalize that, go print it out, etc. and I´m getting pretty fed up with being bossed around like that. Especially since I´m confused about the commands either because I don´t know why I´m doing something or because I don´t understand what he´s saying. I have never been in a work environment where I was doing something without understanding why I´m doing it. It´s mindless and I´ve been trained my whole life to think and question everything. It goes against who I am as a person. I´m not used to this ¨right hand man¨ crap and it´s not what I expected nor what I should be doing as a PCV. Anyhow, that has just been during the creation of the program pamphlet. When that´s done, hopefully things will change.

- I miss dancing. I included a play in the program called "Las Aventuras de la Flamenquita," or "The Adventures of the Little Flamingo" and I have to write it still. It´s going to be a play about mangroves and why kids shouldn´t throw trash in the street. I have visions of myself dancing around in a flamingo costume, leaping and doing arabesques for this play. But no, I´m not writing a dance sequence into it. Sorry to disappoint you.

- I can´t be around people with high blood pressure too often. I just can´t deal with my counterpart´s ¨rush rush rush¨ attitude. It stems from the fact that he is very determined to do his job well but he´s always seeming rushed and it stresses me out. I like to be laid back, especially if there´s absolutely NO reason to rush. What´s worse is that his attitude makes him speak really fast so I often have no idea what he´s saying. Isn´t the American the one who´s supposed to be rushing people!?

Today for the first time in my life, I washed my jeans by hand. I wonder if they´ll feel soapy afterwards.

Church-going China

2005-12-11T16:01:00.000-05:00

OK, I am writing completely distracted because I have a little crowd of onlookers watching me type. So excuse any incoherence.

This morning I woke up and went to Catholic church with my host mom and little sister (well, she has 19 years). Two observations: 1) There was a doberman hanging out in church, lying around, walking back and forth, strolling in and out. Nobody shooed it away, even when it was blocking their way. Dogs in church. Ah, only in Perú. 2) There were no Bibles. I´m pretty sure everyone has a Bible at home, but it was neither provided by the Church nor did they bring it. I don´t know if this is normal in the States, but I´m pretty sure every single church I´ve ever been in has had Bibles behind the benches. I don´t know why this surprised me so much. Anyway, I think I am going to go to church every once in a while just because it´s a huge gathering of people and I want to be seen and meet the community however I can. I´m definitely going to Christmas service, which starts at midnight, by the way. And then they visit family, drink hot chocolate milk and eat ¨panetón,¨ which is this strange-tasting bread with dried fruit in it. However, I´m just praying they don´t try to convert me or baptize me or something. I kind of feel like a fraud in there, but it is interesting to witness. And I think I was only there for an hour.

Yesterday I was in the city of Piura shopping for more stuff for my room and debriefing the week with Prima and the environment volunteer near me who we will call ¨Cactus¨ because she is in the desert desert. Cactus said the following on the subject of regional accents, that I would like to share: ¨I feel like we were learning English from Australians and now we´re living in the Deep South.¨ hahaha. Actually, I would liken Limeña Spanish more to the Brits and Piuran Spanish to the Irish. Peruvians say that Piurans sing when they speak. It just struck me today that yes, they really do ¨sing¨ and it´s just like the Irish. Like the sailor on the Simpsons.

Culture Nudge: we were watching Woody Woodpecker today on TV. Dubbed in Spanish, of course. I told my host dad and 19-year old sister that I used to watch this when I was a kid. My host dad sort of defended adults watching cartoons. He said it´s for destressing. And that sick people should watch this because you feel more like a child. That´s a pretty medically philosophical view of cartoons, huh?

Speaking of host families, my host parents call me ¨China¨ (pronounced ¨CHEE-nah¨). I´m positive they know my real name but they still call me that. It´s pretty funny. So for example, 40 minutes after I´ve been lying in bed the other night, my host mom pops her head into my door-less room and shouts unabashedly, ¨China, here, you need a blanket!¨ And then she throws me a thin fleece blanket despite the 80 degrees in my room. On the other hand, my host sisters call me ¨Ca-roh-leen-eh¨ and I was thinking this was really cute and funny until the other day when I realized they were pronouncing Caroline in Spanish. So I guess I´m getting Caroline even in the other hemisphere.

I went on a two hour walk the other day. I started going down this road, wondering where it would take me. A girl holding her sweater over her head to protect her from the sun told me it was to a caserío, which is a rural population center. As far as I can tell, caseríos are impoverished areas where people work on farms and do other countryside-type economic activities. By living in a caserío, you can take advantage of the opportunities and advantages that come with living near a richer urban area, such as medical posts and customers. It took me about 40 minutes to reach this caserío, which is a part of my municipality. In the future, I might work with those people who stared at me in intimidating crowds. As I strolled peacefully along, I was passed by baffled farmers in donkey carts with corn husks in tow, and by the ubiquitous ¨mototaxis¨ which are motorcycles with a tricycle-like attachment where passengers sit. Besides great exercise, it was spiritually uplifting. I thought I was in a drab city. But the drab city part is a lot smaller than I thought and is surrounded by vast landscapes of farms and desert. Even though the living conditions are poor, my site is beautiful in its simplicity and proximity to nature. I even saw herons patiently waiting in the rice fields. I´m pretty content right now...

2005-12-11T15:47:00.000-05:00

(I WROTE THIS ON DECEMBER 7 BUT THEN HAD COMP PROBLEMS)

Today was a pretty good day for me. My counterpart and I stayed in the Municipality organizing the program for the 7th Annual Mangrove Festival. Using old programs as a guide, we arranged a schedule of events. To my surprise, all the educational events were geared towards the academic and professional crowd. For the general public there were fútbol (soccer) tournaments, volleyball, traditional dance demonstrations, and other cultural things. I easily convinced my counterpart that after the bicycle race to the mangroves, since everyone was going to be at the mangroves, we should provide nature walks to the general public. So I might be giving a guided tour. I´m also going to try to grab other PC volunteers to my site so we can do more kid-oriented, FUN educational activities like plays, environmental relay races, art contests and more. January is their school vacation time, so they have nothing to do besides come to our events. Plus, he wants Prima to come to help give a health talk and I definitely have some in mind that are geared towards mothers and that are related to our environment. He was also really into the idea of offering an organic agriculture or lombricultura (farming using fertilizers from worms) demonstration for the many farmers in the area. So we´ll see which other volunteers I can get to come so we can do a lot of different, more practical activities that target a much more diverse audience than in the past. Today was a great example of how thinking ¨outside the box¨ is just something Peruvians don´t do very often. My counterpart even wanted me to type up the program exactly as they had done it in the past. I, the incorrigible rebel that I am, probably won´t listen to him, and have already made minor changes that make the program easier to read. Ah, the little rebellious changes one can make here. There were a lot of culture shocks for me today...such as the fact that my counterpart wants to set off firecrackers at 6AM on the first day to announce the beginning of the Festival. And that he wants to do a trash clean-up that starts at 8:30AM.

If all goes well, it should be a really great introduction of Cuerpo de Paz volunteers to the general public! It should also be fun reuniting everyone to work on activities. I guess I have a lot of work to do...and a ton of laundry waiting for me at home. Seeya!

Finally, The Journey Begins

2005-12-06T15:50:00.000-05:00

Well, this is the moment that I have been waiting for...getting out of training and into my site! I am feeling pretty tranquil despite all the changes that just happened. It was very sad leaving the crew. Even though we didn´t all grow to become the best of buddies, we all got used to seeing each other every day and having 31 other people to vent to or squeal to or just talk to in a comfortable tongue.

We ¨swore-in¨ on Friday, December 2nd. The second-in-command from the US Embassy office was present and had us repeat the oath after her. Maybe we should´ve read over the oath beforehand because she said the really long sentences without pause. I´m pretty positive I didn´t say half the oath just because I had no idea what it was, and I wasn´t the only one confused. We sounded pretty terrible. Anyway, that made it all seem anti-climatic.

After taking more pictures than I did on my graduation from Michigan, we parted from our host families with much fewer tears than expected, and then got our drink on. We arrived in Lima after getting mooned at least 3 times by fellow volunteers in other buses. We wreaked havoc in the hostel, especially after we started to get our CELL PHONES. Yes, you enter Peace Corps with romantic thoughts of not wanting internet or cell phone, but after 10 weeks of training, you leave all that idealism behind. BTW, incoming international calls are free for me on my cute little Nokia phone that can double as a flashlight. I can also call any Volunteer or any staff member for free since we´re all on the Peruvian equivalent of the Verizon ¨In Plan¨. We´ve already used it for those silly ridiculous reasons, like finding each other in Piura´s gigantic market even though we would´ve found each other after 2 minutes of searching, and calling each other from different departments to tell someone we found yogurt lollipops in the supermarket.

Our last night together, we of course went out to have some fun. Everyone else´s enthusiasm died down pretty quickly however, because everyone had been up packing really late, and drinking early means getting tired early. Well, I was a trooper and was one of the last to leave. That meant I got to experience the most bizarre bar sighting ever. On my way to the restroom around 3AM, this white American woman gets in my face. She is about 45-years old, all smiles, short and fat, wearing a feathery faux-fur overcoat despite being in a hot bar, makeup neatly arranged on her sweaty dark face, circular wire-rimmed glasses, short and crazy hair. ¨Do you speak Spanish?!¨ she yells to me, gripping my arm tightly. ¨Great, I´d like you to meet Armando.¨ Then I see Armando. He is wearing a black velvet costume with red velvet trimmings more appropriate on the stage of a Shakespearean play. Looking down, I see bubble shorts that end in black leggings. What the hell is this, I´m thinking. ¨Armando just became a lawyer. He is very, very smart and he is a very nice boy. He is also (she bend in closer to tell me this juicy secret)...very, very rich. His father is the head of the police of Perú. He needs someone to accompany him. Talk to him!¨ Then I get thrust closer to my real life Bill and Ted´s Excellent Adventure experience. I can´t get the thought out of my head that went like ¨oh, this is what the Incas must have felt when the Spanish conquistadores arrived to their tropical climate in full body armor.¨ Anyhow, I was way to scared of Armando and the rest of his newly minted lawyer buddies/Shakespeare cavalry to entertain him beyond a few sentences. Me and another Piura friend left pretty soon after, hauling back two incredibly drunk girls with us and one incredibly drunk guy. A classic ending to training.

Anyhow, from our group, Perú 6, the new volunteers who will live in Piura include 5 girls, 0 boys...3 in health, 2 of us in environment. Yesterday and the day before, we went on the most grown-up shopping trip of my life...we bought mattresses and bed sheets and tupperware. I still need to buy a bed frame and a nice pillow.

Prima (health) lives very close to me and my counterpart gave her a ride home yesterday when he picked me up in the Municipality truck, even though it was out of the way. She is living in very impoverished conditions, although she does have a toilet rather than a latrine or nothing at all. As we entered her town, we were enveloped in smoke that came from the trash burning in the ditches. Prima told me that was also the community ¨toilet.¨ There are no paved roads and donkeys everywhere. My counterpart commented to me as we left her, ¨she has a lot of work to do. That´s a very poor area.¨ I responded by pointing out the eager crowd of smiling kids that gathered around us as we dropped her off and the warmth of her host mother as she welcomed me to return. ¨That warmth makes living in harsh conditions worth more than living in luxury,¨ I responded. He agreed.

Today I accompanied my counterpart to three different meetings in which I was pretty much useless and just sat there, listening. I guess I don´t so much mind but I do wish I understood more of what was going on. I´m sure it´ll get better...we´re coordinating a 2-day workshop on Valuing International Environmental Goods and Services of Protected Areas and Ecosystems. We have someone from the Economics Department of the University of Piura coming as well as someone from the governmental branch in charge of protected areas. That´s all fine but I can´t wait to get my hands dirty with something less academic that targets community members rather than the professional community of Piura. I´ll just have to be patient...well, I better go. I have a lot of people to meet!!

My New Contact Info

2005-12-02T12:26:00.000-05:00

Carolyn Hwang
Cuerpo de Paz
Casilla Postal No. 132
Serpost Piura
Piura, Perú

- Please do not send packages over 1.1 lbs or else I have to pay lots of money. Books are delivered without problems, however.
- For packages, on the customs form only write ¨gifts¨ that are valued under ¨$100¨...and never ¨used clothes¨ since there are a lot of people selling used clothes from the US as a business here. They´ll make me pay lots of money.
- If you send me expensive technology or electronics they´ll make me pay lots of money. So don´t do that please.
- The slowest month for the post office is Dec 1 - Dec 31st.
- Sometimes packages get lost. :o(

And that´s everything I learned about mail the other day. Today is ¨swearing-in day¨ which means I get to swear that I will protect my country against all enemies, both domestic and foreign so help me God. This is the part of service that almost prevented me from signing up for Peace Corps...that language makes me very uncomfortable. However, I´m not going to say ¨so help me God¨ today and I crossed out that line on the pledge I had to sign, and it seems to be ok with the Man.

We have to sing the national anthem. I realized the other week that I don´t actually know all the lyrics to it. Nor do I know what ¨ramparts¨ mean and neither did the other handful of volunteers I asked. Anyone got a clue?

Well today we spend the night in Lima, tomorrow night we start traveling to Piura and then I have half a day to find a bed so I can move in on Monday. I´m excited and nervous but most of all, just open minded and eager for what lies ahead....my number one goal is to begin developing ¨confianza¨ with my family. ¨Confianza¨ means trust, and it´s an important concept in Perú. Without confianza, nobody will open up to you, which makes it essential if you want to get anything done. But I really hope to develop a trusting, positive environment in my house where I am seen as part of the family. It´s more important than anything else. I think it will take work since I´m going to the coast and not to the Sierra. We´ll see!

Little things that make me happy

2005-11-28T22:11:00.000-05:00

I haven´t checked my e-mail in a long time since my host mom hasn´t paid her internet bill, and probably won´t before I leave. The down side is that my parents just got a webcam and we had a fun conversation the other day while being able to see each other...so we weren´t able to use the webcam this week. The upside is that I had long e-mails from about 7 different people waiting for me updating me about their life. Hooray for thoughtful e-mails! (By the way, I´ll respond later this week...I´m getting kicked out of the internet cabina now).

Today we watched a movie with Tom Hanks and Jon Candy called ¨Volunteers¨ which made fun of Peace Corps. They both played PC volunteers in Thailand during the 60s and had a run in with some commies and the CIA. We all loved the film, especially the scenes of the volunteers talking about how they were going to save the poor, oppressed people and commanding them to cut down sacred trees to build a bridge. Best scene ever: Tom Hanks, who plays a rich spoiled Yalie, gets on the PC plane without wanting to do PC, and all the volunteers are swaying back and forth singing ¨Michael Row Your Boat Ashore¨ and then ¨Puff the Magic Dragon.¨

Happy Turkey Day!

2005-11-24T20:11:00.000-05:00

Today started off with my host mom accusing me of leaving one of her precious forks (her ¨bebitos¨) at the Training Center (I swear I didn`t do it) and Prima´s mom nagging me for leaving my cup in her kitchen for a moment because she doesn´t want a ¨fight with upstairs,¨ as in with my host mom. What happened to not caring about material goods in good old South America, land of living simply? I can´t wait to move further away from Lima. Hopefully in Piura the culture will be different -- no caring so much about your plates and forks and no nagging about the little things. I can´t stand the nagging...I just want everyone to be laid back about the little things, and then things will be much more tranquilo. Do I sound like a hippie now?

Despite all the nagging, I ended up having a great Thanksgiving. There`s nothing like the holidays to make a Peace Corps trainee/volunteer homesick, but then again there`s nothing like mounds of delicious Thanksgiving Day food to make you happy. Feeling a bit melancholy last night, I decided to make french toast for breakfast since I bought Aunt Jemima syrup near Lima the other day. Ahhh, comfort food works like a charm!!! As for Thanksgiving and cooking for the training crew, I ended up not making the pumpkin pies and made my own little creation of crepes. First, I found a ¨recipe¨ for sour cream, which said ¨combine 250mL of cream with 2 limones (little limes) and stir,¨ and it worked like a charm. Weird, huh! Then I sauteéd the rest of my spinach and mushrooms with butter, sugar and a bit of pepper. I made a pancake batter and semi-successfully tried to modify it for a more crepe-like texture with extra sugar and made about 10 huge thin pancakes (well, 13, but I ate 3). So most of my crepes were with sour cream, spinach and mushrooms. It wasn´t a lot so then I also sauteéd the rest of the mushrooms with onions and rolled that up with slices of mozzarella cheese. The crew really liked them and I got the best type of compliment -- the type when someone compliments your food without realizing you were the chef! Because then you know they were honest. Anyhow, we gave ourselves a wonderful Tgiving feast. The turkey team did an amazing job with the turkey that incorporated Cajun spices and was so juicy...since I was a vegetarian before, it was my first Thanksgiving eating the turkey for four years! I gorged myself on cranberry sauce, 3 types of mashed potatoes, Shepherd`s pie, spinach quiche, American corn, 3 types of delicious sweet potato pie/candied yams, chick pea masala, samoas (yes, the Indian empanada thing!), mac and cheese, mud pie with real marshmallows, chocolate cracker layer cake, pumpkin pie, strawberry smoothie and I didn´t even have room for the salad, fruit salad, Cantonese-style fried rice, green beans, stuffing, pineapple upside down cake, pumpkin cake, and other stuff. At the end, we took a picture showing off our food babies as I threatened everyone that I was about to ¨dar la luz¨ if you know Spanish, haha (it means to give birth). We did a great job pampering our new extended family...HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!!

Pre-storm Doldrums

2005-11-23T17:29:00.000-05:00

Returning to training after essentially going on vacation and visiting our sites is really hard, like they said it would be. I am completely unmotivated by anything that does not have to do with mangroves or Spanish grammar. Yesterday I was in a negative and cranky mood, like a lot of other people have been in fact, and I decided that I needed to get out and exercise as a solution. That did the trick, although my exercise was just walking to the Training Center really fast and sprinting up all the 181 stairs. Then I went to the nearby big town to send a letter to my friend doing Corps de Paix in Mauritania, West Africa. We feel really cool sending stuff to each other...and props to her because she has sent me my only letter here! Thanks to my sister for the pair of panties I got in the mail today that says Nice Catch and has a picture of a fish on it.

Anyhow, these days have been spent preparing for our group Thanksgiving Dinner tomorrow. We have the day off to cook. I´m going to help make pumpkin pies. Yesterday I also bought spinach, mushrooms and mozzarella cheese, so I think Prima and I are going to bake pizzas tonight. We are like eating partners. We´re the ones in the cake aisle squealing because everything looks so delicious. We ate a piece of something like a flan yesterday that had a cheescake texture -- it was to die for.

Sorry I haven´t posted pictures up yet -- my host mom didn´t pay for the internet for the moth yet, so ours is down.

I am a shamefully spoiled, spoiled girl

2005-11-17T13:48:00.000-05:00

Ah, how nice it is to know that I don´t have to travel in the next few weeks...I must say though, the buses that I took were all quite comfortable. Peace Corps even treated us to first-class seats on the 11-hr trip back to Lima. The suede seats were more spacious than first-class seats on airplanes. Even more impressive, the chicken and rice dinner they served us was tasty AND there was soap and toilet paper in the bathroom all 4 times I went.

Talking to the other volunteers, I realize that my experience is completely different from everyone else´s experience. Some trainees are in towns of a few hundred people. As such, a handful of them were received with a huge party thrown on their behalf that the entire town attended. Some had a big reception that featured the mayor and they had to give a speech as well. Others had people knocking on their windows to say hi. My reception was definitely tame -- almost nonexistent -- compared to those festivities. I guess it doesn´t make me like my site less, but I do hope that in the future, I´ll find warm people behind the scrap metal doors of my town. Before coming to Perú, I definitely envisioned being overwhelmed with the town´s hospitality. So it was strange to eat my meals either alone watching cheesy telenovelas, or with the three (bored, they wanted dancing) Cuban doctors that came to provide free medical consultations. I figure that it´s just the formality that I´ll break down later when I move in. Some trainees think that people in my town are just scared of me, since I´m the first American in town, although they undoubtedly all think I´m Chinese or Japanese.

Also, as I suspected, I have a much nicer house than most people, maybe because I´m working for the municipality. Most people I believe have latrines (squat pseudo-toilets!) that are shared with everyone in town. One volunteer even clogged her town´s latrine up already! Some people need to dig holes and cover it up again, like a cat. Some people only have water a few hours a week. Some people live hours away from the capital city and don´t have easy public transportation options into town. I´m about 40 minutes away and there are mototaxis lined up outside my doorstep. Piura, the City, is really nice and modern. They have great food, both Peruvian and American (I still have to look for Indian and Thai, however). It´s also clean and it seems safe.

Another reason why I´m spoiled: I have free internet access. The municipality recently built a complex with an auditorium, library and internet center. Apparently, the alcalde (mayor) told my host sister who works there that whenever I come, I can use the computers for free, rather than the 1 sole per hour rate. They are very advanced, fast computers.

I AM excited to have my settling-in allowance, which is a sizeable allowance. I´m going to buy a bed. They loaned me the brother´s during my visit...they´re kicking him out of his room and moving me in, but I´m going to buy my own bed. I also plan on buying shelves, pretty artisan tapestries, a nice reading chair, pretty candles (there were blackouts), lights (there was no light at night except there´s a streetlight right outside my window), a boombox, maybe a little gas stove so I can cook in peace, picture frames for the walls, and I might paint them after a few months if I feel that I´ll be staying for a while. The nearby town of Catacaos is a tourist hotspot because there are a lot of artisans that make ceramic pottery, straw hats and furniture, and silver and gold jewelery. Anyway, I´m excited to create my own living space, and have the money to do it! Ooh, I am so spoiled. And I am not thrilled about it. Especially because poverty exists in my community. What I had been hoping to do was to live like the people I would be targeting with my work. Well, maybe after a year, I´ll move to the municipality´s fishing village. I´m sure I won´t have two bathrooms and a tiled room there! AND I´ll be right next to the ocean.

At the very least, I am comforted by the fact that I should (hopefully) be extremely busy. I have a lot of ideas on building up the ecotourism infrastructure that my counterpart is excited about, but it will all take time. We´ll see.

ps

2005-11-15T18:14:00.000-05:00

Oh, and did I mention that on my first day in the municipality office, after the first 15 minutes, a local radio reporter showed up and eagerly shoved a tape recorder next to my mouth? Thank goodness I´m used to talking to press because doing it in Spanish is intimidating in itself. I had a cheat sheet aka the work plan in front of me though. I read it when I had to say hard words like ¨fortalecimiento¨ and ¨concietización.¨ haha. But don´t worry Peace Corps, I only said what I was going to do (although I really didn´t have a clear idea yet). Nothing about politics! Ah, talking to the press. Reminds me of the good old days.

Crazy days

2005-11-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

As I am writing, I see the reflections of little faces curiously peeking at my computer screen, trying to learn what sort of crazy magic the ¨China¨ does online...

So the past few days have been crazy ups and downs. I stayed with a current youth development volunteer near Huaráz along with two other fellow trainees. We had a very relaxing time taking pictures in her idyllic little Sierra town where you could see the snow-capped Huascarán mountain looming large, even though it was very far away. When we asked the wrinkled old women if we could take their photo and the wrinkled old men the name of the river, they answered, ¨No sé.¨ ¨I don´t know.¨ As in, ¨I don´t know Spanish, I speak Quechua, but I´ll smile and look cute anyway.¨ Despite the beauty of where this volunteer lived, I did not envy her. She seemed to have more down time than work time. I would personally feel unfulfilled if my only responsibilities were to teach computer classes. In the next two years, I hope to see concrete, physical changes as a result of my labor along with the gradual knowledge and mindset changes, which are inevitable.

Next, our entire environment training class went to Huascarán, which is actually one of our new sites. The girl who will be working with Parque Nacional de Huascarán received the warmest, most exciting welcome possible. The staff constantly acknowledged her, thanked her, and reminded us that the National Park itself was initiated with the help of two Peace Corps volunteers in 1975. Not only is her site historic for Peace Corps, it´s the third highest peak in South America, drawing 400 tourists every day. It´s breathtaking. Again, I´m very thrilled for her because this is her dream site, but it´s definitely not where I want to be.

The day after Huascarán, I decided to become really ill. I barfed a little in the morning and thought I was getting better. Ooh, was I wrong. As I sat in a municipal office listening to the beginning of what I´m sure was a great presentation about one town´s trash disposal system, I ran out the door and violently vomited all over the municipal office´s nice clean floor. Good thing it was Sunday, so there weren´t any staff around, just the Peace Corps Regional Coordinator trying to drag my dying body into the bathroom. Everyone in the talk heard me, however, which included the Mayor himself. Ugh. Well I called it quits for the day and slept for a long time in a nice little hostel. After my third time barfing, we finally got a hold of the doctor (cell phone problems!) who informed me that if I barfed one more time, I´d have to go to a clinic for an IV before I were too weak to even walk into the clinic. If so, I definitely couldn´t go to Piura for my site visit. So the loveable but oh-too-talkative-when-I´m-sick Regional Coordinator ran out (literally, she ran, she ran all day getting me medicine, water and jell-o) to get me more medicine. At that point, I started to use mind-over-matter techniques where I envisioned my intestines absorbing water in a very happy way. I slept sitting up because Doc said all the water and jell-o I was eating would just come back up. Finally, I peed, a sign that my body absorbed water!! I didn´t have to get hooked up to an IV!! I have never had to receive emergency medical care after my birth, and I swore it wouldn´t be that day. Then I found out that I´d be under observation until 6PM, when they would decide whether or not I was healthy enough to travel for 17 hours on winding mountain roads (3 transfers!!!). At 6:10, I arrived in the staff vehicle to Huaráz to meet the other trainees, and asked if I had enough time to go buy dinner. That question made everyone cheer, which meant I was going to Piura that night! I bought pancakes even though my Program Director said ¨no grease, no eggs, no milk, no butter, no fruit, no meat, pasta with maybe a little tomato sauce but nothing else, nothing raw. Right, nothing with flavor.¨

So 17 hours later, I was vomit-less but with a weird acidic feeling in my empty stomach. ¡Piura! Por fin. Finally. My counterpart from the municipality met me in a hostel where I had taken a hot shower and more antacid pills. Still, I wasn´t feeling too hot as we drove through the barren desert with stout algarrobo (locust??) trees dispersed here and there, along with miles of wind-blown trash. He left me at my homestay´s house to settle in. I tried conversing with my new family, but the burning feeling in my belly made me completely unenergetic. It hurt to say long sentences or to laugh. I gave up, and slept until they called me for dinner. I ate maybe less than one-sixth of what they gave me. Too bad, because what I ate of the fried plaintain, tamale, saucy rice and fried chicken tasted pretty good.

Anyway, yesterday I felt better and today I feel a million times better. Enough with the health talk.

So what am I going to do?? Ah, wow. In summary, my counterpart wants me to:
- help them delineate the border of the mangrove sanctuary that is under their authority
- organize a forum where we will invite the congressperson who wrote a bill in favor of exploring biotechnology in Perú
- during the forum, be one of five people who respond to the congressperson´s hour-long speech
- research biotechnology and Genetically Modified Organisms
- supervise along with him a competition of reporters who will write articles about the importance of mangroves
- supervise along with him a competition of artesans
- facilitate a course about international environmental goods and services derived from natural areas
- hold a workshop for teachers about the importance of mangroves
- give more educational workshops in March about something

Most of that stuff is supposed to occur Jan 9-15, when this little city will host its annual Mangrove Festival. So this is just the beginning.

During training, we were told that we should spend the first 3 months getting to know the community but not to do too much. I´m obviously an exception because Mr. Counterpart wants me to do stuff during training, even. I certainly like him and think we´ll get along just fine -- his enthusiasm is great and he´s super dedicated to his job. However, I told him that I can´t speak at this forum because it would be meddling into politics (afterwards, they will send the summary of the forum to everyone in Congress). As for the other stuff, it´s not what I would love to do, but it´ll be an interesting educational experience. And anyhow, this is only until January 15th. All this academic-sounding stuff made me a little intimidated yesterday, but I figure I can read up about everything really quickly and learn all the necessary vocabulary and then be fine. Forget about training, where we learned to do puppet shows for kids and make eye-catching posters. I´ll do that after January 15th, I guess! I certainly have my own ideas as to what I want to do...but I´ll be patient.

As for my host family, they live in a really nice house. I mean, it´s recently renovated and has nice tile. And has water 24 hrs-day thanks to a water tank on their roof. And warm water every 6 hours of the day. The family consists of 3 daughters and a son from the ages of 18-26. They are all very reserved but I think that with time, they´ll open up. Not the living experience I had been expecting...not the activities I had been expecting to do...but that´s Peace Corps for ya.

To end on a really great note, I visited the mangroves today. They are gorgeous! After driving through the barren desert, the unimpressive dry forest, and more sand, I suddenly saw big pink flamingoes flying, huge flocks of herons, gulls and terns grazing the sky and lots more sea birds. I´ll describe this more when I post pictures...but it was beautiful with lots of photo ops. It´s a strange feeling to be stepping on desert dunes with the wind blowing piles of sand in your face and at the same time gazing at the lapping ocean...

Whew, I think that will keep y´all occupied enough. Now go back to work, you procrastinator!

I´m going to the hot mangroves of Piura!

2005-11-08T16:07:00.000-05:00

I am going to Piura ! It´s in Northern Perú, relatively close to Ecuador. I was the second to last trainee to find out my site. By the time I was standing next to the environment director waiting for the magic words, my pulse was kicking at full speed due to a restless night of anticipation, a quick cup of chugged coffee and built up anxiety over being sent to Lima or somewhere cold. The first thing he said to me was, ¨Carolyn will be working with mangroves...¨ and I started jumping up and down like a ridiculous little bunny and gave him a gigantic hug before even knowing my department. It turns out that I´ll be within running distance of Prima, which is definitely a plus! The other people who will be with me in my department are also very cool. The people I´ll be around are very important, so I am definitely satisfied.

So I´ll be about 1 hour from the ocean, which isn´t bad because I´ll be 20 minutes away from mangroves, which are a critical habitat in a marine ecosystem. It´s where little fish and sea creatures grow up and hide from predators. Mangroves are also important to prevent erosion or flooding. I´ll actually be working with a municipal government on a protected area of these mangroves! There are many different stakeholders that I will have the opportunity to work with, and many options open to me. Plus, there is a big international mangrove conference coming up in January that I can work on right away. I´ll let you know more about it after I visit my site. Tonight I´ll be visiting the cold mountains but later I´ll be going to my actual site! Kudos to my director for really knowing what I would´ve wanted. He pretty much satisfied almost everything I said I wanted.

Sorry, Dad, I´m about 14-17 hours away by bus. But there´s an airport nearby!

Wish me luck!

Pictures are up!

2005-11-05T14:29:00.000-05:00

So today I am home alone with Miles Davis, The Slackers and Billy Bragg & Wilco. I spent about 3 hours uploading pictures to my flickr site, so check it out! The link is on the link bar on the right. On the flickr site, I organized the pictures into photo albums (sets), which is the recommended method of viewing my photos since I tried to make it logical. When you go through the slide show, if you click on the photo, it will become smaller and you can see the title and caption I assigned to it. Then click ¨Resume slideshow.¨

The rollercoaster has begun

2005-11-04T19:13:00.000-05:00

So Peace Corps really let´s you know that training and the next two years will be like a roller coaster ride of emotions. Happy times mixed with sad times. I didn´t really think it was any more like a rollercoaster than at home until the past few days. Yesterday, one of my favorite people in our training group left. She is the third person to leave, making our group size 31 (Environment has not lost any trainees, so we´re still 18). I felt really depressed about her leaving since I felt that she and I were going to be really good friends over the next two years. Due to the nature of PC, you really cherish the good friendships that you can make in country. So that was a big blow for me. After hugging her goodbye, Prima, Borracha, and I did our ¨teatro¨ (play) for a very poor community where the houses don´t have running water or bathrooms. They don´t even have proper walls or rooves. I described this community earlier. It is sizeable...there might be about 250 houses or so, although I´m a terrible estimator. Yesterday I learned that there are only a handful of latrines that serve the entire community. As we drove up the steep mountainside up the rocky, unpaved road, we went to the concrete fútbol field (cancha) where we were supposed to do our teatro as part of a program organized by the local Health Center. We waited on the cancha as some kids surrounded us shouting the title of our play. Prima and Borracha had done the play already that morning for the local school as part of their health group project. Another trainee who I will call ¨Presidente,¨ since he is the President of the trainee´s association (it´s supposed to simulate a real Peruvian association), joined us as the narrator. As I fearfully watched kids run down the dry mountain slope of loose dirt that had an almost vertical incline, other kids told us that some Americans are supposed to do something down the road, and people are waiting there. Of course Americans had to be us, so we moved all of our stuff down the road and found a bunch of waiting Peruvian mothers and a billion kids next to two blue tents. As we waited for the Health Center to arrive, we figured we should do something with the kids. Thanks to Mrs. Berkowitz, my elementary school Hebrew teacher, I knew that this would be the perfect time to play ¨Red Light, Green Light, 1, 2, 3.¨ It was so much fun and they were so excited to play. Then a van came and lo and behold, we found out that other Americans were there to provide free medical care and medicine to this community. Ah, that´s why Peruvians are more than on time to an event...so off we went again to the cancha. There we found our contacts from the Health Center setting up a large carnival-like tent, an impossible task with the fierce wind blowing. We were high up in the mountains during the time when the wind is strongest, and it was a really stupid idea to have a tent like that. Anyhow, it provided the kids with a huge toy to play with. They were running in and out of the tent, hanging onto it so it wouldn´t blow away, climbing up the basketball hoop, landing on top of the tent and whatever amused them. Those kids need a playground, and they need it badly. At first, there was hardly anyone there. I mean, how can lectures about nutrition and maintenance of food compete with free medical care?? But slowly, as the Health Center gave their talks, people started trickling in. Two of the Soup Kitchens showed up to take part in our ¨healthy food entreé competition¨(un concurso de comidas). By the time we started our play, we had about 20 mothers there, maybe 40 kids, Borracha´s mom and family friend, and 2 people from the PC Training Center. Despite screwing up a lot of lines and me sniffling the whole time because of the wind and the dust, we had a great time and the kids loved it. The play was about a girl who loves being dirty, eats without washing her hands, gets sick and learns how to wash her hands. I was the mother and acted like an overprotective mother in a telenovela-ish style (aka dramatic). I wore traditional clothing from Ancash, a department in the Sierra. Prima was my daughter, the main character, and she got to pretend to poop and diarrhea 3 times using wet dirt. Borracha was a parasite that ran around the crowd scaring little kids. Presidente was the narrator and Doctor who started the night off by making everyone shake their hips. Afterwards, the Soup Kitchens gave us portions of the food they prepared. I felt so guilty eating their food while all these poor little kids were watching us, probably super hungry. I remembered learning that the teacher in that community had said the kids have a hard time concentrating in class because they come to school hungry and leave school hungrier. Even though my food was delicious, I just wanted to give it to all those kids, but it would´ve been extremely rude. Our consolation was the fact that we provided both soup kitchens with many prizes. In a large market bag they use here, we had stuffed mandarin oranges, onions, garlic, sugar, oil, dish detergent, hand soap and a book with a PC cult following, ¨Dónde No Hay Doctor,¨ (Where There is No Doctor), which is a book that explains how to care for hurt or sick people without being able to get immediate medical care. I hope they thought it was an awesome prize, and that everything will be of use to them. In the future, I will be returning to this community because I have begun visiting the childcare centers here. The kids kept on asking me when I would return, so it was nice to be able to say, ¨in two weeks,¨ rather than ¨seeya, good luck for the rest of your hard life.¨

How to celebrate Halloween like a budding ex-pat

2005-11-01T18:04:00.000-05:00

1. Feel sorry for Prima´s 10-year old host brother who is really excited to celebrate Halloween but only has us to celebrate with.
2. Dress up even though you said you already dressed up on Saturday and won´t dress up again.
3. Throw on a beach dress and put a white camisole tank top over it. Wear flip flops. Tie your ponytail of thin, long hair at the very top of your head so your hair sticks out. Wear a hat for pictures. Put on sunglasses. Keep your headphones around your neck. Throw your pack towel (beach towel-looking) around your shoulder. Take your camera with you to use as a prop. Most importantly, apply a thick white layer of sunblock on your nose. And say you are a ¨turista americana.¨ An American Tourist.
4. Take funny pictures with your host cousin and Prima.
5. Play charades and a quick round of Pictionary.
6. Leave for Borracha´s house to play pool with the gang.
7. Drink something called ¨XXX¨ that has a picture of a girl in a thong bikini on it.
8. Dance with the 9-year olds and the PC gang congregated at Borracha´s house.
9. Tell everyone you´re not going to the discoteca with them.
10. Go home, change your mind, put a black t-shirt on, leave the other parts of the costume behind, go to the bathroom without toilet paper because your host mom decided to remove the roll from your private bathroom, grab just enough money for transportation and cover charge. Decide to leave your coat behind.
11. Figure out where the gang went to catch a combi bus by asking people on the street where the gringoes went.
12. Get there just in time to see a packed combi bus across the highway and your friend´s host sister waving you on, and run across the highway (after looking both ways) and just make it in time.
13. Realize that the ¨discoteca¨ is an outdoor space with a stage and a roof. Take your 6´7¨ friend´s long-sleeve t-shirt because you´re cold and wrongly think that there´s no way any Peruvian wants to dance with you now. Thank God for chivalry.
14. Be a wing-girl for the night. Laugh at your friend realize that all the guys hitting on her are 16.
15. Dance to salsa, merengue, reggaeton, Latin pop, ¨rock¨, and other music Peruvians like.
16. When the headliner band plays, stay right in front of the stage with your friends who each have a Peruvian dance partner. Yours is a Peruvian in the PC host family circle who has spent the night with a hula skirt (made of a plastic bag that an environment volunteer made) over his head. Embrace the fact that he just wants to dance and have fun. Be shocked when the band plays a few ska songs and watch Peruvians skank. Join in on the jumping up and down and being silly.
17. Be upset because it´s so cold you can see your breath.
18. Walk home with Borracha as the sun is starting to light up the sky behind the mountains at 5:15AM.
19. Realize your host uncle dead-bolted the door behind him when he returned home at 1AM from partying in Lima.
20. Ring the doorbell and knock on the window because you´re too damn cold to care.
21. Wake up 5 hours later and have your host family say ¨Buenas noches¨ to you in a sarcastic yet very amused manner.
22. Go to town to spend 2 hours buying chocolate, roasted peanuts, milk, dried coconut, etc. for an experimental dessert you´ll make with Prima. Find out later from your host mom that flour is not meant to be eaten raw, but again be too tired to care.
23. Take a nap.

I am a sober pirate grandma

2005-10-30T12:49:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had a Halloween party at a trainee`s house. I was a pirate, of course. First, I went with Borracha and Prima to a pre-party of pasta-making and spiked milkshake-making. It`s so strange to watch 8-year old kids taste alcoholic beverages and dance around with drunk 20-something year olds. In the U.S., that would make a mother faint and call the police. Despite an initial cultural shock, I had fun. After some crazy dancing for the love of fun and good music, we went to the actual party. Any sort of buzz I felt was ruined by my mom-like instincts trying to prevent Peruvian strangers from getting too cozy with my drunk gringa sisters dressed all cute and sexy with their bare legs and shoulders. Finally, we arrived at the party and there was a bonfire...and ingredients for s`mores. I had about 4 or 5! Yummmmm...I think I eat more sweets here than in the States just because I feel that they`re not readily available. I had a good time but felt really old even though I am one of the younger trainees here. But never fear, I had my share of dancing, taking pictures, good conversations...and gossiping, haha. Finally, we were able to herd the crowd into a taxi home and I went to bed the latest ever while here: 2:20AM. Yup, late for grandma!

To backtrack a little and touch on a topic a little more serious, on Thursday, the environment group went to barrios (small towns) outside of Chincha. Chincha is in the department of Ica, which is where I wanted my site to be (I`m not so sure now because my best friends here are going way north to Piura and Lambayeque). Chincha is famous for its relatively high concentration of Afro-Peruvians. They are the descendants of Africans who were brought over as -- what else -- slaves. I was hoping to see some of their traditional dance, but we didn`t have time for it, but did have some traditional food. The meal consisted of green noodles with a red (tomato?) sauce with potatoes and pork. I picked out the potatoes and thoroughly enjoyed my noodles. I drank the too-sweet purple chicha, which is a Peruvian drink made of corn. There are many types of chicha, and some are alcoholic and some are not.

Anyway, in the morning we were introduced to a succesful waste collection system that was started by a community NGO. They collect garbage, recyclables and organic waste on separate days. We helped them separate the recycling materials, create compost from the organic waste and learned about a used clothing store they established in the town to provide funds for the program. Thanks to this program, there is much less trash in the rivers and on the streets. There is much more community pride for a clean town. Plus, they are on their way to making a profit because they can make money by taking recyclables to Lima. The compost is used in townspeople`s gardens. It might actually turn out to be a site for one of us. In the afternoon, we went to ¨Campo de los Niños,¨ which I`m pretty sure is an actual site. Basically, an NGO is trying to get 1% of Peru`s children to be responsible for decision-making about a piece of land with the purpose of fostering strong moral values that will consequently ingrain them with an appreciation for the environment. This site used to be a piece of land with trash strewn all about. The children drew pictures of how they wanted the land to look, picked the best ideas, and went to work. Now there are fútbol (soccer) fields, a playground, a peaceful room made of bamboo for meetings, gardens of corn, flowers and alfalfa, an incipient mini-zoo for forest animals, and cages where they breed cuy (guinea pigs, which Peruvians eat) and rabbits. In the future, they may be able to provide more food for these children of poor farmers and fishers. After being guided around the ¨Campo¨ by our young guides, and with each group followed by 20-30 other animated children, we played games with all 150 or so of them in the adjacent schoolhouse. One little girl decided to attach herself to me, and she became my little companion who held my hand and dragged me everywhere. It was great to see the kids running around and doing whatever they wanted to do. They were so spirited and happy. By the time we left, 30 kids kissed each of us goodbye on the right cheek, the customary way of saying hello and goodbye. On our four-hour bus ride home, we passed through majestic desert dunes on our right and the beautiful Pacific Ocean on our left with the sun setting elegantly above. If I were assigned to be there, I think I would be content.

The death of a duck

2005-10-25T19:18:00.000-05:00

After a meeting at the local Health Center this morning, I decided to go visit the man who is my ¨Community Contact Experience.¨ The CCE is basically a project where I am supposed to befriend someone in the community and talk about the environment. So I chose this man who lives across the train tracks from me. I`ll call him Petey, which is a close English translation of his actual nickname. My host mom introduced us because I was initially looking for someone with a garden. She thought he had one, but it turns out that his garden consists of one coffee tree, one palm tree, one avocado tree, one mango tree, and one of other things. Beyond this ¨singular¨ garden live ducks, chicks, hens and fighting roosters he raises for sale. Retired from working the mines of Ica, Petey is short and very animated. When he tells stories, which he loves to do, he extends his short arms above his head as if he were making snow angels from his chair, and his potbelly juts out into his dirty t-shirt. I don`t think his legs reach the floor. His wife is taller and with a plump freckled face, plump arms and short, curly hair. They are extremely welcoming and friendly people.

After Petey`s wife sat me down this morning in the kitchen, she immediately insisted that I eat the fish sitting on the table. I told her I had just eaten breakfast, which was true. But she insisted, so I obliged, which is the polite thing to do. As I ate my cold fish and ignored the flies on Petey`s face and the thoughts of how those same flies were probably sucking at my fish earlier on, Petey told me all about Ica and how beautiful it is. He proceeded to tell me about his grandson who lives in the most beautiful house in Ica on the third floor. He said that there were two pumas who used to live on the second story. I think I missed an important part of this story but as I understand it, it was a zoo complete with these pumas, bears, jaguars, parrots, snakes and other wild creatures. Maybe he was talking about a zoo in Ica. But that`s what I understood. Then he told me about how someone is a doctor and that the doctor went to the library in Ica, which is even better than the National Library of Lima, and because he didn`t want to spend any money to borrow the books, read every single one of the books about medicine in 24 hours. After these stories, he showed me a Peruvian gourmet cookbook with recipes that use Pisco. Pisco is a grape-based ¨wine¨ that is recognized as a wonderful alcoholic beverage internationally. Peruvians are very proud of their pisco. He asked if I`d tried it, and I said I just tasted it a little. He disappeared and reappeared with a bottle of fancy-looking pisco that came in a wooden case, and a shot glass. Feeling bad that I`m drinking their expensive-looking pisco when they are not the most well-off folks, I took a sip and realized that it`s more like vodka. As Petey continued chatting about some amazing fact from that crazy cache of a brain of his, I thought that maybe the burning feeling in my throat and stomach would burn away all the bad germs that I probably ingested through the cold fish. Trying to maintain my poise and not make a face at the fire-like pisco, I told Petey and his wife that yesterday I tried some manjar blanco (which is similar to smooth caramel) that used pisco in it. ¨You like manjar blanco?¨ ¨Sí, it`s very rich and I like it a LOT.¨ Without a word, Petey disappeared again and reappeared with two chocolate candies with pecans and manjar blanco inside wrapped in festive paper. As I ate one of these yummy things, Petey again disappeared and reappeared this time with two little tubs of manjar blanco and two spoons. One was strawberry-flavored and the other used chirimoya, another fruit. I happily tasted each, realizing it makes a wonderful pisco chaser, and watched him diasappear and reappear with an even bigger tub of manjar blanco. They were from Cajamarca, a department in the Northern Sierra known for manjar blaco, apparently. For some reason, that prompted him to tell me that now he was going to show me how to kill a duck. After verifying that I didn`t misinterpret what I just heard, I followed Petey through his little garden and helped him bag two big ducks. I carried one in a rice bag. The duck was merciful and didn`t flap around, except once. Inside the kitchen, Petey ordered me to sit in this chair. He ran around his house looking for the death tools. I watched two little kittens stare at the rice bags. I looked at the cutting board and knife on the table next to me. I hoped my pisco wouldn`t reappear like Petey. I thought about how Peace Corps told me to embrace stepping out of my comfort zone and other crap. Finally, Petey reappeared a final time. He unbagged my duck and plopped it on the kitchen table, not next to me. The duck made little gasping noises. I thought ducks quack. His wife came and blocked my view of the neck. I decided I didn`t need to readjust my view. She held the duck down. With slow, patient movements back and forth, Petey slit its neck over the kitchen sink. The duck shuddered as it fought, died and relaxed into a final resting state. Petey`s wife left. I watched Petey drain the blood out of the headless duck`s neck. It`s big duck head laid on the table next to it. And that was my morning.

mobs of little girls!!! ah!

2005-10-20T18:02:00.000-05:00

Interesing Peruvian Fact Number 2: Quechua is a language believed to be the language of the Incans that is still spoken today in Perú and other Andean countries. This is only partially true. Quechua had evolved to be very different, and in some places as different as Italian and Spanish. Indigenous groups also spoke other distinct languages. The Spanish evangelists needed a common language with which to preach and proselytize, so they actually ended up TEACHING some indigenous groups Quechua. At least that`s what I think the Peruvian historian said today (in perfect English but really fast).

(Dad don`t read this part.) So is it really true that Karl Rove and Scooter might be going down??? If so I can`t believe I left the States when the newspaper might actually be an exciting thing to read! I am craving more American news. But I don`t want to be on the internet all the time. It`d be GREAT to get some American or British news magazines or journals once in a while no matter how old...The Economist, Newsweek, Mother Jones, whatever...HINT HINT. ,o)

Today the environment group split up into groups of 3 to make 30 min. presentations to various schools. We started with an ice breaker about self-esteem and had them write nice (hopefully) things about each other on a sheet of paper taped to their backs. Next we went into the environment game where everyone represents a different component of the environment (such as water, birds, butterflies, humans) and holds a piece of string from the ball of yarn that we throw to one another. Then we threw real trash in the middle of our ¨web of life,¨ and went through how everything is linked and how trash harms water and then all the way to humans. Finally, we promoted our environmental clean-up day on October 29th...

So my group got assigned to an all-girl´s school. The directors were really excited that we came so they stuffed a million girls in each session. OK, it was more like 40-70 girls, but if you have ever facilitated an interactive activity with little girls before in a language you`re not fluent in, you know that it was CRAZY. They were between the ages of 11-16 I would guess. Since there were 3 of us and one girl wasn`t comfortable with her Spanish, we split them up into 2 groups every time. Our second session went amazingly. That time I was by myself and the girls were so respectful, calm, supportive of each other and interested in all the activities. My Spanish rocked as did my facilitation skills. We finished early and they asked me all sorts of questions about where I`m from, the U.S., what Peruvian food I`ve eaten and if I could sing them an American song. No, I didn`t break out into song and dance, but at their request I taught them how to say ¨my heart will go on.¨ The first and especially the last session of about 35 girls in each group was so crazy and chaotic. I would go insane trying to facilitate projects like that each day. It reminded me why I don`t want to work with kids. Arghhhh I am never having kids. They are brats and wrote mean things on each other`s backs, which I couldn`t understand. In addition, they corrected my Spanish, which is something I want my host mom and teachers to do, but not in the middle of my session. Well, to end on a positive note, they were cute when I wasn`t trying to get them to do anything, and they kept on asking me about ¨El Gringo,¨ who is super tall (by Perú standards), skinny and blonde. That was funny. I told El Gringo that all those girls will be coming to our clean-up day just to see him, the new Peruvian Studmuffin. We also were inundated with requests for our e-mail addresses. So I might have about 100 new e-mail pen pals.

Good Times

2005-10-19T15:25:00.000-05:00

Good Time Number 1: Sometimes I teach my host mom English words. So far, I have taught her how to say lentils, peanut butter, ginger, Hold on please, She is not here, please call back at...The other day she asked me if I had any nicknames. It is the cutest thing to teach a sweet little Peruvian lady how to say ¨Sea Monkey.¨ She laughs every time after she says it and so do I.

Good Time Number 2: Yesterday, Prima and her 10-year old brother were over. Her little brother is adorable and besides for being a computer bum, is very sweet and not intentionally bratty (to me). He puffed up his cheeks and I did the same. I went to go pop one of his cheeks. We laughed oh sooo hard at the ¨bfzfzfzfzt¨ sound. This continued until we came up with a game of trying to pop each other`s cheek as many times as possible before we have to laugh our brains out. It`s the cutest little game. I highly recommend it if you have a sweet little 10-year old and need to laugh.

ok, so maybe not

2005-10-18T20:49:00.000-05:00

We had interviews again with the environment program director. His main message to all of us was don`t expect anything in terms of where you will be or what you will do because then you might get disappointed. So I`m trying to do just that although I was very upset at him and frustrated with the whole process yesterday. Our group still knows nothing although the health trainees have an idea of their climate, geography, project, urban or rural, if they`re replacing another volunteer (our group won`t be replacing anyone since we`re the first environment group!) and even if they`ll be near another person in the group. All the environment group knows now is: we will all be working with kids in some shape or form, we`ll all be working with a community garden somehow, many of us will be in urban environments, most of our counterpart (mentor) organizations will have fairly structured goals for us and most of us will be clustered together so we can work together. So until November 8th, I won`t have any updates.

This morning I went to Huayoringa Alta, a nearby community that is only about 17 years old. I went with 3 people, 2 fellow trainees and an environmental health promoter. The 2 trainees and I are working together on a joint project...I will call one, ¨Prima,¨ because our host moms are sisters, and ¨prima¨ is the Spanish word for cousin. The other I will call ¨Borracha¨ because her host family always pressures people to drink an ungodly amount of alcohol during parties, which she does, and ¨borracha¨ means¨drunk.¨ Anyway, so Prima, Borracha and I met with E.H. Promoter this morning at the Health Center near our houses. We wanted to do a health skit for mothers of a nearby community who are involved with soup kitchens and day care programs. I never realized how much I miss performing, but I am so excited to have the opportunity to act and be silly with the purpose of teaching about good health practices in a fun way. After we confirmed the general idea and the date, E.H. Promoter asked us if we wanted to go to the soup kitchens to meet the women and promote the event. We happily accepted and within minutes, we were on a bumpy bumpy combi bus ride up the mountain to Huayoringa Alta, which E.H. said had the neediest soup kitchens. Along the way, I saw that the entire community is comprised of makeshift walls with a piece of corrugated metal thrown on top to make a roof. Since not all the walls were the same height, cardboard boxes or potato sacks or whatever could be found were attached at the top of walls that didn`t reach the roof. Surprisingly, I felt comfortable here. I remember the first time I entered such a poor community in the Dominican Republic. I felt so alert, so upset at the conditions they live in. This time around I feel less sad and more like, ¨perfect, what can we do to help?¨ I was actually excited to be there rather than in my rich suburb. We went to four different soup kitchens (¨comedores populares¨) that receive certain goods such as rice from a government program, which also gives them a little bit of money with which to purchase whatever vegetables they may need. Unlike in the U.S., the mothers who volunteer there are members of the community and are as ¨needy¨ as the people who take advantage of the meals. The meals are not free but rather have a symbolic charge. As E.H. asked about the presidentas of the soup kitchens and other facts, we watched the women grind cilantro or prepare soup. Some of the women crowded around us, interested in the gringas that wanted to present a health talk and skit for them. Without warning us in advance, E.H. also proceeded to tell them about a ¨concurso,¨ which is as I understand it a cooking competition between the soup kitchens. The kitchen with the most nutritious meal will receive a prize. Somehow during his excitement, E.H. also said that we`d show movies and use the megaphone or microphone, which I didn`t know existed in a such a ramshackled community. Anyhow, this is turning out to be a lot bigger than we anticipated with probably an audience of over 50 women. The children from the day care centers might also attend. We met the woman who runs the day care centers and I will probably go back to visit them to fulfill a mini-project requirement.

Exciting update about my future home!

2005-10-13T18:39:00.000-05:00

OK, OK, OK so I shouldn`t get too excited because I might not get placed here. On Tuesday, I heard through the grapevine that there`s going to be a ¨marine biology¨ site in Ica, which is a department (the equivalent of a US state but geographically large in comparison) south of Lima. According to the rumor, there are FIVE of us who will be placed there...I get excited but don`t know if I`d want to work with four other people. Also, I had been thinking that I would like to be placed in Tumbes, the department that is about a 16 hr bus ride away from Lima. But I wanted to go there because it`s the most tropical site and has a protected area of mangroves, although being placed there does not mean that I`d definitely be working to protect the mangroves. Plus, it`s just a rumor. Then yesterday, I heard that the rumor started from the country director, so it sounds a little more ligit. The director of the environment program tried to brush it off yesterday, so it`s still just a rumor. Now today, we had two guest speakers from USAID (US government`s international development aid agency). They talked about a marine reserve in Ica called Paracas National Marine Reserve, which is Perú`s only marine protected area. It`s also Peru`s third hottest tourist destination because of its great abundance and diversity of marine wildlife. There are seals, sea turtles and loveable birds including the Humboldt penguin!! There are islands off of this reserve called Islas Ballestas which are Perú`s version of the Galapagos Islands because it has so many special endemic species (not found anywhere else in the world). So this is cool but I`m still thinking, ¨well, Tumbes might be sweet as well.¨ Next, some man discussed a whole Pisco-Paracas case study. It turns out that there are artisanal fisheries near the coast and commercial fisheries further out in deeper waters. And then there is the fish meal, steel, mussel and shellfish farms and yes, GAS industry crowding the area and polluting this marine reserve. There is a whole slew of problems and conflicts and challenges with a lot at stake, which means that I REALLY want to go there. The other plus is that my mom says she won`t visit me if I`m 16 hours away from Lima by bus. Even if you come through Ecuador it`s that long because the road winds through the mountains. However, Ica is 3-4 hours away from Lima by bus. I can`t get my hopes up yet, but I don`t see how I can`t get placed here since I`m one of the few in my group who has an interest in the ocean and has experience with marine protected areas. There are some other people interested as well, but I think I stand a good chance. Anyway, I`ll obviously keep everyone updated! I hope my explanation was clear.

On a different subject, yesterday was a wonderful field day. First, we went to a school that serves communities that were created through ¨invasions.¨ This means that it`s a young community and that poor people coming from other parts of Perú migrated here to find a job. They just sort of ¨invaded¨ an empty plot of desert for their new home. And they`re still really poor. In fact, the government doesn`t even issue many of them a national identification card, which is necessary in order to get a formal job, start a banking account, take out a loan, vote and everything that comes with being a citizen. We worked with a group of youth there aged 13 - 17. They are being developed by an NGO to be leaders in their community and to take pride in their environment, essentially getting them to feel that they belong. It`s hard to care about your environment if you dont`feel like it`s your home. It`s interesting to work with kids whose only options in the future are illicit jobs. How the drug business couldn`t be tempting to them, I don`t know. Hopefully the program does the trick and they can advocate successfully for governmental recognition, or at least get a respectable job. When we were working with them, we did not know about these things, only that they were poor. They`re just normal kids, more respectful to us and each other than most American teenagers, in fact.

Then, we drove further out and did a 2.5 hr hike! It was through a mountainous area that looked like Ireland to me because it was really rocky but had greenery...short green stubs and a small yellow flower here or there. It`s a tourist destination for Limeños because Lima has zero amount of greenery. Furthermore, it`s also the only successful example in Perú of a community organizing itself to protect an area from environmental damage and manages the area itself. The community works together to train guides, farm snails that they sell to France and more. After finallly getting out into nature, we met in small groups with community members. My group talked about the micro-enterprises the community started and tried to come up with suggestions for how to improve its functioning. It was a really amazing and inspiring conversation. They were all women and so sweet. They got excited because one of us broke out the little knit cap she`s sewing for her host sister`s new baby. One of the women went back to her house so she could finish the little pom pom on top, although she never actually got around to doing it. Anyway, we got back 3.5 hrs after we were supposed to, but all was well as all is well right now...chao...

Woks, yuppies and over 5,000 plates served!

2005-10-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

Lots and lots to tell, so little time to do it:

Going back a little bit, on Friday we had this eye-opening session on our own nutrition when we go to site in a few months. First, a current PC volunteer who has already done his two years told us of how he ate with his Andean host family for the first 3 months and ate exactly what they ate...potatoes and wheat soup for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He lost 26 pounds or something and was obviously severely malnourished and anemic. That was the worst case scenario. Then we heard from another volunteer from the same training class. He slowly incorporated vegetables into his diet, started his own little garden for a veggie source and introduced veggies into his community`s diet. Eventually he not only got almost every household in his town growing their own vegetable gardens and competing against each other for the largest vegetables, but he also got them all to adopt vegetarian diets and they wrote a cookbook with all these different healthy and well-balanced recipes using all ingredients that you can grow or find in markets in the sierra (mountains). So now I`m really determined to learn how to grow vegetables well. My own little ¨huerto urbano¨ I have growing in my house actually has all 6 plants sprouting!! I`m so excited and hopefully they don`t die thanks to the advice my parents gave me last night. My host mom is happy, too, because the previous volunteer`s mini-garden didn`t produce one bud.

On Saturday my host mom took me to Lima. She owns a complex there that she rents out. Most of the time I was just sitting around watching her do her business or buying glass. However, we ate lunch in ¨el barrio de los chinos,¨ Peru`s own Chinatown. Whoa, let me tell you, it was a strange experience. There was classical Chinese music blasting down the street (not the pop, thank goodness), Chinese people every once in a while who spoke Spanish, restaraunts serving a Peruvian version of dim sum, dang ta (egg custards)!...and then there were the supermarkets that sold woks, chopsticks, expensive mooncakes and statues of Buddha. I bought a Lee Kum Kee soy sauce/sesame oil (at least, I think it`s sesame oil...I can`t recognize the Chinese or the Spanish word for sesame), fen ce (the clear green bean noodles) and Vietnamese noodles. It`s so exciting! There is apparently a few million Chinese in Peru. They came over as indentured servants and just celebrated their 150 year anniversary in Peru. Well, I think it was 150 years.

Speaking of Chinese people, today we had a discussion about diversity in Peru. I learned that there is a commercial here where a little Peruvian boy is pulling back his eyes to make ¨Chinese eyes.¨ A current Asian volunteer was explaining that it`s just an accepted part of the culture and that it doesn`t have mean intentions. I`m not offended when people refer to me as ¨China¨ or ¨Chinita¨ because they call anyone by a physical description here. For example, if you`re fat they`ll call you ¨gorda,¨ and that`s just the way it is. That`s cool with me. However, I`m not sure how I`ll feel if little kids run up to me to make ¨Chinese eyes.¨ When I was little, the kids in the neighborhood would do that and I still remember how confused I was about why they were doing that. It infuriates me in retrospect and it will take a lot of patience and understanding to get through that kind of attention. I do believe that the intention isn`t harmful but it will be hard because it is so connected to my memories of the racist brats on my block that wouldn`t let me play with them.

Back to what I did on Saturday, after shopping in Lima for boring stuff, we went to Jockey Plaza. Think of a mall that belongs in a super rich suberb of the USA. That`s Jockey Plaza. There were all these expensive name brand stores like Armani and Tommy Hilfiger. Obviously, this doesn`t cater to the average Peruvian. I went with my host mother and a guy who works for her. As we sat down to eat some delicious and creamy ice cream, they joked about how they are dreaming of belonging in the mall. And that when we finished our ice creams, we would have to return to reality. What struck me most about the mall was how everyone with shopping bags in their hands were white or were super pale. The economic disparity between the rich and the poor here is extreme. To some, economic status also corresponds to the color of your skin. This type of discrimination is blatant. I learned during that same ice cream conversation that there is a discoteca (club) in a rich suburb of Lima that only lets light-skinned people in. The guy told me, ¨you can get in. I cannot. I`m too dark.¨ While I know this type of racism exists in the world, and maybe even in the US, it`s hard to stomach it now that I am the priveliged one and that it is so blatant.

OK, Pachamanca will have to wait. I have a birthday party to go to!

On my way to legs of steel

2005-10-04T19:37:00.000-05:00

My community lies at the foot of the mountains. To get to the PC training center from here I have to climb up about 8 sets of stairs and walk uphill. It takes me about 20 minutes. I have one of the farthest walks of anyone else in my training group. Especially in the mornings and when I arrive at the training center, I feel like I got delt a bad deal. Many of you probably don`t know this, but I bought a new pair of black plastic frame glasses before I came, and I have worn them every day but once. When I arrive at the center, they are foggy and slide down my nose. I feel like a big dork and think, ¨I hate my walk!¨ (I`m not thinking in Spanish yet, apparently.) However, I will have legs of steel. Considering the fact that it is the only exercise I get besides for the 10 minutes of pushups and side bends I did yesterday, I should consider myself lucky. Plus, my host mom gives me just the right amount of food. Even though I usually buy some chocolate cookies to supplement my diet, I think I`m keeping thin and am super fit right now.

Other reasons why I really like my walk is that our twists and turns on the way to the center take me through very different neighborhoods. Some are nice and some are full of trash and rubble. We cross two bridges, and when we do, we can smell the algae, trash and polluted water below. The amount of trash in the low-volume rivers and along the steep river banks is astounding. Rivers are sometimes seen as an asset to a community for its aesthetic and spiritual purposes. However, these rivers are at the same time a garbage dump and a place to wash clothes for the people who live along the mountains. This happens despite the fact that there are garbage trucks that collect trash throughout the entire community, even up the mountains. There are even government employees who pick up trash along the streets, but not along the river, which would be difficult because of the rocks.

Today, we spent the day learning about various community analysis tools. One included walking around our communities to make observations. My group took this opportunity to see the rest of our community. First, we walked along the streets that we live on. There are very cute houses painted in different bright colors: blues, yellows (like the church), whites, pinks, oranges, greens. My house is a bit darker than lime green. There are sidewalks lined with greenery such as cacti, sparse desert trees and grass. The street outside my house is right next to the train tracks. The train is LOUD. Sometimes I feel like it is going to run over my house. Word has it that there is one conductor who likes to honk the damn horn before, during and after arriving here, non-stop. I can confirm that. He deserves to get fired. The wonderful thing about my street, though, is that along the train tracks the government tends to a little bit of grass, flowers and random trees that gets cut into the shapes of different animals. Some look like alpaca (a very important Peruvian animal like a llama), pigs and an anteater. There are pretty benches everywhere along this nice cement road for people to sit. It`s tranquil until the damn train comes.

So that`s where we live. But of course, there is a WHOLE lot more to our community. I didn`t realize how much more there was until we did our little analysis walk. We went with one girl`s host brother. We caught him playing pool in the middle of the day even though he is in his mid-twenties and is responsible for a child`s existence somewhere out there. Up the mountain we went, up through a narrow pathway lined by high brick walls, up alongside a flock of schoolchildren in their navy blue and white uniforms (skirts for girls, pants for boys, of course), up past a big hole of rubble where there was supposed to be a big supermarket but due to money issues, it`s now a big hole of rubble. And then we realized that this is a bustling town in itself, complete with lots of streets, stores, restaraunts, very nice houses, nice houses, poor houses, half-missing houses, scrap metal shacks, a school, a makeshift church, factories for beds, auto body shops and even a small plaza and a sports rink where they play fùtbol, of course. I used to look up the mountain and see maybe 5 rows of poor houses and no people. What a new world I found right outside my doorstep! As we climbed the loose, unpaved roads, the children stared eagerly, completely confused about who were were and why we were in their little community. Some kept staring shyly at us after we said our ¨Hola,¨ others squealed a little response back, and one courageous boy even stepped in front of me to ask me my name. If I were mayor of that town, the first thing I would work on was to pave the roads. There were many times I thought I was going to slip and then I would fall all the way down the mountain. I`m sure it gets more easy to maneuveur the longer you live there, but if you`re sick or you need to run, forget about it. Also, there are dangerous floods here when it rains called, ¨huaycos,¨ which are like a torrent of lava running down a volcano. The huaycos are a huge stream of viscous muddy water, rocks, big rocks, litter, roofs, kitchens, houses, cars, dogs, and sometimes even people. It has not rained here in 3 years. I guess that is both a blessing and a curse (since their underground water supply is drying up).

In summary, I had a completely exhausting day today. We walked to and from the center 3 times and also walked along a good chunk of my hidden community. I even started off the day doing a skit with a fellow trainee and a discussion with our group. We are the first two to have facilitated anything among the trainees, and I think it went relatively well.

Oh, and I got this insect bite on Thursday 5 inches above my ankle which turned out to be really odd. On Sunday, it looked like Lyme`s disease with the red rings and then yesterday, my ankle swelled up pretty badly. The nurse who was here to give us vaccinations told me it was infected and I should apply topical antibiotics. I called the doctor to confirm because I don´t like taking antibiotics. He told me to wait one day and if it got worse, it was an infection and I should go to Lima to get oral antibiotics. It looked awful before dinner as I was talking to my (real) mom on the phone about how I forgot to bring multi-vitamins, my ankle, gardening, my dog, my family and how I should write a book. After dinner, I took a garlic pill and I wondered if it looked better. After my shower, my host mom came from her sister`s yard with some plants she said would be good for my insect bite. She boiled it into a tea and poured it over my bite. Then she started to wrap the leaves around my bite and my ankle. Then, she broke out the gauze and masking tape and wrapped it around the leaves. That`s when I realized she expected me to sleep with leaves around my ankle. So I did, and it was cool. Either because of time, garlic pills or leaves, I am pretty much all better now. Once again, I am healthy. As a current volunteer told us, when you are in Peace Corps, that is a good definition for success.

I don´t know what I want

2005-10-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

I am supposed to be in Lima now with my host mom. However, the director of the environment program didn't have time to interview me on Thursday so he had to do it today after lunch. Unfortunately, my host mom had been planning on our leaving right after lunch and had a bunch of errands to run and couldn´t wait for me. She felt worried about leaving me alone and I think I´m supposed to be at her sister´s house now, but I´m enjoying the independence. I am even going to be warming up leftovers myself, woohoo! So here I am, still in my town, and consoled by the fact that I get to take naps today, got chocolate and peanut butter candies from the environment program director, and can feel refreshed when I meet everyone else at 9:30, half an hour before bedtime, for a night out in a discoteca in Chosica.

So my interview was interesting and damn, I always forget to say things during interviews that are so important. The interview was supposed to let him know what I want to get out of my 2 year PC experience, where I will function well and other things to help him place me in a certain site. I told him about how I´m interested in international development in general and that I hate the cold. I think I threw in a ¨I´d really love to be near the ocean¨ in there but I don´t think I stressed it enough. The problem is that I think I´m pretty easygoing and can adapt well to anything. So he asked if I´d be ok in a city or a mid-sized town and I said yes, although I should have qualified that with a ¨as long as it´s next to the ocean¨. I wish I also specified that I don´t want to teach in classrooms and I really want to work to make a protected area successful or to work on a project related to income generation. Well, I get one more interview before he reveals his fate to us. What worries me the most is that he asked me if I want to be near other volunteers or by myself. I started on this long explanation about how I want to have little contact with other volunteers so I don´t have to hear them complain or watch them be culturally insensitive (so insensitive of me!)...then he interrupted me saying, ¨uh, but how will you do working as a team?¨ ¨Huh?¨ ¨If you have to work as a team with another volunteer, how will that make you feel?¨ ¨I can work as a team. Well, I´d rather not. Oh, it depends on the person.¨ So now I´m worried that he´ll pair me with someone else in my group that I don´t want to spend 2 years with, which is honestly most people. Not that I hate them all, but I just want to focus on the community and do things myself. He told me to keep who I would want to work with in mind for our next interview. Ahhh, what does that mean!? Last question he asked me was ¨Is there anything I should know in advance that might become a problem within the next two years, anything emotional, physical or the like?¨ I couldn´t really think of anything so I just said that if I really believe in something, I can be really stubborn. So he probably wrote ¨stubborn¨ down on his sheet of paper. Yup, I will admit I can be stubborn. And, well, if I turn out not to be so stubborn then he will be pleasantly surprised.

Today we only had training in the morning. We learned all about organic gardening! Since my dad comes from many generations of farmers, I am excited to learn the art. I wouldn´t say I will love gardening...I´m not exactly the most patient person... but I do want to know how to do it successfully. Some methods we learned to make natural pesticides were to lay out bowls of beer, put out empty bottles with water and sugar in it, spread ash on the leaves once a week, and to grind up ¨recoto¨ which is some really hot chili pepper here and use the juice to spray (I think) it on. We got a whole packet on organic gardening. There is a competition between small groups to grow the best gardens behind the training center. I´m not sure what we´re going to grow but our choices are spinach (yay), beets, carrots, cabbage and some Peruvian herbs. We will also be making our own organic fertilizer using organic compost, which we learned how to make today. If you use the crap from rabbit or guinea pig (which is a delicacy in Peru) you don´t even have to add any organic materials. That is the best crap to use in the countryside, since people there feed their leftover waste to animals. We also started ¨huertos urbanos,¨ or ¨urban gardens,¨ which is basically growing seeds in an old plastic bottle. I forget what I´m planting in mine. It might be radish or beet and some Peruvian herb. All I know is that I painted red fish and a blue swirl on it. It felt like I was in kindergarten again, but hopefully it will grow and I can eat it. I feel so hippie-ish now, but that´s ok, haha.

This is from yesterday

2005-09-29T18:02:00.000-05:00

Still no health problems! It seems to be a nice miracle because people who are getting sick look like they´re having a terrible time. Some people are expelling nasties from the mouth, others from the other end. My friend got pretty sick and then frustrated with everything because her host mom is super overprotective. Somehow she decided that the best way to confront her frustration was to dress in a short (for Peru) poofy jean skirt and tank top. I think the canon of whistles directed at us as we crossed a busy highway brought her back to reality, thank goodness. Another girl also decided to wear a poofy black skirt today, above knee-length. I think she liked the attention though. Not good.

I am learning a LOT of new words in Spanish each day but still feel like I am bumbling like an idiot when I speak. It´s worse because I´ve been soooo exhausted every day. We have a rough schedule and I´m ready to sleep before dinner although I last until about 10 at night and wake up without an alarm clock at 6:20 AMish!! If you know me, that is NOT my normal schedule. I´d feel fine except for the fact that they placed me too high in language. Now the staff think I´m near fluent in Spanish, which I´m not but I don´t want to disappoint them. I had the beginning of an interview today with the guy in charge of the environment program and he started off by expressing how happy he is at my level of Spanish...understandable because there are only 2 of us in the advanced levels and we have some trainees that only have high school Spanish ability. Boy, I need to work really hard...

Many people are feeling overwhelmed these days. They told us yesterday that we´re going to have 2 projects coming up, one is individual and the other is with a group. The individual project is basically to shadow a professional related to the environment and get to know them and what they do better. The point is to practice meeting new people and approach them with an idea as well as to practice Spanish. It might culminate in a one or two-hour project. The group project culminates with a project of some sort. I´m pretty excited to speak Spanish to different people. It might be pretty cool.

Yesterday we had a mission in which we had to work with a partner. I was paired with a girl who is at the ¨novice low¨ level of Spanish and we were an awesome team. We went to Chosica, which is a cute town nearby, and had to go to the biggest supermarket there and learn about their products. The supermarket is about the size of two convenience stores in the US combined. According to the manager, virtually all of their products are Peruvian, including all of their produce, water and detergent. Of course, there is Coke, cookies and other American products, but they are surprisingly few. They also sell store-made chocolate cakes. Score! Then we had to learn about the potable water system. First, we had to figure out where to go to find the answers and then find a person who could answer our questions. It was certainly rewarding to be able to accomplish that in a place that was foreign to us. I had a great conversation with a water engineer about how the town, Chosica, gathers their water from 6 wells (probably large water pumps) although 1 dried up because this is the desert. We talked about how there are no water conservation education inititatives even though it´s very needed. He doesn´t know when the wells will dry up, but it doesn´t seem to be an unlikely situation because 1 already dried up. Some other office has that information but it´s kept confidential! That was a great day of learning interesting things and my partner and I both left feeling more confident about our Spanish and resourcefulness.

It´s time for dinner so I better leave!

chao...

I am 50 cents

2005-09-27T17:39:00.000-05:00

Interesting Peruvian Fact #1: They call 50 cents coins ¨chinas,¨ which also means a Chinese female.

I cannot believe it´s been only 3 days since I arrived here in Santa Eulalia, which is about 45 minutes east of Lima. We are surrounded by massive mountains on all sides, which are a constant reminder of the fact that we are in the desert; the mountains are devoid of trees. They are brown and very dry. My first reaction was ¨what happens when it rains!¨ I am so used to tropical climates that I forget there are no torrential downpours or even the slightest drizzle most of the time. It is my first time in the desert.

So I am in Peace Corps. A time in your life when you give up luxury and the comforts of a modern life. In the Dominican Republic, my homestay had little ants crawling around my bedside table and mosquitoes waiting patiently for me on my mosquito net every morning. The water would not always run. In Belize I had ants, cockroaches, a rat and a completely dysfunctional toilet. And I was cool with all that. So I think I´m very ready for something worse. Never did I imagine that my home here is not only nicer than my previous homestays, but it´s nicer than the places I lived during college!

Every morning I wake up, open the curtains and admire the beautiful contrasts the sun creates with the mountains. I have a newly re-tiled kitchen and bathroom, spotlessly clean. I have only seen harmless gnats inside the house and 1 large spider, which I have at home in Jersey. There is always water running although it is always cold water, which is the only ¨hardship¨ I have at home. I live only with my host mom. She never got married and so it´s just the two of us. Her name is Consuelo and she is super sweet. She giggles rather than laughs and always smiles. She is a high school teacher although she does more administrative stuff than teaching. She wears a bright blue velvet shirt every day and likes to dance. Yesterday at dinner, she laughed with joy because ¨we like the same food.¨ We both eat fish and chicken (yes, I eat chicken now that it´s not full of antibiotics and hormones), love veggies and fruit and a whole bunch of other stuff. It´s pretty good food, too!! We eat a lot of white rice as well as grilled chicken, vegetables and fruit. She uses soy sauce, ginger and garlic, yay to being kind of like Chinese food. She makes a wonderful apple, peach and oatmeal shake. She kept on asking me if I liked ¨Kwakuhr¨ and for a while I thought she was saying ¨cracker¨ like someone with a lisp. Apparently, that´s ¨Quaker¨ as in ¨Quaker oatmeal.¨ She makes her own soymilk from real soybeans, a skill I will have to learn from her!!! There are additives and artificial chemicals in powdered soymilk, so she doesn´t like it. Plus, I supplemented my diet today with Oreo cookies, so life is as it should be.

As for actual training, it´s going pretty well. I have been very positive and feeling pretty confident. Today we learned about our Spanish class placements. I thought I would be intermediate high but apparenty I am advanced middle. OK, I think they placed me a little too high but I really like my class so I´m happy about it now although still a little nervous. I think I should improve pretty quickly and am trying really hard to talk Spanish a lot. As for the other parts of training, it has mostly been orientation, leadership or reflective stuff such as ¨what is the difference between a manager and a leader?¨ or ¨what kind of an experiential learner are you?¨ Most of the time, I´m into it, surprisingly.

Oh, and some of you may have heard of the earthquake that occurred here two days ago. My first earthquake, how exciting! It started in the northeastern part of the Peruvian Amazon and according to which source you believe, 3, 5 or 30 people died. We only get 3 TV channels -- news, telenovelas and soccer. The news channel is the government-owned one, so I take everything I learn from them with a big grain of salt. There is an election next April, so the political tension over here is already apparent. We´ll be learning about the candidates and doing a debate in class, so I´m excited for that. It´s part of cultural integration, by the way.

Well hopefully I´ll be able to find which internet cafe around here has Skype and then I can make free calls! Ciao...

Hi mom and dad!!!

2005-09-24T13:50:00.000-05:00

Right now we are at an in-country retreat/orientation at a nice and clean resort. I was worried about the cold but it is like Spring here! It is very sunny with a nice, gentle breeze. There were bright green parakeets (I think they were parakeets) with red heads flying around the trees as we ate our breakfast of bread and butter. The staff here are soooooooo friendly and eager to have us here. Most of them met us at the airport, from the language teachers to the country director. They videotaped us and took pictures of us and held ¨Bienvenidos a Peru¨signs and wore huge smiles. I feel very safe and at times I feel like I¨m in high school at summer camp because of the energy and they kind of held our hands as we landed in Lima from luggage check onto the bus and to our bungalow rooms. I´m sure the high school/college feel will fade, especially on-site, thankfully. In half an hour I will have my Spanish interview. I am feeling confident about my Spanish. They speak fast but very clearly here. I think I´ll be placed in a high to middle level class. There are some people here with only high school experience with Spanish but there are also people who have spent a year in Spain or a semester in Chile. Then I will get vaccinated and have interviews with people who will place me with a host family and the environmental program staff. The environmental program staff gave a picture presentation...Even though we won´t be in the Amazon, I am not feeling too disappointed now. This country is so beautiful and has such a diverse, rich ecology. OK, there is a line so hasta luego!

Done with the first step

2005-09-22T17:05:00.000-05:00

We just finished up "staging," which is an orientation sesssion in Washington, D.C. The internet here is super expensive, but I did want to write how happy I am with my group. I was a little worried that I would be stuck with some immature, narrow-minded kids (the oldest person here is 25 I think, but we have 1 married couple). I was wrong. Everyone here has done amazing things and many people are so well-travelled and interesting. I have so much respect for them...some have done amazing things like studying women seaweed farmers in Zanzibar or has been a Navy SEAL in Afghanistan and so many amazing things. We did this opening activity where we had a list of one cool thing each person in the group (34 total, half health and half enviro) has done. My thing was that I have logged over 50 dives, so now people start conversations with me like: "Hey, you're the scuba diver, right?" There are actually quite a few people in my group who dive! One girl even brought a full set of snorkeling equipment. Many people want to go to Galapagos...we'll see about that but that's my main vacation goal. Anyhow, thanks to orientation, I will be flying into Lima tomorrow with high expectations for a great experience!

The worst thing I have found out is that nobody will be going to the Amazon :o( So now it's down to the arid desert coast or the snowy mountains. Despite that disappointment, I am still positive! I am just excited to start speaking Spanish again, learn more about my group and meet everyone in Peru!

E.E. Cummings

2005-08-27T00:32:00.000-05:00

Here. So you understand why I chose my blog address, "eyesareopened":

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

- E.E. Cummings

I might not be the most religious person, but I know how you feel, Edward Estlin. It's exactly what I think when I'm scuba diving or hiking in the rainforest. Hopefully, that feeling will come to me frequently in the next few years!

Ah, now this one is more well-known and obvious. Here is where I got the title of my blog from:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

- E.E. Cummings

Let's make it clear that this blog is definitely not about my travels into the land of romance -- I admit, I'm taking some artistic license. But I'm sure Ed wouldn't mind, right?

That should be the last post not related to Peru. Now, on with my travels:

Where to send brownies

2005-08-24T23:07:00.000-05:00

Starting September 23rd, I'll be in the country whose ancient art supposedly helped spawn the Cubist style:

PCT Carolyn Hwang
Cuerpo de Paz
Calle Via Lactea 132
Urb. Los Granados
Santiage de Surco
Lima 33, Peru