All things…American?

So this week the U.S Ambassador to Peru came to have lunch with us at the training center and we got to have a back and forth discussion with him on current issues in Peru…one thing I didn’t know is that the most recent bilateral free trade agreement the US signed was with Peru…I asked him if he thought that some of the negative fallout/sentiment seen with other agreements like CAFTA where some local farmers and producers were displaced and forced to migrate have come to the forefront here and if there is a chance we might see some of that fallout in our sites but his answer was, naturally, more diplomatic than informative. However, the man has led a pretty amazing life and it was great to hear his take on many things including the ongoing drug trafficking wars going on here in parts of the highlands and selva. It was also interesting to hear his take on making it up the ladder in the State Department and Foreign Service, and he did do quite the plug for us to apply when we return…he also recommended some books I’m hoping to find somewhere….

On Monday night I went and got all the ingredients for my ‘pizza’ that my family must have asked me for 3 times last weekend, and was rather happy with myself after finding all the stuff I needed in Spanish (flour, yeast, peppers, chorizo, queso) I boiled my h20 (no chances!) and mixed the dough, my fellow PCT, Annie, came over and we chopped everything and then my host mom told me that the oven hadn’t worked in years and that I’d need to use this little spaceship like cooker…so that was weird but fine…so we put it all in and the thing is definitely hot and half an hour later we go to check on it only to find it has stopped cooking (!?!) so I asked my host mom, and as it turned out the spaceship cooker was teetering on broken as well…so after a first go round of rice as an ‘appetizer’ we decided our only option with our half risen pizza was to put it on top of the cooker and cook it on the ring, this was pretty hilarious as we were trying to balance burning the thing and cooking it, so 20 mins after that it seemed to be ready and I served it J It was funny to see everyones face, I suppose you could just suffice it to say that it was NOT the LAST volunteers pizza, but they ate it and pulled off pretending to love it pretty well! My one brother Kevin who is 13 didn’t really try to pretend though, his face was pretty funny…and a few minutes later he came in with a plate of yuka and rice instead J Next time I’m just going to stick to cookies or something and make sure we have heat!

In other random news, my host mom rearranged my room and put on pretty girlier sheets so now I no longer have a room covered in ‘Feliz Navidad’ decorations..yay!!! I also found a great market for fruit…it takes getting used to here because the fruit is much more ripe and looks like its almost bruised and ready to be thrown out by US standards…for example I probably spit out 50 seeds per mandarin versus like 3 in the states, but its because they are closer to being ripe when they sell. It makes you wonder just how many chemicals it takes to get our fruit gets to look so pristine and pretty….

I had my second session at La Agraria in Lima, learning to plant seasonal things here in Peru…it is so cold in Lima and make a mini greenhouse with plastic tarps etc, its incredible because you don’t drop much in altitude its just the neverending fog around the city that seems to keep the cold in and then when you get back to Chaclacayo its warm again. Unlike many other countries, in Peru people still buy 60 % of their day to day needs and groceries at markets and so we learned today about some of the wonderful diversity you can see in markets here in Peru...as depending on where in the country you are you will see varieties of fruit that maybe never make it to the markets in Lima. Farmers dont bother to certify things as organic here as most people would assume that their food is produced in a natural fashion and there isn't a market demand to have the same kind of 'organic' labeling as you would see in the US.

This coming week I have my second language proficiency interview as well, so I’m hoping I can go up a level, its been a bit tough in my class of 4 as everyone has been out for 2 days sick except me (my other friend has a parasite, gah! )which over the course of 3 weeks adds up to a lot of missed conversations etc. but my profesora gave me some specific pointers today about what I especially should focus on for the interview so I can work on that this weekend…and my class seems to get way more ‘homework’ than the others even the novice classes, but I think that’s sort of a blessing too, because we need all the practice we can get and I’d probably be doing it myself anyway so its good to have the feedback. In fact, the other day I had the oh so fun task of taking the stance that Marijuana should NOT be legalized during a debate in a larger Spanish language group class-you try taking that stance against 20 other Peace Corps volunteers (ha-ha ok I’m stereotyping now). Apparently that topic was too light for our profesoras and next up was abortion and the existence of a higher power…nothing like getting impassioned to get us talking in Spanish!

I’m putting together a 20 minute presentation in Spanish for Monday on a health topic, I picked early teen pregnancy prevention as we need to incorporate nonformal education techniques and such and we covered many of the stats on this particular subject this week , I also already know 3 girls younger than 20 with 1 year olds just after 3 weeks in the community, so in Chacrasana its very relevant, so wish me luck pulling that one off en espanol :)

The past few days we have had mini sessions on using bleach to disinfect drinking water and veggies, how to properly rehydrate babies who have been sick, and a large session on HIV/AID’s prevalence here in Peru. I don’t know if its fair to say that infidelity is a greater issue here in Peru than in the US-its probably just talked about more in the US-but they do see horrible patterns of married women being infected by husbands who travel from the Sierra to the Coast for seasonal work and return with the virus. We discussed different grants available for HIV/AIDs programs and so I might evaluate that when I get out to site, but it’s a larger problem in the very northern provinces of Tumbes and Piura and I don’t know yet if I’ll be headed that way.

I do know though that in 3 weeks I’ll be going to Huaraz, (not to be confused with the murderous Mexico Juarez), supposedly the provincial capital at the center of the Andes in the province of Ancash (high on my list of could be cool sites) for field based training for 4 days. Definitely looking forward to this as it will be our first opportunity to work hands on with what current volunteers are doing and see how they interact with their community partners (most likely they government run Ministerios de Salud.

Tonight the community of Tres de Octubre is having a festival (seeing as today IS tres de Octubre) so I think some of us will be heading over to check that out...

xox,
K.