Some Pictures from Christmas

Enjoy some pictures from Christmas. We had tortillas with honey during Christmas Eve, though they were nothing like the flat tortillas I am used to but theres a picture of that....but delicious nonetheless...we went to my grandmothers house down the road for dinner on Christmas day and here are some pictures of that, and also of my host mom, dad, and brother Alan who is supercute and 7, like Jeremy in Lima...outside of the church Christmas Eve and also after he and his friend Anton drew a map of Paccha for me from their perspective...also some pictures from the high school graduation dance with my host cousin Maury and my host sister, Dina. The girl in pink is my goddaughter (!!!) Deysy, and at the bottom is the not so cute pic of me holding the really cute picture of my granny she sent me for Christmas, I loved it and the card!!!!!
Will post a proper blog soon,
Happy New Year, Miss you!!!
Con Carino

Christmastime!

Christmastime!
It's hard to believe I've almost been a month at site, technically..we swore in as volunteers on the 21st of November so by Christmas next week I'll have been calling Paccha my new home for a month now. It has been a rather weird time, but I think this last stretch that I spent at site without leaving really helped. I have to plan ahead to leave site, since I'm two hours away from Bambamarca which is the closest thing I have to a connector type town from which I can go up to Chota or down to Cajamarca and I also have to make sure I leave early enough in the morning that I can catch one of the trucks thats leaving...this usually means I'm a bit of a vagabond for a day or so in Bambamarca until I meet up with Annie or take the bus to wherever I'm headed. I found a little restaurant where they let me read and drink cafe con leche for hours so I usually do that when I arrive, then leave to get some internet time, then come back there for dinner...kind of slow paced to say the least, but I end up reading a lot and I enjoy that.
So when I got back from Cajamarca on the 6th I just made the goal that I was going to do my absolute best to get out of my room everyday and let the random conversations I have lead me to different activities. I was sitting outside with my cousins (they are my age and since the national universities are on strike they are back in Paccha waiting to head back to the coast for school)and we having a good time listening to music and I was engaged in a futile attempt to translate red, red wine by ub40 (Peruvians love this song...)when the health post staff came walking by. They said that there was a birthday party the following night for Cecy, who is the representative for the government run aid program 'Juntos' and that I should come, they also told me about a session demonstrativa that was going on in the Municipality that wednesday that they would like me to come to, and about another meeting with a local NGO saturday afternoon, and a Christmas party at the health post Sunday night. I was pretty happy to have some sort of structure to work around and went to all of these events. In the meantime I prepared my first lesson for the first English class I taught, which was on monday in the Casirillo of Quiden about an hour away. I decided to take the 'shortcut' up to Quiden that I had heard about instead of taking the roundabout dirt road which winds around the mountain in switchbacks, and the shortcut was a virtually vertical half an hour, but the views were incredible and I ran into a women who chatted with me for a few minutes about her chakra and her estranged husband. Then I got close to the top and saw some kids watching and waving and knew I had arrived...when I got to the school the kids where watching "Jesus of Nazareth" in Spanish in a dusty little room...the director brought me some plain boiled water to drink and then we got started on the class. Since I didn't know the level I was dealing with but assumed it was basic as they are onl 7-10 I started with the numbers and basic greetings. We played a hot potato game with questions that are answered with numbers (for example, how many brothers do you have, how many schools are in Quiden, how many fingers do you have?) The teachers were taking notes and the kids where really into it so I think I can deem the first class up there a success. I'm not going back until after the new year because (as with most things right now) this isn't really the time for projects to be started, but I also talked with the director of the primary school in Paccha about starting classes there on the 11th of January until mid february two mornings a week. The schools have 2 months of vacations and they call these 'vacaciones utiles' so I'm going to use that time to maybe paint a map of Peru with some of the students and teach these classes and also spend the rest of my time doing my diagnostic on Simon Mayo or in the health post shadowing appointments.
The other night in Bambamarca there was the Christmas party for the RED which is the organizational structure for the health centers and health posts on a district level so I went to that with Annie...I wasn't sure if the Paccha staff was going as they were really vague about it as I think there was some drama with the RED earlier this year and our health center, but I wasn't about to miss a night of networking and bad beer so I tagged along with Annie and happily, our Paccha staff did show up. There was a lovely dinner of either Turkey or Chicken (this was hotly debated, I think it was turkey) and rice, followed by the delicious Paneton bread which is everywhere here around Christmas (all I can say on this is think Irish Spotted Dick type bread-that ones for you Laura :)-it has raisens and little sweets through it and is served with hot chocolate..yum. Afterwards the crates of Pilsen started along with the dancing. It was a fun time, we stayed until about 3 and crashed in the apartment of one of Annies community partners...2 hours later we were awake again for a breakfast of saltines, black coffee, and an egg...but I was just grateful to have had a bed for the evening, and sometimes I can't get over how generous people are here. I've really been learning to rely on their willingness to help....because in some instances I don't have a choice..for example when I arrived in Bambamarca and had exhausted all my time at the internet cafe and sipped through 3 cafes and 200 pages at the restaurant ( a good 9 hours combined since I had arrived at 9 am!!)and felt sort of sick but had my big backpack I went to Annies socios house the only house I know in Bambamarca, her name is Dolly and she said I was always welcome if I needed a place...knocked on the door hoping I could just leave my bag inside and find a place to lie still until I felt better and the welcomed me in but explained that their abuelito had died (grandfather) I tried to make an excuse to leave so as not to bother them when they probably had a lot to deal with but they straight away told me to rest upstairs and leave my things if I needed to...I chatted to my three year old buddy Roy who is their son, and went up to the room...its sort of like the western style with the swinging type doors and uneven crooked wood floors. It was a weird feeling to be lying on an almost strangers straw mattress in the middle of a town I still don't really know, but I've learned to sleep through almost any noise these last few months and on any type of mattress and so I was knocked out. I also knew that Dolly was someone Annie trusted and stayed with often, but I guess my point is that I'm thankful for how kind and welcoming people are here...they don't just give you a room, they make sure you have breakfast before you leave or at least something to set you off on the right foot. I know my family would do the same in the States for people, but here it just seems I'd be so much more vulnerable without these random people offering a bit of help here and there in the form of a bed or rickety room to leave my things in so I'm not trapsing around with a gringo bullseye on my back :)
This weekend I'm in Chota to collect my Christmas mail and see Barbara and Annie before Christmas...apparently Dr. Stalin is in Chota this weekend too an wants to take us dancing tonight so we will see how that goes down, we are also hoping to have a night of bad wine, the film Love Actually, and maybe open our Christmas mail together tomorrow night so hopefully that goes down. We've been debating just how depressing it might be opening our Christmas mail alone at site or if its better to do it together...I'll probably wait though, it would be much more depressing to not have any mail in general and it will give me something to look forward to on the actual day of Christmas as the big deal here seems to be "Noche Buena" or Christmas Eve. Plus, I'm starting to get excited at the prospect of getting to see how Christmas in celebrated in a place as remote as Paccha-its a once, or in my case maybe twice, in a lifetime experience I plan to disfrutar (enjoy) to the best of my ability. So far I've heard we go to mass Christmas Eve, have a big dinner at midnight and drink hot cocoa and eat paneton, then the day of we rest and spend time together....so thats my Christmas in theory but I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes down!

In other news from Paccha, we killed another pig this week but I didn't get to practice sutures again..sad.

Dr. Stalin is officially leaving, he wants to pursue a residency in Gastro medicine and will probably do that in Lima but might return to Bolivia for a little while before he starts...I'm sad but we will keep in touch I think, or at least, hope..and as my Dad said...maybe Dr. Goebbels will be his replacement...terrible!!!

I'm going to have lots of time to learn how to sew and plan on buying my little sticks this week so I can sit outside with the other girls and their kids in the evenings and not just watch...

The girl from Juntos, Cecy, said we will start going on house visits to the different villages in the district of Paccha (there are 21) in January which I'm very excited about...

It is impossible to find diet coke north of Cajamarca...

Annie, Barbara, and I are thinking we will try to visit each others sites in January too, and mine is first on the list as my cousins want to take us dancing in Bambamarca after the new year...we'll see how that goes down.

Anyway, this might be my last blog post before Christmas and maybe even New Year as I plan to stay in site for both of them. Send me some emails ( I can check at the cafe at site) or news of what you all have going on as I'd love to hear...Happy Christmas and lots of love.

Will put up pics as soon as I get a good enough connection and will also put up a more concise blog on my workplan come January :)

Con Carino,
K

Map of Cajamarca

So I realized it´s hard to explain where I am but I found this good map...if you enlarge it you see Bambamarca, my closest bigger town, but a little further up you see Chadin which is basically where Paccha is :) Long post coming soon, its been a busy week at site.
Con Cariño

Caja...what?

Some fun pics from my time last weekend in Cajamarca getting to know the other volunteers...it was a fun weekend, but I´m at site now having a good time and will post soon. I was representing Ireland of course in our Cajalympics games and Barbara and Annie were Cuba...
Lots of love hope your enjoying getting ready for Christmas will post soon...

My site some fun stuff :

I’m a replacement volunteer…volunteers usually come in 3 cycles with 3 being the most volunteers who go to one specific site to work,, I’m the middle one. My previous volunteer was Justin and he was in the health program too. He apparently ran marathons, ran up mountains no problem and consumed hot sauce, chocolate, and regular cokes for breakfast…so for that reason he ran but stayed chubby…nice..!?! He was totally beloved by the kids and respected by the officials but I can already tell the more rural women are excited I’m female, they keep holding my hand and telling me they can have more confianza, trust, in a woman and can talk more openly.

My site has about 900 people, the surrounding villages of Simon Mayo, Matabamba, and Quiden are probably where I will work the most as they are very basic, many of the people there are not officially even registered as residents in Peru as they do not have ID cards or any formal identification of their existence.
Paccha is at about 8000 feet, but is close enough to the jungle that it doesn’t get crazy cold.

The "bathing" situation:

Amount of showers taken in Paccha: 2
Amount of slugs pulled out of shower floor before I got in:2
Amount of times I had to try and open the door because apparently it gets stuck from the inside: 3
Amount of times you have to turn the screwdriver to get the shower to start and/or stop: 5,000,000 :)

So some things I’ve been learning this week….

How to kill a pig, skin it, chop it into tiny parts and sell it. Also how to look like your enjoying eating the said pig for lunch. Its called ‘chincharrones’ and is served with mote (large corn kernels) to offset the salt.

How to suture using pig skin…the doctors from the health post came down to eat at the restaurant and there was left over skin so they decided it would be a good day to do a refresher on suturing which I actually really enjoyed learning as it seems someday my tiny hands my come in useful with this. That’s how I found myself sitting around having pepsi and crackers with almost strangers at 9 at night in the health post taking turns practicing with the needle.

How to force myself to just go walking around introducing myself despite the endless stares I get, once I talk to people I realize the stares are not as overwhelming…and I haven’t been called a witch at all this week which is great!

How to have silly conversations for 2 hours in the evenings in Spanish, and how to turn my mini dictionary into entertainment.

How to play ‘Casino’ with the my 6 year old brother and his 11 year old friend, but I taught them Snap! And they love it so we’ve been playing a lot of that.

How to answer to GRINGA! From random windows…its usually little ladies wanting me to visit for lunch, or the kid next door who has been addressing me as hola gringa all week.

How to sleep comfortably in a sleeping bag inside my bed….I really need to get new covers as the ones I have are definitely infested, but I’ve been sleeping well more or less…I’ve been managing to fall asleep to music so loud that the walls shake (from our restaurant..every night!) and wake up to people talking loudly outside my door at 5 only to find that an hour later the music starts again.

How to walk up to Quiden by myself…it’s a tiny pueblo further up the mountain and I decided to go for a walk yesterday to see if I could make it, and I did in about an hour….also got to talk to people along the way. I have to say that in the US I walk pretty slowly by most standards but here its almost like I’m running compared to how slow people walk. I was still about ¼ a mile from Quiden when I saw the kids gathering in the windows of the school to watch me arrive, it was really funny….I said hello to all of them and asked them what kind of classes they want during the 2 month vacations…it was pretty much a resounding “ingles!” so I talked to the head professor up in Quiden to set up a date to start teaching maybe once a week or so in the afternoons as I’m also hoping to teach English in Paccha as all the kids have been asking me to. I’m really hoping to incorporate lots of themes through teaching English, self esteem, planning, and health topics.

As for Thanksgiving, I went to Chota to spend it with the other volunteers, it’s a 4 hour trip but its scenic and I think I’m going to keep it as my base for mail and banking because it’s a nice excuse to go and see other English speakers as well if I need to, and theres also a room the volunteers rent there for really cheap so I can stay in that when I have to stay overnight instead of having to pay for a hostel in closer by Bambamarca. I spent the afternoon in a hospital (definitely a creepy one) spending time with a young women who had just had a baby as we were invited by Barbaras socio partner. We had a nice night, and the cute married couple Micah and Alicia made us apple pies to share too which was a nice taste of something autumnal-ish! I did some shopping the morning after thanksgiving and managed to get lots of the things for my room I was hoping to find like a small shelf, bedcovers, a kettle for boiling my h20, etc. That afternoon it completely started lashing and by the time I finally made it back to Paccha it was close to dark and everything and everyone was just completely soaked. Thankfully though they have these fabulous bags here that are strong for transporting things on horseback so I used those for all my stuff and it kept it dry…
So a little bit about my new host family…my parents are both teachers in the secondary school who also work teaching classes for the illiterate in the evenings, they also run a restaurant that is pretty quiet during the week but definitely picks up at the weekend. My two host brothers have been great so far, one is 18 and we got into a good discussion on what time zones were the other day as Peru doesn’t use time zones…I found this a bit more difficult to explain then I thought…but either way it was fun because we were just looking at my world map for probably an hour picking out different places and cities. My host sister, Dina, is 26 and studied hospitality and tourism in Lima, shes waiting to be officially granted her ‘titulo’ or license and then I’m not sure if she will stay near Bambamarca or head down to the tourist spots in Cusco or Puno…she’s very good at talking around the word when I cant figure out what something is. We both have a love for Peruvian bread but also both need an exercise routine so I think once I get used to the constant uphill here we will start doing walks together. My living situation is definitely pretty comfortable and I think with time I’ll be able to make my room really comfortable, the only thing is I wish we had a living room or just a general room with a TV or chairs to sit around together, because I feel like I’m either in my room or in the kitchen kind of in the way…we don’t have another space besides the little restaurant where I can ‘be’ with my family while not exactly doing something if that makes sense but with time I‘ll feel it out.
I guess on my site visit I was a bit blown away by my ideas of ‘posh’ corps but a comfortable room definitely doesn’t change the fact that I’m in the Sierra and things seem to move at glacial pace. While some volunteers on the coast already have set schedules I’m trying to decide what day I’m going to walk down to the school and hand out my letters and see if I can talk to some people. I think though that during the next month or so I’ll try split my day between shadowing at the health post to learn the ropes and get to know their already existing programs, teaching classes to the kids during their 2 month long vacation, and doing my diagnostic which I might do in some of the villages further up the mountain as they are more where I can put into practice what I’ve learned about basics of rural health. Paccha is a really good base and will be a good place to do secondary projects like a library/youth groups/English classes but I think from the health perspective it would be more useful to go to some of the communities 15 minutes to an hour out of here that have no running water, still cook inside the rooms with wood and no ventilation, have issues with severe malnutrition etc to see what the situation is.
The other night after my walk my host mom told me someone was looking for me at the door, it was three 17 year old girls and they introduced themselves and asked if I knew English, then I found out they wanted me to translate their homework…we sat down and translated together but after they left another kid from the same class came and asked the same thing…..they are all from Professor Titos class so I’ll let you know if he’s happy with me helping them J I also don’t know how big his class is so I may have to turn some away at some point if this keeps up…it was fun though.
For the first of December, World Aids Day, the health post did a March around the plaza…I went up there about 8 in the morning to help with the banners and we marched around 10. The whole plaza was full of people in from the Campo because they only bank in our district is in Paccha so some walk up to 8 hours one way to get here…the reason they come is that once every month Juntos, a government aid program, gives 100 Soles to rural poor women with children less than 14 years old. I don’t know exactly how they classify ‘poor’ …if that means no latrine, no cocina, solely sustenance farming type thing but regardless the plaza was buzzing and there I was in the middle of it all with the health post staff chanting about AIDs…a good way to get my face out there I can assure you. It’s great though, our health staff is really close knit…two couples are married, both the wives are 6 months pregnant. We are fortunate to have three doctors, although I have to say that I’m really disappointed in one thing…I heard that Dr. Stalin is not going to be working in Paccha after December 31. I really liked him, and he was so kind and professional and hilarious, but he’s been completely AWOL since I got here…I guess he is going back to school to get his official specialty…which I’m assuming is the equivalent of a residency all the way in Lima…so that’s sad for me but great for him. I think tonight I’m going to watch Nueva Luna…aka New Moon (second in Twilight series of course) with the health staff ladies so that makes me feel like I belong J

A word about pirated DVDs here….its ridiculous….I can buy a good quality DVD for the equivalent of one US dollar….The two other Cajamarca ladies and I happened upon a bakery/DVD vendor last time we were in Cajamarca and he’s going to work on getting me Tudors season 3...he already had 2012 before it was released in the States. However, this is a double edged sword…Annie was so excited to see her newly bought “Crepuscula“, aka the first Twilight movie, and we the box had pics of Robert Pattinson all over the cover it definitely looked legit…we put it in only to find it was some vampire movie from the 70’s J

Also, the other morning at about 6 there was a knock on my door…it was my host aunt asking me if I would be the Godmother for her daughter deysy….ahh! I said yes on the condition that I was a ‘co-godmother’ as I’m too new to Paccha to know the role I’m supposed to assume and certainly don’t have any money to be giving away. So that’s how I found myself in the church at 11 taking photos of my new godchild…its different here though, she was getting her First Communion and that’s when they assign Godmothers. I brought here a little jewelery box so hopefully that will be ok and a Rosary since I thought it would fit the occasion! I got back from that and found an official letter from the Simon Mayo ‘Rondas Campesinos,’ and other important community members asking me to attend their meeting that same afternoon up in the community so I booked it up there with my host cousin and sister, and we went to the wrong ‘communal house’ and saw all the women sitting outside in their colorful clothes about a good half mile away across the ‘chakra’ or muddy farmland…so there we were slipping and slidding all over the fields trying to make it across asking people to guard their dogs so we didn’t get bitten…..it was a pretty inconspicuous arrival! NOT. The meeting was great though, I got to introduce myself to all the women, tell them I would be coming to visit their homes in the coming weeks to do my diagnostic of what their needs are and that I’d be based in the Centro de Salud at the bottom of the hill. The walk back down at the end of the day was beautiful too, and it was nice to feel like I had met my goal of doing something I thought was a good idea every day, but it was especially nice because it was them who had sought me out to come to the meeting which means word was getting around that I’m in town even out in the villages.

On a fun note, I’m in Cajamarca this weekend for so called “Cajalympics” which is I guess the volunteers here ceremony of getting together for a good time before Christmas and the regional meeting. Yesterday we went to the mini mall place and saw Twilight New Moon in the movie theatre….it was really funny to hear our collective sigh of relief when we found it was in English with Spanish subtitles instead of the opposite way around…I couldn’t get over the plot line and think Bella has some serious dependency issues and should SO choose Jacob, but all in all it was way fun….the other girls got soda that was actually COLD…that is a huge deal here as its virtually impossible to find anything cold. People have refrigerators but its mostly for show it seems, they are rarely on as it consumes to much. I’m used to it now though, don’t know if I’ll go back to lots of ice when I come home, who knows :)

Sending off a big bunch of letters tomorrow so be on the lookout as I finally had time to catch up :)