The hills are alivvvvve....

I'd like to share Annies Christmas montage with you all *sung to the hymn of "my favorite things"...Enjoy :)


This is dedicated this to all Peace Corps volunteers in Peru. I wish you all a very Feliz Navidad!



Cuyes con papas and coffee in mugs;

Riding in combis and kids giving hugs;

Hiking up mountains like the Lord of the Rings;

These are a few of my favorite things.



When the pig bites

When the shower stings

When I'm feeling fat

I simply remember my favorite things

*So then I don't hit people with a bat…



Dancing the huayno and working in gardens;

Sipping hot milk and art from old cartons;

Playing volley no matter if it's spring,

These are a few of my favorite things.



When the pig bites

When the shower stings

When I'm feeling fat

I simply remember my favorite things

*So then I don't hit people with a bat…



Bright neon sweaters; canchita of corn;

Humitas con queso and babies being born;

Watching **Gossip Girl for all the joy that it brings;

These are a few of my favorite things.



When the pig bites

When the shower stings

When I'm feeling fat

I simply remember my favorite things

*So then I don't hit people with a bat…



---------------------------------------------------------------

*Katie Lee has some rage issues and helped me with this last line.



**True Blood also works here, as does many other TV shows (i.e. The Wire, Glee, The Office…the list goes on...)

In other words

So, while I come up with some rhetorically witty ways to rehash life in Peru since October (and oh theres lots to tell), I thought I'd share this with you. Its a fellow volunteers perspective on the weapons of mass absorption tampons incident by Julie Fast....
**************************************************************************
The only thing standing between me and my homemade American cookies was an evil impenetrable force called Peruvian Customs.

For a solid 23 months the Peruvian government kindly allowed my mother’s innocent care-packages to proceed unhindered to my anxious arms. For my last month of Peace Corps Service, however, customs decided to cease and desist all generosity. Arrrggghhhhhhhhh.

Three power of attorney letters later, they still wouldn’t release the package.

Then unfolded this scene, that solidified my negative impression of the evil maniacs who are most likely at this very moment licking oatmeal raisin cookie crumbs off of their chubby over paid under compassionate fingers!!

A fellow volunteer, Katie, was enmeshed in the same bothersome postal hang-up. Together we sat patiently by as the elderly worker in our local post office contacted a presumably equally aged worker in the coastal package-napping branch.

Katie’s package had already been violated and been found to contain…

“Fifty colorful glass vials that look slightly dangerous. We’re not able to release the package until the purpose of these vials is discerned.”

I arched an eyebrow in the direction of Katie. “Is your mother a chemist?”

A shake of the head…and then a wave of realization and a deep scarlet flush. “I think I know what those are…” she looked quizzically at the post office worker. “Does it say Tampax on the outside of the box?”

I doubled over laughing, forgetting momentarily my poor lonesome cookies molding from neglect.

We explained the purpose of the ‘colorful vials’ to the Chota worker on the phone with the coastal worker, between laughs and snorts. I encouraged the post office worker on the coast to try one out if he didn’t believe us, but the Chota worker refused to translate that.

The best part? They still don’t believe the story. So Katie has to travel 12 bumpy hours to the coast this weekend to personally demonstrate the innocence of tampons. I asked for a video recording.

What does this look like to you?

So this was really one of those weeks where Peru could have swept me out with the trash and I wouldn't have put up much of a fight. I find myself clamoring in the gutter trying to reanimate myself to make it until Christmas and the home stretch, well by home stretch I suppose 10 months is not much in comparison with the 27 I will have completed by the end of this ride. I want my hammock and pineapple juice, but alas, I'm living here and reality isn't nearly as idealistic as one might think when conjouring up images of Peace Corps. To limit rambling (ha!) I'll do this chronologically:

Monday- My community partner, a nurse at the health post who is the reason Im in my community tells me he's leaving. Which means I'm on my own to design/implement/anything projects. This is a pain in the ass, and means I can probably kiss sustainability goodbye, but I'll be fine.

Tuesday- Good day, did a play in the high school with nursing students on prevention of teen pregnancy, adapted it to the 'campo' it was a big hit, and while I tried to emphasize the use of contraceptives I came up against the same buffoonery (thats now a word) I would in the states and had to tiptoe around it and just say things like be sure to go to the health post with any questions....etc. Til next year when I plan on swallowing my nerves and diving right into this subject unabashedly.

Also, tuesday afternoon a fellow volunteer and I decided to walk from my site to Chota, a good 2 1/2 hours. It felt like a good accomplishment, so all in all a good day in my weekly rollercoaster.

Wednesday- Go to a get together at my neighbors apartment where she has 3 other people over drinking, window to our Chota room gets left open....my computer gets stolen. Find out Barbara, one of our Chota crew tore her ACL and will be getting medevaced to the states and doesn't know if she'll be able to come back.

Thursday-Convene the neighbor and suspicious friends that were at the party...minus one...find he has a track record of stealing chickens (yes, chickens.) and pull some vigilante justice on him threatening to file a denuncia with the police (I couldnt have done this without the help of a good Peruvian friend I have in Chota). Chicken thief agrees to meet one of the friends in the plaza de armas where he subsequently turns over my laptop unscathed. Peru justice, completed.

By now, your likely thinking I should be happy...don't get me wrong, I was...small successes.

Friday-Go to pick up my mail at the post office, get immersed in the neverending debacle that is trying to get my packages out of the 'aduana' which is the immigration thingy here that holds packets. I was told that my packet had "several injections and suspicious vials, over 50 in quantity that pose a public health hazard." Uh, what? I hardly think my package of goodies posts a health hazard in a place that still doesn't have potable water.

I said theres no way in hell thats my packet until it hit me....the 'injections' are TAMPONS. You know the ones with the plastic applicators...they look a bit suspicious I suppose. Anyway, I spent 20 minutes trying to explain plastic tampon applicators on the telephone to some dude in Chiclayo 10 hours away, everything down to why the applicators are plastic to why they have different colored wrappers. As if that wasnt enough, I then had an extensive conversation with the post office lady about the benefits of tampon use for her teenage daughter. Its a good thing I wasn't PMSing because I definitely would have 'gone postal' Peru style up in that joint.

Its also a good thing that being a Peace Corps volunteers forces you to often leave your dignity at the door after so many illnesses and close calls far from latrines. How else could I have justified a 20 minute attempt to explain why my tampons are not a public health risk while Peruvians sat around and listened to me as my voice echoed through the post office? Anyway, they wanted me to get an official letter from the Ministry of Health here, but since I was going to the coast this weekend anyway I decided I'd suck it up and go show them how the freaking tampon works in person. Which is what I did today. Quite an impressive demonstration I may add :) I got my package, didn't have to pay the 'supposed' fee and didn't even have to flirt that much. I'd consider that fairly successful.

All in all though, I'm feeling like the score is Peru 5, me 0. I'll limit my wallowing over the whole week to the next 12 hours and be one with it, but I mean....SERIOUSLY!!?!?!??!? Remind me to include this in my application for womens health nurse practioner....'extensive description of tampon use in spanish via crappy line to masochistic postal worker....very convincing indeed.'

In other news though, my attempts to escape from the grasps of serial monogamy have been going interestingly, dating Peruvians has been working wonders for my vocabulary so maybe I'll readjust the score to Peru 4, me 1!!!

Mooooo and machetes

So the other night I was drinking my aguita and fighting off these yellow flying cockroach things that like to hit me in the face since our kitchen is outside and they are attracted to light at night when my neighbors came by to tell me that my favorite cow had died from eating too much alfafa. You might ask, why do I have a favorite cow? Well, I learned to milk with this one and walked a long side it sometimes when we were moving the cows to another pasture...and I live in the campo where one has the tendency to go slowly crazy.

There was no time to waste since the loss of a cow is loss of income (milk sells for 80 centimos a kilo to companies like GLORIA leche and Nestle) so we had to turn this cow into meat pronto. I walked the half mile to where it was in the dark under the gorgeous sky full of stars and as we got close I could see its corpse lit up by car lights....seriously looked like a sacrifice from far away...

Anyway, I watched the whole process of turning it from a beast into my next lomo saltado and the conversation when something like this:

Me (watching all the parts I never knew existed getting pulled out): sooo, what do you do with this part?

Answer: Oh, thats great in soup.

Me:oo yum.

Answer: Its delicious, thats what we do with the intestines too.

Me: So are you going to sell all this at the market in Chota?

Answer: No, we will eat most of it over the next two weeks.

Me: What about the head, I saw a furry head all cut up in Chota once but I figured they were going to burn it.

Answer: The head is one of the best parts to put in soup....come over for lunch tomorrow and you can try it with some mote.

Me: Tragically I'm going to Cajamarca tomorrow, what a pity!

I narrowly escaped being subjected to devouring every part of that creature...but talk about not wasting ANYTHING. As gross as it was, I know its still a cleaner process of prepping meat that you'd likely find in a meat factory in the states. I still ate lomo saltado (beef dish with onions, tomato etc thats pretty standard anywhere here) afterwards, blame on being protein starved from my pasta, rice, and white potato diet.

Turns out CUY isn't my worst culinary nightmare anymore! Yum.

A few numbers...

...Of all the countries on the report card Save the Children completed this year, Peru has the largest child survival gap, with poor Peruvian children being 7.4 times more likely to die from access to basic health services than the richest Peruvian children."-Save the Children report on State of the Worlds Mothers....

http://www.savethechildren.org/publications/mothers/2008/SOWM-2008-full-report.pdf

I passed the 3 month point at my site take II, and recently completed my community diagnostic which is the process which we use to get a feel for potential projects we can do in the community according to need. I did this through formal surveys with mothers who for the most part had children less than 5 years old since they are our main health program focus and also through use of some diagnostic tools and informal interviews.

Some of the most frustrating findings:

50% of women are still giving birth in their houses though we are only 30 minutes from Chota where there is a semidecent hospital. Half of these women are giving birth with the help of a local woman (or sometimes man) who is designated as the towns 'partera,' but who often has no training on what to do if anything goes wrong during the birth or any of the warning signs that might come up. We have a woman working in our health post who is a certified 'obstetriz' with whom I'm trying to coordinate meetings with these parteras to teach them about the signals that mean the women needs to get to the hospital stat.

82% of the women I surveyed do not have an improved cooking stove or 'cocina mejorada' and so the majority are cooking on the floor of their houses usually in the '3 stone' way....basically a few stones on the floor of usually dirt with wood thrown in to heat the pots. This is a huge problem since there are a ton of respiratory infections that reoccur over and over because the smoke stays in the room and also causes eye infections etc. Improved cooking stoves are relatively cheap to construct and involve a tube so that the smoke leaves the house, and there is a more efficient use of the wood. This is likely going to be what I'll be focusing on funding wise for a project.

55% of moms couldn't give me an example of a type of food they can give their children to combat malnutrition. Part of the reason for this is very likely lack of familiarity with the concept of malnutrition and association of what foods can help with it. So before realizing a larger project of cocinas, it will be important to do activities with the mothers to help teach what local foods they can give to their children and themselves to prevent malnutrition. 91% of the moms had never heard of iron or its importance in helping with Anemia which is a huge problem in my site.

Instead of just talking about the concept of iron though I just decided I'd make it a goal to have the mothers learn one simple thing they can do to help with their anemia situation which is planting spinach. Spinach has lots of iron and so I'm encouraging it, most recently by prepping land in the health post to plant some there so people ask questions. Problem is if there isnt the costumbre of consuming spinach, theres no point just saying its good so later I'll be cooking with the moms trying to integrate it into their meals to make it palatable and perhaps even tasty. I personally pretty much hate spinach, but I guess I'll have to change that like I've had to do with beans and lentils. Amazing what you can start to like when rice is just white, 3 times a day.

So this post isn't to be depressing with sad little statistics but just rather to say that I'm honing down what I want to work in, primarily a healthy homes project with a group of about 30 moms where we cover nutrition, hygiene, rehydration, vaccinations, etc with the end goal being the installation of a cocina mejorada in their homes (with the prerequisite that they assist all the meetings we hold). So I'll keep you posted as I may be starting the grant app process for this stuff soon.

con carino!



Proof that hard work can be done in a skirt...



Volunteers who came to help prep the soil as part of our monthly 'dia del campo' where we visit each others sites and help with a small project..



Our regional coordinator, Jose, who is also an agricultural engineer and I presenting to the moms on the importance of iron..



Me being a babysnatcher...



Mom from Utchuclachulit with her 4 month old..



My health post...



Mothers waiting for the monthly government distribution of cooking oil and 'papilla' which is a mix they give the children to drink to try supplement their diets...sometimes sucessfully, but not really since its reliant on government distribution.

Traveling nomads

Town outside Piura....happening place.



My health post partner, Antonio and I at training on communal gardens in Piura



View I see every day for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...our kitchen is outside.


Traveling nomad…the other life of a volunteer. I feel like I’ve been a nomad for the last month or so, with little bursts of time at site, but not overwhelming amounts. First, Joe came to visit July 19th and stayed for 10 days. We enjoyed good food in Lima (and I enjoyed crazy comfy beds and central heating), then headed up to Cajamarca where I learned that staying in a hotel on the plaza is not the brightest idea because Peruvians don’t understand ‘quiet’. We shared a liter of famous Cajamarca yogurt, saw some sites, ate yummy food, and then headed up to my site near Chota another 6 hours north of Cajamarca city. Joe was coerced into conquering his fear of guinea pigs (cuys) when I took him to see where they are kept and we helped make a nice lunch at the house of one of my friends at site, Deysy. After Joe left, things returned to normal for a little while as I came back to Campamento for about 2 weeks but then it was time for another training on the coast, this time in Piura up north.

For this training we were told to bring someone from our community who we are working with so I brought the nurse who is in charge of my health post, Antonio. We had a good time and both learned a lot on how to make cocinas mejoradas, community gardens, latrines, and teach youth about health topics. It was fun to see other health volunteers too, but it was a total blitz of crazy full days and we barely got to catch up. I was also dosed up on Benadryl half the time due to some strange reaction to being in a dust bowl. On the last day though our boss had a huge cake for those of us who had our birthdays this month which was super sweet.
Since I was already on the coast and live in the boonies I decided to take advantage of easy transportation and go to Trujillo in the department of La Libertad to see a favorite fellow PCV. I had a great weekend eating delicious ceviche (raw fish in lime sauce) on the beach in Huanchaco, drinking good coffee, walking around, and listening to a hilarious cover band called Big Balls who spoke no English but could apparently sing in it no problem. I also saw a washed up sealion, but that part was sad.

So yeah, I’m back at site for a few days with the exception of Cajamarca for my birthday. Seems birthdays aren’t a big deal in the campo here….I had to pry it out of my little host bros when I asked them when their birthdays were…they claimed not to know. So to avoid a day of self indulgent over reflection and consumption of chocolate at site we are going to Cajamarca to party!

Workwise though things are good, I had a very successful charla (meeting) with 20 mothers with kids younger than 5 years old in a nearby village recently and did a lesson on the importance of nutrition, breastfeeding, adding other foods after 6 months, not selling all your vegetables etc. which went well. I also talked a lot about the importance of iron since anemia in children is a huge problem here, and since Spinach is one of the vegetables with the most iron I gave a packet of seeds to each woman to begin their personal veggie gardens with vegetables that are only to be consumed, not sold! So I will check in on the progress of that as things go along. With these 20 moms I want to do a series of about 5-7 charlas on different health subjects like importance of water purification, small animal husbandry and separation of space, maintaining a clean and healthy latrine, nutrition for children and adults, healthy elimination of trash, early stimulation for children less than 3, and healthy homes. I have already told them that if they attend all the charlas and I see that there is a commitment on their behalf to learning about these topics the health post and I will begin the process of applying for a grant so that they can have cocinas mejoradas. I see the cocinas as a final end goal for these charlas…if they don’t know how to feed their kids and don’t have a healthy home and way to eliminate trash then the cocina is just something that’s being given to them without any real context of why its important. Thankfully Antonio from the health post completely agrees so we are probably going to move forward with these 20 moms and also moms in one other village as well. So I might be looking to get a grant done towards the end of this year. There are two types ok’ed by Peace Corps. One is through USAID for funds of up to 2500 dollars, the other is to solicit funds from organizations/family/friends in the states through the PC website for funds of up to 5000 dollars. I plan to try and use both for my larger projects, but first want to make sure I have a very good base of people to help make the cocinas project happen and I’m confident I will.


In other news, met a man who is interested in building a mini landfill in our centro so hope to be able to work with the schools and reiterate the importance of actually eliminating trash rather than throwing it somewhere. Also, at the end of the month Barbs, Annie, and I are meeting with an NGO here called CARITAS to see if we can collaborate on some projects. I doubt they will have a lot of funds to give, but they may have good advice and resources to share with us as they have been working in towns near Chota for several years.

I also just finished the book Living Poor and didn’t want it to end. It’s about a guy who does Peace Corps in the 1960s in Ecuador and his experiences there….It was one of those books that articulates the strangeness of Peace Corps for you which I appreciated….I would definitely recommend it. Now I’m starting Reading Lolita in Tehran and also The Shock Doctrine which is this monster of a book on disaster related economics…however the author is rather all over the place and goes off on a lot of really interesting tangents, so I’m enjoying it!



Big Balls in Trujillo...bringing 'pleather' back!



Washed up Sea Lion....sad! I had just eaten a plate of raw fish too. Delish!



Cocina Mejorada we built in Piura...we called it our 'letrina mejorada' since we built it in about 2 hours and this pic was taken before it dried.




Dusty Piura village where we did our 3 day tech training...



Vaccinating a duck....haha I know my life is so random.

So thats the bathroom..

I thought of doing a blog solely on the science experiment that is my ‘bano’ but I also wanted to tell you about some of the weird things I’ve been getting for meals here in Campamento….then I realized that since one directly affects the other I can just blog about banos and food together…

My bathroom is actually relatively decent for these parts, consisting of an actual toilet bowl stuck in the dirt which leads down into tubes and a hole away from where our veggies grow. There is a huge bucket next to the toilet which is filled with water that we use to flush, water which then moves the various waste along the tubes and down into the hole where it stays. Every three years they move the tarp and toilet bowl to a new location and put the tubes in the ground again to start over in a new hole. This is certainly a better situation than just a latrine in my opinion. Its just so random, you walk out to the tarp and pull it back and realize that if this tarp were to fall you would be completely exposed sitting on a random toilet bowl in the middle of the field. It’s a fairly hilarious thought when you aren’t living it. Since I am, in fact, going to the bathroom in the middle of a field I’ve encountered all sorts of fun wildlife the most interesting of which is the frog that leapt over me one morning into the water bucket and which my family claims they have never seen. I also saw the frog a few days later waiting patiently to pounce on me from the edge of the tarp…eyes fixated on mine…I figure I’d rather have to deal with a leaping frog than any tarantulas and so far so good, the largest creature I’ve seen was a spider the size of two or three quarters and he was on the tarp right where I had to pass to get out, so I pushed the thing back with lightening speed and ran like the wind back to the house swatting down my clothes and hair the entire way…So far so good in my room, no tarantulas but lots of ants, and last night I saw a black thing scurry out the door and I tried to follow it so it wouldn’t haunt my nightmares but it was gone. Rain came yesterday and soaked through some parts of the wall and I thought that maybe more animals might have gotten in from the damp….a thought that came up in the middle of the night when I heard a scurry scurry munching type noise in the corner of the room….I went after the noise with a flashlight from the safety of my bed but to no avail. The only solution I could think of was to put in my earplugs and forget about it until morning. I’m fairly certain it was a mouse judging by the sound…still would prefer that to tarantula though. By the way, wax earplugs are little miracles, if any of you have any interest in sending me any love, wax earplugs are the way to go….I would almost say they are on par with chocolate. Regular earplugs don’t do much though, sadly.

So in terms of food heres some of what I’ve been getting lately, a nice taste of things I never really thought to try:
Mostly for breakfast I’ve had these variations (of course I notice breakfast more since 1) I‘d be fine not eating it and sleeping instead and 2) I haven‘t had any coffee when I have to eat this:
Potato-like veggie in milk with sugar
Chicken broth soup with flavorless milk curd
Chicken broth soup with popcorn…that I was expected to put into the soup.
The most enormous olive like things I’ve ever seen, black contraptions that are supposedly edible.
Chicken broth soup with dried corn ‘mote’
Rice and lentils before 8 am
Rice and chincharrones…fried pig parts
Corn with milk, mixed together with sugar you can almost fool yourself into it being cereal

However, on the delicious side of things I’ve been getting fresh milk from our cow 2 or 3 times a week and I lap it up like a cat with a spoon of sugar and it might as well be an icecream its so good, relatively I know, but still. Sometimes Elena my host mom boils yerba Louisa into the milk and its delicious. Its also a nice treat because usually for a drink she boils water and we just put sugar into it, its growing on me though….its hot and warms me up. I introduced the fam to hot chocolate packets and watched them take one packet and split it between the 5 of them feeling which left me feeling like a gluttonous savage, but I’ve started only using a little too to flavor my sugar water and its not so bad. Just not so good either.

Campamento Tunel Conchano

This last month has been a crazy one with lots of changes and I know its been ages since I updated, but I’m making a renewed vow to be better at writing on here. Also, bear with me as I try to move away from my beloved run on sentences.

So this last little while to get caught up….

At the end of April I had a problem with someone at my site, so I spoke to Peace Corps and together we decided that I would leave Paccha and relocate to a new site that would still be near Chota and the Peace Corps friends I’ve made. It was difficult but it needed to happen. So…

I spent May in the US seeing my family and friends and to celebrate my sisters graduation yay! It was a great time, albeit a bit strange being back without actually really ‘being back.’ I enjoyed all the comforts, and even though I didn’t have roosters I still seemed unable to sleep in! Some of the things I noticed that I didn’t really notice before:
Everywhere seems to have Wifi now, and its free!
Carpet
Deliciousness everywhere
Wide, nicely paved, beautifully organized streets and the clueless drivers that navigate them.
8 hamburger places on one street
Lack of soup before meals
How easy it is to fill slow days with internet, driving around, tv, etc. and not think twice about it.
People who are super peppy behind the counter for no apparent reason other than inherent peppyness….yes, that’s now a word.
Icecubes from the fridge.

It was great to see everyone and stay at home in my comfortable room with everything I love within one place pretty much, but after some time my mind turned to coming back to Peru and where my new site was going to be since I couldn‘t really totally ‘settle‘ back in the US or get toooo comfortable! I arrived back last Saturday night to one of my best friends here in Peru who thankfully met me at the airport and spent the next two days in the limbo land that is Lima. I was anticipating that I might have to get on Peace Corps to say ‘hey I’m back, please tell me I have a site’ but it was already covered and by Monday night I had my cellphone back, and was headed for Cajamarca. That night I got to my new site to drop my things off, under the rather mysterious cover of dark. My site is called Campamento Tunel Conchano and it’s a ‘centro poblado.’ It has a health post which consists of a nurse and two nurse techs but which serves 8 nearby towns, and a room that consists of the regional mayor. That night I stayed in Chota but got absolutely no sleep because apparently 9 days before the anniversary of celebrations, people march around the streets all night playing drums and making speeches! My new site feels very rural, but there is a lot of movement too and from Chota and its only 20 minutes away by car. Pretty sweet.



My new host family has already conversed with me more in these 4 days than pretty much the entire time I was in Paccha. I don’t say that to be mean, only that in Paccha my family was always distracted by something in the restaurant and we never could really converse consistently. It also seems to me that I am being understood and understanding, and I don’t know if this is just coming from the ability to be talking more in general but it is a nice development. Here the pace of life is different, I go with my host mom to bring lunch to her husband on the farm, I watch the baby while she cuts alfalfa for the cuys, or I go with her to milk the cows. Ha, I know, I’m still completely useless. The point is, this lends itself to a lot of conversation and company which is nice. So I hope it continues, but I’m feeling good that it will. Instead of living in a small town and having to walk to the villages I’m basically living in the village, or ‘caserillo.’

Some things about Tunel Conchano:

-My host family is young, my host mom is 29 named Elena, my host dad is 33, named Walter. I have 3 brothers, 9, 7, and 7 months. The 7 month year old has two very sharp teeth!
-You can see almost all the stars because there aren’t any streetlights, its beautiful!
-They grow alfalfa, carrots, corn, avocados, sugarcane, and peaches here.
-They have sheds with over 300 cuys inside, all waiting to be eaten.
-Most families do not have cocinas mejoradas, but do have latrines.
-It consists of 8 communities who come into the centro to the health post if they need to, but at least they are only 20 minutes from the hospital.
-It has cell phone service in more than one place.
-They have no trash system, though this isn’t really a surprise.
-They have one high school and a primary school in every town (all 8)


So these first few days have been nice, getting to know people I’ve been eating up to three lunches a day of lentils and rice, and getting used to soup for breakfast and dried corn and fresh milk for dinner. Today though I visited a family who wanted me to move in with them and then spent the morning teaching me how to make tamales which turned out delicious! I had an entire meal that consisted of things from their farm, beans we had peeled together, cilantro from the garden, corn to make it thicker. Then tamales from their own corn and cheese from their own cows, it was pretty organic J and delicious! Yesterday I had my official introduction to the community and explained my role here, which is basically working in all things related to health promotion.

I’m planning on doing a very accelerated community diagnostic in the coming weeks, visiting houses and asking about the basic health situation. If I had to look ahead and see possible projects they would probably be:

-Trash cleanup day with the school…later teaching about ‘microrellenos’ basically baby landfills so trash isn’t thrown to the river or burned.
-Charlas (‘talks’) in the school on basic health topics especially hand washing, trash.
-English classes to get to know the kids
-House visits to mothers with young children to work on malnutrition, cook together.
-Community garden, perhaps in the school, to teach about organic and simple pesticides that can be used (for example there is a really good one from the pit of avocados).
-Building ‘cupboards’ which are basically putting up little shelves from wood and covering it with plastic to store dishes, utensils, cooking supplies in the kitchen.
-Charlas in nearby communities with the health post staff on health topics ranging from nutrition to keeping a healthy house or ‘vivienda saludable.’

A larger project would be a cocinas mejoradas project to build stoves with tubes so that the smoke leaves the house and that involves grant writing and gauging community interest which I’m planning on doing.
Also having a ministry of agriculture rep come in and work on simple irrigation systems for some fields where alfalfa could grow so the families could then sell it in Chota to feed cuys and rabbits.

So, yeah that’s it in a nutshell. More soon. To those I saw while I was back home I miss you already but the invitation to come visit is always there…

Also, my address is still the same:
Casilla #48
Serpost Chota
Cajamarca, Peru

Sooooo

Not sure if you guys are still out there reading! I have lots to update on, and I will this coming week I promise..when I actually have time to sit down and talk about whats been going down. Also, I quote Joe when I say "When I read your blog I have to scroll like 3 feet to see the whole thing....you might think about summarizing just a tad." I agree, since I do tend to get 'verbose' shall we say? So look forward to more concise, focused blogs soon.
Abrazos!

Peace Corps..the toughest job you'll ever....

Love?

***Warning...this is a complain-ey blog, lots of awesome things have been happening, but I'll blog on those later.***

Or so they say of Peace Corps service. What they don't tell you is how hard it can be orientating yourself to just what that job will be. You're in the middle of so much need, meandering aroundtrying to get to a respectable level with the language, trying to retain a modicum of respectability everytime you walk out your door and slip up with grammar or forget to kiss someone on the cheek, hearing about meetings that are completely relevant to health promotion and feeling like you belong in the community after they happen, getting told one thing and having the exact opposite occur, and this can lead to a lot of shall we say....frustration with both oneself and those around you.

Some examples of how this has played out lately:

The electrification engineers who offered to take me to some far out communities because they have transport told me I should coordinate with local authorities to arrange a date and time and that then they would take me in their truck. So I did that, with the community of Limache a tiny pueblo about an hour from Paccha by truck. This place is far from a health post and the size of the tumor I saw growing from the side of a mans neck up there the first time I went made me put it high up on my list of places where I should try and do health promotion. I arranged with the professor of the high school for the date and time (no easy feat without cell service or transport...we coordinated the whole thing through his son who lives in Lima and who then passed the voice via an email 2 weeks ago to his father (the professor) who managed to come down to the internet cafe an hour away to check it.) Anyway, my point is it wasnt easy to coordinate. What WAS supposed to be easy is that when I told the engineers that I had a date and time they would give me transport. So I told them a week ago about this, and again this last weekend, and then I left for Bambamarca to make a cocina mejorada at Annies site for 2 days. I came back because, unlike some people, when I say I'll be somewhere and have coordinated something...barring a crisis or near death situation or peruvian road conditions...I'll be there. Anyway, night before the day when I'm supposed to go give this session and I casually tell the engineer I'll be waiting at one thirty the following day to go to the community when he gets a blank look on his face and says.....oh, but you disappeared for two days. I didn't know it was still going to happen....what do you expect when you aren't around? I guess I'll check things out in the morning and see if we can still make it happen.

Um what?

To make matters worse, the next day he told me that they could (in fact!) take me and would pass by the house at 2 that afternoon to pick me and my materials up. 2 30 no sign of them. 2 35 they show up for lunch. I confront them, they say oh, we just arrived from such and such community, no REAL explanation. I told them it was too late and we would have to coordinate for another day. I asked if they would be passing by the community any time soon they said yes and I asked them to pass the voice that I wouldn't be coming and since thats in their hands and they can explain it their way I'm sure I'll look like a complete ass until the professor checks his email again in 2 weeks and sees my explanation.

It's like you have to tell people every single day that a plan you have made is still in effect or still going to happen or isnt just going to fall into mid air. I realize that there are barriers here, theres the long distances, the lack of roads/infrastructure, la hora peruana that creates a chain effect, the lack of money, the all too common lack of vision, the rainy season and the muck. But some days I just abhor the lack of followthrough and sometimes it exhausts me thinking of the amount of effort it takes just to get a meeting off the ground. Whats that going to mean for the larger projects I want to do like building improved stoves (cocinas mejoradas) in this crazy poor, crazy steep community? I suppose one could liken it to the way in the US we say "how are you, we should hang out some time" but we don't actually mean it. I used to hate this about the US and tried not to do it because when I was working with some international students I remember how much it would irritate them that people seemed like they wanted to be friends when they were just overcompensating with polite courtesy. Thing is though, at least we don't make ACTUAL plans...whereas here people seem to make the plans and then it just doesnt happen and the result is a cumulative effect of complete and utter inefficiency.....

Example 2:
After a week of discussing the charla I wanted to do on biohuertos in Unigan a community 3 hours away by truck with the ministry of agriculture engineer, we arranged to take the early truck at 4 30 one morning so we could be back by lunch. I said I'd pass by his office at 4:15 so we could find a truck and be on our way. Being the cognizant of time gringa that I am, I was at his office at 4:15 (in the morning!) ready to go with my breakfast in hand. I knocked and knocked to no avail and there was no sign of him, The streets where silent and since I never sleep well when I have to get up early I was wide awake so I sat on the step outside his office and waited occasionally knocking, occasionally fuming at how stupid it was to actually think this would happen as we had planned. I waited an hour, thinking maybe he had overslept, maybe he had gone to look for a truck, maybe he had left earlier and thought I said 4:00 instead of 4:15. Who knows. I sort of just sat there contemplating the point of a lot of things for about an hour when a lady came walking down the road unable to breath well, almost completely keeled over wheezing with an asthma attack so I helped her knock on the door of the pharmacy and the doctors door to see if we could get help...finally her husband found someone to help her (there are some private little boticas here) and she got the injection she needed. So I guess it was lucky that I was sitting outside doing nothing but waiting and pining in the early hours of the morning...but my point is....I was stood up at FOUR AM! Who does that?!!??! Later, I confronted the engineer and found out that last minute the night before he had changed the plans with the other engineers and was sorry he hadn't passed la voz (the voice) to me. He hasn't stood me up since though, and I chose to let it go because it was the first time and because I have a lot of respect for this man and how hes helped me get to know communities, but I hope he never does this again because my patience will be walking a tight rope!

Things is here, it just seems like you have to babysit everything from start to finish. You make a plan for next week, sturdy as can be, but if you don't see those people again during the week you can be fairly sure the meeting wont happen. There are these documents here called oficios that you draft up when you want to have a meeting with all the particulars about where it will be and when and what will be discussed and give them to those who you want to attend the meeting....Annie and I have a theory that these function so that people can't claim they 'didn't know' or that you 'never told them' throwing you into unnecessary fits of doubt. Three times now people have tried to convince me that I never told them something when I know for a fact I had....I know theres the language barrier, but that makes me especially persistent and repetitive when I'm planning something specific. So the moral of this story is I'm going to start making oficios for all sorts of meetings or events I coordinate, so that people can't back out or say we didn't agree to something when I know its the contrary.

So theres a lot to be said for punctuality and expectations. I have a whole new perspective on that now but as for what I'm going to do here to deal with this thats to be determined. This must be some form of culture shock, but I thought culture shock was the kind of thing you get over...I'm not going to get over this because that will turn me into an inefficient bad example. I just can't wait until my Spanish gets good enough and I can express how I really feel the next time I get a blank 'I forgot but I'm going to pretend its your fault because its easy to confuse you' face. Peru (or anywhere) is never going to get where it needs to be if people don't follow through on what they say they are going to do. And sometime soon. It would be a pity to have the lack of efficiency of the majority of people frustrate the hell out of those who actually want to get things done in a timely manner and see things improve....but I can see how its infectious.


In other news, there was a great parade in Bambamarca for International Womans Day. So I'm including some pictures!!!

And honestly, overall things are hard but going well I wouldnt be giving you a true picture if I left out the annoying stuff...poco a poco.


Parade for International Womans Day, in Bambamarca.









Me with Annie and health promotors from Paccha.

Carnaval, and its almost March!

Agricultural Engineers along with local farmers at the Vivero (specific crop small farm) that we are starting in Matibamba for coffee and making some reforestation of cyprus and pine trees.

King Kongs last moments before the cyanide that took him out of his 'misery'

Cute new puppies!!! I WANT one.

Yum Yum, looks like we were hungry. All thats left of our huge chanchito by noon on a saturday.(this head later sat on a table right outside my door for 2 days giving me the utter creeps)

Getting ready for Carnaval!

A woman making a blanket on the walk up to Huaychoc.

Sometimes I feel like E.T. Home sweet home.

Cooking Chicken in Chota...I successfully gutted the thing.





So since it's been so long and we all know I'm prone to ramble I thought I'd restrict myself to some bullet points about this month :)


One evening in Chota, Annie and I decided we would make dinner and simultaneously decided that a stir fry of nothing but vegetables would be all we need. We chopped up onion, tomato, cilantro, carrots and stir fried them up with some soya sauce. Then ate them with saltines. I think my body might have gone into shock from the nutrients...what, your not feeding me rice today?!

Got to see two more births at the health center...one for a fifteen year old girl having her first child and the other for a mother of 4 already. After the older woman gave birth her family wiped the babies body for what they called its 'fat...' and rubbed the white substance all over the womans face. I got two explanations...luck and to get rid of stress lines brought on by birth.

Had several competitions with my host brother (he's six) on who could eat their lentils fastest....I lost.

Attended a ceremony celebrating the opening of a small irrigation system for several chackras (farms) in Paccha's lower zone. Was handed a bat type object, someone pointed to what looked like a bottle in a bag....after a few seconds I realized I was in charge of breaking the bottle to celebrate while simultaneously dodging the makeshift fireworks being set off literally half a foot away! It was a really nice ceremony though...we walked through the farms to see how the system worked, then went to the school where a teacher in town told a poem he had written about the life of a campesino (and I understood some of it..), then one of the girls in town who attends my English class sang a song in thanks, and there was lots of dancing....including me dancing with the alcalde (mayor) who is really funny to dance with, though not nearly as funny when he's perpetually late or doesn't show up at all.

Praying for Cipro to kick in as I fought off the last bit of god knows what during my visit to Annie's site in San Juan....she has not one, but twooo, latrines. It may look easy but its not.

The carretera out to Paccha has been blocked by milk trucks getting stuck in the overrun river a lot, there's also been mudslides in the carretera, but this is all 'normal' for rainy season so when I've been hearing about those I just lay low, stay at site, and hope they get it cleared out..which they've been doing pretty quickly it seems. Cabin fever hasn't gotten the worst of me yet anyway.

In terms of 'la chamba' or 'work' I'm currently focusing on going to communities with an agricultural engineer to 1)learn more about biohuertos and what can grow in Paccha and 2) get to know more communities. It's been great so far, and we are going back up to Unigan this coming wednesday. I'm thinking I'll try talk to the authorities up there to see if theres a time I can come back to do a nutrition session with the mothers up there. In terms of the health post, lots of my so called co workers are MIA and definitely don't have health promotion on their minds but do like to chat about me behind my back to my host mom, so putting aside the high level of frustration I had earlier this week ( I really miss Dr Stalin!), I'm going to try and be more proactive with them...I'm just going to TELL them what I'm doing for health promotion and focus on teaching the health promotors, parteras (local midwifes with basically no training, but who are used way more often than the health post) who seem to have more interest, more time, and more relevancy to the women I have the goal of working with.

Finished my English class for the 7-12 year olds...lots of lessons learned. For example, don't try to teach kids another language if they are just starting to read. But overall, it went well, the 12 years olds came a way remembering a lot and it was fun for me and now a lot of the kids know me at site. I'm going to try work with the secondary school to supplement there English classes with a youth group some evenings a week where we review what they've been learning in their school classes. My application to attend an English teaching training in Lima for me and one of the teachers from the high school went through so I'm really hoping that pans out and it would be in the middle of March for a few days. I won't lie, I'm excited for the training, but the idea of going to Lima even if just for a few days is a bit enticing as well.

Justin, the previous volunteer, set up a small library in Paccha through a program in Peru that partners with Peace Corps called PROMOLIBRO and I'm currently re-doing the paperwork to try and get our books all renewed so we can keep the library and get some additional books and resources. It's going to involve some tracking people down and paperwork so wish me luck. I also think that I'll have my youth group/language group meet in the library to start using it more...I just don't think that the idea of the library has really sunck in with people in Paccha yet. I saw this article though and this this guy is fabulous!!!Read it :)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/02/25/cnnheroes.soriano/index.html

New engineers in town working on rural electrification requested to meet with me. Had a good chat about how I don't have mobility and they invited me to use theirs when they go to the various communities.

*this next part is a bit of a vent, sorry*

The head engineer is one of those would be hard to read if we were talking English but we aren't so its way harder kind of people. Is he really a total jerk? Are his jokes just really terrible? Am I just not capable of appreciating sarcasm in Spanish...the answers all seem to point to yes. He's only been around a week and will be around a lot longer so I need to find a way to stay sane around him...example: he had my family wake me up at 630 AM the other day because the night before I had casually mentioned that I look for a car to leave Paccha "AROUND" 6 am. When I emerged fully perturbed from my bedroom he had the audacity to tell me I'm acting like I'm on the Peruvian hour. After the week I had with the health center I had to swallow all the snappiness I probably wouldn't have been even able to communicate and calmly explain that I was leaving Paccha on my own time, hadn't slept well, and had decided to leave later. AND that if he had set up an exact time with me I would have been punctual. Pssht. Then he asked to borrow my camera???!?!?!?!?

Carnaval! Was amazing, tons of fun...lots of getting completely mauled with gutter water and other disgusting and unidentifiable substances. We strode through the streets, water guns, baloons, and ugly clothing ready to go following some Peruvians playing the drums. Lots of large groups emerged following different drummers and when you would clash in the streets the exchange of dirty water and liquids began...as Annie put it "its like a cross between gangs of new york and west side story' and Barbara chimed in with 'this is how governments get overthrown.' Haha, it was a good time. On a side note, we got a good dose of coke zero and sadly I'm not sure I like it anymore, but that will change upon reentry to the states I'm sure! I also got to see Avatar since we hit up our black market DVD buddy Juan. Stocked up on some DVDS, ate Chifa (peruvian chinese food), danced, and had an all around good weekend. I also roomied with a girl who brought several different colored bras with her AND perfume and thought to myself that there IS someone in Peace Corps who is more of a priss than I am! muhahaha!






Me with Barbs and Annie...

Destroyal! With the Cajamarca crew and our new addition, Nate. The only one, according to our volunteer leader who has a site prettier than mine :P

January Adventures

Sitting on top of a lechera, or milk truck for my ride back to Paccha!



Dishes the mothers had prepared in Unigan.



Mothers with their crafts.



SuperCUY here he comes.



Tamales for breakfast with cafe de cana yum yum.



Me with my host cousin, they call him gordito but hes so cute. This was his one year birthday!



Girls in my English class..



Me with my cousins at gorditos birthday after dancing...



Hiking down from Huaychoc.


I arrived back to Paccha rejuvenated two Sundays ago after a nice weekend with my two partners in crime, Barbara and Annie, a huge box of hot chocolate and enough candy to feed the entire child population of Peru (twice..), and a new kettle (a surge killed my last one). During the weekend we decided to use our little Chota room to our advantage and actually control what we eat (which after 4 months felt amazing) and we spent Saturday morning scheming about banana pancakes in the market, got all the ingredients and headed back for a mini feast. I channeled my inner shrove Tuesday pancake flipping genius (thanks mom and pooks) and together we made some amazing pancakes and ate them with jam while watching the Little Mermaid. Fun! We also bought tons of vegetables to make stir fry…cilantro, avocado, tomatoes, onions (I can no longer live without onions…they are my flavor when there is none), green onions (these too) and other things and had a delicious stir fry SIN rice. Thank god. Then Barbara made some fabulous tortillas that actually resembled tortillas we eat in the states instead of spinachy omelets that they deceivingly call tortillas here. YUM. So Sunday came and we all headed our separate directions with me scheming on when I was going to open my late arriving Christmas box. After a treacherous rain filled ride back to site in which two huge trucks filled with milk tried to pass each other on our road which is no wider than a golf cart and has an abyss of about 1000 feet on one side causing a delay of 2 hours and much terrifying reversing, I decided to stare the box on and off for 3 days before I finally gave in…my favorite lotion, new Pjs and cozy socks perfect for rainy season, a special version of the Night Before Christmas, a beautiful scarf and lovely letters, and of course hot chocolate (I never saw this addiction coming, but it is now a staple). Definitely made me a very happy camper!
I found it wasn’t as hard to slip into Spanish this time getting back to site after 2 days with my English speaking Cajamarquinas, but it was hard to slip into work…as usual you could say. I went up to the health post two days in a row, it was totally dead…no one was sick apparently, and the rest was administrative work taking advantage of the (perpetual?) quiet time. Lame, so after offering to help to no avail I slipped back into my room and read an entire novel of 453 pages in a single day. Hey, one has to accomplish SOMETHING right? Thankfully though, after running out of novels and starting to feel myself go a little insane from solitude I decided to put proactive into high gear…I went up to the health post and asked for a rundown of what they might have going on in the next week or so…nothing….so I said, oh theres no nutrition charlas, or food being given out to the mothers, or health promotors stopping by? That seemed to ring a few bells, and it seemed like even though there was nothing going on for THEM, there was going to be health promotors stopping by to give out the monthly food rations on Thursday (or some day that week, Id just have to come up and check….every day), and that there was also an artisian fair going on in a community 2 hours away put on by the mothers who participate in a government aid program on Friday, and a nutrition session demonstrativa on Saturday in Simon Mayo…Umm ok….so that’s nothing to them but totally relevant to me. So after getting wind of these activities I made sure to track down the people who were putting them on so I could go…one was the nurse from the community Quiden which I walk to a lot, so I tagged along with her to give out the ‘papillas’ or rice and milk rations given out through the PRONAA program here in Peru to mothers in poverty, then I did 3 community diagnostics with those mothers I saw and learned about some communities nearby that I think will definitely be places I want to give charlas on nutrition. Then I arranged to get a ride with our gobernador to the community Unigan on Friday, he told me we were leaving at 5 am in the camioneta, so I was up and ready to go despite feeling horrendous…I figured I could feel horrendous in bed without a book or I could feel horrendous getting to go to the community I’d been looking forward to seeing all week…in the end curiosity won and I went….but not at 5, at 7:30 a la Peruvian time! I was so glad I did though, the drive was incredible, after going up and over the mountain on this side, the land turns into more forest like jungly trees and I loved it. I also got to see the feria the mothers put on, their handcrafts were beautiful, and it was nice to see a community that is considered part of Paccha, even though its on the far reaches of our district. I spent all morning chatting with the mothers, trying chi-o-chi (a type of messy fruit they make with milk which was horrible on the first bite but grew on me), and totally owning my cousin in hangman (in Spanish). I was walking through the market when one very ancient looking woman stared at me and started to cry…I stopped to chat with her and she told me that she had little girls who had moved to Lima to work that she hadn’t seen but that they had hair like mine and my hair made her miss them…it was sad but we chatted, hugged Sierra style, and I said I might come back to Unigay again. When we wanted to leave there was no truck, so we decided to hop a lechera, or milk truck, and I got to sit front and center to take in the air and the view the whole way back down to Paccha.
Saturday one of the nurses daughters came by the house and we walked to Simon Mayo together. Its about a 45 minute walk up and it was muddy, misty, and rainy. We all had our boots on and the walk up to the communal house where we had the nutrition session was a mess but worthwhile. The nurse Claudina, the health promotor, Ruth, and I all waited and the mothers slowly started trickling up the hill at around 10. So many of the women walk barefoot in the mud and rocks here and leave the mud cake on their feet, but despite the obvious problems, it’s a logical way not to slip and they are the ones who have the final laugh as they watch us make out way down the hill slipping and sliding. The session was about 3 hours, we did the presentation on plates for children 6-8 months, 9-11, 12 plus, and the madre gestante. Then the mothers came forward and made their own plates and presented on them. I feel like I’m starting to get to know the moms in Simon Mayo fairly well as this is the third time I’ve been at one of their meetings, and I was really happy to meet the health promotor Ruth. Fortunately as well, there was a representative from the ministry of agriculture there who is working in developing biohuertos the mothers in different communities in Paccha. I told him I’d like to go with him to these communities and see what he has going on and he was enthusiastic and we have already set two days when I’m going to go with him and the girl from the Gov’t run JUNTOs program by foot to some more remote communities to see the biohuertos (small farms/community gardens) they have or want to have. Also, there was a representative from PRONAA, Esther, which is the group that distributes the ‘papilla’ food to mothers once a month and she is going to be doing nutrition sessions in lots of communities I have not yet visited so I plan to go with her in the coming weeks as well. We had lunch in one of the women’s houses, it was a surprise for me but seemed like they had it planned of course, and I listened quietly and neutrally to some of the local gossip…this is where it helps to fall back on being oblivious to what people are saying in Spanish! When we were finished eating, there was torrential rain, so we stayed in a tiny room watching a subtitled version of Cast-Away with Tom Hanks. I started laughing at the part where the volleyball “Wilson” floats away just as I did the first time I saw the film in the theatre…I remember feeling guilty for finding it slightly hilarious…remember that Laura?! I guess I should really laugh at Tom Hanks though, I have a faceless doll made of one sheet of fabric tied with string I leave on my bed…haven’t started talking to it yet though so its all good.
On the not so enthusiastic end, I did have a day planned with the representative of the contra-illiteracy program in our district to go to a town nearby with him. I ran into him on Sunday, we confirmed, then on Monday after my English class (an hour before we were to leave) I reconfirmed, he said he would come to my house and we would go….2 oclock rolled around…nothing. 3...nothing…he was an hour late at that point. 4, 5, 6. Nothing. It was quite odd because he had been very animated about me going with him, and he could have just told me if it wasn’t going to work out and I wouldn’t have wasted a few hours watching Project Runway (I hate the show, it was just that I ran out of the Office and save the Tudors for the evenings) waiting for him to show up any minute. Anyway, there was no explanation, still haven’t been able to track him down to ask, but I heard rumors that he went to Chota for the afternoon….uh, ok?!? Could have let me know. So stuff like that’s annoying, but all in all I’m happy with myself for arranging these last few things mostly by myself and not with the health post staffs help, I think I want to make it clear they are my main partner, but that if they aren’t going to keep me occupied, I’ll find another way to get out and work with the mothers.
On Wednesday I had an amazing hike up to Huaychoc with the Ministry of Agriculture engineer who is working in setting up biohuertos for the mothers up there. It is an hour or so walk up and 2 hours down…that steep! We were on the side of the Cerro (mountain), it was so steep but the view was absolutely fabulous. I’m going up again on Monday to a lunch that is rumored to be Cuy…wish me luck. The mothers there were quite lively, it was a fun meeting complete with mote (big corn bits) and ‘coffee de cana” …which is ‘coffee’ extracted from sugarcane. Super sweet. As we were in the meeting, the rain and clouds started to come closer and soon you could see the clouds literally enter into the little communal house through the windows and doors. One of the mothers also gave me two huge pineapples from her biohuerto…it was an adventure carrying them down but totally worth it, they were delicious!!!
I also got a ’solicitud’ or formal invite, to the municipality for a meeting Friday which I went to at 9 en punto thinking it was quite official…turns out it was quite official but that still doesn’t mean anyone shows up earlier than 9:45...pretty ridiculous. There was a German guy there, I guess he works in Cajamarca for one of the government aid programs we have here called EDAD…he wasn’t the most chatty but I think it could have been the setting, we will see. I guess he doesn’t really stay in Paccha but comes once in awhile to do…something? Not really sure. I have a meeting with EDAD next week that I hope they are actually there for and maybe I will learn more then.
So in between all these things, I’ve read a good bit, watched the Office (which I don‘t know why I never watched in the States!!) , spent some time with my family, gone for walks in the rain and mist and had lots of random little conversations along the way. Time is slow, but I’m developing a little pattern I think. One thing that does keep me busy in the mornings is that I teach English to 25 7-12 year olds Monday, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays for 2 hours each day. They are totally nuts, and its so hard to keep they boys in the class under control but all in all it is a lot of fun and they definitely seem to enjoy it. We might do a pen-pal thing with my friend Mateo’s class. He’s in the department of La Libertad and it might be fun for our classes to write to one another and talk about what they have been learning and a way to learn a little about a different department. I also am participating in the world wise schools program that Peace Corps does were they pair you up with a school in your home state to write to a class about Peru and your experience, part of the exchange. My class is from an alternative high school in Ogden and before Christmas I got a really enthusiastic letter from the teacher but after writing back a little about what I’m up to I haven’t heard from him since…hope they write me back! Otherwise I might ask for a different, younger class.
In other news, I’m counting down the days until January is finished and February comes with Carnaval. We’ve been looking forward to Carnaval since we found out we would be living in Cajamarca so I’m really looking forward to it and its right in the middle of February. At the end of January, one of the volunteer leaders who has been here for 3 years is coming to visit those of us who are all the way out here in the Chota area and she’s planning to visit my site and then Annie’s. Then we going to Chota for a lesson on doing radio spots…could be good, though I don’t think there’s much hope for a signal out my way though I’m going to ask around.
A few other random things:
-Literally two minutes after arriving back last Sunday night I was invited to a drinking and dancing circle in our restaurant…there’s no escaping!!! I hadn’t even opened my door to put my stuff down…
-The person next to me has thrown up 3 times on the ride to Paccha…different person each time…but I secretly pride myself on being able to handle it! My time might come though…ugh. And don’t worry when you visit I have sufficient doses of Dramamine, but the downside is you will miss the view which is worth it.
-I ate camote, zapaya, and chi-o-chi this week, all mixed with leche. Absolutely revolting site, but I’m learning to stomach them.
-I’m starting to get a little better at Volleyball, in the evenings people play in the street here and I’ve gotten into it too…I have the hand bruises to prove it!
-I’ve started eating mangoes
-We have a pet ‘penguino’ who is really cute and just meanders around the kitchen…as far as I can tell he is our one legitimate pet…he’s just here to be cute, not to be eaten!
-Apparently if the testicles don’t drop on the pig we have killed we can’t eat it because the meat is destroyed.
-Tomato bisque really freaks people out here…the thought of mixing tomato and milk…but I told them to
Eat it with some bread and it went over well!
-Don’t bring leftover Christmas chocolate to my English class…my students showed up later in the day
Asking to buy the rest from me!!!

Its been a little while!

The pictures above are of my first English class in Quiden a community nearby, it was lots of fun! I'm starting my English classes more officially this coming week to kids ages 7-10.
Also, pictures of the dolls burning, we made them from old clothes on New Years.
My favorite fruit...Maracuya..looks gross, tastes wonderful!
The "monster moth" I let chill out in my room for a week or so...he was sort of becoming a pet!



So Christmas in Paccha…..some thoughts (and a long time coming update of all things in general!):

Tortillas and honey…hard to describe but see the pictures below, these are the only time of year people eat them so that’s a big part of the diet for 2 days!

Christmas Eve was a really quiet day, I made some collages (haven‘t been desperate enough to move on to scrap booking yet) , stayed in the house, meandered around trying to find something to do, but eventually just settled in with my book.

At mass during Noche Buena I was firmly planted in the front row with the kids and an old lady and asked if I wanted to confess to the Priest before mass in front of everyone up on the altar…in the spirit of confession I told a lie ( I know Im terrible) and said I had confessed recently, but there was no way! The kids were all dressed up in their nativity costumes and had on the campo hats to give it a good Paccha type twist. Half way through mass the Priest called up a couple…to get married?! It took about 3 minutes and that part of the ceremony was finished, then it was time for 2 baptisms…talk about random. It made me think of the Christmas and Easter Catholics coming to mass on Christmas eve, I‘m sure they would love express Church day…get baptized, married, go to confession, and Christmas mass all at once J None of the songs were familiar, I was hoping for at least one, but it was funny because they substituted the name of our town for where I would expect to hear ‘Bethlehem.’specifically about Paccha..

After mass we came back to the house, and I’d been hearing about this “big dinner” from people in town and among us volunteers we were speculating what it would be, but as midnight rolled around, the tortillas and honey came out, along with paneton and hot milk with some chocolate through it, and a lone chicken wing…pretty funny mix. I gave my family the little gift I had gotten them, but could tell that definitely wasn’t their tradition, which was fine, I just wanted to give them a little something anyway.

The next morning I woke up to flashbacks of a cozy Christmas morning in my house and came back to reality with a nice cold shower, I heard a scream while I was in the shower and found that our cute dog King Kong had been hit by a car in the road…he was bleeding everywhere and we tried to comfort him…we thought that was probably going to be it as he was making really weird noises and didn’t move all day…but later he came back to life…and though he didn’t eat at all last week he is back to his crazy self now…though he’s taking advantage of being thinner by crawling through the cracks in the doors even when they are closed to him! The morning was mellow after that until about 2 in the afternoon. We went down to my host grandmothers house and they were making chicken with rice and yuka (has a texture like a potatoe, just more dry and soft and a different taste that kind of absorbs what its cooked with). The pepsis on the table are always a sign that it’s a bit of a treat, and they also passed around the semi seco wine (its crazy sweet, like dessert wine) and of course the communal glass with beer. We had a nice meal, people came in and out, and then had more tortillas. My favorite part of the conversation was them trying to teach me Paccha’s own form of Spanish, they have pretty heavy accents here that even I can pick up on having come from Lima. I like the sound of it though.

New Years there seemed to be more going on. People were excited about making dolls out of old clothes to burn in the street to say goodbye to 2009...and it was the day of the football match which happens twice a year. I headed down in the afternoon with my host family to our canchita (pitch) which has an amazing view that makes you just want to stare and it and not the game, and the village teams were playing. There was plenty of communal glass passing, chincharrones, and tiny little icecream cones. It was a fun afternoon outside with everyone, and the health post staff was there too. When we got back to the house we all relaxed for awhile, then my sister brought me some risqué yellow underwear which is a necessity for good luck during the new year, then I sat outside with my host cousin whose in town visiting, and we were passing phrases back and forth in English and Spanish, he’s interesting to talk with. It was time to go to the dance around 10 down at the primary school, and that’s where I stayed until 5 the next morning. The whole town was there dancing so it was a lot of fun, and at midnight I snuck out to the plaza to try call home, and saw all the dolls burning in the street…pretty different from what I’m used to! I think the thing I missed the most was the countdown…I thought they would do one, but instead it was just Happy New Year, its 2010!!!

The days between Christmas and New Years I spent going up to the health post to see if I could help out, there wasn’t much going on as it’s a quiet time of year (which is saying something when its already always quiet!) so I read my book up there and chilled out with them. I was getting ready to get to a Quinciniera one night when I got a knock on the door that there was a birth going on in the health post. I had asked them to tell me no matter what time it is so I can come and learn, so I stayed in the health post all night with the doctor (not Stalin, Dr. Wilson who is completing his obligatory ‘rural year‘)…we kept thinking it would be time, but it was her first baby and 14 hours later it finally came. The way you say give birth in Spanish is ‘dar la luz” which literally means to give light…pretty J The birth itself wasn’t quite as pretty to say the least, it was messy, and the doctor was lucky he had on his plastic bag shoes, but it was fascinating. Anesthesia here is not commonplace for births, the only time they give anesthesia is for C-Sections (uh yeah I’d hope so!) , even if we were to go to Chota it would have been a natural birth. I just kept trying to keep it out of my mind that the nearest basic hospital is 3 hours away and watch the doctor work his magic (and the poor girl push). When it appeared that it was almost time for the head to come out I stopped massaging her belly and the nurse and I put our hands in a type of fist above the part of the belly where the baby is and pushed down with all our weight to help make the pushes harder. This seemed like it would be a crazy ton of pressure, but it seemed to help, the baby was almost completely out 2 minutes later. Anyway the moms name is Gladys and she named her little girl Nicole, and she was pretty curious as to when I‘m planning to have babies of my own, it was entertaining trying to explain my rationale on that…We waited another hour and half for the placenta to drop, and when it did Gladys asked if they could keep it. The reason was because she worried that if the placenta was just thrown away somewhere cold or exposed this would have ramifications for the babies health, Nicole might feel cold or be sick a lot. So we put it in a plastic bag and left it by her things…wild huh?

Other days I’ve been helping a tiny bit with miscellaneous things at the health post, like today I folded Gauze pads for a hour and sterilized them, then did the same with cotton. The other day I talked the nurse into training me on the database they use (since we are a “Centro de Salud” we have an administrative function of gathering data from the health posts (there are 21 in our district). The girl in charge of this is having a baby at the end of this month, and in my need to feel needed, I told her I’d be happy to help with keeping the information up to date while she is gone…its very easy to use, and since I’m sometimes just sitting in the health post waiting to be needed anyway I figure this will be a good way to be useful and still be around seeing what’s going on. I feel like this week I’ve taken things into my own hands more with starting to get my diagnostic rolling, and I’m starting to feel quite excited about the probability for projects which is a good feeling.

A little about the diagnostic….during a PCV’s first three months at site they are supposed to conduct what is called a ‘community diagnostic’ to help gauge the needs of the community in which they are living and will be working. Since Paccha is already quite on top of things in terms of rural health being a ‘zona urbana’ ( even though we only have 900 people) I’m focusing on the surrounding annexes that are part of our district. We have 21 of these, and I want to conduct my diagnostic with the ones who are close by in walking distance but who also did not have the opportunity to work with Justin the previous volunteer. I’m going to conduct house visits to the different houses in the annexes and after building some confianza with the family of course I will be asking questions about all sorts of basic health things…for example:

How many children do you have?
Up to what point did you breastfeed them?
Can you tell me what your diet consists of (ex. What did your family eat yesterday)?
Can you identify a balanced meal (have photos of balanced/unbalanced)?
Do you boil your water? For at least 3 minutes? Do you understand why its important?
Do you have a latrine?
Why wash your hands? How often do you do this?
Have you heard of cocinas mejoradas for cooking inside your home?
Can you identify foods that help babies grow?
What foods are especially important to eat if you are pregnant?
Do you have a biohuerto? Do you consume the food you grow or sell it?
How do you prevent diarrhea, and how do you treat diarrhea when your baby or child has it? ---this one is especially important, often mothers are afraid to give more water to the baby---
Do you understand what vaccinations are and the ones your baby needs?
Has someone in your family been sick in the last 15 days? What kind of sicknesses?
How do you eliminate your trash?
How often do you brush your teeth? With water or with paste?
Are you willing to use the Centro de Salud for your health needs? When was the last time you visited the doctor?
Do you have SIS (the overarching health coverage here in Peru)? If not, do you know the process for getting coverage?
Do you raise your own animals to eat or to sell? What types of animals do you have (common are ducks, chickens, guinea pigs, regular pigs)
What kinds of natural medicines do you use and for what needs?


The whole point of the prying questions is to get a better feel for what kind of projects I’ll be working on and get me brainstorming about who in the community I can work WITH…in Peace Corp development mantra whatever I do must be sustainable of course…meaning the local authorities and people have to be willing to commit something to it too. If I find that half of mothers can’t identify a balanced meal, then clearly I need to do some ‘charlas’ (little meetings, demonstrative sessions) on nutrition with the health post nurses, or if they still don’t have latrines and cocinas they after 6 months here I might write a solicitud to the municipality to see if funding is possible for a project to create cocinas in this community and a Peace Corps grant to meet it 30 % of the way. Or if they have fear about coming to the health center and prefer to go to the local naturalist ‘bruja/witch’ as they call it here, then maybe having conversations with them little by little about the importance of the health post. Once I learn more about the community on this basic level theres more details I’d like to learn like do the women know they can get iron supplements free throughout their pregnancy, do they know foods that are a source of iron (of course, this is better if we are talking sustainable right), do they know the importance of early childhood stimulation, do they know about birth control methods, about STI’s? The reason this is important is that infidelity is huge here with men traveling so much to the coast for work…but I don’t even want to touch these topics with a ten foot pole until I know the families and women well…I’m in the Sierra ands its VERY SLOW PACED….you can’t just go in and start talking about sex etc. it will freak them out understandably.
Anyway, for my first visits I will probably have a nurse from my health post come with me, though most of the people seem to have an idea of who I am and that I’m here to work in health. In the meantime, I’m trying to learn about the way things get done here in Paccha, the different organizations that exist that I might be able to work with in addition to the health post and trying to learn about the nature of things here in general, so it’s a lot of observation and taking things in more than it is doing things yet. Plus theres the little hang up called language, which while I think is improving every day, has a way to go!!!




In other random news from the past few weeks...
Things I will probably never quite get used to:

-Math books for toilet paper…this would be taking my dislike for mathematics to the next level.
-The site of chopped up pig parts absolutely everywhere in my house, and smell that comes with that.
-Explaining my marriage status every time I dance with someone new.
-The constant noise…I fall asleep to cumbia, I wake up to cumbia, I eat lunch to cumbia…J
-The huge chicken outside we are saving for a chicken fight…
-That the women who wash clothes are all mute, I met my fourth one today
-The staggering age gap in some relationships is just creepy…


Good things:
-I’ve started looking forward to my cold showers, though this might come from necessity from how infrequently I take them.
-When it’s a full moon you can see all the stars, its beautiful!
-When I leave site, my favorite thing is café con leche with soft bread…at site my bread often has a funny hint of mold and can be rock hard…I still eat it and have been fine but it has that taste…except on Sundays when its fresh. I still love that things don’t have preservatives though.
-Dancing…after making my Gringa dancing debut at the high school graduation until 4 am before Christmas and again at the New Years Eve dance for 6 hours I feel I have proved myself capable of movement especially with cumbia, my favorite naturally. Salsa is a completely different story, as is Huayno, the typical dance of Cajamarca which could best be described as skipping and hopping in circles. Its one of those type dances that make it impossible not to smile its so much fun, but its ridiculous to watch. Thankfully I feel I will be well prepared to own it at Cajamarca’s famous “Carnival” in February when the Huayno will be obligatory!
-The kids around my house have discovered that I brought coloring books with me and all this week stopped by in the mornings to say hello and ask for a page to color its really cute.
-My neighbor has Encarta, which is a nice substitute for the internet when one is very bored, and I got to show them pictures of SLC on it.
-Watching 80’s videos with my cousins
-My walks up to the campo seeing the women making their blankets from a mile away because the colors are so bright.
-Camioneta rides…while I can never leave the window down because when we get into towns kids are armed with water balloons to throw at the truck, its always a good way to meet people and talk…I’ve met engineers, nurses, teachers, farmers, students, writers…and it’s a good way to force me to talk for a long time. Just today on my ride to Chota I taught a little girl the colors of the rainbow and we argued about my hair being orange/naranja or red/roja!

Also, riding quite high right now having finally received the two long awaited packages from my parents!!! Though next time maybe don't send the smaller jeans and hershey kisses together...dangerous (but delicious!) mix :) THANK YOU!!!!!