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