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!!!!!

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 :)