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....
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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