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

Love?

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

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

Some examples of how this has played out lately:

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

Um what?

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


Parade for International Womans Day, in Bambamarca.









Me with Annie and health promotors from Paccha.

Carnaval, and its almost March!

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

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

Cute new puppies!!! I WANT one.

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

Getting ready for Carnaval!

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

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

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





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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






Me with Barbs and Annie...

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

January Adventures

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



Dishes the mothers had prepared in Unigan.



Mothers with their crafts.



SuperCUY here he comes.



Tamales for breakfast with cafe de cana yum yum.



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



Girls in my English class..



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



Hiking down from Huaychoc.


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

Its been a little while!

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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




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

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


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

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

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