A few numbers...

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

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

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

Some of the most frustrating findings:

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

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

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

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

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

con carino!



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



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



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



Me being a babysnatcher...



Mom from Utchuclachulit with her 4 month old..



My health post...



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

Traveling nomads

Town outside Piura....happening place.



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



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


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

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

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

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


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

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



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



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



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




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



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

So thats the bathroom..

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

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

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

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

Campamento Tunel Conchano

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

So this last little while to get caught up….

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

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

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



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

Some things about Tunel Conchano:

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

Sooooo

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

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

Love?

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

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

Some examples of how this has played out lately:

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

Um what?

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

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

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

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

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


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

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


Parade for International Womans Day, in Bambamarca.









Me with Annie and health promotors from Paccha.

Carnaval, and its almost March!

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

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

Cute new puppies!!! I WANT one.

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

Getting ready for Carnaval!

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

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

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





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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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






Me with Barbs and Annie...

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