My Last Hurrah

 I remember my first day in Nanchoc. It was December 1^st 2008 and I arrived on the big day of the town’s anniversary. I went to my house and there wasn’t anyone there (it was my fault, I couldn’t figure out how to work the area code combination to call ahead to warn that I was coming) so I dropped my stuff off at the health post. They too were occupied with some sort of meeting so I took to the streets with a very friendly neighbor. He was 5 year old Eddie. A kid who is all ears that didn’t seem to mind my “yes” and “no” answers and was constantly grinning ear to ear with his new gringa companion…which is how I was able to notice so quickly how bad his teeth were. If it weren’t for the big patch of gray that were his teeth, Eddie would have had one cute crooked smile.

So with neighbor Eddie as my big push I started thinking up some dental health lessons. About 6 months later (and some much needed improvement in speaking Spanish to a recognizable degree) we had developed “Monchito el Golosinero,” a slide show that explains to kids why brushing your teeth 3 times a day is very (VERY) important. It’s super cool. Well at least that’s what the kids say (what can I say, my cardboard Sony TV set is cutting edge technology here). And for the most part the kids seemed to have gotten the message. Riverside High School helped in the project with their donation of 205 toothbrushes—each kid got a toothbrush to use at school after their snack time.

The project was going great, kids were brushing their teeth; good dental health was had by all…or was it? I noticed that there were still kids (and adults for that matter) arriving at the health post complaining of tooth pain. When you have a big enough cavity no amount of brushing is gonna make it feel better. So I started a dentist visite Nanchoc. That’s the main reason people let their teeth get so bad; Nanchoc is just too far away from dental help. To pull one tooth a person needs to go to Oyotun (either in the bus or to pay a motorcycle to take them), then wait around at the health post for the dentist to show up, hope that he feels like working that day, pay the guy to pull the tooth out, then go to the pharmacy to pay for your antibiotics and pain meds. People view it as way easier to just take an Advil a few times a day and work through tooth pain…we’ll ignore possible stomach lining issues and just go with how bad that is for the tooth. And with this another plan was formed: we got to get a dentist to Nanchoc.

I tried to get some help through the Peruvian branch of the Red Cross, but the coordinator would never return my emails or phone calls…not that I blame him, I mean if you heard a voice message in broken English would you respond to it? (yeah, my Spanish still stinks in phone messages, I guess it’s the nerves of having a limited amount of time to talk.) Just as I was about to give up on finding a dentist to come and pull a few teeth, Michael (a Peruvian boyfriend of a fellow volunteer) came to a regional meeting asking about the possibilities of bringing some of his dentist friends to our sites to do dental work.  Sometimes things just work out don’t they?

After a month of planning the big day arrived. The 23^rd of October 2010 was the first EVER dental health fair in Nanchoc. 2 dentists and 1 dental assistant worked from 10am to 4pm cleaning and pulling teeth. I counted; we had 57 patients and pulled 38 teeth. There was the normal Peruvian issue with attendance: the 5 bravest people show up in the morning to get teeth pulled, once they confirm with everyone else in town that the dentists are good, everyone else came pouring in after lunch. I still had a few tooth brushes left over from my Riverside supply, so I gave each patcient a toothbrush. And the kids who had teeth pulled all got a little gift I bought (dollar store quality cheap toys) to avoid as many tears as possible.

Now back to Eddie. His mom had told him that he could go, if and only if, the dentist doesn’t pull any of his teeth. Yes, you read that right…if they DON’T pull his rotten teeth out. Her rational: they’ll just get infected and then she’ll have a sick kid to deal with. After an exchange of confused looks between Tania (a dentist) and myself I went to Eddies house with his and had a 10 minute conversation with his mom explaining why we needed to pull 3 of his teeth (well really all of them, but 3 were so infected they had puss coming out of them…yummy.  She finally let me take him back to the dentists. Eddie was not happy to say the least. This kid has a fear of needles that has never in the history of the Earth been equaled—and this is coming from a girl who did the” kick and scream and yell” bit until I was 11 for all my shots at the doctor’s office. After a good 15 minutes of talking in my most soothing voice, and a few white lies on the part of Michael the dentist and Jenny the gringa , Eddie had been all anesthesia-ed up and was ready to pull a few teeth. He made the usual faces that would be associated with the pulling of teeth, and more than a few tears and “I HATE YOU”s were exchanged, but in the end, Eddie had 3 less horrid teeth in his mouth (thank God they were baby teeth). He left, rubbing a pair of red eyes, and told me that we were never playing soccer again—my heart broke. Our afternoon 5 minutes of soccer had been a tradition since my very first day in Nanchoc…and all over a few pulled teeth that was gone?!?

I tried to pass the last hour of the dental health fair acting like I knew he was joking…or that it was just the anesthesia talking…but I wasn’t sure. I was worried that I had passed some line, maybe pushed him too hard to get his teeth pulled. I mean, I knew medically speaking he was better off without those teeth, but did that give me the right to persuade him into doing it? I was having a personal reassessment moment that lasted all day. I took the dentists back to Oyotun and got them on a bus to Chiclayo, went back to Eddies house to see how he was doing—he didn’t want to see me. My heart sunk again…maybe he was serious? Was there no more soccer to be had in my last month at site? The thought of not playing with Eddie in the afternoons actually kept me up most of the night.

I woke up the next day to make bread with Don Elmer and Doña Rosa; I pass Eddies house to get to theirs so, as normal, I glanced in the door that was open. There was Eddie, sitting on a stool holding a soccer ball grinning that crooked gray smile. “YENNIFER!” he yelled as he jumped up and ran my way. I’ve never been so happy to play soccer that early in the morning (it was 6am). He said he felt much better with those teeth out; it was the first time in a while that his mouth didn’t hurt at night, so he was able to sleep. He said he dreamt about the movie “Alice in Wonderland” that we had watched together the week before. He caught the rabbit with the watch and ate him for dinner…okay, so I never said it was a great dream. The important part was that he wasn’t mad at me! Guess a little push in the right direction is okay.

There’s no use crying over spilled milk or a pulled tooth.

(that's a happy Eddie on the left)

Packing Up

We were given a suggestion at our close of service conference—start cleaning and packing, and start doing it now. I rolled my eyes a little at the prospect; we still have 3 months (or around that) left in site. Even if I wasn’t a self proclaimed procrastinator I’d find that to be a little early for such extremes. So I let it fall to the back of my mind and focused in on passing as much time with my Peace Corps family as possible.

After the non-tearful ‘guess this is the last time I’ll see you…wow that sucks’ moments (what can I say, we’re all still in denial about the whole thing) and a 14 hour bus ride back to Chiclayo followed by a 3 hour ride to Nanchoc I walked back into my room and collapsed on the bed. I was exhausted. The past week had been spent thinking about resumes, post Peace Corps medical plans, government job options, how to make the best out o these last months in site, and the ‘AHHHHHHH THE REAL WORLD IS OUT TO GET ME SOMEONE HIDE ME’ moments.

Lying on my bed I noticed one important thing: I have accumulated a lot of stuff in 2 years. I remember my first day in this room. I had a hanging closet (a stick dangling from the rafters by rope), a desk and a bed. Then somewhere along the way I bought a small bookshelf, made another book shelf, bought market bags, a Rubbermaid-like container so the buggies don’t get my food, packets of poster board for charlas, some campo-work clothes, and a lot of DVDs. Not to mention the random crud that I didn’t buy but have covering every free square inch of my room: kilos of paper waiting to be recycled, what’s left of magazines sent from home after art projects, parts of bottles, and paint cans and containers.

While I was taking in all of this mess I heard a voice, a New Jersey voice to be exact, saying “start cleaning, and start cleaning now.” So I started with the most obvious route: gather all the things I can recycle for a little spending cash. I gathered all the white paper into one market bag, all of the magazines in another, and all the random plastic into yet another market bag. At the end of 3 days (yes it took me that long, I did this in my free time, I still had projects to finish at site) I lugged the market bags in 3 different trips to the health post to be weighed. I had 22 kilos of white paper and poster board bits, 15 kilos of magazine paper, and 3 kilos of plastic. The lady who lives at the corner took it all off my hands (she brings recyclables to Chiclayo to sell) and left me with S./ 6. That’s about $2.15.

Okay, so I didn’t make a fortune, but it will buy me the fancy menu in Chiclayo the next time I go in instead of the boring S./4 one—the fancy menu comes with a dessert! And my room looks a lot less crowded. Next goal: get rid of enough stuff so I can make it home with 1 duffel bag and my hiking bag…let’s see if it happens. 

Elmo's Diner Memories

Any given Friday night in Durham you’ll find my family sitting in a booth at Elmo’s Diner. It’s been our most frequented eatery since high school. The manager and the better half of the staff know us by faces and order: Dad gets his Mexican omelet, grits and biscuit without butter or a cheeseburger without mayo, Mom gets her blueberry pancakes or an omelet with sausage and cheese, grits, and a biscuit (this time with butter), Mike gets his cheeseburger and fries, and me, well I get chicken and dumplings with skin-on mashed potatoes, a fruit cup, and a biscuit. I’ll admit, occasionally I’ll go for the cheeseburger or the blueberry pancakes, but nine times out of ten, it’s the chicken and dumplings.

Today my host mom went to Chiclayo with my host brother and left me in charge of cooking breakfast and lunch for my host dad, my other host brother, the teacher, the guy who helps around the house, and the guy who helps my host dad with the farm. I woke up at 6 and started peeling potatoes, a skill that I’ve got down pat after 2 years spent in the potato capital of the world; so much so that I can probably peel a potato blindfolded. It’s the darn yucca that I have problems with. It has this papery skin that you have to cut/lift off the tuber and then once free of paper you have to slice this hard as a rock thing in half. Well seeing as I was still half asleep, today I nearly sliced my finger in half. After a faint-y feeling (I saw a lot of blood) I decided to yell up the road to the host family that breakfast would be late…I needed to go to the health post and possibly get some stitches.

Of course, the doctor was not there, nor was my socio, the nurse, and the only person who was working had no clue how deep was too deep of a cut and needed stitches. So we cleaned it up, put gauze on it with some tape and I went back to the house to peel more yucca, this time I managed not to add any blood to the breakfast.

So after an interesting breakfast, and with a throbbing finger, I decided to take a break and clean my room. While folding my clothes I noticed that there was blood on my shirt from the finger-slicing incident and decided to change into my Elmo’s Diner shirt. It got me thinking about chicken and dumplings so I decided to take a look in the fridge to figure out my game plan for lunch. There was some celery, carrots, tomatoes, milk, half a cantaloupe, and spicy peppers. Celery, carrots, and milk! I was half way to chicken and dumplings. I went to the store and bought a kilo of chicken, a quarter kilo of flour and some baking powder and got to work.

I had everything for the chicken and dumplings but now I needed the skin-on mashed potatoes. Skin-on, now that would never fly in a Peruvian house—the skin, after all, would stick to the side of your intestine and KILL you of course! So I peel some more potatoes (yeah I eat a lot of potatoes) and got to making milk-less mashed potatoes (my host dad doesn’t like milk).

Chicken and Dumplings: Check

Skin-Off Mashed Potatoes: Check

I was missing the fruit cup and a biscuit. The biscuit was just not going to happen; I only make break with my neighbors in the night, but a fruit cup, that I could pull together. I sliced up the cantaloupe and threw in some apple. So my Elmo’s Diner lunch was almost complete. Well for me it was complete, but I had to bring it up to Peruvian standards: lunch isn’t a lunch if there isn’t rice. So I made Peruvian rice (aka with oil and garlic mixed in…eww) and waited on everyone to get back from the farm so we could eat.

My host dad walked in the door, washed his hands and face and did his usual inspection of the pots to see what is for lunch. This is a daily occurrence, not just when I cook. He lifted the lid on the soup and said “Jenny, you forgot to mix the semola with cold water before you added it to the soup, that’s why it’s all clumpy.” I then remembered that a dumpling is something that most Peruvians had probably never seen or heard of. I explained that it was a gringa soup and that it’s like a boiled bread in chicken soup. Don Jose stared at me for a good 30 seconds and repeated what I had said, but in the form of a question (“¿sopa gringita con panes?”). I nodded and told him he’d like it if he’d try it. He then proceeded to move on to the pot of mashed potatoes, me gave me a grave look and asked if there was milk in them. I assured him there was not, that I used chicken broth to make it thinner, I was given the “okay if you say so” nod as he looked in the rice. He grabbed a pinch and tasted it, and was pleased to find that I made it with oil and garlic, he’d have at least one thing that he was used too to eat today.

I served the plates and watched as the whole gang inspected their plates, pushing the dumplings around in their bowls of soup, starring up at the others to see who is going to be the brave one and try it first. My host brother mustered up the courage to take the first bite, paused to think a second, then said “hey, this is good,” and the rest of the table began to eat.

It may have been a Thursday afternoon, but that’s close enough to a Friday evening for Chicken and Dumplings, Skin-off mashed potatoes, and a fruit cup for me. 

Really. You’re Going to Steal Compost???

It was just like any other day after a trip to Chiclayo. I get back to site and my brain is still in a swirl of e-mails I need to answer for my next trip to civilization, paperwork to be done, project work to be started, and all around lack of ability to effectively communicate in Spanish because the past day and a half was spent thinking and talking in English. I was tired but I knew that my garden had been a whole 2 days without water and was probably very thirsty so I worked up the energy to go and water my plants.

It was just like any other day. I drug the hose from the health post to the back lot, and then I went to my secret hiding spot for the extra 10 yards of hose I bought and grabbed it; then connected it to the other hose. I set it down in the plot in the back right corner of my garden, its where I always start—what can I say, I fall into habits easily, and then walked back to the front of the health post to turn the water on. In my walk back towards the garden the health post owl family did their usual low sweep to scare the begeezes out of me and I walked back to the back right corner. I put water in the 4 rows of broccoli and then turned to water my compost….and… and it was GONE!

I stood there for a good minute processing what I saw while water was pouring onto the ground and splashing mud up all over my jeans. Where my 3 by 3 by 2 foot pile of decomposed weeds, fruit peels, dead plants, dry foliage, egg shells, and guinea pig crap was gone…gone, as in nowhere to be found. The ground had been recently shoveled; I could see where the edge of the blade had run into a rock I had put to support the stick in the middle of my compost. It was also completely dry, so the compost had been gone for at least a whole day. The dried grass clump that had been covering my compost had been moved to the side. My stick was placed a few feet to the right of where it should have been…it should have been in the middle of 25 kilograms of almost ready to use compost. But it was just leaning up beside my fence staring at me just as confused as I was. I’m about 95% sure I let out a whimper as I stared into the empty plot that used to have my compost in it.

The water was still pouring out of the hose and my pants were now completely covered in mud and water spray. I managed to compose myself enough to turn around and to place the hose in the next plot with the black eyed peas…then I let out a few curse words in English and kicked the stick. I stood there just staring for another few minutes trying to think of a plausible explanation of where it had gone. Surely someone at the health post had thought it was just trash (we burn piles of waste organic material here, and I had a huge pile of it in the back. I can see how it would easily confuse someone). No, no one from the health post even bothers to come into my garden, if they came inside they knew I’d make them help me.

 Maybe it was Beto, the guy who cleans the health post. I yelled over the back wall and asked him if he’d seen my compost, he replied “what is compost?” Guess not.

Okay, I needed another train of thought. Who knew about my compost? All the guys at ADRA (the farming NGO that works in my site) knew about it, but they have around 100, 50 kilogram bags full of worm poop which is about 100 times better than my compost. So they didn’t steal it right? I yelled over the fence to Don Alejo, the guy who works the tractor, to ask him. Nope, he said he hadn’t seen it.

Guessing that Beto, the nicest guy I know in town, and Don Alejo the most honest guy I know in town (he once admitted to having pooped in my garden when he was drunk…so he wouldn’t lie about compost) weren’t lying to me I was back at square one.

 I went to turn off the water and then walked into the health post. I asked the new doctor (she had only been there 2 days) if she knew anything. She didn’t even know I had a garden…how you miss a huge wall of white plastic bags in the back of the health post I’m not sure, but I hope she pays more attention when giving medical exams. Carlos said he knew nothing, but was talking to me in his “I know more than I want you to know” voice that I hate and have come to not trust. I asked his BFF Walter if he knew anything and he gave me his “what the heck do I know” face. So I had a hunch, but with no real supporting evidence I was still left with no leads in my case of missing compost.

I then proceeded to forget about putting water on the rest of my garden and resorted in to all around pouty face mode. I know that sounds childish, but we shall call it the straw that broke the camel’s back. The past few months the 40 mothers who had been helping me garden began dropping like flies. At this point I was lucky if 2 mothers showed up a month to help me. Waking up at 5:30am every day to water and de-weed before the sun gets up and has the chance to burn me had gotten very old. Not to mention there is a stupid white spider that apparently likes making its nests inside my green tomatoes, killing them of course, that CANNOT be killed! So I was already in a bad mood. THEN I find my compost missing. The compost that was supposed to give me some HUGE basil plants to make some killer pizza sauce to make the amazing pizzas I make with don Elmer, and that was supposed to go towards planting Talla trees at the high school with the boys I took to Camp VALOR.  This camel was pissed and needed chocolate to make all her worries go away.

So after channeling my inner 8 year old and telling my hose mom in a “oh my God the world is out to get me” tone of voice the case of the missing compost she was of no help making me feel better, replying that the mayor probably had something to do with it. Yes the man is out to get me, but does he even know what compost is?

Fully frustrated and completely pissed off I retreated to my room and ate a whole (huge) bar of Hersey’s chocolate that Casie had brought me when she visited. I even resorted to my EMERGENCY ONLY Mountain Dew can (yeah I found a can at Plaza Vea and brought it back to site for such emergencies) and then ate some vanilla cookies with peanut butter. It was an all out pig-out on comfort food situation. I then went to bed (it was 9pm by the time I made it back to my house) and hoped it was all a dream.

At 5:30am my alarm went off. I put on my green Carhartt pants and my working shirt then headed back to my garden. Pulled the hose from the health post to the garden then went to my secret spot to find my extra hose and connected it to the other hose. I placed it in the broccoli plot in the back right corner and went to turn on the water. I watered everything, except for the compost…that wasn’t there…and then started pulling up weeds and piling them where the compost used to be.

You can steal my compost--whoever you are. You can pull up my carrots and break my squash (which someone had done before…probably the same person). You can do whatever you must to piss me off but I will start over again. You can’t keep me from working. So bring it. One day I’ll catch you red handed and then you’re in trouble.

Vacations Keep us Sane

I don’t know what any Peace Corps volunteer would do without the occasional visit from home. We need the much needed payload of good chocolate, spices, hair ties, and other amazing things from home just to keep our mental health in stable condition. Not to mention the much needed reminder of all things American and a good dose of State side culture.

For instance, my college friend Casie came to spread all good things American (chocolate and culture) for a weeklong trip to my site and then Chachapoyas. I found out a many good thing about life back home: the “that’s what she said” has been replaced with “that’s what he said,” the awkward turtle isn’t that funny, and that the world is still falling apart faster than it should be (thanks to reading a Time and Newsweek). I was also lucky enough to restock my chocolate supply and to get a few sawmill gravy sauce packets (yeah think what you might, but I’m going to have an awesome biscuit and gravy breakfast soon!). Now before you think I was only happy to see the food I must inform that I practically tackled Casie in the Lima airport while holding my homemade sign that read “MEXICAN.” That inside joke got me called a racist about 4 times and got a handful of dirty looks…come on people it’s a joke.

The vacation started off with a day in Lima, doing the only thing there really is to do in Lima during the day: go to the market and eat Peruvian food. We lucked out (in my opinion) and were able to watch a few of the world cup games while we ate (what the heck Brazil, really? You’re gonna throw punches in the Wolrd Cup?) at a menu. Then a most astonishing thing happened (well by Peace Corps standards) I got on an AIRPLANE to get back to Chiclayo. For those of you who know firsthand how much I hate flying you can imagine what Casie had to deal with. I used to be okay with flying, when I was a naive little girl who thought that planes should fly, I mean if Snoopy can do it, then anyone can, right? Now that I’ve had enough physics classes under my belt to know that a plane in the air is NOTHING natural and requires an unbelievable amount of power to stay in the air and to not send me plummeting to a fiery death that will probably end at the bottom of the sea, I’m not so okay with the idea.

After arriving firmly on the ground in Chiclayo with a few white knuckles (and having resisted the urge to kiss the ground) I gave Caise the grand tour of Chiclayo-which isn’t much more than Lima. We went to our favorite morning sandwich place and then to the market to try a few fruits that they don’t have State side. We then went around our arm to get to our elbow, aka through Oyotun to get to Nanchoc. This trip I usually avoid because it involves taking a cruddier (than my town’s) combi and then an hour long Mototaxi ride. I think the new gringa in town was happy enough to be seeing my site and having the new experience of riding in a Mototaxi that she ignored how badly her butt hurt upon arrival. We were only able to stay for the night to make our bus to Chachapoyas, but I had the chance to show her most of my projects, the library, the garden, and the family I bake with, we made a cake to celebrate my best friend in site’s birthday and Casie’s arrival.

The next day Casie got to experience the bright and early (well before bright and early) wake up time of 3:30am to make the 4:00am bus to Chiclayo. She got the full (quite literally) experience of the ride—we filled every seat plus all the aisle room in the bus and gave Casie an eyelevel view of a drunk guy from my site’s zipper…so lucky! Once safely in Chiclayo we met up with my Peace Corps friend Ryan (who lives in Piura) and his 2 friends who were visiting from home, Scott and Stephan, to get on the bus to Chachapoyas.

How to describe Chachapoyas? It is one of my new favorite places in Peru. The air is so clean it is unbelievable, and the views literally take your breath away (although part of that may be partly due to the altitude). We signed up to do a 4 day trek through and around Chachapoyas. The first day took us to el Pueble de los Muertos, the town of the dead, where there are mountain side (like in the mountain) grave sites built into the cliffs. It was very impressive that the people of the time were able to carry such heavy material up half a mountain and build these circle gravesites. WE also got to see a few “tiki men” that were places in front of a burial site of a…I think the guide said it was a king. Okay, so they weren’t real tiki men, but you take a look at them and give me a better word to describe them.

After having spent most of the better half of the day walking down the mountain to the pueblo de los muertos and then back up it again we traveled in a car to the Valle of Belen.  The Valley is now my favorite place in all of Peru. It is a wide green valley with one of calmest winding rivers I’ve ever seen. It’s not home to much, we only counted 5 houses and we lost count of how many horses and cows, but when you wake up in the morning you are submersed in a cloud until about 7am, then the sun peaks over one of the ridges and gives a spectacular show. Of course Ryan and I were the only ones who were up to see the sunrise (we’re used to waking up at 5 due to crowing roosters) so we killed time building card houses (mine was way better) and playing UNO. After breakfast we started our walk to the next stop, a house where we would stay the night before the horseback riding day.

Oh the horse riding day. The worst day of the trip for my poor butt’s sake. I am by no means the type of person who is meant to be on a horse for a long period of time. But I’m just going to fast forward through the stories of all the times I almost died and get to the “YAY WE MADE IT TO THE TOP” celebration scene. A good…oh 8 hours after starting the day out on a horse, and a good few near death experiences to be had by all, we made it to the top of the mountains. We had a great view of the valley on the other side and could even see Kuelap from the top. We then rallied and headed down the mountain. Which I can personally say KILLED my knee, but it was a good walk down. Casie and I found along the way some blackberry bushes and a Sauco bush (a Peruvian blueberry like fruit) that provided some snack food for the journey down hill.

Once we arrived in the town at the bottom of the hill we all fought to get in line for our much needed cold shower before dinner. While the others showered Ryan and I took off in search of a phone so we could reserve seats on a bus back to Chiclayo for the following day. We were successful; we only had to wait for about an hour in line for the only telephone of the village!

The next day we started early. WE had to get two big sites in in one day so that we could all make it back to Chiclayo in time to get Casie back to the United States and Ryan and his friends in a plane to Cusco…the pressure was on. We arrived in Kuelap Fortress and were pleasantly surprised when we realized we were the only ones there! I have never been ANYWHERE in this country that’s even remotely touristy without encountering 100 other gringos with cameras destroying my pictures. Lucky us! The fortress is huge and divided into 3 levels; where the general Joe-Shmo lives, the religious sector, and the military barracks. All the houses are built as cylinders to hold up during the occasional earthquake and have a cone shaped roof with a built in water filter. The view from the watch tower on the third (military) level was unbelievable. And what my mother would have found even more unbelievable was the booby trap that had been set up to keep out intruders: A narrow walkway on the side of the cliff (where if one were to fall it would be a good 100 yards before you hit the next rock and another 500 yards before you found the next one, and so on down a mile high mountain) had been artificially constructed wider. Not bad your thinking? Well this walkway had been constructed with the sole purpose of getting people to walk on it then fall to their deaths…AND all this without a barrier to keep the stupid gringo tourist from falling off the mountain. The only warning was a piece of yellow caution tape that had been tied between 2 sticks….yes mom, its true.

We stayed at Kuelap until around 10 and then got back in the car to head to the Gotca Waterfall, the third highest waterfall in the world. We ate lunch then started walking all the way down a mountain…which to me seemed rather counterintuitive to be walking DOWNHILL to the worlds third HIGEST waterfall…but that just tells you how high up we were to start with! The majority of the group (that would be everyone but Jeff and Ryan) didn’t make it to the actual waterfall due to our legs killing us and the time crunch we were on to make it back to Chachapoyas for the 7:30 bus to Chiclayo. Needless to say Ryan and Jeff pulled out a Superman like endurance and made it to the base of the waterfall and back in roughly the same amount of time the rest of us just made it back…go figure.

We celebrated with trembling knees that we had survived a boot camp’s worth of mountain climbing on our vacation and made it back to Chachapoyas to put on clean clothes and get on the bus. Other than a snoring passage that we all wished to kill, we made it back unscathed. Once in Chiclayo Casie and I got back on a plane to get her to Lima and Ryan and the boys stayed in Chiclayo to make up the sleep they missed on the bus due to said snoring guy. It was a sad departure with Casie at the airport, but then again, I will see her in 3 more months! And in comparison with the 2 years that had gone by, that’s nothing.

Side Note: The internet stopped letting me post photos, sorry people, I'll try again later

MMMMM Bagels

Things have been looking up at site. I feel far more productive and happy. I spent the past few weeks trying to figure out why. I have a project that’s goings great (a biohuerto behind the health post), I will build my first cocina mejorada tomorrow (4^th of June), I’ve made more time for myself (namely reading the first 5.5 Harry Potter’s in Spanish..I got 2.5 left to go), and the library looks like it might actually exist by the end of the month (cross your fingers). These are all great things. I know they sure make my boss happy-- I’m actually working on steady projects (Can I get an AMEN)! But naw, that’s not what’s improved my productivity and made me at times actually giddy. No, I believe I’ve narrowed it down to one of 2 things:

1.       I increased my chocolate intake

2.       I increased my Bagel intake

Now any female can attest to an increase in chocolate intake will make even the nastiest day seem a heck of a lot better, it’s a natural mood booster; but I’m guessing you’re wondering where I got the bagels from since I’m fairly sure half of you have heard me gripping about the lack of bagels in Peru. Well the chocolate and the bagels are connected. I’ve been teaching all of my cooking knowledge to a family in my community who makes bread.

It all started one famous day (in my site at least). Norma’s 11^th birthday. I was asked to me the God-mother of the birthday party (aka provide the cake and drinks and so on) for Norma’s very first birthday party (the other 10 birthdays went by unmarked). Since I’m A. a cheap, and B. had no intention of paying to go to Chiclayo to pay to buy a cake, I decided to make a cake for Norma. Armed with the knowledge that lemon is her favorite flavor I made a lemon cake and decorated it to say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY NORMA”…but in Spanish of course. The cake was ready and waiting a full 2 hours before the party so I put another pan on top of it and left in on the kitchen table at my house to go and set up the Piñata I made Norma (I know I’m cheap, but she loved it) and make sure all the other food preparations were going well.

With everything in order at the professor’s house I went to go get the cake…and what did I encounter? The family cat, Camacho, having a hay day eating all the icing off the cake. Okay, I knew I’d been in Peru too long when my first instinct (after nearly killing the cat) was that if just the icing was gone, I’d decorate it again and call it a day. But Camacho had eaten the top off the better half of the cake. So now I had 30 minutes to pull another cake, decorated cake at that, out of thin air. I ran around to buy more ingredients and threw another S./10 in the family money pot for the extra gas I was surely going to burn through making the second cake. An hour and a half later, I arrived slightly late (yes an hour and a half is slightly late in Peru…)with the newly decorated cake that was a hit with everyone.

So now I’ve diverged sufficiently that you’ve forgotten why this story was important—It’s how everyone in my town caught word that I can make cakes. Don Elmer and his wife Rosa happened to be at the party with me (they make bread in my site) and asked me if I’d be interested in teaching them how to make the cake. Not being able to pass up a free invite to make sweets I said yes.

We started out baking. I taught them how to bake a lemon and vanilla cake, and then they asked me if I knew how to make alfajores (a Peruvian cookie) and I actually did, so I taught them that. We just made enough for them to eat (I’d help out of course). Then I started getting more requests for birthday cakes and decided that Rosa had a business opportunity that was just too good to pass up. I taught her more cakes, cookies, and pies and referred any birthday cake request to her. We now bake on average 10 cakes a week in addition to 6 dozen individual apple pies and 6 dozen alfajores for her to sell. She’s turning a great profit and I get to bake. Now I don’t do all the baking of course. I make the cake or whatever the first 2 times, the 3^rd I help her or her daughter make the cake, the 4^th they do as much on their own as they can, and by the 5^th it’s their “final exam” and they do it all on their own. Rosa has now mastered the art of: the carrot cake, chocolate cake, vanilla cake, lemon cake, apple pies, chocolate chess pie, banana cream pie, banana bread, orange-nut bread, cinnamon-raisin bread, and quiche. Yes, you read that right, quiche.

When making alfajores you only use the yolk, and one day I had left over pie dough, and decided to put the egg whites to use, I mean I hadn’t had a good quiche in a looong time and the oven was just calling my name. So I chopped up a small onion and tomato and threw in some garlic and salt and pepper. Ta-da a super sensation was created. My town actually likes quiche…who would have thought it. I can’t convince these people to eat raw carrots and they like a quiche? That faithful quiche day there happened to be my usual following there watching (a group of 5-10 mothers who spend their free time watching me cook and talking about how they can lose weight to be “skinny like the gringa”) and I offered them all a piece and it became an instant hit. Who would have thought it?

Now not everything I’ve made has gone over great. One day I found a bagel recipe and decided to give it a go. It didn’t look that hard. I mixed the dough, let it rise, kneaded in cinnamon sugar and raisins, made little bagels, let the rise more, boiled them, and then put then in the oven after the bread. I’ll be darned if I didn’t get a half dozen tasty bagels! Now these were no 9^th Street Bruger’s Bagels of course, I mean it was my first attempt, but I was in heaven. I was eating a bagel. Don Elmer was mocking me because I was the giddiest he’d ever seen me eating my bagel with butter (I made it fresh from the cow). I decided that I’d be nice and share my little slice of heaven with my friends. They didn’t like it. They kept on saying that it was not fully cooked (bagels are supposed to be spongy in the middle darnit!) and they were too chewy. Oh the horror of it all—okay, not really. That just meant more bagels for me! So now I made my half dozen bagels a week, next week I plan on trying to make sesame seed bagels (Don Elmer is going to share his sesame seeds). Now if I can just figure out how to make cream cheese I’d be in heaven.

I tell you, an increase in chocolate and bagels just makes everything seem so much better

Lessons Learned

I had an enlightening conversation with my World Wise school class at Riverside High a week ago. I was talking with a few of the students on Skype; they had just asked me what a school day was like here in Nanchoc. Upon my saying that they students are only in school from 8am to 1pm the Riverside students faces lit up, “god that’s so not fair, why can’t we have half days?” was the general consensus. I was taken aback. Not exactly sure why, I know had I been talking to myself my senior year of high school I would have loved the idea of half days just as much as they did. But now, 6 years after graduation (god that makes me feel old) all I can think of is how much I took for granted what we have in the states.

The teachers here are teaching because it is a lucrative job—in my town they receive better pay than both the nurse AND the OB-GYN at the health post. The teachers here lack the spark that I saw in my teachers growing up. At first I accredited the lack of enthusiasm to the differences in the educational system (I guessed that the teachers enjoyed straight-up-lectures just as much as their students didn’t) then I found out about the pay and it all clicked. The teachers are teachers for the money, not for the love of teaching.

Now that being said, I can recall a few teachers growing up that just didn’t have a real interest in their job. It was just that, a job. But the majority of my teachers loved their jobs and were quite good at it—however bad of a student I might have been.

Mr. Carter, my 6^th grade AIG Math teacher had the ability to simultaneously scare the begeezeuos out of us and inspire us to do better.  We were graded on hamburgers. McDonalds is a cruddy grade because their burgers aren’t all that great; they’re edible, not enjoyable. But a Wendy’s burger, they were the best because a Wendy’s burger is square—they don’t cut corners. “Good, Better, Best. Better than the rest, until your good is always better and your better is the best,” it was his credo for our class. His aspiration for us was to always do better. At the time I’m sure I rolled my eyes. What self respecting 6^th grader wouldn’t have? But now, I think Mr. Carter had the right idea. I’ve got that credo written out on paper stuck to the back of the door to my room-- just a little personal reminder. Good. Better. Best. McDonalds bad, Wendy’s good.

I think an entire teaching style can be accredited to Mr. Quackenbush (yes that’s a real name), my high school physics teacher. He was a hippie in all definitions and forms. Long, gray hair almost always worn in a pony tail and occasionally he’d wear his Star Trek shirt…not a black shirt that said Star Trek, but a real Spaceship-whatever-beam-me-up-Scottie shirt. We all overlooked the fact that he looked like a crazy person (okay, maybe he was crazy…) because he made the material fun. When learning about gravity and ramps we pushed his old F-150 down a slope and did some calculations. A few painful Excel-Sheet-induced hours later: BAM! g=9.8m/s/s. Well I’ll be darned. Then who wants to learn about projectile motion from a book? Not any student I’ve ever seen. What did we do? Why we turned the football goal posts into a huge slingshot! A few rolls of duct tape and a handful of bungee cords later and we had sent a Basketball flying across the field (all videotaped so we could call it research of course). A good week later we had figured out, with a lot of help from Excel, that the dern ball moved up with the same speed that it fell down with. Go figure. Then I won’t even go into the details about the electricity labs, I´ll just say that it’s a lot of fun to blow things up. And that you can blow things up and learn at the same time. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone from my Physics or AP Physics class what they learned, you’ll get 2 answers: There is such a thing as a rubber tree, it can be grown in a pot, and it really has rubber inside; and that a=v/t and a=g for something falling straight down. Call his teaching style what you will, but learning can be fun. Mr. Q  taught me that.

If I have to thank one teacher above all others it would be my art teachers. Now, I know what you’re thinking. I studied math, I should thank a math teacher, or a science teacher. Mr. Carter and Mr. Q inspire me now-- now that I’m older and wiser and all that jazz—but when I was in school there was one class that I could walk out of and always, no matter what, feel like I was the king of my world. Art class. Why art you ask? Because it taught me to be creative—a trait that I just don’t see in my students here.

If I give a sheet of paper to 10 students and then say draw your house; they will all draw the same box with triangle roof and a triangle mountain-scape in the background (yes, the high school students too). The color might be different, but the idea, the same. I didn’t realize how much I had taken for granted us having art growing up. And real art, a whole hour to ourselves to play with clay, to make a mess with paint, and to develop creative thought. Here art class is nothing more than students regurgitation lines to a play they have no interest in, or the mandated dance class that no one seems to enjoy. Rarely are they allowed to draw (material costs too much) and even more rarely are they told that their work is beautiful. But in all the art classes I could remember we all walked out having learned something; more likely than not, something about ourselves. At the end of a class I could say to myself, “wow, who knew I had the patience to draw that stairwell in perfect perspective?” And I’d say it with pride. I can say after spending 15 hours cursing at (working on) a MatLab program the last thing I’d think was, “wow who knew I had the patience for that?” It was more likely I’d let out an exasperated “holy cow thank the lord that’s over with. Get me out of here.”

I had spent a lot of time thinking about how much I took for granted in my schooling all week—both the fun and the un-fun. I looked at school as something I was required to do, not something to appreciate or something to be thankful for. So here’s a extremely late “Thank You” for all of those teachers who taught me that learning is supposed to be fun, that I can do anything that I try to do, and that I am my own individual and I have the right to my own ideas and thoughts. Now I know that our way of doing things isn’t perfect in the Sates, but it wasn’t until I left and saw how others learn did I realize how grateful I should be. 

“An Adventure is Simply a Well Planned Trip Gone Awry”

I forget who said that, but whoever they were they knew their stuff. I recently returned from a trip to the Peruvian Jungle than can be summarized in that quote. I think it´s best if I start from the beginning, so here we go:

Thursday in the morning I left Nanchoc and headed to Chiclayo to meet up with the rest of my group (Robyn, Ryan, Sarah, Sam, and Tania). We all ate at KFC in Real Plaza—aka the place where you buy gringa food—and prepared for our 12 hour bus ride over the Andes Mountains to the jungle town of Tarapoto. After the usual routine of checking baggage and showing of passports we all were aboard our 2-story bus with semi-lean-back chairs. The bus continued to run as usual, the bus attendant passed out a sub-par meal of chicken with potatoes and some unidentifiable dessert (either flan or creama volteada…we´re not sure) and then the extremely scary movie of fashion (right now, I Am Legend) started to play. However, five minutes into the scary movie we diverted from the normal bus routine…the bus attendant began passing around plastic baggies. When we asked what they were for she simply replied, “in case you have to vomit and can´t make it to the bathroom.” It was in this moment that I knew we were in for an interesting trip.

Gladly I can state that none of us needed to use the barf-baggie. I can however with equal confidence state that none of us were able to sleep on said bus either. A combination of freezing air coming out of the air vents mixed with a healthy portion of fear for zombie-like-I-Am-Legend-jungle-dogs that may or may not be rampant in the area combined with the horrible roads we were traveling left most of us with less than 2 hours of shut eye. I, being in the very front of the bus with two huge windows to see out of the whole night (I traveled with the mentality that if I was going to die I wanted to see it coming), can testify to the conditions of the roads. Apparently the night before there were a number of landslides that left most of the roads covered in dirt when we were lucky and rock and mud when we were less fortunate. It was slow going, and we arrived in Tarapoto a little worse for wear a few hours later than planned.

Upon arrival the kind owner of our hostel was there waiting for us--a very grandmotherly looking woman with short curly hair and the coolest accent we have ever heard. She helped us into moto-taxis and took us back to her hostel where we dropped our bags and slathered on some sunscreen and ran out the door to go jump off some waterfalls. We rented two moto-taxis and headed up the mountain to a national park with a waterfall where the locals (and tourists) so to swim and enjoy a nice day. And as per usual when traveling in Peru, you cannot pass more than 24 hours without a transportation issue…ours arrived in the form of a flat tire on my moto-taxi. We tried, and tried to get the attention of the other moto-taxi with the other half of our group and failed. Rather than pulling over and waiting for help (as any American would do) we just kept going, very quickly, down the mountain on one good wheel and the other rim.  We all made it to the waterfall alive and excited to jump off the cliff into the water; it’s a small cliff, maybe 10 feet up, probably more like 8. I think we all jumped off…I can{t actually remember that far back in the trip…but I know I jumped ,with Ryan and Tania a few times. Before we jumped the first time we were asking the Peruvians how deep the water is, to which they all replied, “It´s REALLY deep, you´ll never touch the bottom.” We figured a few things out: that deep for a Peruvian is not deep for a gringo—we all hit the bottom, thankfully softly, and that water in the jungle is COLD! We spent a few hours jumping, swimming, taking pictures, and eating the no-bake cookies I brought and then returned to Tarapoto…6 to a moto. So if you are wondering how you fit 6 gringos in a moto-taxi here is how: you put 3 in the bench behind the driver and you have the other 3 sitting/standing on the back cargo ledge. Note to self for future riding experiences, do not sit down, the bumps are NOT good on the bum when sitting on pure metal bars.

The next day we went to the Blue Lagoon, which is in actuality green…but that´s just a small detail. We rented a car to take all 6 of us to the lagoon and wait for us, then take us back. To get to this lagoon you have to cross a river on a barge. Now stop right there. I know you have a mental picture and I wish to interrupt you before you get it good and drawn in your head and explain what this barge looked like. It was 3 canoes tied together with a wooden platform that laid across them that you load cars and people onto to cross the river. Now we weren´t that worried looking at the barge, I mean the guys sure did look like they knew what they were doing and as with most things in Peru I´ve learned that the people here do better with the things that they create for themselves. We watched the first barge go across, it was a synchronized dance of sorts with the 3 motors to get the boat to move upstream then at the halfway point, drift with the current to the other side and dock to unload the cars and people.

Now, I consider myself an observant person…that being said, I wish I hadn´t noticed the following. To the right of this docking area there was a big orange column that was connected on the other side by a large thick metal cable to another big orange column. To me it looked like there used to be a trolley or something that would pass from one side to the other. So I decided to open my big mouth and ask our driver (who is from the other side of the river…so has obviously been crossing this river for 40 some odd years) what were the columns for. His exact reply, because you just can´t make these things up, was: “There used to be a boat connected to the wire, it would go straight across the river and then come back, but recently the current was so bad and it was so overloaded that one side went under and caught the current and the whole boat sunk.” I looked a little harder, and sure enough, right in the middle of the river there was a faint V, the connecting cables from the boat causing a ripple in the current…the boat was still at the bottom of the river connected to the cables and towers. Being a glutton for punishment, we asked when this was assuming (a horrible thing to do) that it was years ago…nope, last week. Yes, these men have been using the 3 boat-redneck-yacht-club version of this barge for all of 5 days…now this is when pre-Peace-Corps-Jenny whould have said “heck no, I´m going home.” Yeah, I actually looked at this thing and said, “hum, this could be fun.” It´s amazing the things 2 years can do to ya.

At the Blue Lagoon we ate Tilapia caught from the lagoon, swam, and were introduced to my new favorite food: A banana (a special one for frying that´s harder than a normal banana) that is grilled, then cut in half (hot-dog bun style) and filled with crushed peanuts. Gosh it was good. I ate 2 in less than 5 minutes. It´s like a peanut butter and banana sandwich 2.0. After a few hours of eating and swimming we met up with our driver and headed back to the hostel to hear our second transportation blip. The boat that “always” leaves from Tarapoto to Lagunas doesn´t seem to be leaving on Easter Sunday. Yeah, okay, it was bad planning on our part to travel on Easter Sunday, but people said it´d be leaving. We were slightly panicked (when I say slightly I mean slightly, we were eating snacks lounging on the floor singing songs waiting to see if it worked out) the hotel lady came back with good news: there is 1 boat that is leaving.

Yay! There was a boat, we went to sleep and woke up at the butt crack of dawn (3am) and took a TWISTY TURNY road to the dock at Yurimangas. I,  can proudly say, have never been carsick before, felt a little queasy. I wanted to teach this guy how to drive in the mountains. Or at least to stop accelerating INTO the turns and breaking coming out of them…it was just a nauseating experience for most, and an actual vomit-inducing experience for others. We made it all relatively in one piece and met up with our guide´s daughter. She took our hammocks and got them set up on the boat and we enjoyed a nice breakfast while we waited on the boat to load.

Now, I knew that we would be on a boat, and that this boat would be hanging room only (hammocks). But all of our friends who had taken this boat had been on the tourist boat…we went on the Peruvian boat (as it was the only one leaving that day). The main difference: the amount of space between you and your neighbor. Without joking, there were our 6 hammocks hung in a 4 foot wide space of this boat. We all sat head to toe as to all fit relatively comfortable and set off on the adventure. Looking around the cabin it was just ridiculous how many people we had in this boat. There were at least 40 people hanging in hammocks, 40 more squished in along the sides of the boat on benches, maybe 10 babies that were hanging in hammocks above their mothers, and at least 15 kids sleeping on the floor underneath all the hammocks. AND this was just on the second floor…I didn’t get to take a look at the bottom floor. We were all doing fine, catching up one some sleep or some reading…for the first 2 hours. Then I (and a few others) had to use the bathroom. We were hanging a good 30 feet from the back of the boat, where the bathroom was, and between us lay a sea of bodies, baggage, and babies. It probably took Tania and I a good 20 minutes to make it to the back of the boat, sliding underneath hammocks, crawling over some that hung real low, crawling on our hands and knees under others, side stepping over babies, bumping people sitting on the benches. It was a sight to see. The bathroom was an even better sight: a 2 square foot wooden cubical with a toilet (yes a real toilet) that dumped all contents into the river (so sad). After doing our thing, and making our way back to our hammocks we told the event to the rest of the group, who we had accidently awoken in our efforts to escape, we all decided to drink the bare minimum of water to avoid that trip again.

We got in some good shut eye. Around 1 in the afternoon a guy began passing out little slips of cardboard with a stamp on them. We all accepted them, not knowing what they were for. We asked around and found out that it was for food. Yes! This boat just got better. Not only were we having fun (we actually were…the bathrooms we just interesting) we got food! It was´{t anything to write home about, yucca, rice, meat of some kind, but it didn´t make us sick…this was the important part. After lunch Ryan and I began a riveting game of hide and go seek with two girls that were sitting near us. Yes, you read that right. We were playing hide and go seek while SITTING (that being in a stationary place) in a hammock. These girls were having a blast, and so were we for the first 10 minutes. Soon thereafter Ryan faked sleep and I began reading, the girls got the hint and left us alone for a while.

Around 10 hours into our ride we decide to climb up to the roof of the boat—we were in search of some good pictures, more air, and space. We found it up there. Traveling by river in the jungle is by far one of the coolest things (if not the coolest) I´ve had the opportunity to do in my life. We passed so many small villages, and waved to probably a hundred children in the process, and told some great stories. At some point we decided to grab the snack bag from down below and had some PB&J sandwiches and potato chips with a LITTLE water. When it because too dark to see we decided to climb back down and sleep (yeah we waited until it was too dark to see to climb…we are special). When we work up it was night time and we were in Lagunas.

We took down our hammocks and met up with Klever, our very…interesting…river guide. His name just fits him perfectly. He´s almost impossible to describe if you´ve never met him, but I´m going to try: he´s a shorter man, built for working hard, with a receding hairline and equally prominent laugh-lines on his face. He´s a man built to be a river guide; he has just the right ratio of smarts to craziness with an added amount of ability to bull-shit and tell one heck of a story. We dropped off our stuff at the hotel, ate, went over the trip and went to bed. The next day we woke up at 8 (Klever understood that we would want to sleep in and a grumpy traveler is no fun) and got ready to head out on the river. We left most things at Klever´s house, only bringing rain jackets, hats, a dry shirt, sunscreen, and the like with us, then took another moto-taxi to the launch point for the 2 day paddling trip into the national reserve.

I have never been so happy for the following: my rain jacket, my dry bag, and a paddle. It poured on us the whole first day, so I was obviously happy to have my rain jacket (and pissed I had put on so much sunscreen just to have it wash off with the rain) and my dry bag to keep myself and my stuff dry. Then I was even happier to have a paddle in my hands. I hadn´t paddled since the outdoor leadership classes at NCSU and I had forgotten how much I loved it. God it felt amazing to paddle again. I surprised all the guides by actually knowing what I was doing, and the guide for my boat appeared to be extremely pleased to have a helping hand for the journey.

We made our way down the river, stopping along the way to dump water out of the boat (it was raining REALLY hard), to see monkeys, parrots, birdies, a sloth, and a jungle cuy. Yeah, there is apparently a Jungle Guinea Pig that lives about 20 feet up in the air in the trunk of a tree…it blew our mind as well, and yes I have a picture of it. But the favorite of the trip was Slid. Sid is a sloth. We were paddling and Sarah and I´s guide said, “Look, a sloth.” When we asked if we could get a closer look, he took out his machete and chopped the poor guy out of his tree. Sid, being a self-preservation type of sloth, made a “run” for it and fell into the river. Instinctively Sarah and I plunged our hands into the water and pulled the poor guy out of the water and into the boat…forgetting that we would then have a wild sloth (is that a paradox?) in the boat with us.

I remember reading about sloths when I was in school…I can´t remember when, but I know I was still young enough to have been missing a tooth and was still able to drink a juice box without actually opening my mouth (remember when you could just stick the straw in the gap?). I remember a few things about sloths: they are the world´s slowest moving animals, they walk/crawl butt first, and they were related to a 12 foot tall giant dinosaur-sloth back in the day. I couldn´t think of any reason that a sloth would be dangerous, but I kept my distance for a few seconds just in case…I mean they have relatives that were 12 feet tall…there has to be some reason they stayed around for so long without getting eaten.  Finally the guide told us we could pick him up, that he wasn´t going to hurt us, and to take some pictures.

We found out a few things about Sid along the next few miles of river: he smells, really bad, he is covered in little bugs that eat the mold that grows in his hair that enjoy crawling onto the body of whatever he is holding on to, Sid is around a year old, and that sloths eat once a week and use the bathroom once a week. One thing that we never did actually find out was if he was actually a he…we just kept going with it. When asked if people keep sloths as a pet our guide answered, “Why the heck would you want one as a pet?”  Okay, so he has a small point, but we could see how if you bathe him once or twice a month and only let him play in clean water how the guy may not stink so bad. You´d never have to worry about the little guy running away from home seeing as how you´d catch him before he made it out the driveway, and if he only eats AND uses the bathroom once a week he´s very low maintenance, the perfect started pet for any child.

After stopping at a house to eat lunch with Sid (“for being the world´s slowest animal you sure are moving fast enough to interrupt lunch”) we got back in the boats and went looking for a place to leave him. We all felt pretty bad that we had carried this poor sloth miles and miles away from his home (a distance that he will never be able to make in his life) and then ditched him in a new and unknown area. The guide assured us he´d be fine and that we´d come back this way the next day to check on him (yeah, he was actually there a day later…all of 4 feet from where we left him).

The rest of the day we paddled further down the river to a campsite on stilts. There we docked the boats and began preparing dinner. Ryan and I de-scaled the fish on the paddles (very sanitary…we are bad health volunteers) and washed them in river water before handing them over to the cooks to fry. While we were waiting for dinner I taught some of the group how to paddle and then they had a race. Now, I would have thought that any group of 4 or more gringos, given the chance to paddle a boat in a river in the jungle of Peru would have jumped on the idea…apparently not. According to Klever, we were the first group he had ever seen take to the boats by ourselves without a guide and play. Basically we rock…but we already knew this.  At this point in the trip we had reached a number of our goals: to see a sloth, to see a monkey, and to see a parrot. We were still missing a few so we told Klever what they were: to see an anaconda, to eat a piranha, to swing from a vine, to see river dolphins, and to see a toucan. He told us he´d do his best to help us reach our goals.

That night we went out for a night paddle, and Sarah was praying the whole time we didn´t see a BIG anaconda. She had heard a story of how they can “stand” 6 feet in the air out of the water and then fall ka-blam style onto passing boats causing them to sink and become anaconda snacks. Not the best story to hear before traveling in the pitch dark at night on a river full of them. We didn´t see much that night. A few sleeping birds, saw a few alligator eyes, but no bodies. We returned back to the camp to sleep; Sarah was happy we didn{t see any legless beings.

Early in the morning we went for a walk in the woods and heard (sadly didn´t see) toucans. They have a beautiful song, a sort of a tut-ti type thing. It´s amazing. We walked further back into the woods and took pictures by these cool trees that´s roots grow FROM the branches to the ground. And then, Sam´s life was changed forever. She was able to reach her main goal, quite possibly in life: she swung from a vine. The rest of us tried, I failed, most succeeded.  We even got to drink some of the water from the inside for the vine…and I´m happy to report that none of us got sick from it! With the mission accomplished we headed back to the boats and ran into the river dolphins. We spent a good half hour watching them do their morning hunting, then headed back to the camp. Along the way we spotted an alligator, luckily from a distance because he looked bigger than I wanted to see up close.

For breakfast we ate…PIRANHA! Fried piranha tastes very similar to catfish, just with a few more bones in there. Their jaw are just ridiculous. They can open wide enough (WHEN cooked) to fit at least 3 of my fingers inside the tall way. After a hefty breakfast we headed back to Lagunas…paddling up stream.  It took us a while, but we got back and managed to beat most of the storm that was heading our way. The wind is a very scary thing in the jungle. We were told that since all of the plants have such shallow roots (there is only 15cm of good topsoil in the rainforest, the rest is clay) that a slightly higher than normal wind can send whole trees to the ground. Seeing as how some of these trees had thorns on them I wanted them falling nowhere near me.

Back in Lagunas we got the first bit of bad news: There is no boat leaving for Iquitos today, but no fear there will most defiantly be one leaving tomorrow! WRONG. Tomorrow showed up and we got the same story: there will be a boat tomorrow. Considering we only had about 2 tomorrows tomorrows to spare before our plane left—without us—from Iquitos, we didn´t have much wiggle room when talking about a 30 hour boat ride. So we went for Plan B. Plan B wasn´t official, it was thrown together. Plan B consisted of our guide, Klever, running/biking all around Lagunas asking every single person he knew with a boat how many gringos they could fit on it and how much it would cost. Now if it had just been our little group of 6, we could have been out of there in a hot second on the mayor´s boat…but it wasn´t just us 6, there were two more groups of 4 from the Peace Corps all in the same…situation. So after being told that 14 was just too much gringo for the mayors boat we had pretty much given up hope.

It was about halfway through Klever´s fishing story (a tourist lost his finger to a Piranha trying to get his fly fishing lure back…stupid) that a small man showed up at the house, sat down, and just didn´t appear to be in that big of a hurry seeing as how he was intently listening to 9-fingured Dan´s story as well. Upon the story´s completion he says: I can take the gringos to Nalta (big city before Iquitos) if we leave NOW. Well I´ll be darned…he was in a hurry after all. We (people from my group) go into panic mode, all 14 gringos are spread out throughout this relatively small, but still rather large town with no cell phone service. Now, one might think it´s easy to track us down…it´s harder than it looks. Frantically an hour later we all show up at the dock, and of course, the guys are still not ready to leave.

We took a look at our boat, it looked nice. Just like a one-story version of the one we took from Yurimangas, it even had a little hole in the back to call a bathroom. Excited to get heading to Iquitos we all went to go find some lunch for the ride and stock up on some snacks. When we returned we were in for a rude surprise. The big nice boat we had seen before was motor-less and the men were moving her motor to something that resembled a 15 foot long canoe. A short while later we noticed 2 huge barrels of gas being loaded onboard and reality sunk in…we were somehow going to fit 14 gringos, with 14 bags, 3 Peruvians, 2 gas barrels, and a car battery aboard this boat…somehow without sinking.

I do not know how we did it, I really don´t. And the first 2 hours were even…somewhat…pleasant. I got a little sunburned, but so did the rest of the boat. But at around hour 3 the rain started. Hard. Now I didn´t forget to mention the handy-dandy foof on this 15 foot canoe because it didn´t have one. The guys killed the motor and started passing out a tarp (aka my only back rest available in the seat I was in) to hold over our heads and bags. At this point I should mention where I was seated in the boat. At the nose of a boat, when loaded down with 14 people and their stuff, the water comes in over the sides splash-mountain style. I was okay with that when there was sun, but when the sun went away, I started to get cold (Zach started getting cold too, he almost died in the front with me). Then when holding, yes holding, down a tarp while moving in a semi-speed boat you tend to get cranky and tired. So tired+cold+wet= 2 very unhappy campers.

Now when we got on board this boat we asked a few very important questions to Klever: How far to Nalta, how much are we paying? The usual. But the one question we forgot to ask the people ACTUALLY driving the boat. The oh so important question. Do ya´ll actually know where we´re going? Eluded our minds. Probably because it seemed obvious. I mean, who would agree to take a boatload of 14 people to a place they´d never been before…these guys. Yes my friends, yes. These men didn´t actually have any clue as to where we were, or where we were going. We were told this trip should last 8 hours, buy hour 10 we show up at a town. Upon stretching our legs and using the bathroom we are told by the locals that we are not, in fact, in the town of Nalta (as we had all thought) and were not even halfway there…S*@#%.

So after almost crying (I’m not going to lie, I was dying in the front of that boat) I got back in the boat and hoped we´d get there soon. At 3am, about 15 hours into this mess I hear the following conversation:

Our boat: hey you guys

The other boat: yeah?

Our Boat: do you know the way to Iquitos?

The other boat: no, we were hoping you did.

Oh goodie. 28 collisions with logs later (the river is apparently used to carry logs to Iquitos) we arrive, by some miracle, in Nalta. After a very uncomfortable exchange of way too much money in front of way too many locals we grabbed all of our stuff and got on the bus to Iquitos. 2 hours later we were in our hotel and bathed. Thank goodness.

While in Iquitos we enjoyed 1 thing probably the most: The Yellow Rose of Texas Bar and Grill. Good American food with some good COUNTRY music. I was in heaven. We actually ate there every meal (I would say I hate to admit that…but I don´t, it was that good). We also did the usual tourist things, went to the market, bought some artisanal goods, saw floating houses (yeah there is a place where all the houses are build on a raft), and ate grubs. Yep, those little gross white blobs of an insect. They taste kinds like the fat on some friend pork, but that could have been influenced by the woman having pork grilling beside her grubs.

After 2 good days spent chilling in Iquitos we got on a plane (which was a horrid experience for Sarah and I…planes are not our friends) and were heading back to our sites. The jungle was by far the coolest trip I´ve ever taken. It´s going to be a hard trip to top…fiestas patrias has its work cut out for it.

Updates to Come

Hi everyone. I am so sorry that it has been so long since my last post. Due to everything and anything electronic that i own deciding to die in the past month I was left without a computer and camera. Thankfuly I have found the money and bought a new computer and camera and will be back on the blogs to fill everyone in on life so far. Some cliff hangers for what´s to come:

°Gardening with the Mothers at the Health Post; a test of patcience and green thumbs.
°Jungle Trip

• Scary bus ride to Tarapoto
• Cool hammock boat ride to Yarimangas
• paddeling in the reserve and holding a sloth
• eating a grub
• the non-existant boat to Iquitos
• The best quotes and moments from the trip
• AND PICTURES!

so all of this is to come...I just have to get to typing. Very sorry for the delay in updates, but I promise to have them all up next week.

Jenny

Good Run of Bad Luck Turned Around

I’ll be the first to admit it; I lack a strong belief in someone upstairs watching over all of us. There may or may not be some higher being up there getting a kick out of watching us live our lives. That being said, the hypothetical higher power up there has had it in for me recently. Be it the god of bad luck, the god of technology, or whoever, someone had made up their mind to make my life a little harder recently.

It all started with Camp ALMA: A field trip of sorts that the Peace Corps volunteers put together for teenage girls in our sites. We bring together teen girls from all of our sites and teach them about leadership, women’s health, and small project management along with playing silly games and painting t-shirts. Basically a fun time to be had all expenses paid by the Peace Corps. I had one girl who told me she’d go. Her mom had signed the permission slip and we were all good to go…so I thought. Day of at 4 am her mother tells me her daughter’s not going. I was pissed. I’d spent the better half of the past 2 weeks talking the mother and daughter through this whole ordeal (the mom’s a little…we’ll say special.) making sure that there was no confusion. And to bail on me last minute and leave me girl-less at this camp—well that was just not cool!

So I show up at Camp ALMA girl-less and depressed. I was really looking forward to this camp. I made the best of it, stealing time with the boy’s girls from Bolivar (The neighboring town with male Peace Corps Volunteers), it was a camp for girls after all, so I didn’t feel bad stealing the girls from their boy volunteers. Then the unthinkable happens. Me being the klutz that I am dropped my point and shoot camera on the floor—the rock covered floor. Crack. There goes the camera. Well, okay, I’m not 100% sure it’s completely gone. It just doesn’t take pictures. I’m taking it to a guy in Chiclayo this weekend that I think can fix it…cross your fingers for me.

I get back to site, piss about the camera, and still kinda pissed about the girl not coming to the camp. Then I hear the gossip: The girl I was supposed to take has run off to Ica (a different department in Peru) with her boyfriend and is refusing to come home. Drama follows but can be all summed up with: everyone in town knows I had nothing to do with letting the girl run away from home…except for the mother. After my 5 witnesses (the 2 volunteers from up the hill, their 2 girls, and the nurse from Nanchoc) were able to support my story that the girl was not with me when she ran away, the mother finally backed down. She now knows that I had no part in her run away daughter’s flight to Ica. I can now sleep well at night knowing she won’t be attacking me with a machete. Things start looking up at this point.

We have decided at the health post to try a big project. I’ve given them enough confidence that it is possible to do. We’re going to attempt-- attempt is the key word-- a community garden in the lot behind the health post. The Idea is that all the mother with children under the age of 5 work together in shifts on a veggie garden. Those parents that work get to take home produce. Sounds simple enough, but in a town with rivalries that make Romeo and Juliet’s parents look like friends it’s a rather hard task to complete. We’re currently attempting to create working groups, not based off of where the family lives (which was my idea that was shot down), rather, based off of who gets along with who. Apparently some of the feuds in town run deep enough that there are a few people who can’t be trusted in a close proximity to each other with a pick axes. We think we have the list down, and the mothers are all bringing sticks and old sacks to fence in the area to keep the chickens out. It looks like this might actually happen.

Then today, the best news possible. The highlight of my week, possibly my month, or maybe even the year: I am in possession to the keys of the future library of Nanchoc. Yes, let me repeat that again: I HAVE THE KEYS TO THE FUTURE LIBRARY OF THE TOWN OF NANCHOC!!!!!!!! Huge break! Biiiiiiiiiiiig news here. After battling with our incompetent mayor for the past few months he has moved his stuff out of the school’s new building (yes, he had stolen the newly constructed school building from the school…) and I have the key to one of the BIGGER rooms to turn into the library. I literally jumped for joy. Rosa, my main go to woman for this project and the unofficial leader-lady of the parent’s association, deserves the biggest round of applause ever. She did almost all of the work in hounding the mayor to get these keys and deserves all of the credit. Without her hard work this first phase of the library would have never happened. I cannot thank this woman enough. Although I’m going to try to thank her in my own special way, I’m going to bake her a cake. It’s the international thank you, who doesn’t like a good cake?

Things are looking up. Let’s hope they stay that way. I’m heading to Chiclayo tomorrow to celebrate my birthday a few days early with some friends, and to buy a broom and a mop and some floor soap for the new library—first thing on the to-do list is to mop up all the rainy season mud that has encased the floor. But I’m game for a good elbow workout.

Down Time

Yes it’s that time of year again: The rainy season. It seemed to have gotten off to a late start this year but its making up for its tardiness in force. It’s rained for the past 8 days straight. I’m not kidding, a solid 150 out of 192 hours to be sure. While I’m super excited about the future prospects of corn on the cob, tamales, and corn fritters that I will be consuming the rainy season has its downside: everything comes to a grinding halt. People stop coming to classes because walking for an hour to school on a sunny day seemed nice, but walking that same distance slipping and sliding while getting soaking wet just to listen to me talk isn’t worth the effort. The meetings we plan and prepare for are given to no one; after that late afternoon downpour they all decided to stay snug and warm in their houses. So us Peace Corps Volunteers are left with some extra time on our hands.

There are many ways to occupy this time. We all try to use time wisely, getting work done in advanced for post-rainy season activities and projects. We spend on average a few hours a week talking to the town population under that one part of the roof of the town store where you don’t get wet in the downpour trying to build interest in potential projects. The poster boards get made in advanced and stored for future use, the pens and paints get neatly organized, and we finally have time to organize all of our photos and other data from the past few months. But even after all of that we are left with a LOT of down time. The rainy season is just full of downtime and not all of it, no matter how much we try, can be filled with real work. So we find ourselves reading a lot, studying for the GREs, watching DVDs or downloaded TV series, doodling in our notebooks, or just taking a nap. To my credit I do spend an hour a day to studying for the GRE, but let’s face it the verbal part is going to kill me so I need the practice. I have found myself doing a lot more of one activity than I would have ever thought possible: Reading. I hated reading in high school. My loathing for this activity probably helped influence my course of study; there is a heck of a lot less reading in math text books. But until the Peace Corps I was never presented with a good 5 hour window of nothingness. It was always filled before with studying, cooking, eating, practices, classes, meetings, or just watching a few minutes of TV. Now I’ve got huge windows of time with no classes, no meetings (because no one ever shows up when there’s rain), no practices (the soccer field’s a mud pit), no TV (literally there isn’t one in the house), no cooking (my host mom likes to do that), and very little time spent eating. So what else is there to do? Well I draw some, paint a little, read Newsweeks that my Mom sent me, and have found myself picking up a few books.

The book I’m reading now has actually given me the incentive to write this blog. Jennifer Ackerman’s Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream outlines the day in the life of your body. I’m only about a third of the way through the book, to the part where she starts talking about the afternoon. I just finished reading about that afternoon lull that we all experience. After eating that big lunch we’re good for about an hour, then the eyelids start getting really heavy and we begin cursing the no-napping policy of our job (OK, the Peace Corps aside), our classes, or our meetings. Well she makes a good point, who said naps were so bad? Well other than our bosses obviously. But she says that at this time of day, when those eye lids start getting really heavy
“There are two ways to go. Try to override the rhythm, bear down on your work…and ignore the open sleep door at your own peril. Or briefly go through it; put your head on your desk, or if you’re lucky enough to have a couch, stretch out and snatch forty winks…Catnap, siesta, forty winks, rest involving sleep but not pajamas—a nap is technically defined as a daytime sleep episode of more than five minutes and less than four hours. Considered by many to be deviant behavior, napping has traditionally gotten a bad rap, disparaged as the unfortunate artifact of an overindulgent meal, stifling midday heat, or sheer laziness…
I’m happy to report that in the past few years napping has achieved new status. Research shows that naps not only ensure a break time at a time of day when we’re definitely not at our best, they also have powerful recuperative effects on performance, out of all proportion to their duration.”

Woo! We have it, a woman who wrote a book based off the findings of scientific papers gives napping the green light. And just in case her words don’t convince you, let me throw in my little case study. I work up this morning at 6am, brushed my teeth, did a little yoga, got my lesson plans together and got dressed all before 7am. I still had 2 more hours to wait until breakfast so I prepared lesson plans for later in the week and then did some laundry (a feat that is never meant for this rainy season…nothing EVER dries). This all goes in line with the “morning rhythm” that Jennifer talks about, morning individuals (such as myself) do all of our best work between one hour after waking and noon. After battling the clothes I ate breakfast and ran out the door to classes. The door of course was no open, so I ran all around town to find the man with the key and had the door open by 10 am and was giving classes to 3 kids (a better than average rainy season turn out). By noon we’re all finished and so was I. Tired from a morning of running around I returned to the house and helped finish the skinning of a goat that was to become lunch. This signaled two things: 1. that we’d be eating really late, and 2. that there was time for a nap before lunch. So I went to my room and had a good hour and a half of sleep before the sound of clanking plates work me up. I then went out to the kitchen and ate rice, bean, and goat with the family, wide awake. After lunch I sat down and read some more and got to the lovely part of this book that told me naps were a good thing. As stated in the book napping is common in many cultures, Peruvian included. It’s just too hot in the summer after lunch to do anything other than nap. Jennifer mentions that in one culture of people living in the Cook Islands that there are more than 35 different kinds of sleep, all with varying depth of sleep and twitches of the sleeper.

And just in case you don’t believe her, Winston Churchill had a few thoughts on the matter as well, “You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner and no half-way measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed.” So who’s with me on pajama party nap time being a staple in all working environments? Okay, I know it’ll never happen. Good news for me: teachers can actually have that nap between lunch and dinner…we just have to wait till school’s out.