Alpaca Attacka

My Last Hurrah

2010-11-08T20:41:00.000-05:00

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

2010-11-08T20:18:00.002-05:00

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

2010-08-22T18:30:00.001-04:00

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???

2010-08-22T18:29:00.001-04:00

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

2010-08-22T18:27:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-07T08:56:00.000-04:00

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

2010-06-07T08:45:00.002-04:00

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”

2010-04-20T23:00:00.001-04:00

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

2010-04-11T10:11:00.000-04:00

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

2010-02-12T22:11:00.002-05:00

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

2010-02-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

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.

The Mango’s Out to Get You

2010-02-12T22:09:00.002-05:00

So back before Peru if you had mentioned the word mango to me I would have said it was a fruit that costs way too much fresh, is way too sweet when bought dry, and is great in juice. It was just some exotic fruit that they sure don’t grow in North Carolina though I’m pretty sure they’ve got them out in Cali and the west coast. A mango was just a mango. A fruit nothing else.

Oh was I wrong. The mango is a silent killer. When harvesting mangos a non ripe, or green, mango can fall from a very high branch and land directly on your head and cause a day-long headache. Or that same green mango can be covered in “mango milk” or the sap from the tree which causes a rash that rivals any poison ivy I’ve ever seen. Oh and heaven forbid you forgot that you had some of that mango milk on your hand and scratched that itch you had beside your eye. Forget pink eye, that’s bloodshot eye for at least 4 days and no you won’t be able to see out of that eye either for a while…might wanna head to the health post to get that looked at. Plus don’t listen to that little boy that lives beside you when he says that green mangos are delicious with salt; to me it tastes kinda like eating a banana peel and lemon peel smushed together with a little salt for seasoning. Then that little neighbor kid forgot to mention that a green mango piece can stick to the side of your intestines and cause one heck of a gastrointestinal issue if you’re lucky and possibly kill if you happen to be a tiny baby. (So that last one hasn’t been scientifically proven, but I’ll believe it after seeing the mango milk reaction…imagine that on your insides…) Not only are green mangos a cause for alarm for humans, they can kill your cow as well. Pay close attention to what those cows hanging out under the mango tree are doing. Silly things forget to chew green mangos (they don’t bother with the salt) and then get them lodged in their throats when the mango milk sticks to the sides. Puts a new spin on a hamburger with mango salsa huh?

And if you thought that just the green mangos were causing all the problems, well you haven’t seen anything yet. Careful eating that ripe mango, that juice doesn’t come out of your clothes. Oh and don’t you try to put some bleach on that juice stain on your favorite white shirt, before the bleach it was a nice yellow color but two seconds after contact with your former friend Mr. Clorox that stain turns a poop-green color that’s never to be reversed back that that sunny yellow. Now staining clothes aren’t too big of a deal, just make sure you wear the same old t-shirt every time you’re eating a mango. Also if you happen to have teeth, which most of us do, that mango’s got a beard. The inside of a mango is filled with these little strings intertwined throughout the flesh for the sole purpose of causing any mango eater at least 5 minutes of tooth-picking post-mango eating and the need for a good flossing. It’s probably all just a warning to eat just that one mango, but they’re just so dern tasty and we tend to forget and keep eating. Too many mangos, ripe as they are, cause another issue: Mango Stomach. Mango Stomach is another form of indigestion, indigestion from hell. That mango was just so tasty it seemed like a good idea at the time to eat three more, but you won’t be eating again for at least another 24 hours. It’s the mango diet.

So after much thought, while sitting out on the log underneath my mango tree eating a few mangos in my mango eating shirt, I discovered something. It was probably a MSG (Ajinomoto) induced vision, that stuff will give you some weird dreams and day dreams as it turns out. However, I believe that the forbidden fruit couldn’t have possibly been an apple; it could only have been a mango. Let’s think this through people. Every drawing I’ve ever seen of this biblical scenario there are a few key details: A red snake, a forbidden fruit, a couple wearing nothing but foliage as clothing. So let’s break this down into parts. Apples grow in moderately cold zones right? I mean I’ve never heard of an apple growing in the middle of Texas. So this statement contradicts the shrubbery as clothing detail. I can’t see Adam and Eve being nice and comfy in their maple-bikinis in the middle of a North Carolina fall. It’s just not happening. Then snakes, the snake I always see is a bright red color, which to me implies he’s probably of the poisonous variety. Since when do you see a red poisonous snake in the middle of apple growing territory? The occasional copperhead of course, and those pesky water moccasins are a given, but a coral snake? I think not. But hot zones, they have some bright colored poisonous snakes out there, and come to think of it they grow mangos out there too…and what’s more comfortable in the sweltering heat than a good foliage-string bikini for her with matching loin cloth for him? Given it’s not a wicking material the sweat just rolls right off you! That snake was a mango vendor, no doubt about it.

Ok so the heat could be getting to me, but you have to admit. I make a pretty good point.

Summer School 101—Let the Battle Begin

2010-02-12T22:08:00.002-05:00

At some point in October I thought it would be a great idea to have summer school classes. I got some key parents and teachers onboard with the idea then began the battle; the greatest battle that any Peace Corps Volunteer is faced with when offering to give classes: The battle against teaching English. It’s just wrong. I can make a list of 5 people off the top of my head who know I should NEVER, EVER, be allowed to teach English (my mom, Mr. Lang, whatever my college English teacher’s name was, Robyn, Tania). That’s just the 5 I thought of right now…if given enough time I can definitely think up more. Here’s how most of the conversations with interested parents went:

Me: Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I’d be giving summer school classes starting Jan. 15th from 10am-12pm for primary school students. We will have math on Mondays, science on Wednesday, and art on Friday.
Parent: Oh that sounds nice, when is the English class?
Me: umm. There isn’t English class.
Parent: What? No English class? How can you teach math and science and art and NOT English?
Me: Well [insert name of parent], you see I have my major in math, and I love art and science. These are the classes I feel comfortable teaching.
Parent: What? You don’t feel comfortable speaking English? How is that possible?
Me: No I speak my version of English fine. But I can’t teach it. It would be like me asking you to teach me Spanish. Do you think you could do that?
Parent: Yes, I speak Spanish. [Occasionally the added jab that they did help teach me Spanish]
Me: You may speak it, but can you write and form lesson plans, make up homework assignments, and figure out a way for the kids to retain that information?
Parent: No but that isn’t necessary. Just tell them what they need to know and they’ll write it down.
Me: Well I want these classes to be fun. If they’re not fun, then the kids won’t come. And I cannot make English fun because I hated English class when I was in school. So I will be teaching math on Mondays, science on Wednesday, and art on Friday if you are interested in sending your kid[s] please let me know. Thank you
Parent: When’s the English class?
Me: see you around. [Start walking away]
So as you can see it is a hard uphill battle to avoid the plague that is teaching English classes. Now I know that there are a ton of Peace Corps Volunteers around the world and in Peru that love teaching English—it’s the most rewarding thing they’ve done in their whole lives. Well that’s nice, but this Peace Corps Volunteer would rather have her tongue chemically burned again than have a structured English class. Note that I added a word there, a STRUCTURED English Class. I am, in my own way, teaching these kids some English. It was my compromise with the parents. While I would rather not, I have decided to teach the kids a little English. I’m using the English as a Second Language teaching approach. Teach them the words that are relevant to what we’re doing. So in math class we learned the number 1 to 10 in English and how to say plus, minus, and equals. In Science we learned how to say some animal names (and that being said I finally learned some new Spanish words). And In art we learned the color names.

It may not be the class that the parents wanted. But it’s the class that I wanted to teach. I’m getting a kick out of these kids, who thankfully, seem to be enjoying themselves. So much so that word has spread and my original class of 4 kids had doubled to 8 by the 3rd day of classes and I was told to expect 7 more students today which would put us at 15 students on the 4th day of class. Guess we’ll see how many are there when I show up for math today. We’re covering area. Well that wasn’t supposed to be a pun. I’m going to teach them about area as a different way to reinforce their multiplication skills, but it works. We’re covering area, making progress, moving along, and all that jazz.

Editor’s Note: So I only had 7 students in today’s class, but I will blame that on the rain…

The Schwartz’s Hit Lima

2010-01-13T22:42:00.000-05:00

So for those of you who know my family you are pretty sure of one thing: we never really travel. Sure we head to the beach or the mountains for a getaway just like the rest of you. The only thing is…we never really go anywhere else. I’ve heard stories of my parents’ younger days; my dad’s backpacking trip through the Rockies and my mom’s trip to Europe to put that high school French to good use. But since then…we’ll the Schwartz’s have been rather, well, stationary. I’m not sure if it was intentional, the not going anywhere more than a few states away from North Carolina, or it was just the lack of incentive. Either way, when I chose to come here to Peru it was a pretty big step in the Schwartz family travel log. So when my parents and my brother decided that they wanted to come to Peru to visit me I was rather surprised. That’s a lot of travel to log for us.

We kept it simple. We could have shoved a trip to Cusco in the week long period that my parents were here. Or we could have tried to go and visit my site (but from the weather report I got today it’s probably for the best that we didn’t go that route). But since I’m a boring person and lacked the vision to figure out something close to Lima to do for the holidays we just explored Lima. I know I’ve said before how much I hate Lima, and that fact still stands; but I can honestly say that Lima is way better when you’re sleeping in a super sweet hotel that your parents are paying for and not the hostel that I usually frequent. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hostel-home away from home (away from home), but it’s not quite 4 star quality.

As my mom put it we basically ate our way though Lima. I got them to try all of my favorite dishes: Aji de Gallina, Lomo Saltado, and some good seafood dishes. They liked almost all of it. Although my brother might not be the biggest fan of Chifa (Peruvian Chinese food) seeing as how it wasn’t the biggest fan of him (eww GI issues). But the food seemed to go over well with them. There was Inca Kola drunk, campo-turkey eaten and Peruvian desserts inhaled.

We did do a few touristy things; we went to the national museum and they got a few history lessons on Peru, or at least some of Peru’s more famous exports--namely, the potato. Yep, all of those tubers are direct descendents of a Peruvian papa. We also went to go see some of the parks in Lima, the lovers park (featuring a huge statue of two people making out), Kennedy Park and Larco Mar (the both of which were full of plastic cows), and the water park. I think the water park was the highlight of my time in Lima. Now this isn’t the type of water park with big slides and splash mountains, nope, this one’s full of fountains. Sounds boring, but since seeing is way easier than writing, here are a few pictures:

To top off the cool water effects, there were laser light shows and on New Year’s Eve there were fireworks!

Merry Christmas to All

2009-12-27T10:14:00.002-05:00

Sweating in my room at 7:45 at night fighting the invasion of crickets, moths with rash-enduing dander, and the frogs determined to help remedy the situation it doesn’t feel much like Christmas time. The official countdown is 2 days on the American clock, 1 day on the Peruvian. Here we celebrate more the 24th. Well, to be more specific, we stay up until midnight, toast to Christmas with a “champagne” like substance, eat paneton (sweet bread with dried fruit inside, like a good fruitcake), drink hot chocolate, and devour a turkey. Yes, just as you are all thinking to yourself, no that’s not the most conducive to then going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep; so of course we then spend the next few hours drinking (for those who drink, I do not at site), talking, laughing, and all around remembering what a good year it had been.

While the signs of a Peruvian Christmas are starting to show up, here in the campo there’s none of that commercial crud to ruin Christmas. People have put up cardboard decorations on their doors. The most comical to me are the ones depicting a fir tree (we most defiantly don’t have anything even remotely resembling a fir growing near Nanchoc) and the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. When I asked the family with our red nosed friend on their door if they knew who it was, their response, “a rare breed of deer that live in New York City,” oh yes, I’m not in Kansas anymore…not that I ever was. My family’s one up-ed the neighbors thanks to having kids living in Lima, we have a fir tree that LIGHTS up. Yes, it’s red and green with lights that flicker in different patterns. I thought it was just a little to tacky when it first showed up…then my Peruvian campo side came through and now thinks it’s the coolest thing in the whole town. I’ll let ya’ll decide on your own if my Peruvian campo goggles have tainted the coolness:

PICTURE

This Christmas is going to go by a lot faster than last Christmas for a few reasons. The main one of which is that the rainy season has been slowly starting, rather than dumping on us like last year. So this means I’ll more than likely (now watch me go and jinx it) have electricity this year to celebrate the big day! Also, I’m counting down to more than Christmas, the 28th of December my parents and my brother, yes the rest of the Schwartz family, is flying to Peru to see me!!! So while I’ll be spending my second Christmas away from home, I’ll have the good fortune to celebrate the New Year with my family in Lima--A New Year in a new country for them. I’ve almost forgotten how much I hate Lima (especially after how much time I’ve spent their recently) because I’m so excited for their arrival.

Now I just have to decide if I trick my brother into eating food that he’d not normally eat…

Graduation Day

2009-12-27T10:11:00.000-05:00

Today marked a very special day in the lives of the kiddies I work with. It was a day of great importance, grand celebrations, and as with all childhood rituals, a healthy pinch (or rather heap) of embarrassment. Today the 6th grade class graduated. Now I had never been to or seen what a Peruvian graduation ceremony is like…so needless to say I had no idea as to what I was in for.

Peruvian Graduation Ceremonies can only be described as a combination of a Quiensienera (Mexican rite of passage for women on their 15th birthday) and the prom from Hades. All the girls were dressed in matching Barbie doll dresses (just wait for the photo) with their hair done by a Dolly Parton-inspired hairdresser who lives in my town. The boys were all dressed like boys should be dressed for a graduation, black pants, dress shirt and tie. Simple. Go figure that they’d make the girls look like bad Barbie dolls and the boys get to retain some sense of self respect. Then again, my point of view could be skewed by the fact that I hate anything pink and frilly. Some of the girls actually seemed to have liked the dress they were wearing.

All of the girls except Jenny that is(Second girl from the left). If you read the earlier blog then this should not be a surprise, but just in case I’ll fill ya’ll in: Jenny is a now graduate from the 6th grade who is basically the Peruvian version of me, a tomboy at its finest, anything but girly, and extremely awkward in a pair of heels. She is a girl after my own heart. So as you can imagine, she was less than happy to be the in the new “my sized Barbie” dress. She takes the credit for the quote of the night: “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, one of the plagues shows up.”

So what had happened was, about 30 minutes into the ceremony, right when we’re getting into the full swing of things, the crickets show up. Apparently every 4 rainy seasons or so we have a slight problem with our chirping friends, they appear in such amounts as to confuse them with rain. It started out as slightly bothersome. A cricket would land on a girl’s foot, she’d squeal and then it’d move on the bother the next guest until someone finally caught it and slammed it into the ground (the preferred Peruvian method for killing a cricket). But soon it because evident that there were far too many crickets to smash. I, as the resident photographer, had at least 5 climbing down my shirt while I was trying to take pictures of the poor girls in Barbie dresses posing with their families attempting to smile while screaming on the inside because there were 5 crickets crawling down their dresses. Next thing you know our little chirping friends are crawling in and around the snack food, the cakes, and getting trapped in the Pepsi bottles of the little ones causing both a ticked off 6 year old and an even more so ticked cricket. For those of you are thinking well “this sounds like when the party died down and everyone went home”…you’d be mistaken.

I was just waiting for when the guests would get tired of fighting the crickets. We fought the crickets through the ceremony. We fought the crickets through the picture taking. We fought the crickets through the required dancing (photographer not included in the dancing). We fought the crickets through the eating. And then this here gringa-photographer decided that she’d fought the crickets long enough and headed home to the safety of her room (cricket-less as of this moment…knock on wood). I figured everyone else would soon follow suit. You know how it goes, no one likes to be the first one to leave a party, but I figured maybe I’d have started a trend of surrendering to the cricket army and calling it a night. Well 2 hours after my departure they’re still blaring cumbia music, probably slamming crickets into the pavement with the beat in an exaggerated dance move. I may have been the only one who surrendered to the little chirping ones…but at least I still have my pride. I wasn’t in a pink frilly Barbie dress.

Home Sweet Home

2009-12-07T15:54:00.002-05:00

December 1, 2008, 3ish pm I stumbled, quite literally off the bus from Chiclayo and landed in Nanchoc, Cajamarca. The bus dropped me off in front of the Health Post with my 2 bags each weighing way more than they should have (this is hindsight talking, at the time I thought I didn’t have enough) and left me in the dust. I was faced with the rather daunting task of hauling these bags the 10 yards to my front door all by myself. It was in that moment that I realized I was actually in the Peace Corps. That concept seemed to have evaded me during the 3 months of training suddenly smacked me square in the face. I managed to drag my bags to the front door to find the door locked and the house empty—damn. I then dragged my bags the 10 yards back to the Health Post all the while trying to remember at least ONE name of a Health Post employee or how to explain that I’m locked out of my house in Spanish. I walked into the waiting room and interrupted a training activity with all of the surrounding Health Posts. 15 pairs of eyes immediately turned on me and I resisted the urge to piss myself or run screaming for my mommy. I was saved by the OBGYN Dr. Emma who raised her arms over her head and belted “Look its Yennifer! How was your trip?” I then preceded to thank whatever higher power there might be for her giving the explanation of who I was and why I looked so lost to the 15 other health workers.

Looking back that seems so long ago. I now know almost all of those 15 eyes by name (a few left the area before I could learn their names), I better than to ever travel with that much crud, and I can talk my way out of almost any awkward situation. I consider myself lucky to actually feel at home in this place, I get homesick for Nanchoc when I’m doing a lot of Peace Corps traveling. Before my mother can breakdown crying let me state for the record that Durham, North Carolina is and forever will be my home and I miss it more than words can say. I know from talking to my fellow volunteers that actually feeling at home in your site is a rare commodity. I am fortunate enough to have real friends here and a host family that genuinely care for me. Aside from the baking heat and the pouring rain I couldn’t have asked for a better community to live in…ok well I could ask that they come to a few more meetings, but we can’t get to picky now can we?

I didn’t until recently realize how much I like this place. I went to Lima for medical checks and came out with a half cracked open tooth. Long story short I had a cavity that would put most bear’s winter house to shame and in the dentist’s efforts to excavate the cave-like hole he broke my tooth in half…without pain killers. So we can just sum that day up as an all around bad day. The day was then made worse by red-tape. We had to send x-rays and images to Washington to decide the next course of action, aka to fix the tooth or not to fix the tooth. I will admit I was distressed over my tooth-- I have a giant hole in my mouth currently being covered with a temporary paste that would freak out the most normal person. But I wasn’t getting all riled up over the in-limbo state of my tooth as much as I was about the possibility of missing my town’s 51st anniversary. The town’s anniversary is celebrated December 1-3rd, This wasn’t just the town’s party, I wanted to celebrate my 1 year in site milestone. This celebration was marking many a moment and I was in no mood to be in Lima in red-tape-limbo missing the soccer and parades.

We are lucky in Peace Corps Peru to have amazing doctors Suni and Jorge working for us who care about not only our health concerns but our personal dramas. I was all but expecting them to tell me that I was going to miss my town party and my 1 year mark in site and be stuck in Lima doped out on pain killers after a root canal. I was however surprised to find that Suni completely understood, we worked out a compromise: It was obvious that I need to have a root canal and a crown put on, even Washington agreed (thankfully!), but it was also equally as obvious to her that I couldn’t miss this moment in my site. So I was given an extra coat of the temporary cave-plugging paste and sent back to site to celebrate the 51st and the 1st anniversaries and will be returning to Lima in a week to enjoy more dental health adventures in Peru.

And as I write this I’m listening to the thumping of the base and the singing of a Cajamarca-Huano cover band at 11pm sunburned from a day of cheering on our horrible soccer team and watching the kids march in the parade. The day could have only been made better if my camera battery hadn’t died and I had it all on film…Oh well, we can’t have it all. But I can still cross my fingers that the band will go home by 1am so I can get some sleep…

A Rose by Any Other Name…

2009-11-17T17:38:00.002-05:00

Shakespeare. I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of the old guy in tights since my senior year of High School when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. And even then the only thing I remember is a lot of funny talking and saying one thing and meaning another. I think it might have actually been during Mr. Lang’s class that I realized I would never, and I mean never, be any good at this literary thing. In math, when you say 2+2=4 that’s what you mean, it’s great no metaphors, no similes, none of this fancy stuff, just a problem waiting to be solved. But as much as I love my math, I’ve come to realize that, unfortunately, life’s got a whole lot more symbolism hiding around corners than equations. Damn you Shakespeare. So if you’re wondering where the heck I’m going with this, just hold your horses and give me a little while longer to set this up. Like I said, I ain’t no good (yes I did that intentionally) at this literary stuff.

Recently I got sick, very sick. And it wasn’t the usually Peace Corps gastrointestinal issues—though for the first time in my service I was actually hopping that it was. I had a fever, a really high fever. No coughing. No sneezing. No congestion. No rash. No GI distress. No nothing. Just a nice and high fever that occasionally would decide to turn into a lack of fever and leave me trembling and cold. I thought it had to be whatever was going around my town until I realized that everyone else who had a fever was also a human snot container. I took a deep breath in and then blew it all out through my nose…nope. Clean. It wasn’t the same cold that was going around. I gave it 2 days to go away on itself. I slept, a lot. The second day I actually slept for 18 hours that day. I had no appetite. I had to remind myself to eat, I’d start eating a sandwich and lose all interest in eating 2 bites in. While my dog loved this trend—more sandwiches for him-- that’s when I knew I had to be sicker than even I was letting on.

I decided to call out doctors. I somehow dragged myself out of bed to walk to the public phone. My head was throbbing, my arms felt as though they weighed 20lbs each, and according to everyone that I passed I was as “red as a cooked shrimp.” After talking to the doctors we were still clueless as to what I might have. The only plausible cause would have been my recent trip to Tumbes…and I didn’t like the sound of that. To fill in the people not associating Tumbes with Mosquitoes like us Peru-Peace Corps volunteers: Tumbes has a Ton of mosquitoes, and therefore dengue and malaria. So as I said, I didn’t like the sound of either of those. We decided to feel it out for another day, see if the fever went down with Tylenol, and go to Chiclayo if it got any worse. I was to call the doctors in the morning and let them know if I was better or worse.

I woke up the next day in a puddle of my own sweat, a fever of 103, and a throbbing headache. I did some math and realized that the phone doesn’t open until 9, the bus to Chiclayo leaves at 8…I had a decision to make without the doctor’s advice. If I waited to talk to them, I’d be stuck and sick in my site for 2 more days until the next bus out of town if I got worse. Then I thought a little more and realized I couldn’t really get much worse and still be moving…so I packed up some stuff and went to wait at the bus stop. I hadn’t reserved a seat, so I was just hoping that I looked as bad as I felt and that would get me out of Nanchoc and into Chiclayo.

It worked. The second the bus stopped the bus driver, usually a rather unobservant man (which his 2 accidents should attest too…and should make me weary to take his bus, but it’s the only option) said, “Wow gringa, you look horrible.” I wish I had some smart comeback for that, but the sheer act of moving was taking up all of my thinking power. I asked if there was room on the bus, and they gave me the front seat. Now, If I had know that all I needed to do to get the best seat on this bus, where we are usually packed in like sardines, was to be this sick…well I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be sick more often. Not only did I get the good seat, they KICKED someone out of said seat so I could have it. I would have been more impressed if I didn’t feel like poo.

The bus ride was horrible. It’s a hot bus ride even without the fever this time of year. I felt even worse on the bus than I did in my bed in Nanchoc. The whole trip went by in a blur, and the next thing I knew we were at the bus stop and I was sweating buckets in the seat. I got up to climb over the seat (yeah that’s how we get out of the front seat) and…yep, those of you who know me probably would have seen this coming… I fainted. I managed to play it off unbeknownst to me, no one saw me starting to get up, and so no one noticed me faint. The guy who works on the bus shook me awake and helped me off the bus. They got me a cab and I made it to my hotel. I was then sent to the Chiclayo doctor, a medical office located (thankfully) 3 blocks from my hotel. I gave tubes of blood, swabs, poo and pee samples, and waited for the results. They didn’t have the Dengue test, so we were just going to rule everything else out and see.

I felt worse the first day I was in Chiclayo, but then started feeling a little better the next day. I called to get my test results, and of course they didn’t have them. My doctor tried to speed up the process…but it was no use, I had to stay until I heard what I had. The next few days passed much like the days in site; I spent way too much time in bed and was hot flashing like a 50 year old woman. The only improvements: cable TV and internet. But with each day I started feeling better, so that was a good sign right?

Finally we got some results back, all my blood work seemed to be normal, and it just said I had a virus. We had figured so much while I was in site, I was a little mad that I had given that much blood and that’s the only information we got out of it…not cool. I waited around some more, and the rest of the tests came back normal, just a virus. So I was told that I “either have dengue or a virus that wants’ to be dengue when it grows up.” Not exactly the good news I was hoping for. Dengue has no treatment other than sleeping and resting, and the mystery virus has nothing better. So, my means of getting better were nothing but what I’ve been doing…fun?

I decided I can sleep with the best of them at site, so I got on the next bus to site and headed home. I slept a lot better in my own bed, and it was nice being with my friends at site again. It had gotten a little lonely sitting in the hotel room all day. When people asked me what I had, I just translated what the doctors had told me. Then for some reason, Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell just a sweet” line came up in my head. Except I heard “a virus by any other name will suck just as much."

Random Collection of Stories too Short to be Their Own Blog

2009-11-17T17:19:00.004-05:00

YAY I Won! …Now What?

I recently held a raffle for a blender. I was in dire need of raising money so that I could buy paint for a mural project. After running through the ideas of different fundraising ideas, the raffle seemed to require the least amount of work. Well turns out it was more work that I had originally expected. It’s harder than one might think to sell a S./1 raffle ticket during a town party, apparently S./1 can buy you a lot of candy for a whining kid. But after a long day I sold all 200 tickets, leaving me with a S./140 profit for paint! Score. We held the raffle and a woman who lives in a caserio without electricity won. Hmm, well yay she won…but now what’s she supposed to do? I think she only helped me out and bought a ticket because I’d be using the paint with her kids. She said not to worry, they’re supposed to be getting electricity by the end of the year (no matter that’s what they said last year as well…)

So a week and a half later I got a knock on my door. I was early in the morning, around 6am and Dona Julia wasn’t in town, so I wasn’t expecting any visitors. I opened the door and it was Jose, the son of the woman who won the raffle. “Good morning Yeni,” he said with a grin, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?” I couldn’t think of a reason why not so I asked what the favor was. He pulled the blender out of a bag along with 5 bananas and a can of milk. “Can I use your electricity to make our juice?” Oh it was just too cute so I said “of course” and brought him and his supplies into the kitchen. We blended up the bananas and milk and then realized a fatal flaw in his planning. He’d biked the 20 minutes to blend his juice and forgot a leak proof container. After thinking for a few minutes I let him borrow a Tupperware of mine and he left with a big smile and his goods in a bag. An hour later he was back at the door with my washed Tupperware and a thank you message from his mother. It was just too cute.

Copy Cat

There is a girl in the 5th grade of Primary school who thinks I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread…and believe me, sliced bread is still a pretty big deal here in Peru. Her name’s Jenny (go figure) and she lives in one of our caserios on the other side of the river. Since her parents are somewhat worthless and her older sisters have long since left the house (well, the town for that matter) she has very little options for a female role model. Now normally I would have hoped a teacher, a neighbor, or another kid in the neighborhood could take this role model position off my hands—but the teachers are only there to receive their pay checks and could care less about teaching, all of her female neighbors never finished primary school, and the older kids hate school. So I guess I’m better than those options right?

Jenny’s always been slightly different from the other girls according to the teachers, she’s “weird” because she likes to play soccer with the boys instead of volleyball with the girls and she actually seems to enjoy math and science portions of her class (however lacking they might be at this school). So basically she was a girl after my own heart before I even met her, soccer playing math geek sounded very familiar to me being the math major tomboy that I am. So I invited her to my math tutoring class on Tuesdays, it’s usually for the kids who are behind in their classes from 1st to 4th grades but I figured I could find something harder for her to do. She’s now finished with her 5th grade math text (a whole 3 months before the school year ends) and has moved on to the 6th grade text.

This past week she showed up at tutoring sporting a Camo Fox Racing hat. Now I will say that this hat is most defiantly of the black market variety, but still, this girl had to have put in some hard hours looking for a camo hat in Peru. I’ve only ever seen mine and one in the airport when the NCSU students came through town. She walked in the door with a grin, trying to hold back her excitement to tell me about her new purchase, but finally gave in and busted out a “Look what I found this weekend in Chiclayo!” while smiling ear to ear. She made a point to show me that they even were the same type of camo—Yes people she made sure she didn’t get the army camo, she got the woodland camo print because that’s what’s on my hat…now that’s hard core.

Needless to say, I’m impressed even if it doesn’t impress ya’ll.

Ok, Stop Drooling Now

2009-10-15T23:37:00.002-04:00

It’s a normal trip on the late bus Sunday night heading to Chiclayo. The bus is rather empty, I have an entire seat bench to myself. It’s amazing. My hiking bag full of clothes and work stuff for a meeting in Tumbes is perched on the bench beside me, I’m listening to my iPod and eating my baggie of dinner my host mom sent me with (a potato and tuna) just basking in the seat all to myself. It’s rare to have that much space on public transportation, let along transportation from my site…

I should have known it wouldn’t last. We pull into Oyotun, the city closest to Nanchoc, all of a 30 minute drive. We were met by the Peruvian National Police with very large weapons (They pack heat during parties), they checked our identifications and then we were on our way to the plaza to pick up more people. Next thing I know we’ve managed to squeeze at least 15 other passengers on this bus, putting the head count well above the maximum capacity (or so I thought) of 25. My bag has now been moved to my lap, there is a drunk guy who REEKES of bad Peruvian beer squishing me against the window. We are still trying to figure out how we’re going to fit all of these people on the bus. Kids are sitting on towels on the floor between the aisles, there are 4 grown men sitting 2 and 2 (2 in the laps of the other 2) in the front seat with the driver-- which has left the driver’s wife and 1 year 8 month old daughter seat less. Since my seat was the first one by the door, to accommodate the long gringa legs that I have, of course I was the most likely to be chosen to hold Angie (the baby). Not to mention that I’m the only one in the front of the bus within handing distance that Angie knows. So now I have the hiking bag in my lap, a baby against my chest, a drunk half asleep/squishing me into the window, and 3 drunks sitting in the doorway, one using my knee as an armrest. I shouldn’t have jinxed the empty bus by being happy.

So 1 hour later everyone that is touching me is now drooling…on me. Now I’m ok with a baby drooling on me, especially when it’s a cute baby, but the grown adults, not so cool. The cutest part of this story, other than Angie of course, is that everyone assumed that she was my child. Angie’s mother is very light skinned and has light hair, thusly the baby has a very gringa-like features—which lead to such confusion. So after a long while, long enough for me to completely loose all feeling in BOTH my arms, Angie begins to cry. Then all the women on the bus get really confused as to why I start looking around the bus. Then I explain that the baby that is in fact in my arms is not mine, and if they can see the driver’s wife behind the wall of drunks to get her attention (yeah it’s that loud on my bus that you can’t hear the baby cry). Next thing I know I’d trying to figure out how to lift Angie without dropping her, due to my arms being asleep. After a few seconds of contemplation, finally I manage to lift her over the wall of drooling drunks and into the safety of her mom’s arm and she stops crying.

Now if I could have only gotten the drunk off my shoulder and the other one off my shoe the bus trip would have almost returned to normal. But then 30 minutes later Angie is back in my arms as her mom is collecting money from all of the passengers. And I got a 50% discount for my babysitting duties. All and all, not too bad of a bus ride into town…I could do without the drunks if it happens again.

This is Angie:

The Year in Review

2009-10-05T18:22:00.015-04:00

First day of Peace Corps: Sept. 10, 2008

First day in Peru: Sept. 12, 2008

First day of official service: Nov. 28, 2008

First day in site: Dec. 1, 2008

Cell phones lost: NONE! Dern, I just jinxed myself didn’t I?

Books read: 6 finished, 3 started (one’s in Spanish). And for a non-reader that’s a lot.

Favorite book read: I Was Told There’d Be Cake, Sloane Crossley, best book ever for the non-reader

Most days gone without showering: 6, 4 days of the Inca Trail + transportation strikes + spending a night in a train station + arriving in Cusco at 3am and being too tired to shower. Yeah I smelled

Guilty pleasure: eating chocolate and watching Grey’s Anatomy

Favorite Peruvian Culture: “Invitar”ing people to food. Whatever you are eating, you always share (invite) with everyone around you. Eats up a bag of cookies really fast, but makes you feel great afterwards.

Debit cards lost: 1, but it totally doesn’t count, the machine ate it. Not my fault.

Worst habit acquired: putting too much sugar in my hot drinks (tea, chocolate) I’m working on that.

Best thing received in the mail: It’s a tie between 205 toothbrushes from my high school for a project and anything and everything chocolate that arrives.

Why you love your site: The people have amazingly beautiful hearts who have genuinely accepted me into their community and I am honestly sad that a whole year has passed this fast.

The best compliment you’ve received in Peru: “Look, it’s a girl from Argentina! They’re so tall in Argentina!” Yeah, when I don’t talk they think I’m Argentinean and not American. Beat that.

Favorite Peruvian Dish: Aji de Gallina. Yummy spicy chicken goodness.

Most terrifying creature found in your room: a scorpion! Then there was the snake, rat, and the neighbor’s crazy cat.

First place you go in your capital city: Plaza Vea (Peruvian walmart if you will)

First person you call on your cell phone: it rotates between Erica L., Robyn,Sarah Walker, or Kate. I’d die in this country without them.

First person you Skype: Mom and Dad

Most useful item brought with you: My hiking bag

Most useless: All that business casual wear. WTF Peace Corps?

Question you are asked daily: “Why are you so red?” and “te enseñas?” (are you used to it here yet?)

Funniest thing said by a Peruvian child: “dude, you have a TON of mosquito bites,” in reference the pimples the Peace Corps issued sunscreen gives me. I hate you NoAd
Weirdest Health Problem: oh, just the usual day long bathroom hugging experiences and some gastritis.

Projects Started: 7

Projects still working on: 3, what can I say? My town’s real big on starting projects…just not on finishing them. Which helps explain the half constructed bathroom at the school…

Worst over-generalization about the United States made by a Peruvian: They think we only eat canned and microwaveable food, and I’m not talking about convenient canned veggies or the occasional popcorn, they think meals come in cans ready to serve...that just sounds un-tasty and freeze dried.

Favorite pastime in site: playing soccer with the little boys showing them that girls can do anything they can do…and better (let’s ignore the fact that I’m like 10 years older than most of them, I’m a gimp. That evens the playing field)

Favorite past time in the city: finding any movie on cable in English and eating yogurt (we don’t have dairy products in my site) with cereal…yes I’m a dork

Most important self-realization made: I’m way stronger than I thought I was
Best quality learned: The ability to laugh at myself when I completely mess up—be it saying a word wrong or falling flat on my face, I’ve done both more times than I care to admit.

Best purchase in Peru: market bags, amazing woven colorful plastic wonders, no trip to the market could be completed without them. Oh and a yoga mat I use as much for yoga as for taking naps on really hot days when the bed is just not an option.

Coolest thing learned: You can actually grow a tomato in a 3Lt Pepsi bottle hanging upside down just like in the info-mercials, ‘cept I’m not paying $19.99 for some pretty container.

Places visited: Lima (duh), Piura, Cusco and surrounding areas, Machu Picchu, Sipan, and it’s now apparent I need to do more traveling. That’s a sad list.

Favorite place in site: On the trail to Palto (one of my caserios) there is an overlook of the entire valley from a water tank. A sunset at that tank is breathtaking. The hike to get there ain’t half bad either.

Favorite place in Peru: The 3rd night of the Inca Trail. The campsite is above the cloud line so you can watch the sun set below you and see every single star in the Milky Way at night.

Peace Corps in one word, go: Liable.

One thing you’ll never get used to: that it’s perfectly normal to cut in line here…except when in line to buy soccer tickets.

People at site stare the hardest when: I eat raw veggies. They call me the bunny rabbit.

Greatest lengths taken for cell phone reception: one cloudy day my cell phone still didn’t have reception from the rock I usually stand on 1.5 hours from my site, so I climbed up higher (biiiiig mistake) and almost died when a snake (the poisonous kind) scared the begeezes out of me. Never again.

Your site’s Favorite American dish: Pancakes and carrot cake. Not together…but that’s a good idea.

Strangest thing eaten: a soup made from goat guts and brain/skull boiled to death and served with corn. Or possibly the internal part melody served with veggies (liver, lungs, heart, intestines, so on)…strange.

Why we live half way around the world for nest to no pay for 2 years with crap bathrooms: To see that one little kid with the black teeth start brushing them every day because he wants to have teeth that are white like the gringa.

What we can (hardly) wait to return to in the USA: Toilets that I can flush the toilet paper in, Pork BBQ with VINAGER sauce—none of that tomato mess, my bed, my family and my dog, a sandwich loaded down with peanut butter because I no longer have to ration it out, huge salads, being average height again, playing field hockey and lacrosse, sandwiches (yes I meant to say that twice), and last but certainly not least: hearing English every day.

Photo best ofs:

Favorite moment captured:

Wraps-Peru-up-in-one-photo Photo:

Coolest picture taken:

Cutest kid:

Project that rocked: facebook2.jpg

“Oh my God Peace Corps” moment:

Best dancing Photo: (a tie) DSC_0315.2

Favorite place for a sunset:

WTF moment:

Cutest back-story:

Half-way through the marathon of service, here’s to one more awesome year!

Eh, What’s Up Doc?

2009-09-27T08:47:00.001-04:00

7:45pm on a Wednesday night. There’s an endless list of things that I could be doing. I could be eating dinner with some friends. I could be watching the stars/planes fly by to Lima. I could be cursing the neighbor’s rooster for being so dumb he’s crowing at night. I could be helping with an emergency at the health post (there’s been a lot of them recently). I could even be writing a literary masterpiece (ok that last bit was a WAY over exaggeration). Oh but the actual action is just so lame, I’m not even sure if I want to write it. Because in me publishing this on the internet my inner dorkiness will take over my outer dorkiness and label me an official dork. And I’m just not sure if I’m willing to go official with my dork status.

OK, before I get carried away and spill the beans let me give some background to explain the action that got me to where I am now. Yes, this is a last ditch effort to save the dork label, so bear with me.

I was reading “I Was Told There’d Be Cake, “by Sloane Crosley (what could be quite possibly my greatest find at the Peace Corps’ Library), it’s a conjunction of semi-non-related essays revealing the author’s rather abnormally-normal life. But one line stuck with me after completing the book in a record time for me (the non-reader) of 1 day (it was really a 4 hour bus ride and a 2 hour hide in my room and read session). “Chastise your inner 12 year old, who is only supposed to rear her head in the face of kittens and swing sets.”

Now, why would I go and do such as thing as chastise my inner 12 year old? However bad my actual life was at 12 years old (I shudder to think, Middle School was NOT good to me) I don’t think that should keep me from digressing to that mind state every-now-and-again. That being said I’m not all for busting out my supply of who knows how many Beany Babies that are in the attic back at the house and playing with them—I am however a-OK for going through and separating the 4 I want to keep from the others and giving those away to the needy. Some 12 year old needs a stuffed animal damnit! Nor am I willing to take out those rollerblades from the garage and start using them, I will admit using them for a Halloween costume my senior year of college, that being said: rollerblades and NC State’s all brick campus on Hillsborough Hike night—not one of our smartest ideas.

But life at 12 was just that much easier. Now I never would have thought I would be in Peru, reading (of all things), and wishing once again to be 12. Ok, not really be 12. I was a klutzy kid with glasses and pimples at 12. But the mindset I could go back to just to visit for a while; back when our greatest worry was the answer to Mr. Lucas’s history homework, or if it would rain and cancel the soccer game that day. Not have to worry about things like money, jobs, laundry (I was a spoiled 12 year old, my mommy did my laundry, you’re jealous I know), relationships (or lack thereof), or if your boss hates you.

That being said, being in the Peace Corps is strangely stressful. You’d think a job volunteering wouldn’t be that bad as far as the stress level’s concerned. I mean I made it through a good 4 years of college and I can honestly say I never resorted to the stress reliving activity that I did tonight. And I was studying Math! That’s a stressful course load. If you don’t believe me track down my study buddies Morgan, Grace, Thomas, and Kenny—just don’t talk to Steamboat, nothing stresses him. Stress and the Peace Corps just go hand in hand, it (in addition to starches, hello a mountain full of rice anyone?) is one of the reasons we all gain the “Peace Corps Pooch” as it’s been called. It’s the volunteer equivalent of the “freshman fifteen.”

But yes, tonight, I resorted to a new low for stress relief. I still can’t quite believe I’m about to say it…well where to start? From the beginning I guess. Well. I lied to my host mom, I told her that I had a headache and didn’t feel like eating dinner. Peace Corps code for “I just really don’t feel like talking Spanish tonight.” Then I locked myself in my room and opened my Rubbermaid-like container that holds all my “gringo food” and got out the beef jerky and chocolate. Now normally that’d be the de-stresser of the night. Beef Jerky and chocolate are 2 of the best things to de-stress. All I was missing was a Mountain Dew (God I sound like way more of a hick than I am…a fatty at that). But seeing as how there was no Mountain Dew inside my box of all things American, I resorted to the next best thing I had…

Are you ready for it? Yes, people. I started watching Looney Tunes. I had brought the DVD set that my mom gave me for Christmas one year (yes, I am an adult I swear) to Peru figuring that it’s just as good dubbed over in Spanish. Turns out, Looney Tunes is not as universal as one might think—the majority of the people I show it here to don’t like it; which brings me back to why I was watching it alone in my room…or so I tell myself. After completing the Bugs Bunny Disc 1 along with a little under a half a bar (big bar) of dark chocolate (thanks again Mrs. Brown!) and 4 big pieces of beef jerky (God I need to start running again) I realized what I had done.

Now feeling like I was an official dork, I realized how freaking tired I was. After I closed the window of the movie I looked at the clock in the bottom corner of my computer screen. Yep, it was only 7:45pm. Yes, not only had I spent who knows how long watching Bugs Bunny and eating junk food, I was also ready for bed at 7:45. My God. I was 12 years old again. At 12 I’m about 85% sure (my memory’s not the best of my Middle School years, like a normal person I try and forget it) that my bedtime was at 9:00pm, 9:30 on a weekend. Wow, so not only was I acting like a 12 year old tonight, I was acting like a 12 year old with the bedtime of a 5 year old, or that of a 75 year old…which ever.

So after feeling the compelling need to write to all of the readers of my blog, however few you might be, and share my moment of shame. My moment of letting the inner dork outshine my outer dork, I guess it’s time to actually go to bed. I figure I didn’t fight the inner 12 year old feeling. I probably shouldn’t try to hold off the tired feeling for too long either. Besides, if I stay awake I might eat more chocolate, and that would not be good for future de-stresser nights. And it’s like 8:30 now. That’s bumped me up to a 10 year old bedtime right?

Picture blog

2009-09-25T18:08:00.009-04:00

Tooth Brushing Campaign Pictures:

Salute Your Shorts

2009-09-25T18:06:00.000-04:00

Schwartz. It’s a hard last name to pronounce correctly. I vaguely remember learning in a German class that it is actually spelled and pronounced wrong and should be the German word for black. Who knows. All I know is that for approximately 18 years of my life (Aka all the years I spent in school and college) I’ve been called Jennifer Shorts. I was unaware of how hard it is for the average American to say Schwartz. I don’t remember ever having difficulty with it, but I guess I need to ask my parents to get the real answer for that…because I honestly don’t remember learning my last name. I remember how freaking hard it was for me to remember to spell Elizabeth. Looking back on it I can’t for the life of me see why…but I always wanted to write Elezebeth. Guess I liked the letter e a lot.

I remember there was one classmate of mine, who I hate only for this one act because otherwise she is an amazing person. But she said to me one day “Hey there Jenny Salute your Shorts.” Not sure if anyone remembers that tv program that came on Nick, Salute your Shorts, it was about a summer camp and the kids that lived there. I don’t remember anything else, just the impact of the day that she said that phrase. Since then, I’ve been called “Jenny Salute your Shorts” at least 2,000 times in my life. It’s always irritated me. I never really cared if it’s that much easier to say Shorts than Schwartz. I learned to say all the Jewish, Spanish, Czech, and African last names of some of my friends…why’s mine so hard? Akin, I’ll say yours was especially hard.

But how ever hard it is for an English speaker (a Germanic language) to say my German last name—it is SO much harder for a Spanish speaker to even attempt it. But recently every one of my students has started an unofficial competition to see who can, in fact, say my name correctly. So just try to get the mental image of Spanish speakers trying to say my name.
Eswitz
Esctich
Eswwwwwatz
Eswwwwiwwwthcs

Oh the list just keeps going on, but usually there is a face made with each pronunciation. At first they pause to think, then they build up the courage to start with an S, well really an Es because an S is never alone in Spanish, and then as they try to take over the next syllable inevitably they raise an eyebrow or shut an eye as they round 3rd base and try to take on the final syllable the Z sound. It’s an ordeal that they just try over and over again, each time I repeat it the way it should be and they try once again in vain.

Then finally one day, I did the unthinkable…I can’t to this moment even believe that I did it. I told them to say it Shorts. Not just because it’s like WAY easier to say, but because it’s a word that they actually know. Even in Spanish, Shorts is Shorts. So apparently I have made myself Jenny Shorts once again…and I spent all of college being so happy that I got rid of the Shorts. But it seems to be working. Shorts in Spanish sounds scarily similar to Schwartz with the accent. Go figure.

So call me Jenny Salute you Shorts for a little while longer. It’s just easier.

Dear Peru 14 Volunteers

2009-09-06T09:24:00.002-04:00

Dear Peru 14 volunteers,

Seeing as how you are all currently in the “holy heck I’m really leaving the country” mindset and trying to decided what in the world should really go into those 2 checked bags that we’re allotted I figured I’d try to help ya’ll out a little. Assuming that you’re all blog stalking like we were before we left the country.

Things I’d have died without:
-My Backpacking hammock—crucial for any excursion to a caserio that winds up lasting WAY longer than intended, also amazing for sticky, hot summer afternoons.
-Laptop—I would not have survived the rainy season (well at least the part that had electricity) without the ability to watch a movie in English.
-External Hard drive—Great for stealing music from your friends…even if you think you won’t listen to it you will. Just wait for the rainy season.
-Rain Jacket and Rain Pants and Gortex boots—yes you see a theme, rain sucks. I was happy I was able to stay dry.
-Hiking Pack—I feel very much like a donkey at times carrying all the stuff we need to give charlas…so the pack just makes that all easier. In addition a Camel Back will make the pack even better.
-Leather Work gloves—I do a lot of shoveling/pick axing/handling metal or animal crud, sometimes it’s just nice to not have to worry about blisters or cutting or burning your hands.
-SUNGLASSES—the sun is just that much stronger here. Even if you didn’t wear them in the States you’ll want them here.
-Chacos—I will have a permanent chaco tan line by the time I’ve completed my Peace Corps service because I wear them 75% of the time, the other 25% it’s either pouring rain and I’m in boots or I’m hiking really far.
-Leatherman—dude, you always need a leatherman.
-Iron Man watch—it’s hard to find a good quality watch here. I’d just bring an extra band…I forgot to do that.
TAMPONS!—They just don’t do tampons here in Peru. I brought a gallon Ziplock full of OB tampons and have still yet to run out (my family also uses them as packing peanuts when they send me stuff). They cost and arm and a leg here.

Things to ignore on that Packing List they gave you:
-I brought WAY more business casual than needed. Really guys, I kid you not, bring one skirt/dress that doesn’t wrinkle very easy, one pair of kakis, and one button up shirt and you are golden. I’ve only worn business casual 3 times, and no one in Peace Corps cares if they always see you in the same shirt. It just makes it easier to remember your name around the office.
-3 Month Supply of stuff—The idea is that we’re short of time to buy that stuff during training…Really if you have enough to get your through a week after Staging in DC you’ll be fine. There is a grocery store (like a real one) a 4 block walk from the training center in Chaclaclayo by the Serpost. You can get anything and everything you need there. It’ll save you some weight on those bags as well.

So basically Peru 14, all I wanted to say was to take a deep breath in. Relax. And enjoy these last few days with friends and family. Enjoy all of your favorite things American because you won’t be seeing any (or much) of them here in Peru. Enjoy JIF Peanut Butter, good cheese, sliced deli meat, solid yogurt, bagels, real ketchup, pork barbeque, thick and good tasting hamburgers, and last but defiantly not least, your family’s cooking. Don’t forget to soak up as much time in your favorite places, the mountains and beaches are beautiful here, but they are still not like home. So enjoy your favorite things, take a lot of pictures to bring with you and share all of those memories with your new Peruvian families.

I’ll probably see ya’ll around the training center at some point. Travel safe, and take care of each other. We’re the only English-speaking family we’re going to have for 2 years.
-Jenny

English Sucks

2009-09-06T09:24:00.001-04:00

Talking with my host dad today over lunch I figured something out. Americans, well all English speaking people, we’re selfish. Ok well not all of us, but our language sure as heck is. Now hear me out before you think that I’ve gone and changed my citizenship to Peruvian (I may have thought about it after this past election…but I’ll stay American for now).

We were talking about my “capacatacion.” It’s a Spanish word that means a capacatation. See, Microsoft Word hates me for even trying to turn that into English. “Capacitar,” Spanish for “to capacitate.” Word doesn’t hate me for that…to capacitate someone, that verb exists, but the noun doesn’t. Now that’s selfish. We’ll take the credit in English for giving the information, to capacitate them, but it just doesn’t have the same significance that it does in Spanish.

I looked it up in my University of Chicago Spanish-English dictionary.
Capacitar: VT to train, to qualify.

That’s the definition…sorta, ok not really. Here in Peru when we talk about capacitating someone it has a deeper meaning than training. Training someone has a different signification. To train someone implies drilling a concept in their head. You can train in a sport, but that usually gives the connotation of a fat old guy yelling at some slim athlete to do the things that he can’t do any more. You can train a dog to sit on command, but that involves a lot of treat giving and yelling and frustration before you reach the goal. Training just doesn’t cut it. It doesn’t paint the right picture.

To capacitate is more than to train. Yes it’s giving someone information, it is informing, but it goes so much further than that in Spanish. Capacatacion. To define it in Spanish is so beautiful. My host dad once said “capacitación es nada mas de brindar a la gente alguna información o técnica para mejorar su concomimiento o su vida.” Yes I will translate that for you all. “Capacatation is nothing more than to volunteer some sort of information or technique to the people.” Brindar is another one of these words that is just so much cooler in Spanish that in English that I won’t get into today, but literally it means to toast (like to give a toast).

So here in Peru to capacitate someone holds such a different meaning than in the states. It’s not just giving them the information, it’s a combination of that, giving information with the person WANTING to receive the knowledge and fully understand and take ownership of that information. See that, they took the instructor out of capacitating the people—now that’s selfless. The actual act of capacitating has next to nothing to do with the person who has the knowledge, and almost everything to do with the person wanting to receive the knowledge. Take that. We can’t even do that in English. It’s all verb, no noun exists. And certainly nothing exists that would take the do-er out of the situation like it does in Spanish.

It’s a common mistake made by most Peace Corps Volunteers when they return to the United States, to say Capacitation. We just get so used to the idea, to the concept, that we forget that our native language doesn’t have that concept, doesn’t have that word. So when we go to interviews and when we are looking for jobs I’m sure that some of the employers or the interviewers think that we’re we’ve forgotten how to speak English. While to an extent we have forgotten to speak English it’s more of English failing to reflect a concept so inherent in the Spanish language and us trying to relay that concept to people who may not speak Spanish and who don’t understand what we want to say.

**Note to Mr. Lang, my 12th grade AP English teacher who can attest to me being the worst student he’s ever had (ok that could be an exaggeration…but probably not) and to my Mother the walking grammar dictionary of my childhood:
I know, I’m probably the last person on Earth who should have tried to explain this concept. And there is a good chance that no one outside of the Peace Corps in a Spanish speaking country will ever understand what we’re trying to say when we say Capacitation. But it was worth a try. Sorry if you all have a headache.

Brush, Brush, Brush Your Teeth

2009-09-06T09:22:00.000-04:00

Finally! The Tooth Brushing Campaign has begun! Thanks to the lovely help from Durham, North Carolina’s Riverside High School and their donation of 205 toothbrushes (as mentioned in my earlier blog) I have been able to start the Campaign. We started off strong, literally, by walking a few hours straight up the mountain to visit Palto, one of the further out caserios of Nanchoc and were greeted by 25 students excited to see what I had in my hiking pack for them…well that was after I promised about 500 times that I wasn’t there to give them shots. You see, they live so far away, that the majority of the little kids only see the Health Post workers when it’s time to get a shot. And since a lab technician came with me, their first reaction was to run further up the hill and hide.

So once I was able to convince them that I in fact was there to give them a lesson and to play a game, not stick them in the arm with a needle, the real fun (I mean work…just in case my boss is reading this) began. I had made a “television” out of cardboard and filled it with poster board. Each poster board has a picture on it, and we “show the movie” while their professor read the story of “Monchito el Golosinero” which translates along the lines of “Little Moncho, the Sweet Tooth.” I love the reaction I get from the kids doing this presentation. Their eyes are fixed on the TV screen, mouths gapping open, exclusively watching the movie. It’s amazing. I get such a great high off of that, knowing that the kids actually enjoy something that took me quite literally forever and a half to finish.

After the video I asked a few questions. I figured the movie went over so great, let’s see what they learned. I started off simple, “Why did Monchito get cavities in the story?” I was met with nothing more than 25 blank stares. So I tried again. “In the story, Monchito got cavities after eating too much of what?” Nothing. At this point I was trying extremely hard to not turn bright red and regress back to my entire schooling career and my fear of giving presentations in front of groups of people. Stuttering, oh yes people, I stuttered this part, I asked “Raise your hand if you understand me.” One kid raised his hand. A boy named Lucho who had been in the health post every day this summer to receive treatment for a bug bite that eats the flesh around where it bites—so needless to say he had heard me talk when I couldn’t talk at all, this was an improvement. The entire class turns and gives Lucho the “what the heck did she just say” face and he explains to the class “Jenny wants to know if we understand her.” I received 25 headshakes of “no.”

Damn. Remember that high I was talking about with the presentation…gone. So I took a deep breath and remember something Terry Dash once told me. Terry is an instructor at NCSU for the Outdoor Leadership programs and was my teacher for Backcountry Skills. In that class we had to give presentations on outdoor skills techniques and he told me that I talk unbelievably fast when I give presentations. He didn’t say the why part, but the why part is that I get so nervous giving presentations that I shake and want to get the whole thing over with as fast as possible…so I talk fast. Remembering that I though…hmm speed-talking gringo-Spanish just might be the problem.

I took another deep breath and repeated, at a turtle’s pace, “Raise your hand now if you can understand me.” Thank God. There were at least 22 hands that went up. Ok, I have them back. Then I proceeded to ask the rest of my questions just to make sure they got the story. Success! They all answered (in unison) all the questions correctly and then all participated in a game. It was great.

To use a bad saying for this situation, I then put the sprinkles on top by bringing out the tooth brushes. “Ok guys. Remember how I said that I’m from the United States? Well I have a class over there that wanted to give you guys a present…They sent me toothbrushes from the United States, one for each of you.” You’d have thought I was Santa Clause. They formed a nice and neat line and one by one took a toothbrush from the bag and I noted one huge difference from what I’m used to State-side. There was no looking for their favorite color, rummaging around in the bag trying to find the “best” or the “coolest” looking toothbrush, one by one they all grabbed a toothbrush and stared at it as if it could possibly come to life at any moment. Some boys had pink ones or purple ones, one guy had glitter on his, and unlike in any classroom in the United States they weren’t trying to switch with the girl beside them who had a red or green one. They just stared at their very own tooth brush.

“Look mine’s got a gel handle! IT’S SQUISHY!”
“OOO mines got bumps on the back!”
“Mine’s got the gel too!
“Look! You can see through mine and it makes things bigger!”

They spent about 2 minutes just getting to know the ins and outs of their toothbrushes. Ones from the states are far more advanced than the cheap Peruvian toothbrushes. Forget a tongue cleaner, or gel handles, or funny bristles to get the crud out from your teeth, Peruvian cheap drug store toothbrushes don’t even have that little rubber get-the-crud-out-from-your-teeth nub. This was just mind blowing.

“So who’s ready to practice brushing their teeth??” I asked. A roar of “I AM!!!” told me it was time to pass out the toothpaste. I put a little bit on each brush, I did it to show how little they’d need, and then we began brushing teeth. I figured it’d be best for me to do it with them and explain as we go. Seemed like a great idea. We started out with the brushing up and down on the front teeth, the sides, and then we moved to the sides. Right about the sides I realized the flaw in my plan. It’s hard as heck to talk with a mouth full of toothpaste foam. Choking back the toothpaste I talked them through the other side, the insides, then the tongue and we all ran to the side of the hill to spit off into the grass and wash our toothbrushes with a water bottle I filled with water and put a hole in the top to make a squirter. It went great! The kids loved it! Their parents might be extremely confused as to where the neon blue toothpaste streaks are on their jackets…it seems that a few of the kids had issues with a mouth full of toothpaste as well. But all and all a great trip!

I handed out stickers, we decorated empty Pepsi bottles with their names and drawings to put their toothbrushes in (to keep the dust and dirt off of them) and then signed a contract to brush their teeth every day after snack time and to always leave the toothbrush at the school. Then I said my goodbyes, and started back down the hill to my house with a minty fresh clean feeling.

(PS. pictures will be coming soon. I just forgot my camera this trip. Sorry)

Light the Fire

2009-08-23T08:38:00.004-04:00

We recently had IST (In Service Training) in Pozo de las Ramos, Piura. All of the remaining Health Volunteer and a community partner arrived ready to learn all we could about latrine construction, improved wood burning stove construction, gardens, raising animals, and Early Childhood Development. Needless to say it was a JAMMED packed 4 days of lessons, and my favorite, hands on learning.

I brought with me to the meeting my most active Health Promoter, Andres Huertas Canerio. He was extremely excited to learn all the ins and outs of construction of stoves and latrines, and coming from a background in construction, I just felt he was the perfect match for the meeting--I was totally right! Andres is the guy you call in my town when your water pipe bursts, or you need to build an adobe house, or your bean crop is dying from a plague and you need help. He’s the Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor of Nanchoc if you will. He asked so many questions during the meetings that some of the other people got mad thinking we’d never leave—it may have frustrated some people, but I was as proud as I could be. I think I might have actually found one member of the community who’s ready to light a fire under the rear ends of the people of Nanchoc and get to working!

Now I’m hoping I’m not speaking too soon saying that. I really do hope that Andres and I, together with the Health Post and other Promoters, can finally get some projects going. Now that Andres has actually seen how freaking easy (and relatively cheap) it is to build an improved wood burning stove, he’s ready to build. He even wants one of the first ones we’re going to make. Our new game plan is to build 7 (you buy one big piece of metal that makes 7 stoves) stoves as part of a pilot program, putting them in influential houses in the community—Andres’s house, my house, Carmen (a lady at the health post who EVERYOE knows), Teo (the lady who owns the phone), the soup kitchen in Andres’s neighborhood, and one at the health post, the other slots are still up for grabs. But I’m excited that we seem to have a plan. In this up coming week we will be getting in contact with sellers of the metal we need to find a cheap price and hopefully start building by mid-September if all goes smoothly.

Not only did we get the stove project underway, but I found my new favorite way to grow veggies. The guy who was teaching about gardens happens to live in a city, so he has next to no space to grow veggies in. Seeing as how it’s like his job to teach people how to grow things, he figured it’d be rather hypocritical of him to not grow them himself and started growing plants on a shelf…sorta. The idea is to build a 2 story growing platform. Envision a bunk bed, but instead of a mattress there is a bin to grow stuff in.

Now I took this idea one step further. I’ve been trying for MONTHS to get my host family on board for a garden, and I wanted a bunny. They told me that there was no space for a garden at the house, it’s true, our patio is chock full of trees, so there’s not a ton of room…but there is some, but that I could build a little hutch for a bunny if I wanted. As long as it was just one bunny. So, I took the guy’s idea for the bunk bed system of growing and changed it a little… I’m going to have a bunny house on the bottom bunk, and veggies growing on the top bunk! I know, super great idea Jenny! I know, I’m proud of myself for thinking it up too.

Tomorrow (18th of Aug to be exact) I’m going to dig the holes to put the posts in, and walk about an hour with the donkey and start begging for people to give me 1 or 2 stalks of bamboo to get building. Usually people don’t give away bamboo…it’s like the duct tape of my site, now I know that you can’t tape things together with bamboo, but you can build damn near anything out of it. But I’m hoping my status as a gringa will help me get some for free…and if not as the gringa, as the broke gringa who knows how to build a latrine and is willing to share that knowledge. So here’s hoping that in the next blog I’m talking about my complete bunny hutch/garden combo and putting my focus on planting and buying me a bunny rabbit. No clue what I’ll name him, but if he’s gray I might have to be uncreative and name him Bugs Bunny…and maybe find me a black duck to name Daffy. I mean the neighbor’s cat’s already named Sylvester.

Cowboy Meets Peru

2009-08-06T11:15:00.007-04:00

This week I was fortunate enough to have one of my best friends come and visit me in Peru! His name’s Josh, we mostly just call him the cowboy because that’s his job description. It was rather funny to watch a boy who us used to the country life of the United States adjust to Peru—both the city part and the country part.

I went to Lima to go and pick him up from the airport, and spent most of the day hanging with the host family waiting on his flight to come in at 11pm. Everyone had a lot of questions about the mystery gringo that was coming to visit. “How blue are his eyes?” “Like how tall is tall?” “Wait, he gets paid to hunt?” “What do you mean he doesn’t speak Spanish??” were just a few of the questions I got to answer. My host brother-in-law and I went to the airport around 11 to wait for him to come out of customs. Now I’m not sure if it was the fact that I hadn’t actually seen Josh in over a year, or just the shock from a few plane-full of gringos walking out of the international terminal doors in the airport…but it was A LOT harder than I thought it would be to find him. I was thinking before I got to the airport that it could only be so hard to pick a 6’2” reddish-blonde haired and bearded guy that’s probably wearing plaid out of a crowd. Apparently I had overestimated my ability to scan a crowd. If he hadn’t been wearing a CAT (Caterpillar) hat I might not have found him until after he had walked around the lobby for an hour.

Once safely out of the airport and all the craziness that is included in that we made it to the Peace Corps crash pad in Lima around 1. The tour of Lima started the next day. Now ya’ll know I’m really not a great tour guide, so I did my best…but we went to go see Larco Mar first, the fancy shopping mall positioned at the top of a cliff overlooking the beach. It was our first visit mainly so we could switch out his US money to Peruvian Soles. I hadn’t seen American money in so long it was kinda a nice memory to see them. I forgot that it was all (mostly) green. And I’m pretty sure they’ve changed the $5 since I left. When I get back to the States I’m sure I’ll be having some real issues. None of the money will look the way I remember. But after Larco Mar I took him to my favorite (funniest) park in Lima: Parque de Amor, the Park of Love. Now before ya’ll get confused, let me explain why it’s my favorite park in Lima. The whole part is built around a HUGE statue of 2 people making out…it’s just one of those things that you stare at much like a car wreck. You’re not sure why you’re staring, but you just can’t seem to pull your eyes off of it.

After the shock of the park, we went to a fair in Baranco that had art and textiles from around Peru on display and for sell along with Peruvian food for sell. Josh tried his first Pisco Sour—the national drink. It’s Pisco (a clear grape liquor) mixed with lime juice and egg whites. I’m not a big fan, but Josh seemed to enjoy his. He wasn’t however able to finish it, they made it REALLY strong and we hadn’t eaten lunch yet…so probably for the best he didn’t finish it or I would have been dragging him around Lima. Once we had had our fill of The Peruvian Culture Fair we went in search of food and ate a light lunch since my host family had invited us to Pollo a la Brasa ( Rotisserie chicken) for dinner. That night after supper we got on the bus and Josh had his first taste of a 12 hour bus ride from Lima to Chiclayo.

Now I can safely say he wasn’t a fan of the bus ride…but then again, I don’t know many people who are a fan. It’s rather hard to get a good night sleep on a bus, even if the seat leans way back and has a foot rest, just because us gringos tend to be larger than the seats. But we made it to Chiclayo and proceeded to pass out sleeping for all of the morning in the Peace Corps hotel in Chiclayo (where I always stay). I gave Josh the tour of town after our power naps. There were a lot more people around than normal because we were there 2 days before the Peruvian Independence day and all the partying had already begun. We went to all the usual stops, the grocery store, the mall like place (hey he may have been here for Peruvian culture, but I needed my American culture fix), and just walked around and saw the sights. We also went to Lambayeque to see the Museum. It was a really good exhibit. It had artifacts found in and around the region of Lambayeque on display, and…MUMMIES! My favorites were these little gold figures about 2” tall.

After the culture lesson we hit up the King Kong fair across the street. I think I’ve explained King Kong to everyone before, but just in case, here we go again: King Kong is the regional dessert of Lambayeque. Its layers of a butter cookie with fillings, the fillings range from chocolate, to caramel, to jellied fruit. It winds up looking a lot like a brick of cookied goodness. While it is very good, it’s also very dry and I would not recommend eating it without a glass of milk or a cup of tea or coffee nearby. We then went back to the hotel to enjoy the last of American TV while we had it (the hotel gets movies and shows that sometimes are in English) because we were heading to Nanchoc the next day.

And what a surprise we had waiting for us at the bus terminal: THE NEW COMBI!!! Rojas, the family that runs the bus system at my site FINALLY bought another bus. So we got to ride back to Nanchoc in the big new shiny bus! How fun (at least for me, I don’t think Josh was that impressed). When we were on the bus Josh got mistaken for the volunteer that lives above us in Bolivar by Michael’s 11 month old host sister. She spent the entire bus ride staring at him or crying because her mom wouldn’t let her go sit with Josh. Once in Nanchoc my work officially began. And not my Peace Corps work, the government moving up vacations had killed any and all chances of working this week, but my work as a translator. I’ve decided becoming a professional translator is defiantly not one of the more entertaining jobs in the world. It’s rather frustrating and complicated and leads to one end: The loss of ability to talk intelligently in either language.

But once in Nanchoc, I think Josh realized just how…not jam-packed…his vacation would be. Since the school vacations got moved up there was no option of doing the fun cool things I had planned (giving a lesson on teeth brushing, and playing soccer with the kids, or working in the garden) so I just had to improvise—which is a hard thing to do in the middle of nowhere Peru. We managed to find a few things to do. We went fishing with a cousin and his family and my best friend in site (the nurse) down at the river in Tinges. Josh managed to catch his first Cash-Ca (that ugly fish I was talking about in an earlier blog), which is a good thing, because I don’t think he would have stopped fishing until he caught one. Let’s just say he’s got a bit of a competitive streak in him, and the other guys catching 11 and his none just wouldn’t have done. I think the visit would have been even more fun for him if he could speak better Spanish. Tito, the cousin, is an avid hunter and had a ton of stories to tell and questions to ask Josh—the only problem, I can honestly say that my Spanish vocabulary on hunting terms is not up to par. They were impressed that Josh new a few words that I didn’t, to his credit he did work in a hunting camp in Texas and Mexico, so he had practice—I had no idea what they were talking about. I just filled in the gaps in their conversations when it went to hunting. I can talk all day about most things in my site…hunting is not one of them. But Tito has invited Josh back to Nanchoc to go and hunt deer and mountain lions…doubtful that Josh will actually come back, but the gesture was really nice.

In addition to catching fish, we went to go and see some ruins at my site. There is a spot that has rocks with engravings of animals and people and symbols along with these huge holes in the middle of nowhere (more so than my town). We went one day to try and find them ourselves. And I have found (once again) that Peruvian’s aren’t really that good at giving directions. I found where I thought the rocks probably were, but we just couldn’t find a way to get up there to them…2 days later we went back with our guides (local kids) and I’ll be damned if we didn’t get taken right back to the same spot I tried to get us to before. The only difference, they knew how to get to the top…dern. But we had fun walking around the rocks and looking for all the engravings. We’re not sure what most of them are, they are really worn down from all the rain that we get in my site. But I plan on going back with paper and crayons and taking rubbings of them—maybe that will help.

And that about sums up the gringo’s visit to Peru. I’m about 99% sure Josh was expecting to do more on the trip…I mean Peru has so many cool things to do…but it was just a bad time politically to do much of anything. The president had moved up vacations and cancelled most big Independence Day celebrations. To that cramped most of my plans. Hopefully he doesn’t regret his trip to Peru. I mean, he can now at least say he’s eaten (and not really liked) a Guinea Pig, the strangest (and worst by American standards) cuts of pork, and yucca. And if nothing else maybe I’ve finally convinced him to learn a little bit of Spanish for his next hunting gig down by the boarder. Who knows, I was happy to have the American visitor and to get to speak a lot of English for a little while. Not to mention catching up with a friend. Maybe I’ll get another non-family visitor from the states during my time here, who knows.

River-what? Riverside!

2009-07-22T19:17:00.002-04:00

Ok so that may be old school at this point...but its what we said back in the day of Riverside High School 2000-2004. But the end point is that RHS Students basically rock. Why you might ask? Oh well grab a seat and I will tell you:

Last school year (for them) Ms. Davidson's International Relations class asked me if there was anything that they could do to help with a project in my site. Obviously I can't ask them to raise enough money to to a latrine project...lets face it, the NC School system needs that amount of money to put towards hiring more teachers. But I figured that they could help me with toothbrushes. Tooth Brushing is a daily habit majorly overlooked here in the campo of Peru. Most of the people I know...well in fact ALL of the people I know, even the Health Post Staff, have at least 3 cavities (not that the Peace Corps Volunteer doesn't have her share...So I was a rebellious child...I'm sorry mom!). Then even more are missing at least 3 or 4 teeth due to tooth extractions--my health post doesn't have the instruments to fill cavities, they just get to be so bad that they take the whole tooth out.

So obviously the best way to counter this trend of toothless Nanchoc-citizens, something must be done, and it must be done from the little ones right on up. Well I got my starting hand from Ms. D's IR class. I asked them for 150 tooth brushes. That would be enough for every child in my community between the ages of 4 and 8 to receive a tooth brush. And they sent me 205! Now that's what I'm talking about!

I've yet to give a lesson on tooth brushing to students, I have given the lesson to the health promoters with the help of some local kids. I'm looking forward to the end of winter vacations (which got pushed up 2 weeks due to the pig flu...) so that I can start giving the lessons! The game plan:

To start in the poorest caserios of my town, Aventuranza, Tingues, and Palto with their kindergarten through 2nd grade classes (which is around 35 kids) and then to move on to the actual Town of Nanchoc. I can't wait to start! I have made up a "television" out of a big box that I fill with slides. Each slide has a picture that corresponds to a story about the dangers of not brushing your teeth (aka cavities). The end product is that the kids feel like their watching a movie, not receiving a lesson. After the "movie" we're going to play a game. With 4 or 5 volunteers we will create our "mouth." The volunteers are the teeth. The other students in the class will stick with tape pictures of candy and sweets all over their classmates. Then we must "brush" our teeth with the "tooth brush," aka broom, until all clean!

When I get to giving lessons I will be sure to take LOTS of pictures for the IR class and post them all. A big ol thanks to RHS and all their hard work in getting me those tooth brushes! You guys are a great bunch of students!

Why Do I Bang My Head Into The Wall? Because It Feels So Good When I Stop.

2009-07-07T09:06:00.002-04:00

I can’t remember where I first heard that quote. I’m pretty sure it was Grey’s Anatomy episode…some of the best lines I know come from that show. Don’t hate.

Why do I bang my head in the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop. Believe it or not, that actually translates into Spanish quite well. “? Porque estoy golpeando mi cabeza con la pared? Pues, porque siento riquísimo cuando me pare.”

Why might one need to use such a phrase in Peru you might ask? Simple. I assisted my first, and probably last, active budget proposal. What might that be you ask…well it’s a time where the representatives of the organizations and communities come together in the mayor’s office to talk about dividing up the community project budget.

Wait, I just described that way too orderly. It’s really a time where 30 people who are semi-organized come together to yell and scream and literally take their shoe off and slam it into the floor demanding that the government hear why they need a project done in their caserio more than that dude’s over there.

Yeah, sounds like fun doesn’t it? Well see I didn’t know what exactly I was in for when I arrived in the Health Post this morning. I came with one goal: To talk to Carlos, the guy in charge of the environmental concerns of Nanchoc, about the disgrace of a landfill the Mayor has built along the road. It’s horrible! I’m not even sure he dug a hole for the landfill. It looks to me more like he found a spot where with the way the wind blows the sand it created a shallow pit, maybe 4 feet deep, and started dumping tractor loads of trash in the whole. Now as common sense would tell you, if the wind created that hole, then the wind is damn well certain to lift all of the trash out of said hole. Needless to say we’re blowing trash all over the town and into the river. Then to rub a little salt in the wound that is the trash dump, it’s also laying in the middle of a flood plane...oh yes, when December comes around what trash that is left in the hole, that didn’t blow out that is, will be washed straight into the river.

Oh the joy I find when going for an early morning run in my site. Badly made dumps. At least I now know why the Mayor was avoiding showing me said dump for the past 2 months. Even he must have known that it was a mess.

Ok so I’ve gotten sidetracked. Yes that is why I originally showed up the Health Post. To talk. Then Carlos mentioned that there was this active budget proposal meeting and that I should go with the Doctor to mention the horrors that are the dump. GREAT IDEA I thought…

Ok so it all started out great, we talked about the vision of Nanchoc, what we all want to see by 2014, what big projects need to be done to reach those goals. It was all quite orderly and calm. Well that was the first 2 hours. By noon I guess everyone’s stomach’s began to turn on them. The mean came out. People started fighting over why their caserio deserved the money more than another…that is when I knew it would be a fun day. By 1 the representatives of the government decided it was time for a break and lunch. A little cooling off period if you will.

After lunch, things just got worse. Not because of the participants, the lunch had done them all good. They were calm and organized even cooperating and suggesting joint projects to benefit multiple caserios. Oh no, this time the problem was the government. Now it could be that I’m a math major, or that I’m a gringa who occasionally points out flaws in plans when it comes to number crunching…but I became the least favorite member of the community by one of the council members…

So the mayor had told us that we had S./134,400 this upcoming year (2010) for projects. Between 6 caserios that’s S./22,400 per caserio. Roughly $7,466. You can do a fair amount of work in Peru for that amount of money. Palto wanted a new bridge to be built, or maybe a community center, Adventuranza won my heart by saying they wanted a latrine project (in coordination with the Peace Corps volunteer!), Tingues wanted to fix an irrigation canal, Hacienda Vieja wanted to fix their water system, Carahuasi wanted to do the same, and Nanchoc wanted to rebuild the police station…which is literally about to fall down. All of which were reasonable with about S./22,400.

Then the other shoe dropped. The mayor realized he had forgotten to mention a few things that we’d have to take out of the budgeted money. S./34,400 for contractors and paying taxes on community work projects (yeah I didn’t understand it either). And then another S./ 15,000 for “extenuating circumstances” that could happen during the rainy season. Akaadded costs of fuel and the like from muddy roads. So…as a math major, I raised my hand…the first time I had done so the whole day. I figured it wasn’t really my place to decide where the money goes, I already had my latrine pitch, I was happy with that. But I raised my hand and said:

“Mr. Mayor, excuse me but I’m a little confused. You origionally said that we were going to be given S./134,400 for community projects is this correct?” “Yes,” he replied. “Ok, well that would have given us S./22,400 for each project, and we had planned the projects for today’s meeting based on that number. But now you are taking S./49,400 from the budget. That’s taking about 40% of the budget out of play.”

And then there was a silence. I waited a few seconds for him to respond, he said nothing…so I continued…

“So we went from having a little over S./22,000 for each caserio for a project, to S./14,166 for each project. That’s a big difference.”

You could see the wave of light bulbs clicking on in the room. I guess I was the only one who had done the math in their head. That’s when the disorder began…my bad. I won’t go into the details, but luckily it was all verbal arguments, aside from the slamming of a shoe (it came from a bag, not off a foot) to make a point, it didn’t get too violent. And after 3 hours of yelling it appeared that everyone just gave up. We weren’t going to get that S./49,400 back from the mayor. So it wasn’t worth anymore of or time fighting for it.

The meeting ended undecided the actual amounts that will be given to each project, the newly founded comities’ going to decide. And the council must have not held a grudge on my math, because they asked me to be the president of the town’s Patron Saint’s party. After being informed that that means having to organize everything, I said “no thank you” and left to head home to eat supper.

So why do I bang my head into the wall? Because it feels so good when I stop. That might have been a waste of my time…after all nothing was really accomplished…but it made a good story.

…Maybe It Was The Chu-cha

2009-06-18T10:11:00.002-04:00

The bad thing about being sick in the Peace Corps is that 90% of the time, we really have no clue what made us sick. We can have a pretty good guess, but we’re never sure. This is a new country with new sickness-causing-issues. In the States, if my head hurt it was probably because I had just spent a good 6 hours staring at a computer screen trying to get a MatLab program to work listening to country music way too loud to try and keep me awake because its 2:00 in the morning. Here in Peru its anything from the sun’s too bright, the weather’s too hot, or I spent too much time in the shade (don’t ask me, it’s what people in my town tell me). In the States if my stomach hurt, well for one thing it was a rare occasion that it did, but it means that I’m sick. Cold sick. Not I just ate something really strange that I know will come to bit me in the tail, which more often than not seems to be the case here in Peru.

Now every time I get sick I have to do a mini scientific analysis on my day’s food intake. Well it could have been that orange I ate and didn’t wash the peel first before I peeled it…No wait, it was probably that Jello that the nice old guy by the mural I’m working on gave me. Bet he didn’t boil that water for 3 minutes to make it like he’s supposed to...No wait, it was defiantly that puppy I stopped to pet. Did I wash my hands before I picked up my water bottle…or was that after? Gah, as you can tell the list just goes on and on. But usually before you get sick here, you get…well for lack of a better phrase…a gut feeling. It’s a grumbling/gurgling feeling that comes from deep down in your stomach that’s the bodily equivalent of a flare gun going off.

Like right now for example. The flare has gone up, I’m about 99% sure that I’ll be hating myself tonight and becoming good friends with my bathroom…again. Dern, I was on such a good streak. 2 months without a stomach problem. But today I went fishing with some friends…seemed like a good idea. And in the infamous words of a Miss Wendy Drake: what had happened was…

Today I walked a good 2 hours to “the good part” of the river that runs by my town in search of Chu-chas. Now I had no clue what a chu-cha was. I was just told that they’re A. Tastey, and B. easy as heck to catch because they don’t swim that fast. My kinda fish. I should mention fishing here doesn’t involve a fishing pole. It involves one of two methods. There is the throwing a fishing net with weights on the end to trap a bunch and fish out the big ones method. Or there is the Noodling method. For those of you unaware of what is Noodling, just let Google be your guide. It’s a “crazy redneck” method of fishing where you stick your fingers (hand, arm…whatever really) into a hole in the bed of a river (you know, under a rock, under a branch) and hope to god that whatever’s under there doesn’t have sharp teeth when it bites on so you can pull it out and say, “hey Bubba looky what I caught.” Ok so we do it a lil different here in Peru, you stick your hand under a rock, or whatever, and if it’s a squishy blob that doesn’t bite back it’s a fish, not a crab or crayfish. Then you try to trap it in a corner or pin it to a rock and get it from your hand to the bucket or bag as fast as possible before you lose it. Sounds simple right? Well with a little practice and strategy, yes it is.

The strategy you might ask? Why block off a feeder creek to the river with rocks and mud of course! Yes, there is a fork in our river where 3 feeder streams meet and turn into the big daddy river of Nanchoc. So we hiked up to the top and piled up rocks and river sand and stopped the water flow with a fishing net waiting at the bottom. The lil fishies had no where to go. Then what do you do you might ask? Well you go from pool or water to pool of water and turn over rocks and feel around for the squishy blob and try and get it out.

This is where I should say that a Chu-cha is not a squishy blob. In fact the first Chu-cha I caught, really it caught me…it stabbed me. A Chu-Ca is nothing more than what I call a Sucker fish back in the States. You know those little brown guys you can buy at the fish store that suck on the wall of your dirty fish tanks? The algae eaters. When you buy them they’re so little (if you’re cheap and get the $2 one like me) but if you leave them there long enough then get REALLY big. Apparently when they get big enough they have big old spines. Yes that cute looking lil fin on the top of a lil one turns into a gringa-stabbing instrument when they are older. Who knew. Then what’s even worse, who knew people would think they’re…good to eat. I mean, let’s do a little thinking here. They eat pond scum. And fish poo. And…you want me to eat one? Now I didn’t study biology, but to me that screams: I am a pond scum eating fish who has a ton of bad things living in my body so don’t you dare eat me! But I guess that’s just me…cause damn if they didn’t cook that thing up and serve me one…

Now I’m sure I’ve mentioned that in Peru, when you’re invited to eat something…you eat it. The family saying we have is “you’ll eat it and you’ll like it.” So I ate this fish. The Chu-cha. And the whole time I was eating I was thinking, “In about 4 hours this is NOT going to be a good day.” I finished the whole thing, except for the head, I have a personal issue eating the head of any animal…I don’t like it when they’re staring at me like that.

I was close, 5 hours later is when the flare went up. After acting like I enjoyed the fish (it tastes like what I imagine algae tastes like…can’t say I’ve ever eaten algae) and sitting around listening to stories, while trying to get the fish bone out from between my back two teeth without anyone noticing for an hour or two, we left to start walking back. The walk back always takes more time when you’re tired. Worse when your stomach hurts. I figured I was the only one who had had the flare gun go off. After all I was the only gringa in the group. I went with my best friend in site Cati, her boyfriend, and Carmen. But then Segundo (the boyfriend) mentioned that his stomach felt bad, followed by the rest of us admitting that ours too, felt horrible.

Needless to say, I’m going to qualify this as one of the 10% of the times that I’m 100% sure of what made me sick. Chu-cha…pond scum sucking fish of the devil (yeah that’s its new name in my book). The end result for chu-cha: they’re really fun to catch…not so much fun to eat.

For now, I’m going to go lay down and hope it’s not a bad night…

4x6

2009-06-18T09:46:00.006-04:00

I’ve become somewhat of the unofficial photographer of my site. Not that I mind it, I love to take pictures, and occasionally I even get a really good one out of the deal. I even get a real smile out of some of the people I take pictures of, not the stone faced Peruvian glare that usually comes out when you take someone’s picture here. My town’s started opening up one photo at a time.

I was originally hesitant to bust out my Nikon D40. I mean, the camera costs the same as the proposed new addition to the high school. I was worried in what bringing out my camera would say to the people in my town. I’m supposed to be the broke volunteer, a flashy camera might counteract that. Or so I thought.

I did have a few people call me out on how expensive the camera must have been, I just wrote it off as a gift. Saying that I didn’t buy it. Which I didn’t. So it’s not a lie. In hindsight I’m mad that I waited as long as I did to bring out my camera. I waited almost 6 months, wanting the town to get to know me as the volunteer before the gringo with the fancy camera.

May 1st was the anniversary of the High School here in town, and then June 7th was the day of the flag. I took a ton of pictures, probably near 1000 in total to document both for myself and to give to friends. It’s rare for a family here in the campo of Peru to have more than one or 2 photos of their kids. It’s getting less rare in this cell phone/camera day and age. But let’s face it, cell phone pictures aren’t always the greatest. So I’ve started trying to get one or 2 good pictures of every kid that performs at a school function or community event. Then I of course take any other cute kids picture. Anyone that asks me to take their picture I will. Under one circumstance: they said “Jennifer take my picture” and not “gringa take my picture.” Who would have known the fastest way for EVERY single student at the high school to learn my name was to bring my camera.

These kids are just so photogenic. There are the occasional “strike a model pose” that I try to get them to avoid. Only super models look good pocking their hips out at that angle anyways. I like the photos the best when it catches them off guard. I get a glimpse of who they really are, before they have a chance to turn on the stone cold Peruvian face for photos.

I’ll let the pictures do the talking from here on out:

Dancing at the High School

The Little Ones waiting to march in the parade

Waiting to perform

Eddie listening to a speech

Holy Ice Sickles Batman!

2009-06-18T09:44:00.001-04:00

Showers in site. There are Volunteers who maybe (that’s a big maybe) take a shower once a week. That is if it’s a shower, it’s probably a bucket bath in all reality. Now before you go calling us gross, I would like to speak out on the part of that poor weekly-showering (bucketing)volunteer and say that he/she probably does the “crucial parts” scrub down with a washcloth on a daily basis (so I hope). Then there are the once every few days shower-ers (bucket-ers). There are defiantly a lot more of them out there. And then there is the rare breed of the everyday or more showers(buckets).

Until recently I was a daily or more shower-er (bucket-er) due to it just being so dern hot in my site, with temperatures over 100 there was just nothing quite like a cold shower (yeah cold) to just make you feel human again. I even occasionally found myself taking a “longer” shower (when we had running water) of 8 or 9 minutes just to enjoy the water. I never thought I’d admit to liking a cold shower, but when it’s that hot, it’s really all you have to keep from going crazy. I can actually remember one day that I took 3 showers…but that day had an unusual amount of dirt and mud involved.

Upon return from Cusco, I’ve noticed one big difference in my site. Just about everything else is the same. But it got cold. It’s like someone flipped a switch on the nights here. Its gets brrr chilly (as we say in the Schwartz family household) during the night and stays that way until about 10 in the morning. Now I was originally happy, I love the cold weather after all, it’s way easier to put on another shirt or jacket when you’re cold than to want to take off a layer of skin to cool off on hot days. During the day now it’s…dare I say it?...nice outside. It’s a mid 60 or 70 most days, today it probably hit 80 again, but that’s a rare thing I hear. But it’s been nice. I don’t sweat when sitting still eating my lunch anymore. I actually don’t mind that the soup is piping hot and practically boiling, at least the temperature’s not.

The thing I forget when I say that I love cold weather is cold showers in cold weather. In the States we have this amazing thing called a hot water heater…those don’t exist in the campo of Peru. I can now say I’m starting to understand how it is that some volunteers go a week without showering (while stating that I’ve not actually resorted to that yet). Glacier cold water on a cold day is not ideal for many things, a long nice shower is defiantly one of them. So my daily showering has turned into a bi-daily, ok well really, I wash my body every day (thank goodness for washcloths) and skip the hair occasionally. After all, ask any of us female volunteers, and the worst part to wash when it’s cold is your head. It’s like an instant brain freeze…which suck even when you have ice cream as a reward.

Maybe I’ll get used to the cold showers, I mean the guys in Ancash did right? So I’ll suck it up and enjoy the nice weather. And try to only shower in the warm part of the day.

Mmm Smells Like Home

2009-06-18T09:42:00.002-04:00

There’s not many times I find myself thinking: man, this tastes JUST like it does back home.

Everything here taste’s different—even when theoretically it should taste the same. Coca Cola taste different, Sprite taste different. The peanut butter is different. The chocolate’s not that good, but we still eat it because we’re away from home and it makes us feel better. Almost every food tastes different here. I tried to make biscuits…different. My cookies, different. I’ve just now got all the kinks almost worked out and food that I make are starting to taste like (or close enough) to how it does in the states.

Now that’s not always a bad thing. I do tend to love Peruvian food. There’s nothing in the states that tastes like my favorite plate here: Aji de Gallina. The fruit here tastes better, the veggies taste better (well ok I still don’t like olives). That’s probably to due with how fresh they are. But tonight I had a taste of home. We ate soup for dinner, no big deal usually. It’s almost always the same when it’s the “dinner time soup.” Its rice, chicken, and a mix of veggies and potatoes. It’s always good. Tonight it was better. Not because my host mom did something extremely different. I’m sure only one ingredient changed. Green Beans are in season.

They were cooked so long that they were that brown-green color of pond algae. Which if you think about it is actually a really gross color for anything other than really well cooked green beans. I’m not sure what it was in the soup, my host mom doesn’t use butter )my host dad doesn’t like it), but when I had a spoonful of green beans (intentionally just to see if the taste was the same) I had a flashback to Bullocks. Bullocks is a barbeque place near my house that I used to love(for those of you reading who’ve either never lived in Durham, or who live in a cave in Durham and were unaware). Unfortunately due to either a change in cook staff or a change in management, I’m not sure which, the family favorite has fallen a little bit out of favor, its just not like it used to be.

But I remember how it used to be: Steaming hot hushpuppies that had just the right ratio of onion to sugar served with honey butter in those little plastic tubs by the basketful. I always got the BBQ with a rotation of sides, it depended in the night of course. There was the sweet corn, baked apples, green beans, lima beans, black eyed peas, cole slaw, well the list just goes on and on, but those are the ones I remember. The corn, green beans and apples being my favorites of the list. The BBQ came out hot, just right—Eastern North Carolina style (the only way in my book). Then we topped off the BBQ high with a Tootsie Roll pop that you bought for a quarter by the cash register.

Half of Bullocks still had that smoked filled, donw home dinner feel, the other half was only lacking the smoke. The line to get in was always long on a Friday night. My family and I probably have eaten there enough Friday nights in our lives to fill a calendar year—ok that could be a slight exaggeration, but it’s at least half a year. I’m not sure how many years its’ been since I’ve eaten at Bullocks. Like I said, we stopped going when the food changed. But tonight, those green beans were JUST the same. That green-brown, slow cooked to death taste. It was amazing. When my host mom asked me if I liked the soup, I said yes and thought for a second to try and explain Bullocks, and the familiar taste…but then figured it was too hard to explain to someone outside of the BBQ Culture. Maybe one of these days I’ll figure out how I can make a campo-pig cooker and try and explain it to them by showing them…till Google and I hit gold, I’ll just have to settle on old memories and wait until Late 2010 when I can get me some of Eastern North Carolina’s best--probably homemade by a Mr. Tom Myers out back of his house if I play my cards right.

Cusco 2009 with NCSU Crew

2009-06-01T10:12:00.004-04:00

So as I probably told a few of you: I was invited by NC State to return to Cusco to help with the Summer Study Abroad Program that they have here in Peru. Besides the whole “free vacation” aspect of it, I was really looking forward to seeing my professors Kay and Leo along with their daughter Isabel, and the Program director Carlos again. Not to mention the whole “YAY there’s gringos!” aspect of it.

But the trip started out with a visit to the rest of my host family in Lima (the sons and daughters of my host mom here in Nanchoc) to stop in and bring a few presents from the farm—namely a turkey and some tamale-like things called humitas. I was super excited to see the whole host family. I got to spend some time with my host niece Luciana, my host sister Consuelo and her husband Miguel, along with my two really cool host brothers Juan and Albert. I felt really bad that I kicked the boys out of their room, and had them both sharing a twin sized mattress on the floor…but they’re Peruvian gentlemen and gave me the real bed to sleep in. How sweet. Their mama raised them good.

I went with Consuelo to Ripely (think the world’s largest Macy’s…or maybe it’s not that big, it was just big for me) to buy a present for her husband. This is a 6 story mall--like straight out of New York or something. Needless to say after spending the past 9 months living in the not-so-city parts of Peru, the shiny, loud, and bustling Ripely was more than this Peace Corps Volunteer could take. I will admit it. I had a mini panic attack. There were probably over 2,000 people in this place, American music; it felt like a Macy’s...just WAY bigger than any store I’ve ever been in in my entire life. I mean, I thought since Chiclayo is a rather large city I wasn’t going to have the shock of going back to Lima…WRONG. Oh well, I survived, just left with a racing heart and sweaty palms. Oh yeah, Consuelo found a button up shirt for her husband too. I don’t think she noticed the gringa was nearly ready to pass out from the stress.

But later that day I met up with the NCSU crew at a VERY (and I mean VERY) nice hotel in Lima. Now I’m 100% sure it’s the same hotel that I stayed in when I went on this trip in 2006—I’m also 100% sure that they’ve added a ton of upgrades since I was there. I’ve never stayed in a bed so big before in my life. I actually called my friend Erica (the only other Peru-12er that’s near me) to brag about the bed size. Seeing as how we usually share a double bed when ever we’re both in Chiclayo (hey it’s the cheapest option…and we make next to nothing) the concept of not kicking each other at night was intriguing. So I enjoyed the king bed all to my lonesome—because its way nicer than my hay mattress here in Nanchoc. But just like last time, bright and early in the am we left the shiny pretty hotel and went on a plane to Cusco.

Now here’s where if I believed in omens, I would have turned around and gone back to Nanchoc. But I don’t, so I stuck around…my bad. We were broken up into 2 buses, the first 2 early flights on one bus, and the later flight on the smaller one. I stayed behind on the small bus (there had been a few forgotten passports that we were waiting for) and got a phone call: “Jenny, you’re on the first flight! It leaves in an hour.” Yeah, I freaked out a lil. I’m now in the late bus, leaving for Cusco soon…yikes. Thanks to the rather Peruvian like driving of our bus driver we managed to do the hour long bus ride to the airport in less than 35 minutes—way to go short dude! And I made it on the flight (thanks to the flight getting delayed by bad weather). I rested into my seat in the aisle. I am not a huge fan of flying…and when I do fly, I like the aisle. In a very Schwartz-family like feeling: If I’m going to die I wanna see it happen! I was nervous until the plane finally made it above all the foul weather of Lima and I saw the Andes below the wings.

By 10 I was on the ground in Cusco waiting patiently with a group of 15ish students for the other 2 planes. 11:00, nothing. We had taken over a corner of the airport that was largely unused. Only largely unused due to the rotating “Authentic Andean Band” playing at whatever baggage claim opened next. I have issues calling them authentic due to the cell phones nicer than mine they were all using and the laptop one had in his bag. 12:00, nothing. Half of the students had taken to napping on the floor propped up against their luggage, the other half alternated between going in search of food and listening to iPods. 1:00, I finally called Carlos to see where they all were. The other flights had gotten delayed, there should (should) be another group arriving in the next 10 minutes, and we were to go find the bus driver in the parking lot and head to the hotel. At this point I’m extremely happy that my Spanish is a hell of a lot better than in my first trip to Peru. I was able to track down our bus driver (and even got to explain that he could stop talking English at a 3 year old level because I speak Spanish!) and we made it to the hotel. The last group of students (and the 3 other adults on the group) arrived about 2 hours later. We were all tired, but we made it!

The next few days were nothing but a blur of traveling and site seeing. We went to Pisac (both the name of ruins and the name of the town we were staying in) to do a hike to some ruins, and shop in the big weekend market they have there ever Sunday. At the Pisac hike we had the first few cases of altitude sickness set in, but fortunately nothing too bad. We also had one slight…we’ll call it a traffic accident. We had told the students that lunch was to be in a café in the main plaza, and that it was first come first serve for eating. Now when we said that, we meant that the students could take their time looking in the market before eating if they so choose, or go directly to eating…well the hungry Wolfpack took that as a “THEN LET’S RUN TO TOWN TO GO EAT FIRST!” So needless to say when you have around 50 18-22 year olds running down a mountain with varying fitness levels, there’s going to be a few problems. We had 2 girls fall down, one scrapped her knees up pretty bad. Thankfully the domino effect of the falling stopped at 2 and we weren’t patching up 100 knees after lunch.

The rest of the Pisac portion of the trip included visiting salt mines and a pottery workshop. I remembered the salt mine hike to be the hardest of the trip last time I had gone. Not because of the distance or because it was that hard of a hike (don’t get me wrong I remember it being mostly uphill) but because we did it RIGHT after lunch. And after eating the LAST thing you want to do is hiking up a mountain…usually. But this year the program had decided to cut the hiking part of the salt mines and we just took the bus ride up. Now it could be because life here in Peru has taught me a few things, or it could just be because I’d been there before. But the road to the salt mines, which if you ask Kay is the SCARIEST road in all of Peru, wasn’t as bad as everyone made it out to be. Yeah we were in a rather large bus, and the road is tiny. My mom would hate it because there’s not a single guard rail the entire way up, and the bus was going fast. But my time here in Peru has taught me something: for the most part, the bus drivers know their stuff. They could parallel park that thing in the middle of the NC State campus if we asked them to. And I know a few good ol boys with big ol trucks who can’t even say that.

After the Pisac weekend we went back to Cusco, and did all the good sites: Saqsayhuaman, Tipon, Pakuapukara, Tambomachay, Moray, and a few museums. Now I could go into detail, but honestly to anyone who’s not there or to hasn’t read at least a little bit on the sites, there (unfortunately) all going to sound the same to you. I will say that Saqsayhuaman is the site with the HUGE rocks piled up in giant terraces. It’s probably one of my favorite days of the trip, not just because I love Incan architecture--the rocks are all so perfectly carved that you can’t fit a knife blade between them—but because we do horseback riding that day. I remember being a little nervous the last time I went, a friend had told me he’d take me riding before so I could look like I knew what I was doing…that didn’t happen. So a combination of it was my first time on a horse (in the 2006 trip) and my horse’s name was Rebel, we’ll just say I was happy it was over with quickly last trip. This time was different. I’m now an expert donkey rider, so the transition to a horse wasn’t too incredibly hard, it was aided by the fact that my hose was nicer and seemed to know the trail like the back of his hoof.

Then of course there’s the Inca Trail! The highlight of my first trip to Peru. The Inca Trail’s what made me decide to do the Outdoor Leadership minor at State. The idea that people’s jobs are to guide beautiful hikes was fascinating (even though I knew that I’d never do it for a living—don’t worry mom). The hike this time was just as beautiful. The mountains were just as tall. The only difference I noticed: The Nevadas, the ice capped mountains we can see for most of the trail, had an obvious lack of ice on their slopes. I recall the entire mountain being snow capped and white, this time, they looked more brown than white. Less snow capped and more snow speckled. I tried to pretend like it was just in my head. But when I got back to site, I looked at an old picture from the first trip, and one from this time. Global Warming’s real dad. I got photo evidence.

On a slightly cooler note: In my first trip we say people making adobe bricks to build their house, and on this trip I saw their completed house. Also, I had taken a picture of a little boy washing his hands in a irrigation ditch in my first trip, and I saw his again this trip. Lauren S, you’ll be happy to know I gave him a candy again…I’m sure if he’d of remembered me he’d be wanting a Pringle.

The trail went reasonably well. We had a few girls who were struggling along the way. Every year we tell the students how hard the trail’s going to be, but the returned students seem to forget how much they complained on the trail and how hard it actually was. Every year when the returned students come to talk to the newbies the, “Oh my God it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done! I hated day 2! God I’ll never do it again!” turns magically into “It was the most amazing this I’ve ever done, I’d recommend that everyone does it. It really wasn’t that hard.” Now don’t get me wrong. I agree. The Inca trail is one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done in my life. I loved every minute of it. I loved every blister I got the first time and the second time. But I love hiking, I love being outside, and I love being away from the city. That could not be said for every student that’s ever done an NCSU Peru Study Abroad.

There was a fair share of whining and grumpiness throughout the trip, a few medical scares (we had a few people faint on me during day 2—the hardest day of the trip) but everyone seemed to make it to the end genuinely happy that they came on the trail and glad that they finished. I also had at least one, “Goddamnit I’ll never do that again!” but that’s to be expected I guess.

We had planned to spend 2 days in Aguas calientes, the town below Machu Picchu—but transportation strikes that have been going on around the country seemed to not like that plan. We had to squish the 2 days into one afternoon. All of the tired and unshowered Wolfpack had around 5 hours to take in Machu Picchu before we left on a train—the last trail out of Augas Calientes before the strike started. We all sat, tired, dirty, and hungry in the train station for a good 3 hours waiting to hear if the train could leave or not. Some people had come in early (yeah the strikes are “planned” here) and blocked the tracks before they were supposed to, so we were waiting for the tracks to get cleared. By 11 finally we boarded the train. After a long train ride, and a long bus ride, we finally were back in the hotel in Cusco by 3am.

I’d like to say that I managed to sleep in, but I’ve gotten used to taking up by 6am at the latest, so me making it to 8 seemed like a blessing. I showered (I figured there was no point in doing to when we arrived, there were 40 something other girls wanting the hot water, I was already dirty…what’s another few hours right?) and then went to eat breakfast and heard the news. Due to the strike, we were on lockdown in the hotel. No leaving until 1. So at that point I tried to go back to bed, failed, and called my mom and dad from my cell phone to catch up.

The trip went by in a blur-- honestly the 2 weeks went by so fast. When I left the group I was happy that I had gone with them, but I was homesick--and strangely not homesick for Durham, North Carolina. I missed Nanchoc, Cajamarca. I’ve developed some great friendships here, and I missed my friends, my work…and I never thought I’d say this about my hay mattress…but I missed by bed. Not for its comfort, because we all know (I’m sure I’ve complained about it outside of this blog entry) but more for the sleeping in a familiar environment. I don’t sleep well in new places, so Cusco was a time of not very rewarding sleep. Now that I’m back in site, it feels good to realize that everyone here missed me. When I walk the streets and run into someone I haven’t seen since I got back I get the familiar, “My oh my, where have you been missy!” and then get to tell stories of all my new friends from NCSU and our adventures in Cusco, and explain that I’m sorry and I couldn’t bring everyone back something because I’m a broke Volunteer and Cusco’s an expensive city.

All in all I’ve decided a few things: I’m really glad I got to go with another group of NCSUers. I love my University, and I love the students with all my heart. I believe that the Study Abroad program was one of the most rewarding experiences in my life, and probably if I hadn’t gone in 2006, I wouldn’t of had the nerve to click the SUMBIT button at the bottom of the Peace Corps Online Application. But I also know that I will never leave my site for 2 weeks again. The vacation was nice and deserved…but it’s too long to be away from my new home and my work that I love.

We’ll Call it “Inca Trail” Prep

2009-05-09T09:31:00.000-04:00

I think I haven’t done a very good job of describing the range of geographical differences that are my site. Nanchoc (as in the capitol of the district of Nanchoc) is located in the Cuenca Valley of Cajamarca. We’re a transition zone between the sierra (the real mountains) and the costa (the beach) so we’ve got a little bit of everything to offer for everyone…did that just go a little too “Visit NC” advertisement on ya’ll? For the majority of my time here I’ve been in Nanchoc or visiting the more “costa” of our caserios due to the heavy rain fall that we got this year. There’s just more mud the higher up a mountain you go.

So when Carlos asked me earlier this week if I wanted to go with the Health Center to do the census in Palto I was super excited. Palto is one of our “sierra” caserios that I had yet to visit because it’s…well way up there in the mud. Since we had gone a good 2 weeks without any rain fall, and close to a month since the last heavy rain fall we figured it was about time to go house to house to get everyone’s information for the new Health Insurance Plan for Underprivileged Farmers. So I was told at 6am on Wednesday (the 22nd of April) we’d be heading to Palto Alto (that means High Palto) first and then working our way back down the mountain house to house. Sweet!

Since the Peace Corps Volunteer has the super awesome hiking pack I offered to carry some medicine and other supplies. Cati (my community partner/best friend at site/health center nurse) loaded down my pack with a good 16Kg of meds (that’s 35.2 lbs). There were about liquid medications for the kiddies who are sick and can’t swallow pills, then a variety of creams, pills, and injections for whatever other ailments we would encounter along the way. And since I’m a good Outdoor Leadership student (oh Terry, Tommy, and Ted, I know ya’ll are proud) I had my usual “weird gringo” supplies such as a pocket knife, head lamp, rain cover for the pack, sunscreen, snacks, and a ton of water. All of which I was told by the 2 male Health Center staff that went with us were “unnecessary.” Here’s the point in the story where I should explain that Peruvians, in particular males, think that drinking water while exercising will slow you down and actually cause physical pain…yes even the doctors share this thought…

Wednesday the 22nd, 6:00am: Cati, Carlos, Dr. Alex, and the gringa are all ready and in the Health Post making sure that we have enough of everything that we need. I ask one more time if they want to bring water, I even offered to carry it in addition to the 2 L I had already. Cati took me up on the offer and put a 0.5 L bottle of water in my pack and carried another 0.5 L bottle for herself. (The girls just have the right idea here)

6:10am: We start heading up the mountain. I’m not sure exactly how much my pack weighed. But its 35 lbs +2.5 L of water (I’m not going to count how much the bread I was carrying weighed…because I ate it in the first 30 minutes). We started off at a nice pace, it wasn’t too steep at this point, we’re were still laughing and joking around—mainly about how if the Lab guy Walter was with us he’d already have turned back and been waiting in the Health Center for us to return.

7:30am: Let the real mountains begin. We passed through Palto Bajo (Low Palto) and waved at a few people that we knew and told them we’d be back. A woman I’ve had the chance to talk with a lot at the Health Center laughed when I said we were heading up the hill, “Good Luck my gringita!” she yelled as we kept walking. At this point the trail changed from a nice incline to “oh dear lord.” Now having gone backpacking many-a-times I can say that the general consensus is: walk a nice semi slow pace up hill, and recover on the flat or downhill portions. Apparently that’s just crazy talk here in Peru. The guys (because they are guys) decided to kick it up a notch, they started what was basically a slow jog up the mountain…and because I have my mother’s competitive streak…I followed suit. (Oh Cati kept up as well)

8:30am: I think the doctor and lab tech—who are both carry a few extra pounds in body fat—finally decided it was time for a MUCH needed break. We stopped at a creek crossing and ate some more bread that Carlos has tucked in his jacket and Cati and I drank water. I offered to the guys, they refused. Carlos then pointed up, at what I would say was a roughly 67° angle and said, and I do quote, “we’re heading to that building you can see there.” On a side note, there was a cool boulder at our snack break site that I want to return to…it might be a good bouldering boulder.

9:00am: I’m now officially dying at this point-- we’ve continued the jog of the mountain for some unknown reason. The guys said it’s my own fault because I drank the water, I said to hush it’s because I’m the only one with any weight on their backs. They laughed and told me what I think translates into “man up.” We stopped shortly at the Primary school to let the teacher know that we’d be passing back by the school before it lets out at 1 to give anti-parasite meds to the children.

9:10am: We hear screams, not the “OH MY GOD I CUT MY FINGER OFF!!” scream, more of the “AHHH mom he’s pulling my hair!” scream. 2.5 seconds later we are greeted by a group of 10 children running full steam down this trail. A good 5 seconds later they come to a screeching halt. Not because they see that there are people walking up the trail, but because they see that they’re the doctors walking up the trail. Another note I forgot to mention, the only time the Health Center in recent memory had walked up the hill to Palto was for vaccination campaigns…and kids hate needles. Now cue the “OH MY GOD I CUT MY FIGNER OFF!!” screams, the kids veer off the trail into a smaller, less used trail, screaming “they’re going to stick us! They’re going to stick us! Run faster!” They reappear below us where the 2 trails meet and did the universal stick their tongues out and put their hands by their ears and go “neener neener” sign. We laugh, Carlos yells, “hey we’ll be back down the mountain soon with those shots.” And we keep on walking.

10:30am: We made it! We were officially at the highest point of Palto Alto. Now I know this just because my host dad said that his aunt lives at the furthest house up the hill and I was greeted by a “Julia get over here, that gringa that you’re nephew was talking about is here!” So after a few moments of staring me up and down and a few “she’s not blonde like that other gringo” remarks we took their birthdates, Identification numbers, and asked what level of education they had, and then followed the trail loop back down the mountain passing house per house asking for the same information for every member of Palto.

11:30am: The rain starts?? Now I had mentioned before that the rainy season had left us…well apparently I lied. The rain began to fall at a somewhat steady pace, thankfully not pouring, for the rest of the day.

12:05pm: We finally had doubled back to the primary school and arrived to the deer in the headlights stares of about 20 kids praying like hell that we weren’t carrying vaccines in my bag. Then the doctor made a really bad joke about having a shot for everyone, and left me and the nurse attempting to reassure them that the doctor’s really bad at jokes and that they have nothing to worry about. The doctor then began to ask each kid if they were feeling sick or had any pain so that we could give them medicine.

Now here I will point out that I think we medicate WAY too much at our Health Center. Whenever anyone has a slight pain or cold they come running to the Health Center for a shot or pills…its way overkill and is probably doing more harm than good…but it makes people feel like the Health Center is doing its job. I mean we all feel like the doctor’s a waste of time when we go in for an appointment and he says, “Oh it’s just a cold, go home and get some sleep. Drink plenty of fluids.” The visit just doesn’t seem worth our time unless we leave with a diagnosis or medicine (other than sleep or fluids). But then again, I don’t usually go to the doctor unless I’m on the verge of dying, in way too much pain, or my mom and dad have convinced me that I’m sick enough to warrant a doctor’s visit…guess that’s what sets me apart from my towns people here. Here it’s the slightest sniffle and it’s off to the Health Post for you!

But back to the story, we gave out anti-parasite meds to every student (a MUCH needed treatment for these kids) and then cold meds, rash ointments, lice shampoo, and a few other pills to the kids who said they were feeling sick. We also gave out iron supplements to a few girls who’s eyes were a pale yellow—probably resulting from a lack of meat (and thus iron) in their diet. We didn’t have enough iron supplements to go around (we gave the ones we had to the girls first but ran out for the boys) so luckily Carlos and I are returning later in the week to treat the water and will bring more supplements to the boys.

1:30pm: We finished up with the school and headed further down the mountain to visit more houses. So this trail we’re walking on. It’s not really a trail. A trail would imply that it’s…somewhat plane, that is it’s relatively even aside from the random rock or tree stump…oh no, this is not a trail. So what happens here in rural Peru during the rainy season is that people still need to do their everyday work—even when the trail is not a trail and it is mud. That involves moving their cows from one pasture to another so they can eat…in the mud. Which leaves these HUGE hoof-mark-pot-holes all over the trail--The result you might ask? Well it’s something like a Swiss cheese effect. So as we’re walking/falling down this steep trail of Swiss cheese the added difficulty is trying not to sprain an ankle or knee (yeah it was fun for my bad knee…).

2:35pm: GRINGA DOWN!!! So like I said, Swiss Cheese trails are hard to walk on, made even further complicated by the surprise rain storm turning the firm Swiss cheese of a trail into melting Swiss cheese of a trail. Well I was trying my damndest to not fall…I said trying, I didn’t say succeeding. Ok so to my credit I didn’t fall. I slipped. The melting Swiss cheese swallowed my boot whole into a crevasse of mud. Now my first reaction was to laugh…I mean what else can you do when you’ve been swallowed whole up to your knee (on just one side of your body) by the mud and are currently doing an awkward split in the middle of a trail in the rain? Yeah, you just laugh, and then you make sure nothing’s broken. Thankfully nothing was broken or twisted. The guys helped me out of the hole and we kept on trekking.

4:00pm: We’re all really hungry. Not sure if you’ve noted…but nowhere in here has it mentioned eating lunch…that’d be because we didn’t. Now when I asked Carlos before we left if I’d need to pack a lunch he said no. I brought plenty of bread to last the day…if it had been just me eating it…but I’m nice and I shared it all with them for “breakfast.” So we’re all STARVING after a long day of hiking and not eating. By this time we have also run out of water. I had chlorine pills to treat water if we wanted to pick some more up, but we decided we were an hour from town, we could make it (it takes 30 minutes for the pills to work…so that’s half way home).

5:10pm: We make it back to town, stop in the store on the corner and beg for ice cold water. Rosa thankfully has a 2.5L Bottle cold and ready to serve! We put it on the Health Center’s tab, finish it in about 3 minutes and all head to our houses to shower and eat and sleep.

6:00pm: I’ve showered; I’ve eaten…well sort of. When I arrived at my house there was just rice left over from lunch, and I wanted more than rice! So I climbed the tree to the roof to grab an avocado that I had seen that morning and ate that with my lunch/supper.

6:10pm: The girls I’ve been tutoring with their math and painting with and teaching to play soccer show up at my house. “JENNY!!! Let’s go play soccer, come on!” I tried to explain nicely that I’d just hiked WAY to much today and was really tired and just wanted to sleep…that for some reason was just too hard to comprehend for these girls. I was saved by the bell…or rather by the donkey when Don Jose arrived from the farm and said that I needed to help him cook diner. The girls left, I didn’t’ have to help cook diner, I just slept in a chair until diner time then ate.

8:00pm: My tail was in bed asleep.

It was a long day, but it was a lot of fun! I’ll call it Inca Trail prep work.

Wait…I’m Not a Water-Sanitation Volunteer?!?

2009-05-09T09:30:00.001-04:00

The past few weeks have been full of work--which is awesome after a very, very, very slow rainy season that was lacking in anything and everything work related. I’ve been helping a neighbor with a training packet for the new Preschool teacher’s (called the PRO NEI schools here) and giving them some…gulp…English training books. Basically I’ve been making a list of English words that are preschool level (apple, orange, dog, cat…) with their translations and a phonetic way of saying them (which is accomplished by me saying the word and getting a friend to write it how she thinks it sounds). Then I’ve been translating (note a theme here?) a arts and crafts book for the teachers as well. So that’s been taking up a lot of my morning and night time, passing a few hours a day in front of my computer making everything look pretty.

Then of course I’ve been doing things outside, because we all know how much I hate to pass a whole day in front of a computer (duh that’s why I’m in the Peace Corps). I’m still working on my garden, trying to find someone to help me fence it in. I’d do it myself, but it involves wielding a machete and I’m rather fond of my fingers and toes, so I figure I’ll leave the cutting of the bamboo to a professional…or at least to someone with experience. I’m also still working on sanding off the paint on the mural. That project is moving way slower than I thought it was going to—caused mainly by the black paint being made of some super strong chemical that has caused it to fuse with the cement and thus not want to come off. Come to think of it it’s probably the lead in the paint that causes that reaction…yay cancer here I come!

I’ve also been helping Carlos, our Lab Technician and local water sanitation manager go to each water collection/treatment center in a few of the caserios. Now I’m not a Wat-San (that’s Peace Corps short hand for water and sanitation) volunteer, but as most of you have figured out reading these blogs, our roles as volunteers seem to overlap quite often. Thus I find myself working on many of the same projects as other group’s volunteers (latrines, water systems, gardens, trash programs) because they all involve protecting people’s health. But I’ve gotten the crash course in wat-san over the past week. It’s been great fun, and quite the eye opening experience. It really is amazing what you can do with a few miles of PVC piping and some cement.

Just Like Old Times

2009-04-18T08:55:00.005-04:00

So while the past 2 weeks have been full of ups and downs, I’m going to be positive and focus on the ups for this blog entry (even though I’m so frustrated with a few people in my site I could scream…I’ll avoid that…). And not just any good ol ups, but ones that remind me of when I was a little kid making them even better!

I’ve finally gotten the Health Center to buy some paint to start a mural at the entrance to my town. I was a little disappointed when they told me it had to be about the new insurance plan for below the poverty line farmers (which is about 85% of my site) and not a really cool protect the environment mural I drew up…but hey, I get to paint so I’m happy. But not only did I finally get the materials I need, I now have helpers!! Some local girls have befriended me--yes I know have friends in site above the age of 5 who aren’t grownups-- and decided they wanted to help. So after helping a few of them with their math homework, which was kinda like pulling teeth since at first they just wanted me to give them the answers (a big ol no-no in my book) and then just wanted to guess (ugh), but after an hour they had started to get the hang of the Foil technique--ya’ll remember that one? We called it the Coke man and the Pepsi man or the Lobster claw too…if that helps jog any memories.

So once all 11 of the homework problems were complete we headed to their houses to ask for permission to head off with the gringa to clean around the wall the murals going on. I can only describe my interactions with one of their mothers as me being the 18 year old boy showing up at the house to take their 15 year old daughter out on a date… needless after convincing them that 1. Their child would not get into any trouble, 2. We were just going down the street, and 3. They’ll be home before dark (any of this ringing a bell from when ya’ll were kids?? Or mom, sound familiar?). We headed down the street to get to cleaning. My new friends Talia, Patty, and Jakie were super excited about helping the gringa clean…still not sure why they were so excited about cleaning…but whatever, its enthusiasm.

Once we arrived at the mural wall (which is currently painted—very badly might I add—with an old insurance plan advertisement) I divided up tasks. I let the girls get to scrubbing the paint off of the cement wall with the worlds thickest sand paper (it’s meant for sanding metal) and I put on my work gloves and got to chopping down the thorn-bushes that were overgrowing the wall. Now I can remember as a child wanting to do whatever my daddy was doing in the yard (well aside from mowing…that never looked appealing), be it weeding, mulching, spreading pine straw, or trimming bushes. It was all the better if I got to wear his old work gloves that were WAY to big for my hands, we’ll call it the “work glove effect.” Well apparently it’s the same for these girls—except I’m not their dad, I’m just the friendly neighborhood volunteer. They quickly grew very bored with sanding saying that I had the better job and they wanted to try it. So after insisting that they would work with one glove each (I only had a pair with me) and that Talia was big enough to handle the shovel, I let them at it. You would have thought they were playing instead of actually doing work. Giggling like the little girls they are (ok they’re 11 and 12, but still that’s pretty little) and squealing whenever a thorn gets the better of them. We only had one minor injury, a thorn decided to attack Patty’s toe, she went in flip flops even after I told her shoes were a better idea—“but my sandals are cute, tennis shoes are for boys”— the thorn was quickly removed with the help of my Leatherman, another thing they quickly fell in love with and decided to play with for a good 10 minutes.

But after being COVERED in paint and cement dust and our fair share for thorn scratches, I decided it was time to head back to get the girls home at the time I told their parents they’d be returning (I may be living in Peru but I’m still not a fan of the Peruvian Time…aka being 30 minutes to an hour late for anything). But my adventure was not ending with the walk home, oh no. As we are about half way back, the bus that takes people to Chiclayo was passing by. These girls squealed (rather screeched) with embarrassment—after all we were all covered in dust and dirt and apparently boys just can’t see us looking like that. The following scene is straight out of a teenybopper made for Disney film, but still funny: Jackie, the oldest of the group at 16 quite literally grabbed my arm and spun me around and then hid behind me as if that made her invisible to the bus rather than actually calling attention to herself (just imagine Elmer Fudd hiding behind a tree when Bugs Bunny looks in his direction) while Talia and Patty dove into the ditch…yes people, they dove.

Now the gringa is extremely confused at this point, because as I’m sure my mom and daddy will point out, I was extremely proud whenever I came back inside all dirty from helping my dad in the yard—it meant I had been working hard. However mad it mad my mom when dad and I would come in covered in yard clippings…to me, it was a badge of honor. But oh no, to these girls it was like pouring pig blood on them during the school dance…I know I just wasn’t a girly girl when I was little—but still, this reaction seemed a little over kill to me.

After the bus incident they giggled and were red the whole 10 minute walk back talking about how embarrassing it was that the boys saw them covered in dirt. Now I thought that that might be the last I’d see of them (since they seemed to hate people seeing them all dirty) but once we got to the first of their houses they asked “so what time are we going to clean tomorrow??” So I’ve decided while these girls act like they hate showing off their hard work (in dirt form) to the boys in town, they really think its super cool to be working with the gringa in site. That made me feel good. I’m glad I can pass on the “work glove effect” to Peruvians here in my site.

Now on a completely different, well ok not completely different note. Another childhood memory that was brought into light today (the 12th of April) was Ant Farms. Ya’ll remember those? The 2 pieces of Plexiglas held together by the green plastic with little tractors and a barn inside. You filled it with sand and then captured ants from the back yard and held them captive in their feeding them bread crumbs and cereal and giving them water with the little water dropper? Ok well I’m just going to hope I’m not the only one who thought it was cool. But I remember the coolest part was always looking at their tunnels, they’re cool and twisty, and just all around an engineering feat that they don’t collapse.

Ant Farms are cool when they’re contained in Plexiglas. When you discover one inside of the 50Kg (that’s about 110lbs) bag of sugar we keep in the front room… not so much. I went to go and grab sugar last night just like normal. Take the measuring cup out of the bag of rice, dunk it in the bag of sugar (without looking like normal) and find a MOUNTAIN of ants. Now, this was a new bag of sugar. I was used to the old one not having anything living in it and thus not needing to look inside before scooping out the 2 cups of sugar we’d be needing to sweeten tea for 20 people. But oh apparently this bag had been deemed ant-topia by the queen ant herself. So after letting a girly scream escape from my mouth (yes I’m ashamed it happened, but I wasn’t expecting to meet the entire crew of the Pixar film Antz before supper time) and dropping the measuring cup (that was more full of ants than sugar) to the floor I decided maybe I should take a second to admire their work. I turned around to flip on the light switch and grabbed the flashlight and shinned it into the 4 foot tall paper bag. Much like my ant farm…just I could only see the first few layers of tunnels that I had disturbed in grabbing sugar.

After admiring for a few seconds I decided I should let my host family know that the big ol bag of sugar had things living in it. Now I’m not sure what I was expecting their reaction to be. I mean, I know if my mom in the states had found that our sugar had equal parts ants to sugar it’d be one of 2 reactions: 1. She’s immediately throw it out into the garbage, or 2. She’s walk it down the street into the vacant lot and throw it there out of fear that the ants would reenter the house made that we’d disturbed their home and ruin everything. But my host mom just looked at me and said, “Ok, well go back and grab as much sugar as you can without ants and let’s put it in the drink.” I must have had the “you want me to do what with the huh?” face on because she repeated her request and I went back to grab more sugar…with less ants if possible. I tried to shake the bag a little—you know scare them out of their holes before I plunged my hand in—but this is a 110lbs bag of sugar, it didn’t budge. So I just did the quick dive and scoop maneuver and came out with an…I’ll say 85-15 ratio of sugar to ants and walked back into the kitchen to see what would happen next. My mom took the sugar, dumped it in the pot, and then handed my host dad a spoon and said to mix the sugar in and take the ants out when they floated to the top.

Yeah, I didn’t drink tea last night.

You Know You're A Redneck When...

2009-04-10T08:49:00.001-04:00

So it all started day 2 here in Nanchoc, Cajamarca, which is a town fairly comparable to my Mother’s home town of Pikeville, NC. It’s a small agricultural town that’s more or less in the middle of nowhere and about an hour drive from “civilization.” Yeah, they’re about the same. If you re read that sentence you have no idea which of the 2 I’m talking about…I will say this, at least we have cell phones and internet in Pikeville.

But back to day 2, one of the Doctors at my health post made the rather large mistake of calling me a Yankee. Now to his defense, most Peruvians think that we (that’d be us gringos) are all from New York and therefore are Yankees…Needless to say after a fruitless 2 hours of explaining that I am most certainly not a Yankee, and that Yankee’s are from the north, still no breakthrough had been made. At about hour marker 3 the phrase Redneck came into light. People from the north: Yankees. People from the south: Rednecks. We didn’t get into how that’s not so true anymore due to all of the damn Yankees (which are another breed of Yankee) that move to the south—case and point: Cary, NC. But Redneck was a phrase that just didn’t translate with all of the cultural differences (no matter how literal of a phrase it might be), I tried to explain that a Redneck is much like a person from the mountains here (aka old school farmers), but that too did not translate the signification. In the end they were content with me just explain that it’s a saying for people from the south that live in the country. And that was that. Never brought up again.

Flash forward to my 5th month here in site. I’m working in my garden, and now understand the song lyric “loving me will be like working unbroken ground” because this dirt is TOUGH as all get out! But I’ve been picking and shoveling away at this 10ft by 15ft chunk of land for about a week now—tilling, putting cuy poop in the soil, all that good stuff to make my veggies grow nice and yummy and I’m basically done. But as you all know, no matter how much SPF my sunscreen has or how often I apply it, this white girl’s going to burn. It’s practically a proof in math (yeah math people I’m going there): If there is sun, then Jenny will burn. No doubt or question about it. It will happen. On day 3 of working I switched from my normal t-shirts (al la NCSU logo) to a quick dry t-shirt that had a different neck line—thus exposing my burned neck and the Doctors had a realization, “OH THAT’S WHY YOU’RE CALLED REDNECKS: one of them belted. Why by George I think they’ve got it!

So after a quick 5 minute conversation explaining that yes, most white people burn when exposed to the sun for a larger amount of time, even my mother and brother (two of the tanner people I know) have the ability to burn, they got it. Rednecks because our necks are red. Tada. So apparently sometimes all it takes to cross cultural boarders here in Peru is a little bit of sunburn. Who would have thunk it?

Belly Side Up

2009-04-03T17:57:00.002-04:00

Being in the Peace Corps has given me a lot of…down time. It’s not a bad thing—let’s face it, life just moves way to fast in the US anyways, we could all use to slow down a little bit. But my down time has given me a chance to think about a lot of things in life. (Now to those of you who know me, which I’m betting is 99% of the people reading my rantings, you all know better than to expect something profound to follow that statement) And the one part of life that has particularly caught my attention during this rainy season is as follows:

Why is it when you find a dead cockroach they are always on their backs?

(Ok so this ones in a smear on the wall cause I smushed him)

Ok so you’re all glad to see I haven’t let any of you down, and that I’m still not a very pensive person…well I guess it depends on your definition of pensive, because I think this is a very important question that requires some thought.

But seriously, hear me out people. During the rainy season the cockroaches have headed into our house (which at times resembles the outside of the house due to a few lil holes in the roof and muddy floors) to escape the water. Now I will say my attitude towards cockroaches has changed DRASTICALY since moving into my first first-floor apartment (aka easy access for cockroaches) when I literally screamed and chucked a chaco at a cockroach that was flying in my living room (yeah who knew they could fly?). Now when I see a cockroach, especially if it’s a big one, I take a second to admire its size or the clicking noise they make when they walk on wooden doors before squishing it flat with whatever is at hand—a chaco, a rainbow, a Spanish dictionary. And they are everywhere, luckily they tend to stay in the hallways…or at least that’s where I see them the most so I’m going to pretend like they aren’t in my room… so I have a clear shot at squishing them.

But for some unknown reason a lot of them are dying—on their own. And it’s not like they’re the grandpa cockroaches that have lived out their long life snacking on dead bugs and or the candy that people have sent me and have then died of natural causes. I’ve seen a BIG ol cockroach, he was probably a granddaddy, the ones we’re seeing that are dead are tiny. Like cricket sized. And the sight of all these dead little cockroaches was enough for my host dad to ask if I’ve bought poison and that’s why they’re dying. No, I haven’t been poisoning them…but it’s a good idea…

But back to the dead ones, they are ALWAYS, without exception, on their backs. I asked my host dad why that is and I got the standard Peruvian “I don’t know gesture” (that would be to turn your head to one side, make a frownie face, and throw your hands up by your shoulders and raise your shoulders all at the same time while saying “ehh”). With my dad, who usually knows the answers to such random gringa questions a gasp, it lead me to do some thinking on my own.

Why are dead cockroaches always on their back?? Ok so I thought of the obvious connection between that and the 1920s mobster’s saying “he’s belly up” when talking about a dead guy (hey that’s pretty good considering I don’t have Google to help me think up these things in site) but still sans an explanation of WHY they do it. I will admit to turning off the light in the hallway and waiting on one to come out and croak (which is another thing I’ve thought of. Why is dying a frog noise as well?? But that’s another blog) and die on their backs. Sadly I didn’t see the death of a single cockroach, I did however kill a tarantula, and they roll up into a ball when they die— no matter how hard you hit them with your shoe!

So some hypothesis I’ve come up with (in a very unscientific manner):
1. They do a back flip in the moment of their death as a result of their muscles spazzing, and like how bread always lands butter side down, cockroaches always land leg side up.
2. They are super dramatic about their deaths (think cartoon deaths) and do the “oooh” “uuuuh” “arrrrrrgh” with accompanying hand gestures and grabbing at their chests (do they have chests?) and then do the standard twirl and flip landing with their legs up in the air and let out a “sigh” as their eyes roll into the back of their flat heads.
3. The ants are faster than me (they love to eat a dead cockroach) and always arrive before me to the scene of the death and flip the cockroach onto its back to prepare it to be carried away for consumption. Now the only flaw to this is that usually I see the dead cockroach without his ant predators.
4. It’s a trick my host dad’s playing on me with every single cockroach in the house just to see how observant the gringa is. (Ok so this is the most highly unlikely option between all of these. Not only because my dad is a neat freak and hates cockroaches, but because he can’t hardly see so find them all)
Yeah, I’ve been using my down time to its fullest extent in contemplating these occurrences. Now I know what some of you are thinking: Yes I could be using my down time to write a book (haha ok yeah we all know better), or solve some unsolvable math problem (yeah my math people know better-I like ‘em when they have an answer I can prove…and not in proof form), or perfect my Spanish (I’m gonna need more than 2 years to do that) rather than pondering the deaths of cockroaches, however comical the real answer could be. But hey, I’m a 23 year old with a 10 year olds amusement level. I still find bodily functions comical after all. Even more so since joining the Peace Corps—a Parasite is way more amusing than a fart, especially when they are put together!

A Glass Half Empty Can Occasionally be Half Full

2009-03-14T13:15:00.002-04:00

So I love country music, most of you reading this are well aware of that fact and either love me or hate me for it. And people may say that its only music about trucks, fishing, heart break, or a dog…ok I’ll be the first to admit that that’s a good part of it, but some of its deep people!

One of my new favorite groups is Lady Antebellum, they’re a little new school for country, but have good instrumentation and the lead singer has a great voice—plus they write their own stuff, so that’s awesome. Well they have a new song called “I Was Here” and it basically embodies all the reasons I wanted to come to the Peace Corps. I wasn’t naive enough to think that I was coming to change the world, after all one person cannot change the world (no matter how highly some of ya’ll think of Obama—even he can’t do it, accept it). I didn’t come here thinking that I was going to drastically change everything for the better in my new community and everyone was going to love me and the Peace Corps. I’m a glass half empty kinda person on most days. I prefer to think of it not as seeing the world negatively, rather I’m a realist. I know my limitations and the limitations of man as a race. But with this song I get a glimpse of my glass half full side.

While I’m a realist, I have idealistic tendencies every now and again. I want to see change in the world, I want to help my community, I want them to like me and work with me to make our community better. And I think that this song just embodies how that change will be done.

You will notice me,
I’ll be leaving my mark like initials carved in an old oak tree
You wait and see
Maybe I’ll write like Twain wrote, Maybe I’ll paint like Van Gogh
Cure the common cold, I don’t know
But I’m ready to start because I know in my heart

I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better with the time that I’ve been given
And I want to try to touch a few hearts in this life
And leave nothing less than something that says
I was here

I will prove you wrong if you think I’m all talk
You’re in for a shock because this dreams too strong
And before too long
Maybe I’ll compose symphonies; Maybe I’ll fight for world peace
Cause I know it,s my destiny to leave more than a trace of myself in this place

I wanna do something that matters
Say something different
Something that sets the whole world on its ear
I wanna do something better with the time that I’ve been given
And I want to try to touch a few hearts in this life
And leave nothing less than something that says
I was here

And I know that I will do more than just pass through this life
I’ll leave nothing less than something that says:
I Was Here

After all we were told a story of a Peace Corps Volunteer in India. After the end of his service when asked if he felt that he was productive he replied that he didn’t accomplish anything, he failed as a volunteer. Many years later, the Indian government was doing a dental health survey, and found one small pocket of their population that had wonderful dental health. When they asked the local population why they had such good teeth an old man replied:

“There was this American who lived here years ago that would brush his teeth in the public water well every day, he told us it was a good idea.”

He made a difference, he was there. Guess I’m seeing things a lil more Half Full now a days.

a few photos that are un related just to jazz this thing up

Me and Erica decided to make salsa on the floor of our hotel room

Erica digging into the salsa and chips a la super market

Actual Conversations...AKA too Good to Make Up

2009-02-28T09:43:00.000-05:00

(With Peace Corps Medical Doctor)
Me: Hi Suni, its Jenny Schwartz.
Suni: Hi Jenny, tell me, how are you?
Me: actually right now I’m pretty sick
Suni: Tell me what is happening with you
Me: Well, my stomach really hurts, especially after I eat and it’s been going on for about 3 days.
Suni: What kind of pain are you having? Is it a cramping or a stabbing?
Me: When I’m not eating it’s a cramping, when I am eating its stabbing.
Suni: When are you having these pains while you are eating or within 30 minutes of eating?
Me: While I’m eating and it lasts for usually an hour after eating
Suni: Are you having diarrhea?
Me: no
Suni: Are you with vomiting?
Me: no, but after eating I feel like I’m going to, I just hate throwing up, so I have managed not to so far
Suni: hmm… Are you with a fever?
Me: Um I don’t think so
Suni: Do you have pain in your head?
Me: No
Suni: Hmm, this is abnormal. Ok, do you have a health post in your town?
Me: Yes
Suni: With a lab?
Me: Yeah, but the lab tech is on vacation until the day after tomorrow
Suni: …hmm, ok well if you can wait until he gets back have him do a stool sample and a blood test and get me the results.
Me: ok
Suni: Here is what I want you to do for me. Take your temperature every 4 hours and if it is high please call me back immediately. Also, please eat just bland food, potatoes, rice, and chicken soup. Where are you exactly?
Me: In the pay phone in my town
Suni: No, where is your site
Me: Oh, Nanchoc, Cajamarca, but I’m closer to Chiclayo than Cajamarca City
Suni: Oh, ok. Do you have internet in your site?
Me: Haha, no. No internet
Suni: Then I will call your cell phone in 2 days to hear your results
Me: Suni, we don’t have cell phone either
Suni: Oh, ok. Then I will call this number back in 2 days
Me: They usually don’t come by to tell me when I have a phone call, so I will just come back here and call you when the lab guy gets back and has my test results…assuming we’ll still have electricity in 2 days.
Suni: Ok… well I will be waiting to hear from you and your results.
Me: Thanks Suni
Suni: Feel better

Date of conversation: 24th of Feb.
Date of Lab guy’s return: 26th of Feb
Results of lab tests: TBA

(With Nanchoc Health Center’s Doctor—translated into English)
Dr. Freddy: what are you working on?
Me: My Diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: you’re working on your own diagnostic?
Me: Yeah I just talked to Walter in the lab about a few things to help me with my diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: why isn’t Walter doing your diagnostic?
Me: Because it’s my job to do my own diagnostic, all the Peace Corps people are doing one in their city
Dr. Freddy: wait, you all have to do your own diagnostic? Why aren’t the lab guys doing it for you?
Me: Because it’s a way for us to get to know our community
Dr. Freddy: …having a parasite is a way to get to know your community?
Me: What?
Dr. Freddy: You need to have a parasite to get to know your community better? And you all have to do the lab diagnostic yourselves? Those are weird rules
Me: umm Dr. Freddy, I was talking about my community diagnostic, remember I asked all those moms those questions…I just wanted to stuff on parasites from Walter.
Dr. Freddy: Oh, so Walter is running your parasite diagnostic, not you?
Me: yeah, I’m not a lab technician
Dr. Freddy: yeah…I’m going to go eat lunch now, my head hurts
Me: ok, I’ll be working on my diagnostic
Dr. Freddy: [rolls his eyes]

Final Lab Results: no parasite
Next Step: wait and see if it gets better on its own…my mom’s going to pass an egg over me tomorrow (don’t ask it’s a Peruvian get better thing…)

I'm A Big Girl Now!

2009-02-17T09:41:00.000-05:00

It’s Feb 17th, and as most of you know IT’s MY BIRTHDAY!! Woo. Ok so I tried to play down how much I really love birthdays here in Peru because a Peruvian birthday party involves a lot of drinking, dancing, eating, and drinking…and usually last until 6am. So to try and avoid

1. Drinking—I don’t drink in my site, everyone here thinks I hate the taste of beer…well it’s not all a lie. I hate the taste of Peruvian beer, so that makes the white lie ok right?
2. Dancing—I don’t dance here either…well ok I really don’t dance much in the states either, so that’s not changing much. Besides Cumbia and Whiano (the popular music here) aren’t very interesting to dance too. Think about your 5th grade graduation party, where everyone danced by moving side to side and throwing in the occasional twirl or hand jive…well that’s Peruvian Cumbia dancing…yeah fun.
3. Staying awake until 6am—I’m almost always ready to fall asleep by 10pm. It’s a combination of I’m now an “old fogie” (ok so 23’s not that old…but still) and the possible parasite that I’ve got making me really tired. (the parasite may or may not be a joke…we’ll find out in a month when I get back to civilization to see a doctor that speaks English)

But to give you all a rundown of my Peruvian Birthday:

At 5:30am I woke up to the sound of our donkey hee-hawing his way into the Guinness Book of World Records for the loudest donkey. And at 5:31am my host dad fled the house running in his PJs (not only was the donkey yelling, he was making a break for it—he’s notorious for running away). So its way before dark, the sun usually rises around 6:20, and I’m in no mood to leave my bed, I have a rule where no matter how early I wake up, I stay in bed until I see a lil sun (usually 6:20)—unless of course I have to use the bathroom (I drink a ton of water here), then I’ll get up before.

But at 6:00 my host niece who’s still here (they planned to only visit for 4 days, that was 3 weeks ago…) began singing “happy birthday” in English…well ok it was “hoppi berduy a wuu” because her English isn’t that great and she’s only 5, so I’m going to go ahead and just give her credit for trying. She entered the room quite literally with a bang—my door tends to stick, so in the process of opening it she slammed to the floor, still singing might I add. What a trooper. But after a few minutes of struggling with my mosquito net she finally managed to crawl into my bed with me to “descansar por un ratato” (that’s to rest for a while.) she apparently woke up at 5 asking her mom if it was time to sing me happy birthday.

7:00 we finally decide to leave my bed (and I notice that she had her shoes on and I now need to do laundry because my sheets are COVERED in mud…) and help cook for the people who eat at my house. Because today we didn’t have the normal 14 guys working at the mine. Oh no. They had diminished to 6 yesterday, and I was super excited to only have 6 of them eating at the house—less work, less smell. But at 7:15 the boss man of the mine came saying that he found 16 new guys to work until the end of the month, and they’d all be here at 8:30 to eat. Then at 7:45 the head of the electric company that’s been trying to get us constant electricity came to say that they wanted 18 lunches…so let’s do some math people. 14-8=6, 6+16=22, 22+18=40 yeah count it, 40 people eating at my house…oh wait. 4-+Dona Julia+Don Jose+Ingrid+Isabela+Don Alfonzo+Me=46. Did I forget to mention that my host mom is also a miracle worker?

8:55 (aka 8:30 in Peruvian Time) all the 22 guys from the mine show up to eat their breakfast. They leave within 15 minutes of being served…it’s literally like watching pigs eat, food is flying, chicken bones and thrown, rice is dropped, soup is spilled…its just a mess.

9:55 all the plates and tables are now clean and Dona Julia can start preparing lunch for the army. I head to the health center to say hi to my friends. They are all waiting and have a Birthday Hug waiting in addition to a Brittney Spears CD…they think that all Americans love her…so I acted surprised and happy…it’s going to make a great spatula to take paint off a wall one day, just not a good listen. But I pass the morning with the Health Center, half talking about the united states, half way talking work (it’s my birthday so they said I can’t talk much work)

12:00 I return to help prepare for the frenzy. I put all the cups out (we only have 20, thank goodness that they were already planning to eat in shifts) and plates and put napkins with the spoons (yeah we only eat with spoons) and then at 12:30 the “wave of smell” as my host sister put it, arrived. These dudes stink! But I’m not going to focus on that because this is about my birthday
By 3 we were all done with the cleaning and I had time to make my cake!!! I fixed a Peruvian Carrot Cake, it’s Peruvian because the ingredients are different, so the taste is a lil different.

At 5 my host mom and sister began cooking supper for the miners, and a special supper for me—Aji de Gallina!!!! Aka my favorite food here in Peru, it’s shredded chicken in an pepper, bread, cheese, and milk sauce served with potatoes and rice (yeah its got a ton of carbs in it, but I LOVE IT!)

8:00 my birthday party! All of the Health Center came over to my house to eat my favorite food, with my favorite cake from the states, what a great combination. We sat and talked and joked around for a few hours. Mainly talking about funning instances when they weren’t able to understand me during my time here and the confusion that the misunderstandings caused. But all and all a good time was had, and by 11 my host family and I were washing dishes so we could head to bed.

What a great birthday. I know that my mom and dad (and probably brother) missed me on my birthday, I for sure missed them, but my Peruvian family took really good care of me and went to extra lengths to make sure that I had good food to eat.

Learning Things...Medically

2009-02-13T09:40:00.000-05:00

So as much as I don’t like the guys that work at the mine above my town, I must thank them for today’s lesson:
How to sew stitches.

Now before Michael Hirsh (the director of Peace Corps Peru) has a conniption and kicks me out of the program. I didn’t learn on a person! Let me tell the story before I get kicked out for practicing medicine (cause I totally didn’t on a person)

Ok so the story is needed. I was discussing how smelly these men at the mine are with the pharmacy technician in my town as we were collecting materials to go to the neighboring towns as the king of smelly walks in covered in blood accompanied by our lab technician who was about 3 seconds from fainting. We won’t get into why our lab technician can’t stand the sight of blood… but yes, this guy has a 6 inch gash in his arm and in his wisdom decided to tie off his arm with his shoe lace so that he could walk the 45 minutes from the mine to the Health Center (yeah the mine didn’t want to take him in the truck because it’s a waste of gas…).

So I had 2 reactions to this sight: 1. Oh dear lord that’s a ton of blood why did we have blood sausage for lunch, and 2. Cool! So I decided to let the emotions in reaction 2 take the wheel and follow the doctors into the exam room to do my usual helpful tasks (hand them the stuff they need or hold an IV because I’m taller than they are…basically act like furniture). Due to the fact that we didn’t have electricity and I’m an amazingly prepared Peace Corps volunteer I was asked to put my headlamp on and stare at this guys gash while holding an IV above my head. Yes I hope you all have a mental picture going…because I can assure you that it was a funny sight. Oh I forgot to mention this was at 7pm, aka time that the sun goes down in Peru so that’s why the Gringa’s headlamp was needed. This guy walked in with a 6in long, penetrating stab basically from a rock that shattered as he was picking it up. After getting the rock pieces out of the flap of skin (yeah it was cool to watch, just glad it wasn’t my arm because our numbing injection wasn’t helping the guy too much at this point). But I’m watching the doctor sew this guy up and let me tell you people it’s not as easy as it looks on Grey’s Anatomy people…at least not with hard Peruvian campo skin. Well apparently had a look of awe or “algo asi” (something like that) because the doctor asked me if I wanted to try. After explaining that we weren’t allowed to practice medicine in the Peace Corps (aka do anything doctor-y) and the look of “oh god please no” fell off the injured guy’s face Dr. Alex said afterwards I’d get to practice. I had no clue on what at this point--I was just too busy staring at this gash to provide light to question.

So after a good 45 minutes of sewing (this was a killer gash) and the guy’s all clean and “juntando” (together in one piece) and we explained that “no sir you cannot go back to work right now, you have a 6 in penetrating STAB wound from your work and you’re whole hand is numb…of course you can’t go back to work today you idiot” (ok we didn’t say it exactly like that…but it had that effect) Dr. Alex said it was time to practice. Me and the pharmacy technician decided to follow suit, with equal “what’s about to happen” stares. We close up the health center (it closes at 7 anyways) and went to a neighboring house where Dr. Alex asks about the ½ kilo of chicken that he asked for that morning (yeah you have to order your chicken in advance here so they can kill it and clean it) and walked back with his chicken to the Health Center.

Now to my Grey’s Anatomy fan friends, think the Christiana trying to help Burke with his hand episode. The Doctor cut the chicken to the bone and handed me a pair of gloves and the (cleaned) rest of this guys “sewing kit” and proceeded to instruct me on how to sew a stitch. It’s a lot easier on a chicken than it appeared to be on a person—so that made things easier. I don’t think it was the worst sewing job ever done in the history of the world…but it certainly wasn’t the prettiest. But the doctor said if the chicken wasn’t already dead and dismembered in 4ths that he probably would have survived with my sewing job…so that’s cool.

And no mom and dad, this does not mean I want to be a doctor—sorry, you’ll still have to look at Mike for the money in the family to pay for the really good nursing home for you guys. I’m the do-gooder—there’s never any money in that.

Knee Deep In Mud

2009-02-09T16:11:00.001-05:00

A month into the rainy season has taught me a few things:
1. Never take a sunny day for granted. When you see sun, you should wash your laundry, even if you don’t need to that day, because you never know when you’ll see sun again.
2. You clothes can take up to a week and a half to dry.
3. My water-proof gortex boots, pants, and jacket were among the smartest of my packing choices.
4. It doesn’t really matter how good the traction is on your boots, 5 steps into walking you’ll have 2 pounds of mud affixed to the bottom no matter what.
5. Sometimes chacos are a better bet than boots. When you know you’ll sink knee deep into the mud, chacos are easier to wash off, and you can wear them wet unlike boots.
6. Peruvians have small feet, and I can’t find knee high rain boots in my size.
7. Bugs hate the rain too…so they go into hiding in your room if you don’t shove cardboard under your door when you’re not in your room. (oh and this system makes it a pain to use the bathroom at night)
8. It can still be 110 degrees outside when it’s raining. Yeah, that blew my mind too.
9. No one cares if you bring mud into their house, because their shoes are covered in mud too.
10. Electricity is amazing, and it sucks to live without it for 2 weeks when you have work that needs to get done on your computer.
11. There is a Peruvian radio station that plays American music (I discovered this when my iPod battery died and I couldn’t charge it due to lack of electricity)
12. Head Lamps are one of the greatest inventions ever made.
13. It is possible for a water pipe to get washed away by rain (…ironic no?) and leave a town waterless for a week.
14. It is possible to take a shower in the rain here in Peru and to prove it we have an outside shower stall (4 plastic sheets hanging from a tree) that I have used. It just takes a lil patience to get the shampoo out.
15. Ducks love the rain because it turns our patio into a lake, and they can ACTUALY swim in the water at times…it’s that deep.
16. It’s acceptable to call your pants that are covered in mud and have been worn for the past 4 days in a row your “good pants.”
17. Some days you can cross the river to make it out to Chiclayo…some days you can’t. Last week was a can’t, hopefully tomorrow is a can.
18. Brown water can be drunk. You just have to put it in a big bucket, wait a few hours for the crud to settle, pour out the stuff that looks clean into a towel over another bucket, and then boil it. And in my case cross my fingers that I still don’t get sick…eww.

Just a few things I’ve come to find over the past month. The rainy season’s been a very interesting time here in Nanchoc, and I’m told there’s another 2 more months to go…let’s just hope that the river plays nice and I can make it out for Reconnect in March, because I miss my Peace Corps people and wanna play on the beach with them!

Its a Hard Knock Life

2009-02-09T16:10:00.001-05:00

First of all I just wanted to apologize to the people that actually read these blogs (well I hope there are people who read these, or I’m basically talking to myself…eh oh well) about how long it’s been since I’ve been able to post. I usually only make it into civilization once a month. But the good news is this blog should be good!

Well where to start, oh, the phones. Ok so as I’m sure I’ve told most of you, or possibly written before, there is not internet or cell phone at my site. Therefore every member of my group here in Peru has probably forgotten that I exist since I can never communicate. And up until Jan 17th we had phone service in my site…yes I said up till. On Jan 17th at 9:30am the mayor cut all of the phone lines to Nanchoc because there are some people who haven’t paid their bill in a year (yeah Peruvians aren’t real good about setting deadlines.) And the gringo in town (me) was the first to discover that there was no cell phone reception when I tried to be an amazing sister and use an ENTIRE phone card to call my brother’s cell phone and say happy birthday. At first we thought just the Health Center’s line got cut. The line hangs low in the road and if a stranger to town passes by with a load too high—snap, there goes our line. But no, everyone’s phone line was cut. And this of course doesn’t affect our lovely mayor, because he doesn’t live here, he’s lives in Chiclayo (yeah go figure)but up until a few days ago, (like Feb 1st) we were without any means of communication, then after a mini riot the mayor was forced to open the only pay phone in town. So I used a whole phone card to call home and let the rents know that I’m not dead on the side of a Peruvian road. (Sorry you weren’t home mom!)

Hmm what else is new? Oh yeah, I had my bosses come to visit me yesterday (the 4th) just to check in and make sure that I’m still alive. We had a charla (educational session) with mothers of children under the age of 3 about food preparation and nutrition. It went pretty well. I didn’t give the charla, the Health Promoters that I’ve been helping train gave it, their first charla! I was so proud, they did amazing. But my bosses seemed pleased with everything, except for the rain (it’s been raining for the past week straight). And thanks to Mom and Terry, Tommy, and Ted for the magazines that you all sent, I shared the wealth and passed them along with my bosses to give to the other volunteer’s they’ll see this week. Besides most of them had articles on Obama and nothing else…and we all know I don’t want to talk about that.

But the highlight of the past few weeks has been that this week my host mom finally came back from Lima!! So I don’t have to be Chef Jenny anymore! How wonderful. And she didn’t come back alone, she brought my Host sister Isabel and her daughter Ingrid. Isabel is awesome; she’s 25, it’s been really great to have someone my age in the house. And Her daughter is…well timid. This girl is afraid of everything: Donkeys, cows, goats, chickens, roosters, ducks, and insects…yeah and she’s in the campo of Peru, we’re surrounded by these things. The poor girl. Today was a very traumatic day for a 5 year old. The day started off with my dad killing a goat because we have 14 people eating at our house every day (another story I’ll get to in a second), and Ingrid thinks that killing animals is wrong…god I know, she’s crazy. Its Discovery Kids fault—the show with the daughter of the Crocodile Hunter says not to kill animals…or so I’ve been told a hundred times now as Ingrid’s eating her chicken…yeah I’m confused too. And she cried and stared with horror as I help Don Jose cut the goat into portions separate the “good internal parts” from the “bad internal parts” (yeah I had goat liver, lungs, and heart stew for breakfast this morning…it was as gross as it sounds). But as if that’s not enough trauma for an animal loving 5 year old…today when I was washing my laundry (on the only sunny day we’ve had in forever) I hear a death scream coming from the room where we keep the cuys (Guinea Pigs) and baby chickens and turkeys. So naturally I go running to see who is dying. Turns out it’s not who was dying, it’s what was dying. Ingrid was jumping into the room with the animals…and well…squished a baby turkey. And it was still alive, she had stepped on its butt, and its guts had shot out of its mouth. So naturally thinking of the tramitized child before the turkey I pick her up and leave the room, and my mom yells at me for not killing the turkey first…go figure. But it’s ok, I had the crying kid; she killed the turkey with her foot. So this sequence of events is obviously enough to send any kids over the edge. But as with any good story, that’s not the end of it.

So right now it’s Carnival here in Peru. Now I’ll be honest, I really have no clue what that means aside from an excuse for dirty old men to throw water at women and children walking in the streets. But on this ONE day without rain, as Ingrid and I walked to finish a mural I’m painting in the Health Center a group of boys threw a bucket of water with pig blood on us (yes intentionally). Ingrid started balling (for the 4th time today) as I started fussing out in a mixture of Spanish and English at these boys. Yeah ok so I still can’t fuss people out very well in Spanish. “F you” translates anger better than me saying “that’s just not nice” in Spanish. So as we return to the house to change…the rain starts back up. So As I’m tying this, my clothes are hanging on the line…and getting a second rinse cycle (well ok they never has a first since I wash by hand…but just go with it). So all in all, it’s been a hard day to be 5 years old.

And back to the 14 people eating at my house story. So above my town there is a Slate Mine that no one from Nanchoc wants to work, the people here would rather work their land, so the company brings in people from outside to work—and they of course need to eat. Since my host mom runs one of 3 “eateries” in town (and she’s the better cook) they are all eating here. These guys are pigs. I have no clue who the heck taught them to eat, but they need to go back for a refresher course. They somehow manage to get more food on the table or benches than in their stomach. But the only good part of them eating at my house is they all really think that I’m the 7th child of my host mom (the girls in the family are “gringo” in skin color—aka a lil more pasty than the average Peruvian). So heck yeah! I actually have passed off as a Peruvian at least until I talk…then it’s obvious that I’m either not from round here, or I’m just special...

Hello, I'm Mike Ross, And This is Dirty Jobs

2009-01-22T15:56:00.000-05:00

Ok so I’m not Mike Ross, but I sure as heck have felt like him over the past few days. So I’d like to think that you all know what Dirty Jobs is (after all the people reading this are either friends or family and let’s face it, we love that show), but just in the case that one of you haven’t a clue: Dirty Jobs is where a man named Mike Ross travels the country looking for the Dirtiest Job. He doesn’t just look for the jobs, he does the job for the day, it usually involves animals (the animal itself or their poop), trash, or just a ton of dirt. Well as it usually goes, Mike tries to do every job while under the instruction of the actual person who has that job--the other dude/chick usually is WAY better at the job than Mike, and thus we have the comedic part of the show--Mike usually sucks at these jobs, well at least at first.

So back to my point, I have been Mike Ross over the past week or so. To set the frame, my host Mom is in Lima because her daughter is sick, so she has been gone for about 2 weeks now. Then there is the Flu that’s been going around my town (but thanks to my Flu shot a la Peace Corps, I’m still going strong) that took my Host Dad as its next victim this week. So Cleo (the professor that lives at my house) has stuck around this week to help me “run the house.” So I have a few interesting stories to go with the “running of the house” that is Dirty Jobs material…

First let’s start with Cows, they’re always on Dirty Jobs, so it just seems fitting. Well we are in the rainy season here, which has NOTHING on a rain NC summer, let me tell you what. It pretty much pours from lunch time till 3am, we have precious few hours without rain where Mr. Sun reminds us that he does exist…not that any work with cows is does while the sun is out. So Cleo and I walked the 1/3 of a mile to the cow pasture, a distance that should take maybe 10 minutes, 15 if we’re walking at a Peruvian pace…but we’re about shin deep in mud and my Chacos have become encased in mud, and Cleo has her flip flops in her hand cause they aren’t doing her any good on her feet. About 20 meters (yeah I think in meters now) from the gate Cleo eats it in the mud (hey its 5am and its hard to see, how was she supposed to see that rock?). Now my conscious had a short battle between laughing and helping, but it chose laughing while helping her up as the best route…well within 3 steps of helping her up, I fall into the mud. Now you all are probably thinking this is funny. Yes, that it is. But the clean bucket we had to carry the milk back in is now dirty. So we have to walk another 30 minutes (due to mud our pace was slow) to the river to wash off the bucket. We finally make it back to the pasture with a clean bucket, rope the cow, get some milk, and begin the dangerous trip back to the house…needless to say we came pretty dern close to crying over spilled milk. Not too dirty you’re thinking (well I didn’t have my camera to take a picture of how muddy we were) but it was funny.

Now pigs eat everything and anything…one of the reasons I usually try not to think about what any given pig here has eaten when part of it is on my plate during the day here…but our pigs, I know EXACTLY what they eat. Nasty watery leftovers/stuff that went bad/old burnt rice from the bottom of the pot, ect. And we store it in a bucket until it’s time to carry it in a jug to the farm house to feed the pigs. Now this usually is an easy job, but we had a ton of relatives pass through the other day so there was way more “pig water” (as we call it) than usual. And since Don Jose is sick, there was no Donkey to carry the heavy load…just a Jenny (which as Wendy and Leslie pointed out to me our freshman year means a female donkey…so it’s totally fitting). So I carried this 8Kg jug full of…muck…for 40 minutes because we were walking in the mud to the farm house. Then it’s Cleo’s job to give it to the pigs, because I just don’t like the smell. Well she didn’t realize how heavy the jug was and splashed the both of us with the pig water in the process of feeding the pigs. So we are now covered from head to toe in yesterdays nastiness, and to make it worse, my mouth was open so I had pig water IN MY MOUTH. Yeah, that’s Mike Ross material. To put insult to injury, since we smelled like pig water, the flies thought we were a walking birthday present during the 40 minute walk back to the house…

Then the Dog ate one of the ducks, and just left another dead for me to find...

Then today (Jan 22) we were all prepared to make chick peas to go with our rice and chicken…the only problem, this pesky little bug that loves to eat grains had beaten us to the idea and had put tiny little holes in probably 2/3 of the peas we had. So rather than admitting defeat like Don Jose and I said, Cleo decides to boil them for a while, kill the bugs, and pick out the bad ones. Great plan on paper…needless to say I was picking around chick peas with insects popping out of them all during lunch and trying my damndest not to bust out laughing and let the lunch guest in on our little secret. I’ve never examined my food so close before eating. But somehow the Senor that eats with us managed not to see the sea of insects that he was eating…thank god. Ok so not very Mike Ross, but funny.

Then for a not so dirty, but still alittle Mike Ross-ish moment. Cleo and I were pealing garlic (like 6 heads of it) to mash and store in an open container by our open wood burning stove (I need to work on that). And apparently I suck at pealing garlic at a Peruvian Pace…I thought I was doing pretty good…for every 1 I pealed, she had finished about 10. There goes my ego.

Well for now I’m heading up to the other pasture (yeah we have a ton of them) to go and grab some Wan abanas(I spelled that wrong…but I don’t know any other way), I’m about 99% sure it’s a bread fruit in English. A big ol green blob that’s got little white pods with seeds in the middle. Kinda tastes like yogurt…but not really at the same time. It’s a complicated flavor, but its amazing, so I’m going to go brave the mud to grab a few before the rain comes in.

It's Like Christmas Day...on Jan 13th

2009-01-14T08:23:00.007-05:00

Hey everybody so I know that I’ve posted a lot of blogs recently…but lets face it I think you all like to read them, so it’s ok. The reason that I’ve been fortunate enough to have this much access to internet is because the SERPOST people in customs hate me. I came into Chiclayo on Monday with every intention of being a good Peace Corps Volunteer and going back to my site the next day on the next bus…but the guy at customs didn’t like that plan. I waited in line for 4 hours to fight this guy to get the package that my Outdoor Leadership professors, Ted, Tommy, and Terry sent me, and the package that Liz and her boys that I babysat sent me. Now normally I’m sure it wouldn’t have been this much of a hassle to get the boxes…or so I’m going to tell myself…but since the Peace Corps has my official government issued passport, all I have is a copy and a letter saying that the Peace Corps has my passport. Well to the guy at customs that just wasn’t sufficient. Now in the states I would have just said, “Ok fine, I’ll come back when I have my real passport back in 2 months.” The problem is in Peru they only hold packages in customs for a month…and the deadline was creeping up on my packages before they were to be sent BACK to the United States. Yikes.

So after realizing that Customs’ man hates me, I sent to solicit help from my favorite lady who works at the front desk (the place where I go to get my mail that doesn’t go through customs—basically if it’s less than 2 lbs and isn’t in a box she gets it, otherwise it goes to evil customs man) to see if she had any ideas. Well my lady apparently is the boss (wo)man and was not happy that evil customs man was making life hard for her gringos (she loves us Peace Corps people because we share the candy we get sent with her…so thanks guys!). Boss lady turned into this dude’s mom in 3.5 seconds doing everything but grabbing him by the ear and spanking him. I’ll call it explaining, because that sounds more polite than fussing out, to evil customs man that I can only make it into Chiclayo ever so often, and that due to all this rain we’ve been getting I probably won’t be able to make it back for a very long time. And that I have given him an official document that states that my passport is in the hands of the government and they’re sorry for the trouble, but give me the damn package. Yeah! Way to go boss lady!

Needless to say after 4 hours of this, I made it out of SERPOST with 10 envelopes from (yes this is time to thank you all by name…think of it like the Oscars):
My mom (of course she’s my mom!)
Mr. and Mrs. Shelhorse
Liz Stankavage and her boys that I used to babysit (Liz I LOVE the pictures of the boys, they have gotten so big! And tell Brooks that he looks amazing in his glasses)
Mr. and Mrs. Pickett
Anna Myers
Kacie Ross and the RHS Field Hockey Team (haha ok I have to giggle, that sounds like a really funny band name)
Ted, Terry, and Tommy-my Outdoor Leadership Profs (with some super wicked cool gear as Terry says)

Thanks to everyone who sent me all the goodies, I’m pretty sure I’ve made about 5lbs of candy, 2lbs of beef jerky (yumm) and all sorts of cool random stuff (just how I like it--nice and random!)

But back to the story as to why I’m still in Chiclayo (sorry I got distracted by all the goodies). $ hours from when SERPOST opens just happens to be noon…the time that if I am taking the bus back to Nanchoc I should probably be on my way to the bus terminal…or there already if I want a seat that’s not infested with chicken poo…hey I live in the country, it’s how people transport them. So I was running back to my hostel with a bag full of goodies and 2 boxes, make it back by 12:15 realize that CRAP I haven’t packed any of my stuff yet and I still have way too much stuff to do on the internet to leave right now. So I called Emilia (my boss in Lima) and begged to stay longer to look for more things on the internet and to finish buying stuff for my room, and thankfully she agreed. I love this woman! She’s so understanding of when we volunteers have a problem and very good about helping us find/or use a solution to make our lives easier. So thanks to Emilia’s awesome-ness I have had more time in the internet to look up more plans for Improved wood burning stoves (cocinas mejoradas), wood burning ovens (people in my town really seem to want them, I know it’s not really part of my Health Program’s goals…but I’ll consider it a secondary project), a really cool website www.biology4kids.com and its counter websites www.physics4kids.com and I think there’s a geography, earth science, and other cool 4kids parts too. So I have realized talking to parents and kids in my site that their science classes are NOT like ours. I remember the science fairs in middle school (yeah I know all the parents reading this just shuttered from the memories…but thanks for helping us guys!) then I need to get going to look up some more latrine plans and some AIDS/HIV stuff in Spanish for my health center.

But I hope that you all have enjoyed the blogs and the pictures. And if any of you want a giggle. My group made a rap video on YouTube

Murphy’s Law of Sickness

2009-01-13T13:23:00.002-05:00

So damn if Murphy didn’t know his shit... Just the other day I was talking with the nurse at my health center about how surprised I was that I hadn’t gotten really sick yet. Let’s face it with the chicken hanging from a hook for a day before we eat it, and the electricity coming and going I don’t even want to think about the fish and milk in the fridge, getting sick is bound to happen. But not 2 days after having this conversation with the nurse…that rumbling in my stomach started up and you know you’re in for a FUN fill adventure in potty land. Yes I am aware of the fact that that sounds like the name to a child’s potty training book…but trust me, it needs a happy name-- it’s no fun.

There is nothing like waking up at 3am and battling the lizards, spiders, and cats to make it to the restroom with…we’ll just call it issues. Now normally I’m a good Peace Corps Volunteer and I wait a day to see if it’ll pass before I take the magic pill (Ciprofloxacine) to make it all better…but people this time was BAD, so George and Suni (our doctors) I hope ya’ll can forgive me, but I was not willing to wait a day. So pop goes the magic pill and the waiting begins. This was a horrid day, Cipro and all. My host mom thought I was dying…for a while I too thought I was dying. Stomach cramps so bad I was crying, the aforementioned…issues…not being able to keep anything down. As we say here in Peru, it hit with FUERZA! (Force/Strength). Now I won’t go into details, God knows you all don’t want to hear it and I don’t want to remember it. But I am sure as HECK glad that I packed my Gatorade in my suitcase. A. there is nothing even remotely similar to Gatorade here in my town, and B. the electrolyte tablets in our first aid kit are gross. In addition I would like to thank myself for thinking in advance and purchasing saltines in Chiclayo when I was there last because “they always come in handy.” Damn I’m good sometimes.

And really when you’re sick the only thing you want to do is sleep and take care of the issues. But since its Christmas time (the 27th of Dec, aka sick day) my house is BUSTING with family, normally I’m cool with family, more people to talk to and more stories to hear. But when you’re sick that just means it’s that many more people to come in and ask “are you ok?” or in the case of the 2 ½ year old “are you dying?” I felt the love, but I just wanted to sleep. Peruvians also have some weird homemade remedies…and yes I got to try them all. So I have drunk a tea made from the peel of a pomegranate (we have a tree in my yard), tricked into drinking a shot of canazo (really gross shine made from sugar cane) mixed with sugar and who knows what, and had an egg passed over my body (yeah I don’t know, it apparently sucks up the bad stuff…). Fun times.

But enough with the sickness! The next day I went with the Health Center staff “fishing” at the river. Now when I think fishing I think of a rod or pole with a hook on the end, be it a spinner or a fly rod. Well fishing Peruvian style means hunting for crayfish! Haha so much fun! I had flashbacks to being 11 and searching for them in the creek near my house at Kitchener Ct. with Lauren Bilski. I took some pictures I’ll try to upload but the funniest moments went photo-less. Walter, the lab technician screaming like a little girl when the crayfish bit back, us deciding to follow Carlos’s “shortcut” which lead us 30 minutes out of the way in the backwoods of Peru (thank god the Gringa is a Boy Scout at heart and had her headlamp since the sun had set mid being lost), and then the “how to gut a crayfish” lesson that followed. I’m just sad that we were unable to cook up a chowder with the days catch (about a kilo…so 2.2lbs) because there is a pregnant woman in a nearby town currently giving birth across the street in the health center and all hands are on deck since the OB-GYN is out of town. Well almost all hands, since I know nothing about child-birthing I figured I would be of more help by not being around. And since I don’t know the woman, I’m sure she’s happy not having a stranger in the room.

Currently I am taking a break from making my very own crayfish catching net from the old mosquito net that Andrew left behind and typing up this blog. But I figure you all will be very proud to know that there is Duct Tape involved…because we all know that it’s required in any homemade device. Hopefully it works…I’ll keep you all updated.

Christmas--Nanchoc Style

2009-01-13T13:14:00.004-05:00

Hey everyone!! It’s now 5 days until Christmas and I’m sure there are a ton of Christmas cookies being baked, eaten, and shared going on back at home (eat up, I haven’t had any Christmas cookies this year). I know that I won’t get to post this until after Christmas when I make it back to Chiclayo but I just wanted to say MERRY CHRISTMAS/HAPPY HOLIDAYS/HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone back home! I miss ya’ll a ton! Take in the Christmas tree smell for me…there is no such thing as an evergreen where I am…unless a cactus counts…which in my mind it does not.

So Christmas Peruvian style:
Just like in the states, Peruvians eat turkey for Christmas…now in a place where there are grocery stores with a supply and demand market, you know that 95% of the time you’ll be able to find a turkey for the big day as long as you don’t procrastinate too much right? Well in Peru its home-grown turkeys, and this year, there apparently are not enough to go around. So it’s been really funny listening to people talk about the ways they’ve protected their turkeys (here in Peru you buy it still gobbling a few weeks before and fatten it up for Christmas day in your yard):
-Tie it to the tall part of the tree and put food up high so it doesn’t hurt itself trying to get down to eat. Ok so the rational here is that Peruvians are short and wouldn’t be able to climb this prickly tree without his ladder that is hidden…all of 3 meters from the tree by a towel. That and turkeys really do like to hang out in trees, happy bird, happy family.
-The turkey sleeps in the bedroom with the family. Ok so my inner health promoter is just cringing at this thought…we work so hard to keep the animals OUT of the houses…and their poop out of the houses. But this story is just funny enough that it might be ok to overlook the turkey poop in the kitchen. So this family ties the turkey to the bedpost at night. Rational: turkey thieves come at night…this is true.

But my family is lucky enough to be one of the ones that raise turkeys, so I know that my family will have a turkey. Why am I so certain that my family’s turkey won’t get yanked you might ask? Well she’s a crazy ass dog that’s tied up in front of our chicken/turkey house. So Don Jose (my Peruvian dad) either bought or was gifted a set of puppies, one is mentally challenged after an incident with a brick to the head…so obviously he’s not going to stop a turkey thief…it’s his twin sister that’s the devil in doggie form. Ok well she’s really not the devil-- she’s just ADHD like no other and is the most hyper thing I’ve ever seen in my life. So hyper in fact that she is tied to the tree in front of the chicken house all day every day. Now I have tried to walk by her without dying…it can’t be done, I have the scratch marks to prove it. So my family doesn’t have to worry about being turkey less this year. In addition, I think we have around 10 turkeys that we are safe guarding for family friends (let’s face it the devil-dog watch system is bullet proof…ok bad choice of words…). But I was doing some calculations the other day. Dona Julia, my host mom said that turkeys are going for S./12 a kilo…that’s roughly S./24 a pound, which is like $8 a pound…now I don’t remember how much a turkey costs in the states, but I sure as heck know that we’ve never paid that much for a turkey…I don’t think.

But in addition to turkey, Peruvians do Paneton…Now Paneton is like fruit cake. Ok you can all stop making that gross face. I said it’s LIKE fruit cake, not that it is. This stuff is actually pretty good. Like all other made-in-Peru things, when I first tried it…I kinda wanted to throw up in my mouth just a little…but now, I LOVE IT. So it’s this big muffin looking piece of bread (like 7” in diameter, and a foot tall) with little candied fruit in it…but the Paneton I had last night at the health promoters Christmas party had…dun, dun, dun, CHOCOLATE!!! It was amazing. So in the states, Christmas supper is turkey, dressing (or stuffing for my Yankee friends), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes in some form (or maybe that’s just a southern thing too), green veggies, bread, gravy. Here it’s Paneton and turkey with hot coco. Yeah my stomach was a little disappointed, but its good food, and here it’s expensive food. So Peruvian’s bust out the good stuff on Christmas day.

I was fortunate enough to be gifted a Paneton and a can of milk (yeah it comes in cans, old school huh?) by the health post (Cajamarca RED, aka the boss man, gifted Panetons and Milk to all the health centers/posts in their RED…oh yeah a RED is a network). So my family and I are either going to enjoy it for Christmas supper, or for the going away party of Cleo, my house mate. She’s a teacher at the local school, so she’s only here for the school year (in Peru it’s from April to December), so we might throw her a little party…not sure yet.

The health center also had a party (so I’ve had a lot of Paneton, turkey, and duck…we had duck at this party) where we played Secret Santa (Amigo Secreto). Now since I believe that I am a boy scout at heart (always prepared) I happened to have…are you ready…2 Christmas presents with me when I came to my sight for just such circumstances. God I’m good sometimes…haha. So I did my best ghetto-wrapping job I could (because I didn’t know that you buy wrapping paper in Peru in single serving pieces and I didn’t want a whole roll…rolls are not done here in Peru. But I took an envelope that my mom had sent me some leaves in that was the nice and thick paper but not quite cardboard material, unfolded it, reversed it so it was brown side out, and decorated paper (computer paper size) in red, white, and green, and taped it to the front. People laughed at the Gringo and asked if that’s how we wrap presents in the States…because apparently the guy before me here in Nanchoc did something similar.

Well I’m going to cut this blog here, figuring that I’ll write another one before my trip to Chiclayo. But Happy Holidays everyone! Love you all, Miss you all!

and here's the Turkey that we...sacrificed...for christmas...enjoy :)

First Week in Site!!

2008-12-11T07:24:00.002-05:00

So I’ve finished up my 9th day in site and came back to Chiclayo to buy a few things I needed for my room and to pick up the box of books that the Peace Corps sent to us via a bus line. Its kinda weird being in such a fast paced city again, I like campo life’s slow pace. But my last week or so in site have been great. I haven’t “officially” started working yet, the Peace Corps likes us to do a community diagnostic during our first 3 months to figure out what would benefit our communities the most before we start up working. That being said my first few days were really nothing other than getting to know everyone at the Nanchoc Health Center and watching the Parade. No—they didn’t have a parade just for me, I know you’re all disappointed. But they did have their towns 50th political anniversary on my first full day in site, so it was really awesome to see the town all decked out in white and gold balloons. The kids from Nanchoc and the surrounding districts had a competition for the best portion of the parade. Nanchoc won with typical dances and dress of various parts of Peru—Afican dancing from Ica, typical Selva dancing, a dance I’m not sure where it’s from but it’s representative of war and has bells on the dancer’s legs, and the prize of the bunch, the Marinara! The Marinara is a courtship dance that is very popular in Peru in the northern part of Peru. After the parade there were the introductory speeches of all the honored guest, the current and former Mayors of Nanchoc, the surrounding areas, directors of the schools, and so on. I lucked out and didn’t have to give a speech my first day there because my arrival was sort of a surprise. Due to a combination of our cell phones not working right in the first few days, and Nanchoc’s phone having issues, I wasn’t able to call ahead to warn them I was on my way…Supresa!

But also on the Anniversary of Nanchoc (Dec 2) we had a seminar at the Health Center for doctors, nurses, OB/GYNs and heath promoters from surrounding areas about HIV/AIDS testing and methods of teaching prevention to coincide with World AIDS Day. So it was nice to get to meet some of the heath workers from surrounding areas. The day of the Parade was also the first taste of hot truly hot it does get in my site. Now I talked to a few people about the heat and my site and it was a huge surprise to find out that Peru isn’t all mountains and cold. So I’ll give the breakdown. Along the coast is desert, but with a breeze from the ocean usually so the temperatures are a little cooler, but still hot. Then you have the in between coast and mountain regions that can be broken into a few parts: Rain Forests, just like it sounds, green, rainy, and cooler, then the Dry Forest, where I am—and it’s just like it sounds, dry and dusty and hot, until the rainy season, then it gets hotter and rainy and green. The next section is the mountains (the Sierra) and this is the section that most people think of when they think about Peru, but it too has variations. There is Jungle like mountain sections and more “typical” Peru sections. Then on the other side of the mountains is the jungle (the Selva) and its just that, jungle. So at my site “hot” right now is 95 F in the shade with not much of a breeze during the afternoons. But I’m told in a month that I’ll be begging for that temperature back, because it gets up to 115 at my site WHEN it’s raining. Wooo!

So with the hot weather comes the rainy season. And in my site, when it rains, it POURS. So it sounds like starting in January and ending in around March it’s going to get harder and harder to leave my site due to wash outs in the road and mainly due to the height of the river that intersects the only road to and from my town. So I’m not sure how much you all will be hearing from me over the next few months…but this is just a warning that most likely I haven’t died, I’m just on the other side of the river chilling in my site working on some health stuff.

Speaking of health stuff, I’ve had a few meetings with various interested town bodies (the teachers, the doctors/health staff, the mayor, and coming up soon the health promoters) about what changes they would like to see in their community and what has worked well in the past. I am always amazed at how much they have actually already done in my site. My community partner (the person the Peace Corps set me up to work with) is a nurse and she is really into learning the most she can about Community Health Promotion. She has been going to monthly seminars in the capital of Cajamarca, Cajamarca City, to learn more about the problems in our region (well the health concerns). Where I come in is helping think up FUN ways to teach these things. In Peru the education system is rote memorization, so most people don’t know how to do much more than give lectures and hope like hell that they stick…so this is where the Peace Corps Volunteer and their non-formal education techniques come in!! But some ideas we have come up with so far are:

Community Gardens/Home Gardens: Now I know what you’re thinking, “Jenny you live in farm land, how would the need gardens if they’re already growing stuff?” Good question! Turns out they are growing food, it’s just not food that has a very high nutritional value for the most part. There is a lot of Yuca (think a stringy potato…but tasty, at least when my host mom cooks it), potatoes, corn (but more feed corn that eating corn), and Tobacco—and you don’t eat that. There are a few people who grow cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, and other veggies, but they sell most of them. My typical meal might have 5 peas in it and a few slices of tomato, the rest is rice, beans, and potato or yucca—it’s really filling, but lacking a lot of vitamins. So if we can get everyone to grow a few plants that have more nutritional value, then we can add to their diets and benefit everyone—they don’t have to pay for the produce, and they are more healthy.

Cocinas Mejoradas (Improved Stoves): A lot of Peruvians in the campo cook with wood. And usually its an open grate inside the house (or in a enclose space near the house) where they do the cooking, therefore the smoke is EVERYWHERE. The walls are black, the bricks are covered with suit…along with the inside of the lungs of anyone living in the house. So and Improved stove traps the smoke inside a tunnel and sends it outside the house through a chimney—they actually use less wood and burn hotter too, so it saves money and time. Win Win.

Youth Work: Teen pregnancy, lack of self esteem, lack of creativity, and lack of individuality are all issues in my site—I would like to point out that I did notice this in my trips to the school, but it was mentioned as a project from me by the teachers and doctors. So I will most likely be doing self esteem and individuality workshops with students and start up a youth group or as the mayor suggested, a girls soccer league!

Those are just a few ideas that we have come up with, I’m sure there will be more to come. So I’m in Chiclayo for the day to buy things for my room such as sheets, pillow, shampoo, hangy closet organizer thing that will function as my dresser. Just the necessities. I also splurged and bought a new shirt at the Peruvian equivalent of a Walmart, it was cute, and of a really really light fabric so I can survive the hot days of Nanchoc. Speaking of doing the necessary tasks, I really should get going to the post office to pick up the packages that people have sent (thanks Kacie, Mom, and Josh!) and to the grocery store to get some pecans and milk (in a can) so I can make sweet potato casserole for my family and co-corkers. Bye guys!

It's Official We're Peace Corps Volunteers...and We Have Cell Phones To Prove It

2008-11-30T16:38:00.001-05:00

Ok guys, sorry that I haven’t written one of these in forever and a half. Life finishing up training has just been crazy as heck! Since I’m writing this away from the internet I’m not even sure where my last blog left off so I’ll just pick up at my site visit. My town is called Nanchoc, Cajamarca—if you’re going to try to Google it, don’t, it’s not there (well not much about it). So I’ll try to fill everyone in on the happenings. Nanchoc is a small district capital of 350 people on a busy day that is surrounded by 7 surroundings neighborhoods with a total population that’s still less than 1000 people ( or so I’m told…in 3 months I’ll be able to tell you the exact numbers I hope). But my house is AMAZING! I love it, and I’m about 99% sure that I have the nicest, or at least in the top 10, bathroom in the Peace Corps. I have tile, AND, get this, a shower curtain. Ok so the shower curtain doesn’t sound like an extraordinary feet, but there for some reason seems to be a lack of shower curtains in this country…assuming that you have a shower. But my house is rather large for a house in the campo, it has 2 kitchens (one wood burning stove outside and one gas stove inside), 2 living rooms (one from the older portion of the house and one newer one that they just built in the back of the house), 4 bedrooms, but one’s used more for storage, and the best part…a cuy room. Yes, you read that correctly, we have a whole room that’s dedicated to guinea pigs. I think there was around 30 of them in there…not sure of the exact numbers yet.
My host mom and dad are really nice; their names are Julia and Jose. My mom runs a Pension out of the house, which is basically means that she cooks meals for the teachers and doctors in the area. And my dad is a farmer--we have a ton of land and animals. I think I’ve counted 6 cows, 10 goats or sheep (ok so you laugh that I can’t tell the difference…and well Wendy is crying. But these are the weirdest looking animals I’ve ever seen…I think they’re a new species or something.), 15 turkeys, lord knows how many chickens, 5 pigs, 2 donkeys, 2 horses, 2 dogs, and 2 cats. And hopefully when I return the cute, adorable puppy that I found at the barn will still be there and I can claim him as my own…but that’s a big assumption I probably shouldn’t make.
My house is located right across the street from the health center, which is great since I will be working so closely with them over the next 2 years, and the school (the only school in the whole district) is right down the street. Everyone seems really excited to be working with me and really happy to have another volunteer in their site. I’m replacing a guy from…get this…Raleigh, NC—so basically they think everyone in the Peace Corps is from North Carolina now, which is weird, but my house is decorated with the pictures from a NC calendar, so it’s like being at home…sorta. My first night in Nanchoc we had a meeting with all of the health promoters, doctors, nurses, and teachers to discuss what they would like to see from me as far as work projects are concerned over the next 2 years. They want a lot of work with youth, which I am super excited about, and in the areas further away from town they still need improved stoves and latrines, then there is the obvious working with the health promoters and keeping them up to date on information and the like.
So since I can’t really think of any other interesting site descriptions right now I’m going to switch topics and talk about graduating!!! Ok so it’s not really graduating, it’s just officially becoming a volunteer…that’s right as of yesterday, the 28th of November we are all officially Peace Corps Volunteers! We had a really nice ceremony in the back yard at the training center with a tent decked out in red white and blue with the Peruvian flag, the Peace Corps flag, and the American flag in the center. Douglas, a member of my health group and all around bad ass for his songs and guitar skills during Spanish presentations among other skills, managed to give an amazing speech IN Spanish while being deathly ill. He somehow made it through the hour long ceremony without puking then had to retreat to the bathroom to pass some time. Poor guy, but he did an amazing job, so KUDOS Douggie!!!!
Oh I forgot to mention before the ceremony we all had to bring all of our luggage to the center so we could take it with us to Lima that night. Ok so 47 people, with 2 to 4 bags each = a shit ton of luggage. We somehow managed to carry it all on to the buses that picked us up from the training center and took us to Lima. Once in Lima we quite literally put our bags down in our hostel and ran for supper/to celebrate with our fellow PCVs. Brian and I ate at a pretty good restaurant in Parque Kennedy, I had the best Lasagna ever…ok that’s a lie, but since I haven’t seen real mozzarella since I left America, it was amazing. (sorry I realize I’m using the word amazing a lot…but it’s just fitting and I’m too lazy to think up another word) Then after supper we met up with the rest of the group in Barranco at a bar/discoteca and left around 4 in the morning (and for Peruvians that’s early…they usually stay out till the sun comes up).
Then my plans for today were to go see my host family from the last time I was in Peru, but when I got to their house they were on the way out the door to a lunch, so I talked for about 5 minutes then they had to go. Maybe I’ll catch them the next time I’m in Lima. So right Now I’m sitting on the end of the bed listening to Brian snore, and waiting for Sarah to fall off the bed because she’s only half on due to luggage, typing up this blog. I guess at some point I’ll wake them up so we can go grab some lunch…or quite possibly join in with the nap fest. My bus for Chiclayo leaves at 8:30pm and I should be arriving there around 9am tomorrow. Then pass the day in Chiclayo and head to Nanchoc Monday afternoon (it would be Monday morning, but the only bus leaves at 1.)

So until next time: love you all! Miss you all! Stay safe.

FBT

2008-11-07T18:06:00.001-05:00

So I’ve been trying to figure out how I can write a blog that sums up my Field Based Training experience without being so incredibly long that you all fall asleep while reading it. Now do not get me wrong, FBT was not boring, the complete opposite, it’s just I never thought that so much could be crammed into a week…so I’m just going to give this a shot:
You might ask, how does one travel from Lima, the capital of Peru to the province of Piura (which if any of you have seen a map of Peru you know that Piura is freaking far away from Lima)? Well in a Bus Cama of course! So for the Spanish-disinclined, bus cama literally translates into Bed Bus. And its just that, a really nice bus with seats that recline back to nearly a bed. Now I’m not sure if I’m just too tall for these busses (well any gringo for that matter) or if I just can’t sleep on busses—both are very well possible. But I just wasn’t able to get much sleep on my 14 hour bus ride (during the night) to La Cuidad de Piura. But I will give Bus Camas this one thing: not once did my butt fall asleep, so that goodness for that! After our 14 hours in a bus (with a dinner and breakfast that were actually eatable) we hopped in some taxis and began the second phase of the Piura adventure: the 4 hour ride in a taxi that is older than we are!! Never-the-less, our beat up yellow itty-bitty taxi somehow made it to Jilili (the city I spent 3 days in for FBT). Jilili is the site of a Peru-10 volunteer (I’m a Peru 12, so that means he’s been in site for a year just to fill you in on Peace Corps lingo…its confusing I know) named Brian. His site was just beautiful. It was a mix of sierra and selva (mountains and jungle), it had the tall steep, winding mountain views combined with mango trees, banana trees, and sugar cane. Brian spends most of his time working with the JASS program, which is a committee that monitors the collection, treatment, and distribution of water and the management of sewage…he’s still got a ways to go with the treatment part…let’s just say us trainees were advised to brush our teeth with bottled water…yumm. But Brian is doing a great job so far just keeping the ball rolling with his projects, and finishing up the projects of the previous volunteer at his site (she worked with latrines and there is still a lot of follow up he has to do with those).
While in Jilili we took a tour of the heath center, saw some HOLSTIENS (wendy I know you’re proud!!!), worked with some latrines, and community garden/compost projects, gave a few education sessions of the importance of communication to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grados (aka 13-16 year olds), and attempted to make a radio spot but was forced to abandon that due the rain. Rain on a calaminia roof (aka tin roof) is really loud and makes it IMPOSSIBLE to record a skit for the radio on a computer…trust us we tried. But that just about sums up my 3 days in Jilili to the best of my cliffs note abilities. So onward to Potrerillo!
From Jilili we ran, quite literally, to the combi as it was pulling away from the town center with all of our things yelling “WAIT!!!!!” The bus did wait, we were able to get our seats between a woman with a rooster and a man with a typical hat of Piura on (think reeeealy wide brimmed cowboy hat-10 gallon style). After a 3 hour bus ride and a 2n hour taxi ride we were at our next site, Portrerillo. AND small worlds of small worlds the volunteer, Lizzi, is from DURHAM!!! Turns out we lived all of 20 minutes from each other, she went to Durham Academy (I know, but we like her anyways)! It was so cool to be able to “talk shop” with a fellow Durham-ite. She was asking about all the good places (Elmo’s, Cosmic, Fosters, Mad Hatters, so on) AND we realized that we have a few common friends (Lindsey and Jeffery Spears mom cause I know you’re wondering…). It’s just such a small world.
But Portrerillo is way different that Jilili, it’s located in a valley called Chipillico and is soooo pretty. There are rice fields as far as the eye can see at times surrounded by beautiful mountains, banana trees, more mango trees, and all the chickens, cows, and pigs your heart could desire. (PS Wendy tell me what type of cow has a huge hump on its back and some hair business going on its belly…cause that’s all they have there). But the sun here was fierce! I’m talking Eric got a sunburn from the part of the sun that was shining through the window on his leg in the car ride to the site…wow. But Lizzi has the coolest project I think I’ve seen yet, she is finishing it up now (just in time to end her service in late November), she has worked with an NGO called Plan International and brought her community and the surrounding communities the coolest gift ever—FLUSHABLE LATRINES!!!! Ok so Ya’ll probably aren’t as excited as I am about this…but you don’t have to poop in a hole…so I don’t expect much animation. But the way these things work: Plan International and her worked together to supply the communities with the necessary supplies, bricks, metal doors, TOLIETS, PVC tubing, cement, and skilled workers. And the communities in return provided the man power, the adobe bricks for the walls of the bathroom, and the will and want to work to better their community. So here’s the Basic Run down: You’ve got a normal toilet, all white and shiny and just asking to get used, that you put on a cement base, get this INSIDE of your house, and connect the toilet to a “septic tank” with a PVC tube. The “septic tank” is a hole in the ground with a wall of bricks with spaces in between them, you then fill in the bottom of the tank and the sides of the hole (between the dirt and brick) with a mixture of sand and larger rocks. Top off the “tank” with some cement and a ventilation tube, and you’re DONE! How this works: you walk to the canal (irrigation/water source for everyone usually really close to the house) grab a bucket of water, go to the bathroom, do you’re thing, pour the water in the toilet and TADA it flushes. The water travels in the tube and is filtered through the sand and rock and the clean water goes into the surrounding earth, while the nastiness is kept in the tank. And just when you think it can’t get better…oh it does: Potrerillo is supposed to be getting a RED Sistema de Agua (aka a water system, with pipes that bring water to the house, and remove sewage and used water from the house) so the community will be able to use their pre-existing bathrooms with the new system…they’re moving on up in the world!
We didn’t just so only latrines, we also saw the construction of an improved stove (one that uses less wood but gets way hotter for cooking) and gave s few education sessions on AIDS/HIV to a the local high school. Now I get to the fun part of Field Based Training: The Prank…
So, Rebecca (my DC Roomie) happened to have a birthday during FBT, Nov 1 to be exact. And Lizzie and my instructor had decided before FBT that a birthday party of sorts was needed in a bad way to celebrate. Sooo with a little planning and some kick ass acting if the rest of my group does say so, we had a plan in order. Here’s how it went down: Friday morning as we were waiting for a few people in the school yard before our HIV/AIDS talk (Rebecca being one of them) George (the instructor) laid out the plan. “We’re going back to Piura City for Rebecca’s birthday. But we want to surprise her, so she can’t know. I will say something later and just play along with it.” And the scene is set.
We made it through the class, the concert after the class, and lunch before the plan started to come together. Gorge spent A LOT of time on the phone, which made Rebecca worried, being the natural observer that she is. Then as we were about half way through with our stove George called Lizzie out of the room for a second and then he left. Lizzie walked back in and said, “OK guys, something’s happened. We need to thank the workers and the family and get back to the hostal for a meeting with Gorge.” So we all thanked everyone and started walking back. Once we arrived in the hostal George had a talk with us and told us that Michael Hirsh (the Country Director of Peace Corps Peru) was in Piura City and needed to have a talk with us, so pack up all of your things and get ready, the taxi will be here in 20 minutes. We all thought this was a great plan…but we didn’t know the effect it would have on Rebecca…the poor girl naturally assumed the worst: A Peace Corps Volunteer had died, a family member of someone in the group had died, and the list just goes on. So we did our best to be upbeat about our fake meeting with Michael. We all got our stuff together, hopped in our 2 taxis and were back in Piura City in a little over an hour and a half.
Now here’s where our “painless surprise birthday party” started to run into a few kinks. I forgot to mention that Rebecca was sick…well most of our group was sick in some form or another (Sick of taxis, sick in the stomach, nice and gaseous, something like that). Well when we showed up in Piura City…the hostal we were supposed to be staying at was closed. They had forgotten to write a receipt for a customer and the government had shut them down for 3 days (tough love, I know). So we walked around for an hour finding another hostal (we weren’t quitting till we found one with hot water!) and finally got one for a reasonable rate. George announced that we’d all meet back in the lobby in 30 minutes after everyone had the chance to shower, then we’d go and meet Michael at a local eatery for the meeting. Rebecca just couldn’t understand why we needed to shower to go meet with Michael, he was used to smelly PCVs--she was sick and just wanted to go to bed. Reluctantly she showered then we all went to the “meeting.” Lizzie and Gorge had already planned with Cappuccinos (the local PCV hangout) to have a table for 8 ready (there were 7 of us) so as we walked in there was our table…and by shear coincidence the table right beside us was another group of Peru 12 from the environment group…well that added a little more reality to our prank. So we went to their table before Rebecca and did the “so you’re here to meet with Michael too?” wink, wink, nudge, nudge move. That poor group was so confused, but we managed to get Rebecca away before they ruined our hard work. We sat down, acted anxious about meeting with Michael, and then the waiter brought wine. Rebecca said, “Why the heck is Michael Hirsh buying us wine??” Then George decided to break the news in form of a toast: “Rebecca, I just want to say on behalf of the group that we’re sorry but we played a trick on you…Michael Hirsh is not coming, this was a trick to get you here. Happy Birthday…did I mention we’re sorry?” Speechless, Rebecca sat and pondered the day’s events for a second and said, “wait…Hirsh isn’t coming? What? Ummm…”
Yes I’m pretty sure the lying made us bad people…but the food was worth it! Oh yeah, I left out one little part of the story. The electricity was out, so when we walked in everything was candle-lit and looked like a place you’d go on a date…that also confused her. And seeing as how the electricity was out they were only able to prepare half of the menu. So we all had salads and the BIGGEST brownie and ice cream we’d ever seen. The End.
Thanks everyone if you made it through the end of this blog, I know it was long…but it did sum up a while week! Take care!

“When worse comes to worse, get your mom to send you a $%*# ton of chocolate.”

2008-10-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

Today was an interesting day. Since it’s the last day before our trip to field based training it was pretty slack. We had a dental talk from Suni, our friendly neighborhood PCMO, which can be summed up into floss, floss, floss. It’s expensive to buy in Peru so don’t bother, she’ll give it to us for free…oh the joys of PC life, free floss…now I just need to get in the habit of doing it every day…it’ll make Dr. Jordan happy (my dentist from home). But after our talk we had a very animated 3rd year PCV named Joshua come in to talk to us. Let me just say this guy cracks me up! He just had some lines today that were so funny, I actually wrote them down in my notebook for the SOLE purpose of sharing them with you all faithful (I’m sure) readers of my blog. So here we go, let’s start the show:

“When worse comes to worse, get your mom to send you a $%*# ton of chocolate.”
Ok, so Joshua didn’t actually say this, his friend Cheri (I’m guessing another PCV) did. But it’s just so perfect. There is chocolate here in Peru. Every trainee in our group can tell you a Sublime bar is kinda a taste of home (think a really thick Mr. Goodbar, but way better chocolate to peanut ratio). But every now and again, we just need an M&M. In all my trips to markets and supermarcados here in Peru I’ve yet to encounter M&Ms…and I just can’t for the life of me figure out why. Its chocolate, that the Mars company swears doesn’t melt in your hands…but I can state for the record, it actually does…but its just so dern good I’m not sure how Barney has made it to this country and not M&Ms. Any way, onward to the next quote

“Don’t turn away food…you’ll give them a complex.”
So in Peru food is a VERY important part of establishing confidencia (confidence…yeah you guessed right, I love cognates too). Like I’m talking no matter how big the plate of rice and potatoes is that they put in front of you, you better darn well find room for it in your stomach to fit it. You see when I soon travel to my site for the next 2 years, the first 3 months will be spent doing what is called a Diagnostic Report, basically a written out report saying how everything works (or doesn’t work) in my soon to be barrio, and who’s who in the area. So in order to gain people’s confidence, and get to know them, what do you do in Peru? Why you go to their house for lunch, dinner, lonche, a snack, a baptism, a wedding, a birthday party…well really whatever they invite you to and you EAT. And I’ll tell you what; Peruvians can eat some rice and potatoes! But that’s ok because I’m about 98% sure I’ll never get sick of potatoes…but maybe I shouldn’t say that only a month into training…
“If you don’t care for your host family’s food then invite them to peanut butter on a regular basis. They will understand how you feel about their food.”
Ok for the most part, Peruvians are not a fan of peanut butter…no clue why, because lets face it its AMAZING. But for the most part, not big consumers of PB…que triste. But Joshua’s point was if you find your self eating the same…well untastey meal over and over again, just offer them some of you S./16 Peanut butter (yeah that’s about $5 a jar…a small jar) because most likely they aren’t going to like it either. But as part of Peruvian culture, since you are offering…they must eat it. And at some point they will reach their limit, because obviously peanut butter is WAY grosser than say chicken liver…haha. And they will ask to not have any because they aren’t really into it. Then that provides you the perfect opportunity to say: now that you mention it, I’m not really feeling the chicken liver either…no matter how much iron is has for me. Problem solved.

“Stear clear of the fridge. Its DANGEROUG….that 3 seconds of artic wind that come out when you open the door will cause you to get deathly ill.”
So to Americans the before stated will sounds crazy. How can you get sick from the fridge. The fridge keeps your food cold and actually prevents sickness from grossness that can grow in food right? WRONG. Ok so in Peru, Cold=Bad, no ifs, ands, or buts, about it. I was sick for the first 2 weeks I was here because I was wearing chacos when my mom and dad came to pick me up. I’m going to get sick because today I walked barefoot to the bathroom this morning…what I really had to go! And the list goes on. When you’re sick you can’t drink cold things, it’ll just make you worse, only hot things, so hot infact you’ll lose the linning to your mouth. But hey this is a cultural exchange so we’re all making the best of it, trying to wear our “house shoes,” not let our mom see us leave the house in chacos, you know the drill. But man, careful when you open that fridge, infact its best if you stand behind the door as you open it, use the door as a shield. And don’t stand in front of it for too long…that’ll get you sick in a heart beat.
Now let me clarify, I’m not mocking, There has to be some truth to the fear of cold, I mean I did actually get sick for a day after I went to that night soccer game in chacos and without a hat on my head…so my mom must know her stuff. It was just a shocker when we all came here to go from cold gingerale when you’re throat hurts to NOTHING COLD, ONLY HOT! But hey, I love hot tea, so it works out.

Well that’s all the insite I can share from our buddy Joshua, he was a hoot. I love hearing from the current serving PCVs because they all have so much information to share, and we all need to take in as much of it as we can…I mean we’re 6 weeks through training…only a few more left! GASP!

As for now, I’m heading to Jilili, Piura for Field Based Training. I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know how it goes!

Cuy Caca Powered Houses

2008-10-19T17:12:00.001-04:00

Hey guys and gals!
This week has been a crazy busy blur of homework, projects, birthdays, and cuy guano. So let’s start with the homework bit and make ya’ll wait on the cuy guano part (gotta save the juicy stuff for last). Well I moved up a level or two in my Spanish classes. I was a Novice High, now I’m an Intermediate Medium—and as with any advance in levels of classes, there is an increase of homework as well. Now to qualify, really it’s not anymore homework than I got each night in High School or College (but in College I had more time to work on stuff, seeing as class only took up a portion of my day) but as I mentioned last time I have about a 1-2 hour window to do homework…so it just seems overwhelming sometimes. So far I have been able to finish it all, with the help of my lovely family. They have been checking it to make sure it sounds reasonably intelligent, and that I use the right vocabulary and verb tenses.
Then to add to the homework pile, we have charlas to prepare for!! Charlas are just mini lectures using non-formal education techniques. I.E. not an old school lecture when we get up and preach a subject and everyone pays attention, or falls asleep—because let’s face it, those don’t work in English, let alone most of our broken Spainsh. Rather we teach charlas using games, activities, posters, and well, fun! So for next week my groups have to have 2 charlas ready. For Tuesday we (Ryan, James, and I) are giving a charla on alimentacion complementaria, complementary feeding, of infants between the ages of 6-11 months to all of the PC Staff and PCTs. So we are going to work today (Sunday) on a way to make that…well fun…to people who don’t have an infant and who aren’t thinking about a baby for, well we hope, at least the next 2 years. Then for Thursday my language class (Saritia, Frieda, Mark, and I) are presenting everything we could find about Lambayeque (a province in Peru). So far…we need to find more information. But my mom has agreed to help me cook a typical dish once I find one…so the internet will be my hero later on today.
Moving on to BIRTHDAYS! Our lovely Robyn had her 23rd birthday earlier this week and we all celebrated with an amazing cake and gaseosos (soda) at the St. Nicholas Heath Center where we have been having class recently. The cake was great, but sadly it didn’t leave me with much room for my awesome lunch of Aji de Gallina! Ok so this dish is by far my favorite dish in Peru (it was last time as well, but my family never made it…but this family loves the stuff!!) Its some sort of pure of aji, think hell of spicy pepper, milk, and who knows what…mixed up with shredded chicken served over potatoes and rice. MMMMMMMMMM. Ok moving on to the next birthdays. Brad has a birthday and a party, but I was feeling tired so decided to skip the “its Friday lets go grab something sweet or a beer to celebrate making it through the week” gathering and catch a nap. So I walked the 30 minute trek home (I hate combis so I avoid them when possible) and open the door to have my sister grab my arm and whisper something in my ear. Wait let me frame this for you. I was walking with my iPod in listening to country music, because let’s face it they just don’t have it here and I miss it! And my brain hasn’t quite gotten the English-Spanish 0.20 second switch time down yet. So I still have Josh Turner’s “Would You Go with Me?” stuck in my head and I get a “Yennifer! Nos Olvido la cumpli de mi papi” (aka my whole family forgot that day was my dad’s birthday…oops!) So the whole family, including me, goes into super rush mode trying to go buy a Lonche (a snack before dinner) and some gaseoso to throw together a last minute mini party before my dad makes it back from his accordion jam session down the hill (yeah how bad ass, my dad plays the accordion). Needless to say it was funny as heck, and we celebrate what I think was my dad’s 60-something birthday. Now before you mock me for not knowing my dad’s age, I’m sure they told me the first day I was here…but I forgot, and it’s IMPOSSIBLE to guess how old a Peruvian is.
Ok on to the part you all really have been reading this far for. CUY GUANO! So we went to a “green” house, that was actually called the white house (casa blanca)…have I lost anyone yet? Well this house was about 2 hours away from the center in Chaclacayo in…Pacaha…something Lima. (sorry I stink at town names). But it was basically a husband and wife team, with assistants, who have a completely 100% green and self sustaining house. They grown their own food, veggies, fruit, and meat, and power their house off of methane gas released from this huge underground digester that basically eats everything that doesn’t go into compost. It was really cool. They run everything that’s usually gas powered off, well basically farts. So the stove and gas lights, and then run a gas generator that powers their indoor lights, tv, and so on. Not to mention the older couple were cute as hell, it was just a fun day.
After the day of cuy farts, I decided I was going to go to this AMAZING pastry shop near my school to buy a postre (dessert) for my dad’s real birthday party we’re throwing today. I got the most amazing apple pie I’ve ever seen…sorry dad, but its true…just…wow, mouth water to look at, I can’t wait to taste it later! I’ll let ya’ll know how it turned out.
Before I leave to go join in on the usually Sunday rituals of a late breakfast and lots of laundry I’ll fill you in on my newest piece of information: I’m going to Alta Puira for field based training the week after next. While I was originally a little sad to find out this information, because I had always associated Puira with the beach…and well flat land--Jorge, one of our AMAZING PCMO (Peace Corps Medical Officer) has a presentation of PCVs sites all around the country. And low and behold…Alta Puria has MOUNTAINS and GREEN STUFF!!! God it looked amazing in the photos. It literally turned me from a grump to the happiest person in the room. Cause ya’ll know I love me some mountains!!!

Ok my laundry is calling, time to go add to these calluses on my hands and do this stuff the old school way! Miss everyone back home! Stay safe ! Love ya’ll, laters!

Poco a Poco

2008-10-15T21:56:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone!
Sorry I’ve been so bad about posting blogs, finding the time to sit down and type up one has been harder than I thought. Here’s a lil rundown of my day to day life: Usually I wake up around 6:30 (6:15 if it’s a shower day) get dressed, eat breakfast, and am out the door and meeting the other guys in the neighborhood by 7:20 to walk to school, or to get to someone’s house if language classes are in the neighborhoods that day. Classes start at 8 and the first session goes until 12. Then its LUNCH time--a wonderful time of day where all of us 20-somethings (and a few 30 and 60-somethings) regress back to our elementary school days and play “who has the best lunch” or “who the hell wants to trade??” Its actually really amusing to watch us eat. Peruvians eat a MUCH larger portion of food than Americans, and most of it is filled up with potatoes and rice, with a meat of some sort, and a sauce with some veggies. Therefore I get a kick out of watching us rationalize eating as much as we did in our little Tupperware containers. “I ate all my meat and potatoes and half of my rice…if I give the rest of the rice to the compost or the cat then it won’t go to waste…and my mom will never know I didn’t finish.” Yeah ya’ll might laugh, but that is a daily occurrence at the training center.

After lunch we have our technical training classes (health, wat san, and medio amb) or lectures as a whole group depending on the day. And we wrap up classes by 5, then its either hike it on back to 3 de Octubre, or stick around the center for some PC activities. Some people have started a running group, a yoga group, music group, salsa dancing, then there are the pc t-shirt committee, and other fun things that go on till 6. Either way after that long day I get back to my house around 6 or 7 depending on what happens after class and fill my family in on my day and watch the news until…the soaps come on!!! I made myself a promise…I’m not exactly sure when, but long ago I said I’d never get into watching soaps…well good luck trying to keep that going in a Peruvian household with a tv! From 8-10 its soap time! Victoria is the favorite in my house—If I could tell you what it was about I would, but from all I have gathered there’s one woman named Victoria with way too much drama and men in her life. But after some tv/parents time with some homework squeezed in there, I usually pass out in my bed by 9:30 or 10:30 depending on the day and start the whole process over again.
So tonight being another normal night, I’m sitting on my bed in my room listening to Victoria (my room is technically walled in, but there are 2 windows without the glass part that have curtains over them, so sound travels well—but the good part is my room has the best air circulation in the house!) and typing up this blog at 8:57pm. I only tell you the time because I know that I won’t be able to post this blog for at least another day and I don’t want to confuse people with times. I just had an awesome dinner of arroz (rice), with papas (potatoes), cebollas (onions), zanahorias (carrots), and a fried egg—sunny side up style. Big surprise on the rice and potatoes I know—but somehow in Peru we manage to eat the same 10 foods, but every time it tastes different. I swear sometimes at lunch we all can do nothing but laugh when someone asks us what we got for lunch, because 8 times out of 10 we don’t know the name of the dish. So it’s, “Hey today I got rice and potatoes with some chicken” followed by someone else saying, “dude me to! Wait…mine’s yellow, yours is brown…is yours spicy?”, “Naw its chifa [chineese type food here in Peru].” Congratulations you have now felt what it is like to sit at the PC lunch table, just multiply that conversation by 10.

Oh and today I received my first letters/care packages from home, so to all you other slackers step up your game! My mom was kind enough to send me a beany baby (yeah remember those things!) for my 2 year old niece. Tonight we taught her how to say Bones in both English and Spanish (hueso in Spanish) and I translated the poem that comes with them and apologized for it not rhyming. She LOVES this thing, it has not left her side for the past 2 hours and I think I hear her throwing a fit now because she needs a bath and Bones can’t go with her. I tell you what it’s the small things here that just make me so happy. My mom also sent me some news paper clippings—a few with my RHS girls Field Hockey pictures!!!! Sorry about the East Chapel Hill game girls, but congrats on the Jordan victory!!! You’ll be happy to know your photos have now been shown to dern near my whole neighborhood. My mom was so proud to show off “her gringa’s field hockey team” to the neighbors tonight, so Carmen, Merissa, and Abby ya’ll are now famous in 3 de Octubre!

Another thing, sorry but I have a lot to catch ya’ll up on, I had my first Charla on Monday. A charla is basically a lecture, they can be given in a formal way (ie a standard lecture, the teacher talks, and prays that the students absorb all the information), or in an informal way (through games, facilitations, skits, puppet shows, the list goes on). And special thanks to my favorite Outdoor Leadership Instructors Tommy, T-Dash, and Ted for helping me be the most bad ass facilitator I can be! This charla would have been SO scary had ya’ll not made me (for a grade of course) practice so many lesson plans and lectures. Our lecture was on the importance of cleaning your teeth. Sam, James, and I drew up some teeth and had a happy side and a sad side. We asked the kids T/F questions about brushing their teeth and if they thought the answer was true they’d show the happy side, and if it was false the sad. Then after we passed out drawings on dulces (sweets) with tape on the back and had then put them on 4 of their classmates who were “teeth” for the activity. We then “brushed” the teeth and “flossed” (with a piece of climbing rope!! Yeah buddy!) to remove the sweets from the teeth. All and all I think the charla went really well. We gave the lecture twice in 2 classrooms in a primeria (elementary school) to the 3 and 4th levels (around 8-10 year olds). The kids knew most of the things we taught about brushing their teeth, because they have had local government officials and doctors talk to them. But the problem with most places in Peru is not the lack of information; it’s the lack of follow through and the lack of available resources. As one kid in one of the classes pointed out, “it’s hard to brush your teeth when you don’t have the money to buy a toothbrush or toothpaste.”

But then again, that’s why I’m here--to help provide not just information, but resources to a rural community in Peru. As with everything else in my new PC life “poco a poco” is the way to think about everything (that is “little by little”). Sharing information, cultures, technology, education, resources, etc. takes time, it all happens poco a poco.

TEMBLOR!!!!

2008-10-07T18:37:00.002-04:00

Ok so This post is probably going to be relatively short since I'm sitting in the local internet cafe and its not very conducive to thinking. But I wanted to tell you all about my very first earthquake!!!! Now before you all (and my mother) flip out, according to the news today it was a magnitude 4 so it wasnt that bad. But the story:

My host dad Elipo has just finished asking me to explain hurricanes to him. The news Last night was about all the issues going on in America (PS someone fill me in please...we are all out of the loop) and the announcer mentioned hurricanes. So mid sentence of me explaining that hurricanes were not like earthquakes all the dogs in the neighborhood start barking. And then literally 2 seconds later my mom gets this look on her face--it can be best described as the one a coach gets right before their team gets scored on--and then the house starts shaking. Next thing I know I'm being yelled at in Spanish to get outside FAST. The tremor has stopped by the time we all got outside, and it really wasnt that big of an earthquake. But the funny part comes next. So I apparently had the biggest smile on my face once we all got outside--I mean it was my first earth quake--and the only thing I could say was "es verdad, en cierto" aka "seriously, really?" my mom just laughed and called me a silly gringo.

But needless so say there were no other trembles, everyone is ok, it was just exciting for me since it was my first. My new friends from Cali didn't think anything of it.

Tomorrow I actually have a DAY OFF!!!!!! My first day off in my entire 3 something weeks here in Peru--there is no free time in the Peace Corps. So I look forward to updating this blog some more tomorrrow.

Till then: love you all, miss you all!

ps Wendy and Derrick: send me plants 101 so I can translate it to Spanish. Sounds like I'll be doing more community gardening than I thought and I'd like ya'lls help!

Chisme is Funny!

2008-09-28T21:50:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone. Sorry again these postings haven’t been as regular as I was hoping. It’s been incredibly hard to find the free time to connect to the internet…in fact right now I’m technically looking up facts about Peru’s health situation. I’ve become rather adapt at multitasking, more so than when I was in the States. For instance I am now no longer thinking in English and attempting to talk in Spanish—I’m just thinking in Spanglish and talking in slightly better Spanish. It’s been a long 2 weeks. I forgot how hard it is to talk in Spanish all day…let alone on top of 10 hours of class and work.

So to fill you in on the new stuff…ok as soon as I typed that I realized the week has become a complete blur. So I will attempt to summarize with some highlights. Yesterday (sat) we went to the Agriculture University located about 40 minutes away from Chaclacayo outside of Lima for our first “Farmer” lessons. It was SOOO much fun. Tomorrow I will hopefully finally get some pictures up for everyone. And P.S. Derrick and my Family you will be so proud: I actually knew some of the plants!!!! I now have a new favorite fruit in the whole wide world. It’s called a Pepino, a Cantaloupe like fruit. It’s about the size of a softball and is a pale yellow with purple stripes. It tastes like a piece of candy but is juicy like a watermelon. Our instructor for the day was a really cool graduate student named Jamie and he took us around the whole farm and in all the green houses. It was so much fun playing “guess that plant” with all the little seedlings. AND the best part, I am now the proud mama to some seedlings…I forget exactly what the seeds I got handed were. And before you go mocking me, he told us the names in Spanish, the packaging was in Japanese, and it was right around lunch time…so I’ll get back to you on what they were. But we also had Clearing and Tilling 101 (old school style with a shovel) where I was complemented on actually knowing how to handle a shovel…I think it was a complement at least. It was a lot of fun and I can’t wait to go back next week!

After “farming 101” I tried to round up a few people to head to my Host family’s house from last time. It didn’t work, there was too much else to do. Paloma I PROMISE I’ll come next weekend! A group of us went to Jockey Plaza and got some “American Food” then headed on to Miraflores to see the beach. It was a lot of fun because I got to play tour guide for our group of 7 gringos. We went to Larco Mar, Parque de Amor, and then down to the beach to see the Pacific. We then crammed all 7 of us into a taxi to head to the combi stop to head home. After a 2.5 hour combi ride I was back in 3 de Octubre with my host family and ready to party!

No I have not turned into a crazy partier, but my town has. Our town virgin (all the towns have them) is being celebrated this weekend. So we have had LITERALLY nonstop dancing/drinking/and music. It has been just insane. There were fireworks last night at 2 am that were UNBELIVABLE. Totally would have been against every fire code law in the United States. They constructed this 20 foot tall wood (yes wood, as in flammable) tower that has spinning and sparking, and howling fireworks attached to it. Now I know some of you are thinking “well jenny, that doesn’t sound too bad” I forgot to mention we were on the Chancha (the soccer stadium about the size of a basketball court) with 400 of our closest drunk friends. After the fireworks there was some dancing and more music, interrupted for one minute when some guy in the crowd decided he didn’t like the song and threw a punch at the band…haha.

But the new town “chisme” (gossip in Spanish) is now that Ryan O’Hara and I are dating…completely not true. But to frame this story for you: 1. In Peru if a guy walks a girl home it’s a date. 2. If you dance together it means something’s up. Okay so I’m the only girl living in 3 de Octubre, thereby I am forced to walk home with 4 of the males that live in my barrio…therefore making me look…well somewhat flirty. Then due to the fact that Ryan and I like to walk while the other guys prefer to ride the combi, I walk with him more than others. Add the cherry on top with him forcing me to dance at the party last night…ta-da I am now apparently not single…small town gossip. Go figure.

On that note I’m going to get back to actually doing work and talk to you all later!

Love you all!

Greetings from Chaclayo!!!!!!!

2008-09-21T13:10:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone, So sorry it has been so long since my last post...Internet has been hard to come by. I finally found a pretty cheap internet cafe near my house, so hopefully I can be more regular with the posts!

Ok to fill you in. I am living in the barrio of 3 de Octubre about a 40 minute walk from the Peace Corps center in Chaclayo. My family is absolutly amazing! I have a host mom, Luzmila, a dad, Elipio, Sister, Liz, brother, Limber, sister in law, Roxanna, and a niece Alejandra. I love them all, they have been so greast helping me with my spanish and feeding me very well! Needless to say I do love Peruvian food!

Classes have been going great so far. The usual bumps in trying to remember my spanish have occurred. My Spanish class is very small, only 4 people in my group (this is normal for a Peace Corps language group) and my Health classes have been very informative! I am just hving such a blast getting to know the other 46 people in my training class. My only regret is that I dont have much time to keep in touch with you all from home. I wake up at 6 and am meeting the other 4 gringos in my barrio by 7 to walk to class. We are done by 5 and spend a few hours getting to know the city and its people. Then I´m usually home by 7 or 8 in time for either supper or the neighborhood soccer tournament. Right now El Cuerpo de Paz has lost 2 games...but they were very close!

But to sum up this post. I´m doing good, I love ev erything here...except for the keyboards...so I apologize for the errors I´m sure are in here! And I miss you all Loads. I will try to post some pictures and a video of my house tomorrow!

Love you all!
Jenny