My Last Hurrah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(that's a happy Eddie on the left)

Packing Up

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

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

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

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

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

Elmo's Diner Memories

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

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

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

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

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

Chicken and Dumplings: Check

Skin-Off Mashed Potatoes: Check

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vacations Keep us Sane

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MMMMM Bagels

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

1.       I increased my chocolate intake

2.       I increased my Bagel intake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lessons Learned

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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