These photos are from Early In Service Training in Ancash.

The above photo is my little buddy Maju who was glued to my side every afternoon when she came home from school. I sincerely miss the little booger.

11 Enero 2011

Yesterday felt SO good.

I was busy as a bee all day running around printing off solucitudes, delivering them to volunteers, instructing the volunteers what to do with them, meeting with nurses, and NGO members in Chivay. I felt like me. Confident and efficient.

Then, I hopped on a bus to Arequipa for an 8 o'clock meeting this morning with a professor that teaching in Madrigal who is living in Arequipa during the rainy season. I have asked her to be the local representative for the VALE after-school program and invited her to come to Lima with me in March for a training on sustaiable development and the Peace Corps 50th Anneversary celebration. Her name is Angelica. She was the professor I was post impressed with while doing my teacher observations last year and the kids really admire and trust her. She is also a peer that I can relate to in a sense and one of the few people in Madrigal I feel that way about. We have spent bus rides chatting it up, and evenings caught in the street in conversation we didn't want to leave. It is her class that is doing a letter exchange through me with a class in the US, and it is her that I go to when I am confused or need help with something. She is beyond excited to get to go to Lima and must have hugged me 5 times after our meeting today.

Currently, I am sitting in a coffee shop working on the curriculum. I want it done within the month. Wish me luck!

9 Enero 2011

7:30am

This morning as my family headed out to the fields I proclaimed that I would need to do my laundry.

“But when I finish, I will come meet you.”

“No, hijita, it will take you all day to do your laundry.”

“Ok, we will see. If I finish I will come find you in the fields.”

Oh, lordy, was she right.

I started to fill up the tub made from old tire and the water was murky. I cleaned the tub and filled it again. Murky. Reapeat. Murky. And when I say murky, I mean brown.

“Do you think the tub is dirty or is the water?”

“The water is brown most of rainy season.”

“So how do you wash your clothes?”

They all just looked at me. It became very obvious that they just wash their clothes in the dirty water.

“Some women take the family clothes to the spring”

“Ah, ok”

“Will we drink this water?”

“Of course, it is fine when it is boiled.”

Time to buy bottled water.

8:00am

I packed up my all my dirty clothes and headed to the spring. There were women there, as always, washing clothes, bathing themselves and their kids. But today no one was chatting like usual. Some clouds were peaking over the side of the canyon and we new the afternoon rain would be strong. So, the women focused on washing as quickly as possible at 8am so their clothes would be dry before the rain started. I joined the concern club and scrubbed away.

10:00am

As you may know, carrying wet clothes is no easy feat. Carrying all of your clothes wet is nearly impossible. I figured this out the first time I went to the spring and had to stop every ten paces on the hike home up canyon. Now I wash the clothes in shifts (broken apart by color of course, that’s for you Mom), but that takes much longer and he clouds were looming.

Just as I got back to my house with all my clean laundry around 11am it started to rain. Now what? Literally everything is wet, and I have to pack for my quechua classes in Chivay tomorrow. So, I start pounding nails in my ceiling and stringing rope all over my 3 meter by 2 meter room (lots-o-zig-zags). When I run out of rope I curse at myself for a little bit then decide to balance a long stick between a chair and my bed to hang some more clothes. When that task is completed my room is completely inaccessible, but I can kind of crawl to my bed (which needs to be cleaned because it is covered in adobe debris from pounding nails) and I sit on my bed , arms crossed, pondering what the heck I am going to do with the other mountain of clothes that is sopping wet slung over my door.

1:00pm

Just then, the rope slides off the nail and all my pants don’t fall on the dirt floor (which would be bad), but worse, in the dirty dish water.

So, I re-string the rope, re-wash my pants with water from the kettle, and disperse the heavy clothing more evenly among the threads around my room.

Then, the Sun comes out. I dash to move everything outside for whatever amount of time we will have Sun. It is now 2pm… laundry still not done.

More clouds in the horizon and everything surely did not dry in the one hour of sunlight.

The rain starts.

Everything comes back in.

3:00pm

Then it stops.

Everything goes back out.

Now it’s 4ish, my clothes are still very wet, and I hear thunder in the distance.

“Why,” you might ask, “don’t you just do your laundry on a day when it doesn’t rain?”

It’s the rainy season. It rains everyday, often all day.

What do people in town do? They don’t wash their clothes much. They wear the same clothes over and over (this heavily contributes to the high rates of urinal and vaginal tract infection according to the nurses).

So they wear the same one outfit (yup, same undies too from what I an deduct) for a week or two until their clothes dry.

So… now what?

6:00

My host mother and sister came back from the fields and laughed when they saw my bedroom. We sat and munched on pineapple I brought from the city as we shared one anothers’ days.

Little did I know that before I got up this morning they had killed and cleaned two rabbits for dinner! Woot woot! Roxana and I were placed in charge of rice and onions on my stove while Juana, my host mom, finished gutting and frying the rabbits.

I can get over the rabbit guts that were hanging over the fire (she missed the pan with some of the intestines). I can get over the fact that she never cleans her grinding stone and there are literally decades of crushed pepper mashed into tonight’s sauce. I can even deal with the fact that no one washed their hands but me before we started cooking. But, is it really worth it with the brown water? Washing and boiling the rice in the brown water is not something I can get over. Nor washing all our plates in the same murky yuck. The cherry on top was when they boiled it and added cocoa to make hot chocolate. I took one sip and my nose turned up. I really couldn’t handle the knowledge that this matte was brown even before they added the chocolate.

This morning I thought bottled water, but that is going to get very expensive very fast. Can you imagine washing you face in brown, murky water? I am going to need to hall in a TON of water to wash my self, fruits, dishes, and cook with.

It would be better to do some sort of filter system. I remember Peace Corps mentioning they could send us such a thing, but I need it now. Not in a month. Not in 3 months. I need it tomorrow. Knowing Peace Corps nature, I doubt I would receive the filter system anytime soon.

It would also be good for me to demonstrate to the family that filtering is easy and inexpensive. Cross your fingers for me. Until them, I am going to continue buy 1 liter water bottles daily at the tienda down the street.

No wonder half the pueblo goes to Arequipa City in the rainy season. It really is hard to live here right now.

8 Enero 2011

Rejuvenated!

This delightful day was spent in the fields. We went out to pasture with the cows and spent the day there, very shepherd style.

They feed the cows and bulls alfalfa, but for some reason yet to be understood by me, you have to feed them the alfalfa slowly so that their bellies don’t swell and they die. If there is a chemist amongst those reading that could explain this to me I would GREATLY appreciate it. Anyways, we take the herd (of 5) to the field, tie them up, and cut alfalfa and feed it to them about one mountain every hour...all day. Cutting the alfalfa itself is kind of like mowing your tall lawn by hand with a knife. Once alfalfa is planted it re-grows in about a month (like grass) for up to 10 years without replanting. This is why it is such a great food source here for their cattle. However, the manner in which we must feed them is laborious. It requires you do be in the field just about all day every day, which is usually a woman’s job because she also handles the milking of the females. One of my little side dreams is to convince the kids in town they bring to the fields with them books to read instead of throwing rocks at each other or the cows.

But, slicing down the alfalfa doesn’t take a lot of strength, or thought, so it is a meditation I have come to enjoy. Being surrounded by the mountainous beauty of the canyon only solidifies my pleasure.

My host mother brought us lunch and my nervous stomach looked at the tuna/onion/rice mix without much interest. “Come, come, debes comer algo, debes comer todo.”- Eat, eat, you should each something, you should eat it all. In my consistent nature of never saying no to food I told my tummy to bucker up and boy did she. She ate the whole plate. I am back in full steam! Some mumbles and grumbles during digestion, but functional once again! Take that intestinal bacteria!

One of the joys of Peace Corps is the free time. While the cows and bulls munched their alfalfa, I laid on my back in the sun and read. I am finally able to read the pile of books I have been collecting all my life waiting for the free time to savor them. Last night I started Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, gifted to me by my mother years ago. It is marvelous. Every woman would enjoy the flavor of this book. It is written in a speech that is eternal and true and explores all reaches of birth, womanhood, faith, sex, death, relationships and beyond. Each woman’s story I have read in the bible, but this is completely new, and their lifestyle couldn’t be more relatable to me today. In every female character Anita re-introduces me to I can see the soul of a woman I have loved, and the antiquity of her language and her story connects my heart to the women centuries before me. I am a couple hundred pages in and must declare the tale is beautiful.

Now, I sit on my bed listening to the music of the rain on my tin roof and allow my mind to travel to Egypt with the wives and daughters of Jacob.

7 Enero 2011

I successfully utterly and completely jinxed myself yesterday.

No more than 2 hours after journaling I started piling alpaca blankets on me because I was freezing cold. I was super confused how my little host cousin was running around in nothing more than a long sleeve shirt when I was covered in goosebumps and shivering under 4 heavy blankets. I had fixed popcorn and no-bake-cookies and we were all watching a movie together in the my family’s room. I began to feel nauseous and headed to my room to get in my sleeping bag so I wouldn’t feel so cold. The strange thing was that even in my below zero bag I was still shivering like my body was packed in snow. I was completely baffled.

My loving host sister came to check on me and when she saw my spasming body she got a little spooked and started to fix me eucalyptus and honey tea. Next my host mother came in and said munyo would be better for an upset stomach but we didn’t have any. I took my temperature and it was a good 3 degrees higher than normal. It took all my strength to keep my teeth from chattering and breaking the thermometer. Then a flash of last week’s meeting I had with the Health Post coordinator came into my head, “Right now there isn’t a nurse at the post in Madrigal because they are in transition. There should be someone there in about a week, but for now it is closed.”

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

I feel like someone has taken a crow bar and beaten the crap out of me and then packed my body in an ice box and soon my insides just might explode and there is no nurse or doctor for hours. Figures. I called the Peace Corps doctor 24hour line and got a busy signal for about an hour. Someone must have been in worse shape than me. So, I popped an aspirin, sipped some coca leaf tea (we switched tactics), and we stuffed me in about 3 layers of clothes, my sub zero sleeping bag, and then piled 6 alpaca blankets on top. My poor host family was super concerned, and quickly I realized I was truly ill.

We determined that it must have been the neighbor’s milk she offered me that morning. The three step process of preparing milk to a drinkable state is often overlooked, like hand washing, teeth brushing and the like.

When my insides finally did explode from both ends around 10pm I called the PC doctors again. Sweet and comforting he said he gets about 10 of these phone calls a day from Peace Corps volunteers in Peru and said that the medication is in my first aid kit they gave me in training. Thank the lord! But, he warned me, it will be a rough night. He was so right. After an eternity of moaning and rolling around in bed I took my second dose of horse-pill antibiotics 12 hours later. The fever was gone and I stripped down to normal attire and had the strength to fix myself some oatmeal. Two spoonfuls and my stomach said that was enough. Roxana (my darling host sister) went and bought me 5 bottles of water because she remembered that I told her mom to drink water when she had diarrhea. I poured in the dehydration salts also provided in the first aid kit and finally slept.

Now I have officially joined the 100% of South America PC volunteers that experience life changing diarrhea.

Yesterday’s experience made possible by the following:

My mom: mercury thermometer

Betty Kleopfer: Quaker oatmeal

Beckwiths: The Girl Who Played With Fire –great movie!

6 Enero 2011 take two

I returned to site expecting a few delights:

1) Guinea pigs in the chicken coop I built before I left.

2) A fresh layer of dirt over my entire bedroom (it blows in the cracks in the door and window if I don’t clean it daily).

3) Fresh underwear!

Only one of those expectations came true.

Everything, including my bed and kitchen, was covered in a light layer of what they call “polvo” or blown dirt. I spent a few hours cleaning everything from my sugar jar to my sleeping bag, to by reading material.

There were no guinea pigs in my chicken coop!! Yay! Instead, the family dog had given birth and made that her family’s home. Thank god I wasn’t here for the birth because they drowned all the female puppies as a form of population control. But, we have 5 beautiful little male puppies that I just love to sit in the chicken coop with and stare at. Their eyes have yet to open and they are about the size of my palm.

Unfortunately, there were no fresh underwear to be found. Drat! The hand washing is taking a toll on my skivvies and I have had to throw away quite a holey few at this point. The rainy season, more than anything, keeps me from doing serious laundry. No Sun= no dry clothes and wet clothes do me no good. But, tomorrow’s plan is to turn my bedroom into a laundry mat.

As I was cleaning the dirt from my already cleaned dishes I looked up and a bull had entered the house. Yup, full blown torro loco had just walked in the front door. I yelled for Roxana and we both tried to make loud noises to scare the bull out, but, apparently the bull that was waiting outside to fight the bull that was inside was scarier than we were. Our house was a more comfy place for Mr. Bull and he had no interest in returning to the bull ring (no pun needed) that the street outside has become. The solution? Scare away the bull that was outside before the bull that was inside could do any damage. It worked. They both ended up trotting away down the street. The questions of the day were, where did they go? And, who is their owner? Meh. No harm done.

This morning Roxana woke me up and said, “The comvi leaves in 10 minutes, lets go visit my “cunyada” (the wife of her brother) in Lari”. I threw on clothes and splashed my face and we ran down the street, coats in hand and shoes untied.

When we got there I played with the family kids (human and goat) while Roxana visited with her sister-in-law. The whole family was very sweet and one of the kids (human) decided to come back to Madrigal with us and visit her grandparents. There are no comvis in the morning from Lari to Madrigal, so we had to hike it. It is such a beautiful hike, I never mind it. And, as it is spring here all the fields and flowers are just beginning to bloom. We picked mountains of wildflowers to bring back to the house. I was in heaven; we were all having a blast. “I’ll race you to the sheep!” “I’ll race you to the pine” “Don’t drop the cactus flower! It’s the prettiest!”

Now, my cold is calling me back to bed. This cold has sent me a fabulous reminder to thank my body whole fully. Yeah, my back hurts sometimes, and yeah I have a runny nose now, I even get a quick bout of diarrhea here and there from unproperly boiled milk or unwashed hands serving me alpaca. But, it could be so much worse. Seeing other volunteers go through intestinal worms or nasty parasites gives me a world of thanks for my hearty body and dumb good luck.

Knock on wood for me!

6 Enero 2011

My entire vacation in Cusco I did not blog.

That doesn’t mean nothing worth reporting didn’t happen.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t have some life changing revelations (yeah, I know I been havin’ those a lot lately).

I think it just means I was surrounded by people I could talk to.

Cuzco has this fabulous mixed culture. I think about half the population is made up of people who traveled there to visit from all over the world and they just stayed. Cuzco has an ancient magnetic energy that reminds me very much for Granada, Spain. The beauty of the rolling mountains, distant clouds, and timeworn culture create a strong aura that is undeniable.

Like Austin, Portland, and Granada, Cuzco is a place where I can feel confident and comfortable being me and continuing my life of discovery. I made dear friends in no time. We could share our truest thoughts with one another and work through.

Like the theory of the United States, I, and those I hold dearest, search for land where many cultures live simultaneously constantly learning and teaching together.

Some highlights of the trip:

The day before New Years we traveled to Pisac, a small town outside of Cusco that is hippie central. Full of artisans, Cesar, our friends and I felt right at home there. We did a small purification ceremony next to the river to prepare our bodies for the new year. We passed a lime(can also be done with an egg) over our bodies to pull out what we don’t want to have in our spirits for the year to come. We crushed salt in our hands and through any sadness over our shoulders. Then we smoked a local tobacco which was extremely relaxing and chatted about our goals and feelings for the new year.

After a delicious dinner at a friend’s restaurant we spent New Years Eve in the Plaza de Armas where the entire population of the city and surrounding towns gathered (in their yellow underwear), to set off fireworks and run around the plaza in circles to bring travel in the year to come.

The days before new years I had been searching for a dress to wear New Years Eve night. Cesar wanted to dress up and I didn’t have anything I felt appropriate. I packed for the Peace Corps. I spent an entire day looking for a dress and a pair of heals and couldn’t find anything that was my style or fit quite right. Cesar met up with me one afternoon to see three dresses I had picked out. Of course, he loved all three, no help at all. When I said I should just buy all three so I have dresses to wear in Peru he said, “That is not the woman I fell in love with”. I am telling you, he is fabulous. Pleased, I left the market without buying a single dress and decided to make it work with what I had in my backpack.

We spent the days following New Years sipping the least expensive coffee we could find (as money between the two of us was thin) and chatting with friends from Germany, Peru, Jordan, Australia, Holland, and more. The bounce between languages always gives me a high.

When the money ran out we hopped on a bus and headed back to Arequipa. Our good friend from Jordan came with us. It is a big running joke that Josef and I are such good friends because according to pop culture United States citizens and citizens from the Middle East should be threatening each other’s lives, not chatting in Spanish over dinner. When we boarded the bus Cesar acted out a huge drama when Josef got on begging him not to bring a bomb on board just because his girlfriend was a gringa. Josef played along perfectly and went to the bus attendant and asked that he speak with the disruptive passenger sitting next to the white girl. When the attendant walked over to politely ask Cesar to be more quite and accepting of other cultures on the bus ride I burst out laughing. The poor attendant must have thought I was a lunatic. Cesar cried he was laughing so hard, “Well played Josef”. Similar scenes have been acted out in coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, usually at the workers expense, but always, in the end, to everyone around us’ enjoyment.

On the below zero ride down the mountain in the unheated bus, both Cesar and I got a cold. I slept all of the following day until my bus left for the Canyon then slept the entire 5 hour ride and arrived in the canyon the following morning.

January 4^th I met with a representative from the Non-Profit Quechua Benefit and we traveled to 5 pueblos in the canyon where we are coordinating free dental visits with the Non-Profit Health Bridges International. It was an exhausting day with a variety of emotions. One nurse actually said she would be happy to give us permission to come use her facility but couldn’t promise she would be there the day of the event to unlock the doors (yes, my ears were literally fuming as I gripped the smile on my face with all my might). Other nurses were more helpful and offering to help organize the people in their towns that needed the most help (god-sends). I have much more work to do for this project and less than a month to get it all worked out. It will be a very exciting event for everyone involved in the end.

I slept most of the day of the fifth and kicked this cold in the butt then hopped on a minibus back to Madrigal with a backpack full of dirty clothes, fruits and veggies, belated Christams presents, and a runny nose. It was a lovely vacation.