Being with my host family in Lima is delightful. We feel right at home together, cooking, cleaning, chatting, etc. My host sisters and I even put in a video she got at the market that has popular Peruvian songs and teaches you the dance moves. We were laughing and crying together trying to learn the steps. It was completely geeky and a complete blast.
This morning we spent the day in the garden pruning and tending to the chickens. It has been such a comfortable day.
Late last week I began a three-day journey from my site in Southern Peru to Peace Crops Early In Service Training in a central Peruvian department called Ancash. 5 buses, one break down, 10 hours of sleep, 4 meals, and three days later we arrived at our conference center in Yangay, a small city just outside of Huaraz. Google it, and goodle Huascaran. I traveled with another volunteer for safety reasons, and instead of sleeping we were both quite literally jaw dropped and staring out the windows as we wove through the mountains of Ancash. Above the young cornfields the setting Sun colored the snow-peaks with an orange glow that made the clouds look purple and spurious.
The clouds were so low and dense that evening we had no idea we were in the foothills of the infamous Huascaran. The following morning, with a slight lift of the nose, the double peaks of Huascaran revealed themselves.
Otherwise, this week has been uninteresting in every aspect of the word. Quite literally locked up in this rural conference center with extremely limited hot water, internet, and electricity, we have been bombarded with lecture after lecture on how to plan and implament sustainable projects for the year to come. My mental escape was gifted to me through the eyes and arms of a 5-year-old, “Maju”, the daughter of the cook for the center we are staying in. I delighted her and her cousin when we first met with the games my father used to play with me when I was little (“spidy” hands tickling and counting your ribs, letting the kids fly around the yard in your arms, and even little hints of “doctor dangerous”), and now she rushes to my side when she gets home from kindergarten. If I am in a lecture she is set up with crayons and paper and every five minutes she patiently lifts her drawing to show me the progress and receive a smile. Her little hand, longing for affection, in my hand that never felt so large, follows me around the compound every evening. I can’t get enough of it. Turning everything I am doing into a learning experience for her keeps my heart in the game while Peace Coros pumps up my brain.
It has been a delight to see the other volunteers I was trained with after our first three months at site. Everyone the same, but everyone different. What we have learned in such a short time is distinct in our eyes and our thoughts. Leaving training three months ago we were all close, but now that we are experiencing together, we have become a family; comfortable, and dependent on each other.
But, the gossip, “oh, my lord!” I can’t handle the wispers about who isn’t doing enough work at their site and who has gained wait. So judgey. We really are a true family.
Tomorrow we depart to return to our sites. I am going to stop in Lima on the return to Ancash and visit my host family from training. A good friend of mine that is a volunteer is having a surgery on Monday so I will be her chaperone for the remainder of the journey back to Arequipa. Here we go… back on busses.
8:00am
Today is my host father’s birthday.
As I am frantically tabulating all the information in my surveys and writing my community diagnostic my host mother is killing, cleaning, and preparing rabbit for dinner.
I am very frustrated that I wasn’t able to knit with her yesterday afternoon and chop up some rabbit with her this morning, but the responsible woman buried somewhere in me knows I only have 3 days to write this diagnostic for Peace Corps and two of those three days I will be on buses traveling to Early In Service Training.
Wish me luck! 20 pages of puked Spanish, here I come.
1:20pm
What is even harder than working through complicated statistical equations you haven’t studied in years? Working through complicated statistical equations you haven’t studied in years with the most annoying creature on the planet buzzing around your head, hands, computer, tea, feet, everything! Damn flies might actually cause me to lose my mind.
5:00pm
My host father came back from the fields today and when he saw my face peek over my laptop he smiled and walked over so that I could wish him a Feliz Cumpleanyos. Today was the day I ate food with the family that actually tasted good to me. Roasted hare. So delicious! I devoured my rabbit leg (yup, it still had the toes and everything, the dog got the toes, don’t worry). Dinner was followed by a series of traditions that I felt elated to be a part of. My host father kept telling me that I am a part of the family now as I helped him break apart pieces of alpaca chest, count out 6 coca leaves, wrip pine needles, count 3 corn kernels at a time and them pile them all together in a historically specific design. Then my host father whispered prayers to the small, specific pile, and poured a strong alcohol into a shell and sprinkled it over the small mountain. Then every woman in the room breathed on the pile before we threw it into a pile of incense. As the earthly gifts burned we listened carefully to the cracks. You have to hope for at least three cracks which symbolize a prosperous year to come. With each loud pop the whole room “wooped”. Today we had 6 cracks in total, a very good sign. The small ceremony was followed by drinking and dancing. They are still just tickled pink to hear me speak quechua or wear a pollera (local dress), so tonight was a particular treat to see the gringa dancing around in local exuberant attire with her 60-year-old host father in his traditional poncho. In all of the silliness, I have to say that there were these moments of unreality. Disbelief that I could really, truly be here, a part of this ancient offering. Then this strange euphoric experience as I came down out of a bounce in my pollera circling my family’s room. This utter and true happiness that you usually only feel in a familiar hug or an intimate kiss. Where the world just softens into nothingness and all you can feel are the people with you and complete happinessToday I went to the schools for like the 5th school-day in a row in an attempt to get all the permission slips/pacts from the kids with their and their parent’s signature so they can participate in my afterschool program. It is a permission slip because it informed the parents where their kid will be once a week, it is a pact because they promise to read a book a week and be on-time to the get-togethers with the same signature. It is literally like pulling teeth getting kids to do their homework, but I think I only need about 15 more and I will have the signatures of every kid and their parents in Madrigal.
Last night on the bus ride home from Chivay I had met with a teacher, who I adore, and we chatted and brainstormed for the full 2 ½ ride. It is her class that I came to today with an armful of hand-written cards from kids from a classroom in the United States. A PC volunteer alum now teaches at a bi-lingual school in Massachusetts and we organized letter exchanges between our students. His kids wrote letters about their lives, families, and hometowns. Each of his students I paired with one of mine and with much excitement and pride they opened their letters and begged to read them out loud to each other. It was fun to see what the 11-year-olds from The States wanted to include about themselves, and it was even more fun to see how kids here reacted to the foreign but personal information. We did a little talk about where Massachusetts is, how the seasons differ, what hockey and softball are, the different systems of measurement, and how to address a letter. The kids are so proud to be able to write a letter back to the very same kid that wrote them. This Thursday they will bring some art supplies to class and we will compose responses for their new United States friend.
This weekend I went into the city and spent Saturday and Sunday in Chivay with my enamorado. I like that word, enamorado. It literally means the guy I am enamored or enfatuated with. It has a much more appropriate ring than “boyfriend” for some reason.
He took a bus in from Arequipa, where he lives, to see me. We spent a majority of the day at the hot springs. This is usually a place where locals come to bathe by morning and tourists come to relax by evening. Well, I have to say, with my darlin there, no one gets to relax. He is a huge ham and everyone smiles when he is present. Everything from sharing his drink with anyone within reach (a common part of historical Peruvian culture that is dieing due to western influence), to teaching kids how to swim with me, to offering his enamorada to pachamama (Mother Earth) and throwing her into the 90degree pool… very loudly.
Walking through the market with him was quite a trip. By now, the local growers and sellers have come to know me and often slip a free banana in my bag here and there, but with him there it was like they wanted to offer their entire tienda to him. He is so charismatic every woman falls in love with him in seconds. I think I got double my week’s spinach for the price of one, and another woman pulled out the fresh broccoli for me from a wooden carton hidden under other fruit. It was also good for me to be seen with him around town so that any men that might have bothered me in the past know he exists and I shouldn’t have to deal with them in the future.
Sunday we played soccer with Chivay locals that I have come to know. The past couple Sundays I have come into Chivay to do my market shopping, play soccer, and bathe. Women don’t really play, so I play with the teens and men my age. I have to say, I have a blast every time, and usually other locals stop to watch us play. I am not a very good soccer player, but I love every minute. The constant running at this high altitude, if nothing else, will strengthen my heart and thicken my blood like chocolate.
Monday I had my quechua classes in Chivay. Our teacher is fabulous. He is a tour guide that is a native quechua speaker and he is extremely animated. He is teaching the class in a well-organized fashion and when he starts telling stories we are all sucked right in. In learning quechua we are not only learning a language, but a culture and a history. It is a little odd that the other volunteers and I are learning our third language from our second, but somehow, it works.
Monday evening my enamorado returned to Arequipa City and I went to the AICED library to do some research on Madrigal. AICED is a non-profit formed by the Spanish government that set up shop here in the Canyon to do vocational trainings and repair the Spanish churches that were destroyed in an earthquake about 10 years ago. Their goals and Peace Corps’ differ in many aspects, but we both have resources to offer each other and get along very well. Over all, we both want to help. They are the group that actually put us up in Chivay when I was translating for the health survey for Health Bridges International and Quechua Benefit. Their library consists of about 4 shelves of books, but it is the best in the canyon and only contains information about the canyon. I am researching for a Community Diagnostic that all volunteers must write for the Peace Corps. This weekend I will travel to Ancash for Early In Service Training and will be required to turn in this 10-50 page diagnostic and do an 8 minute presentation on my town. This diagnostic will contain some history of Madrigal, information about the lifestyle, what people want, and what I am going to offer them. Then, I will return to Madrigal and present my findings to the professors and municipality members here. I have handed out and received about 200 surveys at this point and both Peace Corps and Madrigal want to know what I found out. One set of surveys was done via convenience sampling on health access, the second to each kid in the local school on education, and the third to the parents of the students on lifestyle.
Once I have written up the CD (Community Diagnostic) I will try to post it here. However, it will be written in Spanish… sorry. Perhaps when I am not feeling so busy with work I will translate the whole darn thing.
Wish list
.7 pencil lead
sports bras (34B or 32C)
Bronner’s lavender hemp oil soap
indestructible digital camera (yeah, mine hit the dust)
my favortie snack, veggie booty and smart puffs http://www.piratesbooty.com/
peanut butter
ranch dressing
4.0G external USB (left mine in an internet cafe)
some artists whose most recent albums I will absolutely never find here, but the few songs of theirs that I have help me through the rough days:
Dan Mangan
Lost In the Trees
Sharon Van Etten
James Vincent McMorrow
Stornoway
Lord Huron
Atlantic/Pacific
Anni Rossi
Kat Edmondson
Edith Piaf
David Vandervelde
Active Child
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Grafitti
Inara George
Lost in the Trees
Sun Airway
Phosphorescent
if only you could mail ice cream and pizza...
