Back to Work!

I must say I've been surprisingly productive in my time back in site after a really nice vacation.  My parents came to see me for a few weeks and treat me to my new version of luxury: hot showers.  It was really awesome to be able to spend time with them and travel around a bit.  We started out in my town so they could say hello to my host family, then we headed off to Cusco.  We spent a few days in the city, then seeing the incan ruins in the sacred valley before heading off on the Inca Trail.  From were we started it was a trek of about 55 kilometers, crossing over Dead Woman's Pass at 4,215 meters.  It was pretty cool to arrive at Machu Picchu by foot, even though the view through the fog from Intipunku was not ideal.  After finishing seeing the cusco sights, we flew to Puerto Maldonado, in the Madre de Dios jungle, to spend my birthday just over the border in Bolivia, at the Heath River Lodge.  The jungle was humid, and we were hours and hours from any form of telephone, cell phone signal, or internet access.  Our cabins were even lit by candlelight, which would have been much more romantic if I hadn't been staying in a cabin by myself!  In the mornings we took a boat down the river to the Macaw Clay Lick, and saw quite an array of birds come to eat the clay, which they do to balance out their diets of unripe fruit.  All in all it was a fantastic vacation, and maybe it's nerdy but I really like spending time with my parents.

Since getting back, I've been super busy.  There is a new nurse and a new doctor in the EsSalud health post, and they have been really excited to work with me and get started visiting schools and getting to know the community.  I've been teaching classes to adolescents and young adults, and getting a close-by community ready to receive the next peace corps volunteer in december.  Now I just need to find time to go for a run!

Water Project

This is what the reservoir that my water comes from looks like.  It's really disgusting.  They put chlorine into the blue tank to 'clean' the water, but no traces of chlorine actually enter the water in the houses, so the system is not terribly effective.  There are plants growing in the water inside, and it turns out that the accumulation of debris and residuals has caused an excess of free radicals to be present in the water, not to mention the over-the-limit level of fecal matter.  Delicious.

One of my current projects is working with some hydraulic engineers on a profile of the current system and a proposal for a new reservoir and some sections of new piping to increase the quality and water pressure throughout the network.  It's been interesting to survey the topography of the whole town and it's surrounding small communities, and I've been administering a survey to find out the opinions of the people about their water quality.  So here's to making a better system and not getting cancer!

Sad Stuff

Being summertime, and having the schools closed, work has been a little slow in the last few weeks.  The good news is that I’ve had more time to work in the library, and will be picking up the next set of books from Promolibro at the end of the week to supplement our collection.  

We had a really scary and tragic incident in my town last week.  A large attraction here are the crawdads, which are served almost year round.  Right now they are in their time of reproduction, or “veda” and it’s illegal to harvest them.  However, people do it anyway.  Two men approached 2 15-year-old boys and offered them 100 soles if they would pick a certain amount of camarones.  The kids said sure, and went to the river with the men.  Once there, the men pulled out huge knives and cut the boys.  One got a cut from his wrist up to his elbow, but managed to escape, ran home, then jumped on the first bus to Arequipa.  His friend was not so lucky.  The men cut up his arm, cut off one hand and one foot, slit his throat, then removed his kidneys, small intestine, heart and eyes. They covered him with large rocks on the low bank of the river, where he was uncovered and found 7 days later by some people working in the area, and, overcome by the stench, looked for the source.  The boy who escaped came back after 3 days and has been working with the police, giving as much detail as possible about the incident.  It seems to be illegal organ trafficking, and further analysis is being done on the corpse in Lima to determine better the time-span of the crime.  I was in the municipality yesterday when the mother came in, trying to file the papers for her murdered son.  She is so overwhelmed with all the paperwork coming from the government, police, lawyers, and hospitals, and barely seems to know what to do.  This was one of my students, and it’s really hard to digest what happened to him.  It’s really scary that illegal organ trafficking has been brought to this small town, as well.  Parents are right: Don’t talk to strangers.

Keepin on

     Things are going pretty well this week.  It's summer vacation and there is a group of 6 kids that come to the library every morning for a few hours to read, and they come because they actually want to sit quietly and read.  It's amazing.  With those kids as a base of users and the occasional other person that wanders in to check it out, it's looking like a success.  Promolibro has been pleased with our library management and is going to send another loan of books to augment our selection in a few weeks.     

Last November I started working on an International Art Exchange with OneWorld Classrooms.  I sent artwork from local high school students to the organization in mid-december, and I got news today that the organization loved the art.  They are based in Massachusetts, and are putting our artwork on display in a few high schools before sending it off to the final recipient school.  We were also awarded a grant of $50 for art supplies for the school, which is fantastic.  While that may not be an overwhelming sum in the states, it will go far to help the students here. We'll be receiving artwork from other students in april I think, so it will be fun to set up a 'gallery show' at the school to show it off.  

     Another highlight is that today I met 2 hydraulic engineers who are creating a project plan for a new water system in my community.  Our water is terrible, and is the cause of a lot of malnutrition because of the parasites and bacterial infections that the kids get when their water isn't treated properly.  To go to the source and fix the water will help the health of this community immensely.  The engineers were very interested in my job with Peace Corps and said they would love help with the organization and creation of a feasible project proposal.  I'm really excited about working on this project.

A New Year

   They past few months have been busy, and full of travels.  For Thanksgiving I went to visit some volunteers in Ancash, just above Lima.  Hiking in the Cordillera Blanca was gorgeous, and it was great to celebrate the day of thanks with some good friends.

   In December we had medical checks and year-in program meetings in Lima, which was fun because we got to see all the volunteers from our training group; it had been since March when we were all together last.  Thankfully I'm healthy and had fun presenting about my projects, most notably the Library progress.  It's summer here, and there are a lot of kids who come to the library to read everyday during their summer vacations - it's a lot of fun recommending books and encouraging them to keep it up.  I'll be back in site for a solid period of time, now, and am looking forward to some interesting projects, such as a youth group of health promoters to teach about healthy sexual practices with the goal of AIDS prevention.  My parents are coming to visit in April, and I'm really looking forward to seeing them and traveling around a little.  

Integrating

As a desperate act of integrating into our communities, Emily signed us up this week to present a dance at her town's high school anniversary celebration. We thought long an hard about what we could do to impress these peruvians - they've got more than their fair share of typical dances to choose from. Although both of us enjoy dancing to hip-hop music when we go out, we decided it may not be appropriate to present a number like that. We then thought about the Electric Slide, Cotton Eyed-Joe, and everything else down to the Macarena. In the end, we decided to present a swing number to the tune of Go Daddy-O. The only hitch is that neither of us dance swing. Even so, after a solid 3 hours of choreography and practice we entered center stage at the celebration and wowed the peruvians with our incredible dance talent.

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=-Pv4OJIXeDU

In other news, Peace Corps Arequipa (we function practically like a separate country down south) has started working closely with the NGO CoPlan on their current project of promoting leadership and the role of citizenship and democracy in small communities. There are a lot of different forms that CoPlan's projects can take on, which is nice to have the flexibility to mold their project to help our specific communities better. They use volunteers from various universities around Arequipa to travel to rural communities and empower other peruvian youth while providing a solid model of success for the youth, being successful and motivated peruvian students themselves. It's a very interesting partnership for Peace Corps to be working with CoPlan and it's really nice to meet some people close to our age and education level in the city as well. They came to my site to do a training with students at a technical institute as well as people from the municipality this week and we have plans to develop a larger project together early next year.

Festival Time

In August I was able to go home for a few days to celebrate my brother’s wedding - what a treat. Not only to have the comforts of home, but to be surrounded by family and friends for a few days was amazing. Dan was also able to come back to Peru with me and visit for a few days, which made getting on the plane leaving America a lot easier.
I’m now safely back in my site and enjoying the events of our “Cultural Week” and town anniversary. This weekend is the Shrimp, Wine and Pisco Festival with a packed schedule of dance performances and culinary delights. This morning there was a ‘marathon’ around town. There were groups for kids, teenagers, adults, senior citizens, and representatives of institutions. I ran in the last category to represent Cuerpo de Paz . . . and I won! I guess that says something about the physical fitness level of the business people in my community. It should be a fun weekend enjoying all of my small town’s finest food, drink, and entertainment.

The 'final' version of my world map in the community library.  It was a process . . .

This past weekend I was in Arequipa for a monthly meeting with our coordinators and the other volunteers, and we had an opportunity to go to a bullfight in Characato, just outside the city.  It was of the Arequipena style, with no matador, spears, whips, blood, or dead toros.  The bulls came into the ring, their owners were not allowed to touch them during the fight, and if they felt the urge to battle the other bull, they turned head to head until one of them had enough, and then he ran away.  Once, a bull entered the ring, saw the other bull panting and pawing the ground and said, "Forget this", turned, and ran away without a fight.  He lost. 

Projects are coming along well - This week's accomplishment was to plant a 'biohuerto', or garden, in the technical institute in town.  The students are mostly 18-20 and are invited to study here with free room and board, only paying a minimal fee for classes.  All of these students are from the sierra, the mountains a bit farther inland from me.  Some are single mothers without many other options, the others are kids who don't have the resources to be able to study in a university, and this is an amazing opportunity for them to be able to learn more skills and perhaps fulfill some of the goals they would otherwise be unable to meet.  We planted cabbage, swiss chard, onion, beets, and broccoli.  I hope some of the veggies actually grow . . . the kids can then use them to augment their lunches with more vegetables, or to sell and be able to buy more seeds to improve the garden.  We also did a lesson on SODIS, the solar water disinfection method, and it they are going to adapt this method, for which they only need plastic bottles and the sun, to have safe drinking water for lunch, rather than boiling the 10-15 liters of water every day.  

Things to look forward to:  

-  Rob's wedding in August.  I'm really excited to see my family and the friends who are able to make it out, as well as all of the family friends at the wedding.  It's gonna be great.

-  Saturday is Emily's birthday, so we are going to celebrate in her community . . . I'm thinking of combining it with a 4th of July celebration and dressing up like an American flag.  We'll see what I can pull off.

Library

For months now I've been working to coordinate a community library project with the municipality - we've finally made some progress.  We've got the space painted, a window constructed, wiring put in to have light, a door constructed, we have 2 large bookshelves, a large table for students to read or do work at, a small desk for the 'librarian', a few books from prior donations, computers on their way, and I've painted a map of the world on the wall as well.

It is still missing country and ocean names, but some local artists are going to help me to paint the peruvian flag, peace corps sign, municipality symbol and write the names on the map.  At least they will be able to get the accents in the right places!  Looking forward to a grand opening of the library within the next couple of weeks.