Rice fields and mountains of my new home

The view from my new room (and I have a small balcony overlooking this!)

And the river runs through it . . .

Site Info

There was a lot of speculation and build-up in the days, and hours, leading up to the revealing of our sites. After FBT, we had to wait until Tuesday. Tuesday in the afternoon. In the afternoon after a BBQ and speeches. Then there were more speeches. Finally, a bucket of Styrofoam fish were dumped into the pool in the back of the training center and we went up in pairs to ‘fish’ them out. On each fish was the name of a city, department, and whether the site was for a health or environment volunteer. Only after the city and department had been announced would the program director announce the name of the volunteer headed to that site. Before having time to look over the information in the folder given to us with site information, we then had to take our turn at fishing out the next piece of Styrofoam for the next volunteer. We were all completely on edge.
I was right about the cluster of volunteers that I am placed near, although the location is different from my initial idea of where I would go. Is this description beginning to make you antsy to know my site the same way the information was held back from me? Here it goes . . .
Arequipa. I am moving to a medium sized city in the department of Arequipa, province of Castilla. I’ll be living in a valley with a river, and my city is known for it’s shrimping from the river. They’ve got shrimp scampi, shrimp gumbo, fried shrimp, baked shrimp . . . I’ll have electricity, water, a toilet rather than a latrine, cell service, and there is surely internet access in my city.
Arequipa itself is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities in Peru, and is known as the white city because most of the buildings are made of sillar, or white volcanic stone. The dynamic that exists between those Peruvians from Arequipa and those Peruvians from anywhere else in Peru. Some people have considered Arequipa to be like the Texas of Peru, where all the citizens think they are better than anyone from the rest of the country, and they would rather be their own country. They call it the “Republica Independiente de Arequipa”, and when I was given my site information I was also given a fake diplomatic passport to be able to “get into” the department. I think it’s funny that people from my department think they are better than the rest of Peru, and I’m excited to join in with the patriotic sentiment for the ‘real’ Peru. Arequipa the city is only 8 hours from Cusco . . . a perfect excuse to come visit me before heading to Machu Picchu! The two other volunteers and I are headed out this weekend for Arequipa to visit our sites and get to know the people who are already positioned in the south – there aren’t many of us! The cluster of three sites are all new sites, without previous volunteers, but it sounds like the communities have a lot of opportunities for me to get involved, including work in psychology. I’m really looking forward to taking the 14-16 hour bus ride down south to check out my site.

Preliminary site info

I had a meeting with Emilia, my director, today, and found out some clues about my future site. She told me that she has a site for me and thinks it will be a great fit. I can’t help but wonder how much of that sentiment is true versus how much is merely trying to reassure me. As she described the area, I got really excited, but am still nervous about site visits in a week. She told me that I will be in a hot climate and I will be living in a valley with a big river, it will be on the coast about 70 km from the beach. I will be living in a regional capital, about 3 hours from the department capital. My city will have electricity, water, and internet, as well as cell service. The health center employs about 30 people, which is relatively large. My sociocommunitaria, or community work partner, will be a woman, Gabi, who works at a larger hospital nearby and will be overseeing the other two volunteers who will be part of my cluster. One girl who also studied psychology will be living about 20 min away, and I think it’s Emily, who was with me over FBT. Another volunteer will be within 2-3 hours, and I think that will be Greg, who will be living up the mountain above my city, which is at the bottom of the valley. It’s a new site, so all three of us are from Peru 10, a Salud group that is now of 19 (Paul left today). I will be working on psychology projects, and will be working closely with a catholic group from either Spain or Canada. The padre in charge of the group speaks 5 languages, including English. I’m excited about the variety of projects that will be available to me in the city. There is an institute for computers and English, and there seems to be a good relationship between the health post and the school. From the info I’ve gathered so far, it may be that this site is in Piura, which is a coastal department in the north. The house that I am going to be living in is on the second floor with a family billiards business on the first floor. Mi madre nueva is 45 and has a 29 year old son, but it seems her husband is a bit older. From what Emilia said, mi madre is excited to have a volunteer and is fairly active in the community. Emilia said she was worried initially because the house is a bit loud (am I living on top of a bar?), but the two volunteers who went with her to check the place out really liked the woman and said it would be a good house for a volunteer. I have my own room, not sure if there is a separate entrance for it, but at least I won’t be inside the room of mi madre. I also have my own bathroom, which is awesome. I’m excited to start with psyc work because it’s more technical and I’ll need to learn and study more than simply giving handwashing charlas for 2 years, which has seemed to be a theme throughout training. Sites are looking up, and I’ll get all the details on Tuesday.

Semana 7

When we returned to the center today it was interesting to hear about the different experiences that each group had over FBT. My group seemed to have some luck in that we were able to travel to areas with more of a tourist draw as well as the sites of the volunteers. I was also glad that we had from 3-5 volunteers with us at all times, rather than just talking with or visiting one at a time. It allowed for a much more interactive experience because not only were we bouncing questions off each of them, but they asked each other about their sites and discussed the differences in their experiences.
Each group seems to have enjoyed the regions that they visited, which means that no matter where I am placed it was probably be a cool region. The places that we will be sent are the less developed areas, and thus are towns needing more help. In the past week each group visited similar levels of communities, regardless of the department they traveled to. It’s interesting to listen to the stories from each group and see how each one seems to feel their week was the most trying or their experiences were the most strange. We all ate strange things (pancreas, goat, cuy, mystery meat). We all traveled on roads with holes and without pavement. It’s almost like final exam time in school when one student tries to complain about how many exams they have, not stopping to realize that we are all in the same boat.