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.

Peruvian Wedding

Although my host parents have been together for about 30 years married by a civil ceremony, they finally decided to get married in the church.  It was interesting watching a group wedding ceremony of about 25 couples, with the majority of family and friends waiting outside the church to get the ceremony nonsense overwith so we could start the party!  

Cotahuasi was incredible - even more beautiful than I had imagined, and much cooler than Colca because of the lack of tourists and development.  It's a very calm and natural canyon, with a really interesting landscape and cool things to see.  

For anyone with the time, I would recommend the 12 hour bus ride to Cotahuasi for a much richer experience than what can be found in a trip to Colca.  Colca is also cool, but as it is the second most profound canyon, it only comes in at second best.

Work has been interesting lately, with a potential latrine project, water sanitation ideas, a series of lectures on family violence, child abuse and sexual abuse, training sessions for high school teachers in areas of sexual reproduction, diseases, and relationships, working with families to improve nutrition and hygiene in the home, the community library, an exercise group with some little old ladies . . . there are a million different opportunities for projects, so I've been trying to narrow in my focus on what is possible to complete, what would help the community most, and what I'm most interested in doing.  

My parents came to visit a few weeks ago, and it was awesome to have them here, even if it was for only a week.  They came to my site and were able to get to know the family I'm living with over a feast of shrimp, then see a bit of the town, the fields that my host family owns and currently has a crop of rice, but will be planting wheat and potatoes soon, and also meet some of the people I work with in town.  The community members have yet to stop talking about how enormously tall my father is, and how now they understand 

why I'm so tall.  It was also interesting to do some of the more touristy things in Arequipa with my parents, such as take a 2-story bus around the city to see the sights, and go into the Monastery of Santa Catalina.  I had been told that the monastery was really cool, and it went above and beyond my expectations.  It was so interesting to learn a bit more about the history of Arequipa and about the influences of the Spanish culture on Peru, and on Arequipa in particular.  It's a gorgeous monastery, and at the high point, the nuns in that convent lived better than I ever will, with servants and special china for their afternoon tea.  Having my parents in town for my birthday was the best present of all.  It was really fun to go to a few nicer restaurants with them - I think they were sick of typical Peruvian food by the end of one week, imagine how it'll get to you after 7 months!  While in site I don't get overloaded by Peruvian food (aka rice and potatoes) because I mainly cook for myself.  Even still, it's always a nice break to get a salad full of colors that you can eat without the risk of parasites and bacterial infections. 

Next week I head to Lima for a workshop in Project Design Management, and I am supposed to bring with me a member of my community.  I chose my host mom, Elda, to take with me because she's got a million ideas about how to make the community a better place, but has no real concept of how to go about making those ideas a reality.  I also chose her because she is well known in the community, will be living here for the rest of her life, and is really great and I am excited spend a few days with her.  It will also be great to see some of the other volunteers - not everyone is coming to this same workshop, but there will be enough of us for it to be really fun.  

Back To Majes

After a few weeks of traveling, I`m back in Majes. First I was in Chivay finishing the Quechua workshop that we were offered during february, then I went up to Trujillo for reconnect with all the other volunteers from Peru 10, my training group. It was really good to see everyone, hear about their experiences, and share information about projects that we have going on. I`ve been spending this week trying to get the library project to stay on track as well as continue with the other projects that I had going on. It was strange to be out of site for 2 weeks and then come back and try to pick back up, especially when it`s the anniversary of the district next week as well as Semana Santa. For Easter we have 4 days off, and a few of the volunteers and I are heading to Cotahuasi, the biggest canyon in the world, to explore, go hiking, and relax in the thermal baths. I`ve heard it`s beautiful, and I`m really excited about the few days of vacation with the other volunteers.

Pensamientos

Part of my work here in Peru is to open people´s minds to new cultures. I feel like I´ve accomplished that goal with the 6 men with whom I was working yesterday. In starting this library project, we want to use a space in the municipality that was previously a storage room. Yesterday was designated to clean out the storage and move it to the warehouse down the road, so I showed up bright and early to help out. ¨Oh no,¨ they told me, ¨don´t worry yourself¨. But I insisted, then the 7 of us, with an occasional extra pair of hands, worked for at lest 4 hours straight, carrying boxes, old engine parts and god knows what else from the storage room to the truck, driving down the road, unloading, and coming back . . . 5 times. It was heavy stuff, but we worked through it together. Afterwards they admitted to me they had been shocked I was willing to do manual labor like that, carrying boxes and whatnot, and I didn´t even complain about how heavy it was. Shock and amazement, women sometimes are competent. It´s been really fun working on the construction of the library with all these gruff old men. They´ve started making fun of some of the guys who have slacked off the job, saying how much better this gringa is. I´m taking off for a few weeks to finish my Quechua workshop and to meet up with the other volunteers for reconnect to talk about our projects and experiences thus far, and I´m sad not to be able to keep up the pace and motivation on construction. I trust Don Pepe to be in charge in the meantime, continuing to get things set. When I get back we´ll finish painting, and be able to open up for the community.

February

This past week was spent in Colca, an area in the Andes above Arequipa City. Eight of the nine volunteers all traveled to be together for part one of a Quechua workshop. Quechua is one of the primary indigenous languages of Peru, continuing part of the rich Incan history. By the end of the week we were able to go around town meeting people in Quechua and buying things in the market with our new skills. Just the simple “Allilanchu?” (How are you?) would get the senoras all excited that we knew some Quechua (at which point they would start babbling on in a language we todavia do not understand). It was a good week.

My boss, Emilia, came down for Lima to see how things have been going in Arequipa yesterday. Although all my perfectly constructed plans went to caca the afternoon before she arrived (i.e. the police chief left, the class I was supposed to teach was turned into ‘day of sports’ and the gobernadora with whom I had project plans was asked to leave office), things ended up going well. I was able to propose plans for starting a library with the mayor, and it looks that we’ll be getting that under way in the next few weeks. I also have a club for adultos mayors, a project to bring agua potable to town, and a club de adolescents. In a meeting for the latter today we had a waterballoon fight in the plaza to demonstrate how they need to put on more sunscreen after going swimming in the summer. It was pretty hilarious.

I’ve got a lot of things being brought to my plate. I’m really glad, because a lot of what is missing in the community is not the idea of the project, but the organization to get the ball rolling. Hopefully we can keep the momentum going.

A New Year

The holidays passed smoothly - I celebrated Christmas and New Years with my host family in site, and it was really interesting to learn about their traditions.

Christmas: is celebrated starting the night of the 12th. We all got together, and at midnight went around hugging and kissing everyone to wish them a merry christmas, then had our christmas feast, sang 'feliz navidad' about 35 times. At 2 am we took a taxi to grandma's house down the road to sing more with her, so I didn't make it to bed until close to 4. On Christmas day the family went out to a restaurant to have Christmas Cuy and play sappo. Eating a guinea pig was an experience, and I'm glad it's over and done with.

For New Years my 24-year-old sister, Barabara, and I planned a party at our house. About 25-30 people were coming, and we got steaks of pig meat and papas to serve to all, as well as 7 cajas of chela and a few bottles of pisco to toast with pisco sours. At midnight we all went outside to watch the life-size doll be burned in the street as we were dodging the fireworks that the children were shooting at each other. We were all wearing our yellow underwear for good luck, we passed around rice and lentils to signify having food and money for the year, we ate 12 grapes and made wishes on each of them . . . then we danced till dawn. I went to sleep around 7 and when I went out at 10 am there were still people drinking and celebrating. That's endurance.

Work is going well - I started teaching English classes at the summer school last week and I'm starting my teen health club the upcoming week. I also am headed to a workshop to learn a bit of Quechua, one of the indigenous dialects, and I'm really excited about it. There will be 8 volunteers at the workshop, so it will also be cool to see the other people and hear about how their sites are.

One of the biggest bands in Peru, Kaliente, came to my site for a concert, and Emily came in to go to the concert with me. We ended up meeting the band and dancing on stage in front of my entire city . . . I still haven't stopped hearing about my impressive cumbia skills. Grupo 5 is coming in a few weeks as well. We may have to have an encore performance just to not disappoint all of our fans . . .