A lot has happened in the last month or two since my last blog, this is me trying to remember some of it. February was supposed to be the month of rain, as was March, but as beautiful and green as the campo is right now I’m still waiting for the endless days of rain. In the rainy season it has only rained five times for more than an hour and more than a pleasant mist. I bought a giant bucket to collect water from my roof and use it to shower; unfortunately my bucket sits inside my house holding dirty canal water used for flushing our porcelain latrine. I was told by other Piura volunteers that the year before it rained almost every day and so I am hoping we are just on an every other year rainy cycle and next year I’ll get to experience the washed out roads and the necessity for knee high boots.
When I wasn’t working I spent more than half my time hanging out with my puppy Zoey. The little adorable ball of fluff learned the commands sit, stay, come, outside, shake, and she was learning lay. This was a great form of entertainment for me because first of all, I am big time dog person, and secondly I have never trained my own puppy before or for that matter I haven’t ever had a puppy that is solely mine before. I went to a week of training in another department and my puppy Zoey and her brother Shrek both became sick with fevers and they both died a day before I got back. I had a few days of mourning and on the third morning of being back my host dad brought me a new little friend. I now have another little buddy named Ruby. Just as smart as Zoey and it turns out they are half sisters thanks to the busy patriarch of the dogs Blanco senior. Ruby is beginning the same intensive training program that worked for Zoey I just have to keep this one alive. If it’s not too clear, there is no neutering of pets in the campo. I explained to my sister that if a dog bites a human there is a good chance that dog is getting put down in the United States. We discussed this after my family’s dog bit a woman earlier that morning. If a dog ever really bit me and did damage I would have no problem putting it down. I love animals but bad dogs are bad dogs and they don’t deserve too many chances to bite me when I’m running. I’m keeping my fingers crossed to make it through the two years without a dog bite, but the odds are against me.
As for work in the last couple months, progress is a slow process. I plan a date and time to plan for a charla with the 2 nurses in my town and when I go to the health post neither of my socios are there. I spent most of my days walking around the community doing house visits, normally chatting with the women of the household for at least a half an hour and then performing my health survey. I have a few favorite houses, but one house I loving stopping at more than others is a house I pass every day on my way down the mountain. Whenever I stop and chat, the little old lady runs and makes me a snack like mangos or cheese and crackers and then she has her grandchildren bring me a pepsi from the store. This family is a perfect example of the Peruvians I love. Most Peruvians are always sharing and always trying to make you feel comfortable and when I leave the house of this family I always leave happier and content with my choice to join Peace Corps Peru.
I want to hold sessions in the Center for infant and adolescent development but I can’t hold sessions until we find a local. The local we want is a classroom in the school, but the new classrooms are still under construction so there is a lack of classrooms at the moment. Work in the library is on hold because the library in Potrerillo is a one room building that could be confused with a backyard tool shed and all the toys for the development center are currently being stored in this little building. The other project I want to start is my incredibly large viviendas saludables (healthy homes) project. The project will include at least 20 educational sessions with the mothers of the community leading up to the improved kitchen project. If the mothers attend a certain number of chats, bring their houses up to the healthy standards with little home projects I have laid out for them, and comply with all house visits they will be one of the lucky families to earn a cocina mejorada and more importantly hopefully they will have changed at least on health behavior for good. I can’t change the whole community but small populations can change and in turn be examples for the rest of their neighbors. This project in still in the works and I look forward to starting it, but right now it seems as though I will be going it alone.
School started in my community again and it’s a great relief to have some quiet time away from my brother and sister in the mornings. I love spending time with my family, but after living with roommates all throughout college at times it’s tough to be back in a home where privacy is next to non-existent and there are rules to follow once again. I gave a short speech in front of all the parents who have kids attending the school and discussed how I will help teach English classes and other subjects as well as the importance of my projects starting in the community. Starting in April I start teaching two classes a month about children’s rights, puberty, sexuality, and self esteem. After those classes end I will begin classes in the high school about puberty, sexuality, relationships, maternity, prevention of STIs and HIV, and life direction.
One day I went swimming with some local boys in the river my town and another day I made it over to Jillian’s site to go for a swim with her and her host sister in a another great swimming hole. The trip to lake has been in the works for some time now and as soon as Jillian and I find some ducky inner tubes in Piura we are going for a lake day. The temperature remains in the 80s-90s everyday so this is a possibility for a couple more months still.
The 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps offered a chance for the volunteers to meet community partners from the site’s of other volunteers from all parts of Piura. There was a great mix of volunteers and Peruvians including as well, the country director for Peace Corps Peru and our regional director for the department of Piura. There were speeches, photos, a well made video about Peace Corps, and of course drinks to toast to the occasion. The anniversary served another purpose of bringing all the volunteers in Piura together which provided for a fun night out the bars for a little r and r. I almost didn’t remember the reason why this trip was my favorite trip into the city. We took a day beach trip Colán in the district Paita. We spent a relaxing couple of hours swimming and sitting on the beach before we had fresh sea food a five minute walk from the shore.
My family was excited about the mirror I bought for them, mainly because it is the only mirror in the house now besides the one in my room. My sister hung it right next to the front door and now it’s a custom that everyone uses it before they leave the house. The other large improvement to my living situation is the solar shower I received from my awesome mom. My entire host family now uses the solar shower and my brother and I even built a shower room on the side of my house, complete with a towel rack and a shelf for soaps and shampoos.
March is the first month since training my schedule has been packed with trips. The first trip was to the department La Libertad for a week of training. The first day we arrived in Trujillo, La Libertad five volunteers including myself and our health program volunteer coordinator went on an all day ruin tour. Our bus left from Piura the previous night at 2:00 AM and made it in to Trujillo at 8:30AM leaving us a whole hour to get ready for day of site seeing. Our first stop was the ancient city of Moche. We meandered around recently constructed museum and then took our tour through the archeological dig sites that included a large pyramid like structure and several smaller housing structures. For lunch we were taken to a touristico restaurant with entertainment and delicious food. Midway through our meal another volunteer, Brittany, and I were dragged up on stage to compete in a marínera dance off. We received huge free Pisco Sours for being good sports, a prize well worth five minutes of embarrassment. After our lunch we continued on to other historical sites including Chan Chan and then we ended our day in Huanchaco, La Libertad. Huanchaco is a smaller town thirty minutes away from the center of Trujillo and our hotel happened to be located a two minute walk from the beach. Our training was held at the hotel, but the first few days were tough to get through. Go from working a few hours randomly throughout the day at site to sitting through presentations and participating in small group activities for 8 hours, and you can bet almost every volunteer is going to be snoozing through some less interesting parts. The staff at training saw this after a couple days and decided to give us a two hour lunch break to hang out around pool or go for a dip in the ocean. What makes the Peace Corps so great is that even our instructors were joining us in the pool and enjoying the time off. The snack breaks that split up other parts of the day were great chances to catch up with all the other volunteers that I hadn’t seen in over 3 months. Besides these break times whenever we were free the volunteers were making up for lost time and sharing stories about their respective sites. At night we found great places to eat alongside the shore and we stumbled into a couple of real laid back bars that kept the nights amusing.
The day I returned back from my ten day work trip was by far the worst day I’ve had in Peru. My mood remained cheerful, but the combination of things lost and broken piled up that day like they haven’t done since I’ve been here. That morning I had two meetings in Las Lomas. One meeting was with the Mayor and the other was with the Director of the Health Center. After the meetings with the help of another volunteer Eric, I realized my phone was missing. When I called my phone I found it had been stolen in Trujillo and had been sold to a woman in the campo at least 15 hours from my site and there is no way to ever get it back. I moved on thinking I can get a new phone, no big deal; I have another phone I can use for a while anyways. Later I returned to site to the news that my puppy had died along with my family’s other puppy. Just when I started to forget about my puppy I looked over at my three week old bicycle. The back tire was mangled. My host dad decided he would borrow my bike again and on his third ride on my bike he crashed and rendered my bike useless until they have money to fix (a.k.a.- I’m paying for a new tire if I ever want to ride my bike again). I thought the bad news was over until I looked in my bag a noticed I left my Ipod charging cord somewhere on the trip and my Ipod use therefore dead and useless. My brother arrived home and decided he would give me another thing to complain about. The beautiful single teacher in my site that wanted to get to know me left to teach in another district. If all these things were easily fixable I wouldn’t have been so agitated but everything takes so much longer to get or to do down here it’s hard not having a quick reset button or at least a Wal-Mart to go and replace all my stuff (minus the puppy).
Just when I though all my traveling in March was over I had to take a side trip to Lima for a few days to get a new passport. I can never sleep on the 15 hour overnight bus trips, but I still enjoy the trip nevertheless. While in Lima I made my way into the office everyday as well as a few scattered trips to the gigantic above ground bunker looking structure that is the US embassy. I had only planned on being in Lima for two days, but my trip that started Monday night in Piura stretched all the way out till Thursday evening in Lima getting me back to site Friday afternoon. Coming from such a small town, cities like Lima are always a little overwhelming, but there is always something to do. I was proud that after one day I learned the public transportation system, and with a little extra travel time planned for just in case, I could make it anywhere in a city of nearly 8 million. The other favorite part of my trip was the notable work and attitudes of the Peace Corps staff. Even if I was speaking with someone I had met only once in my service, almost all the staff members knew my name and what program I was in. The Peace Corps office runs because there are volunteers, but we wouldn’t get anything done without the help of such a great group of people in Lima running the behind the scenes game.
One other small adventure arose out of the Lima trip. Wednesday night I was invited to play in a small 5 on 5 game of fútbol. The game went well, the score was level, when my feet left me and my face tried to break through a thick layer of cement floor. I got up and kept playing only to realize later a few seconds later that I had a gash on the underside of my chin pooling blood. Out of all the places to be for an accident to happen I was in the best. I was right next to two staff members and one of the Peace Corps doctors met us at the hospital a half hour later. Peace Corps doctor Jorge stayed with me for my appointment and took me back to my hostel across town afterwards. The four stitches I received will just be another reminder of great times spent in Peru.
No comments:
Post a Comment