In Piura, especially in the Chipillico Valley, the most common question a gringo receives is “Estas acostumbrado?” or “are you accustomed/adapted?” I have to say after two months in site I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else for the next two years of my life. Days are slow here sometimes and my schedule depends on completely on me. If I want to go and knock out twenty encuestas after teaching summer school classes I can do that or if I’m not feeling up to it I can go and read under a mango tree in the chacra by the river or work on a charla I want to give later that month. I wake up every morning and start my emotional roller coaster and this is the only thing left to which I’m still adjusting.
Since catching up with everyone at the volunteer meeting in the beginning of January I have made it a goal of mine to stay in site until the February meeting. It has been a tough few weeks but I have enjoyed so many little things in my community, bonded with my family, and made new Peruvian friends that I hope to keep for two years and beyond. I have continued playing soccer for the town team, although missing a couple games due to other commitments. Our season will end the last week of January due to the rain that’s about to get here and turn the chacras vibrant green and bury the rest of the valley in mud.
Jillian and I have been busy with youth summer classes four days a week since the middle of January and these classes will continue until mid-February. We’ve had classes, in which we have taught hand washing, English, proper nutrition, art, and sports. We split the week, two days in my site and two days Jillian’s site in Chipillico . The classes usually last around two hours and vary between 10 and 20 students. When I go to Chipillico we eat lunch at Jillian’s house, which is always considerably tastier than the food prepared at my house. Some days I make it to the internet cabina and get in an hour of email and facebook, but the price of internet in the only internet cabina in the valley you can imagine is a little steep. Really it’s only 2 soles per hour (roughly 30 cents), but when you receive a volunteer stipend and you need to buy a dresser, a bike, other small things for around the house and save money for trips around Peru little money here and there adds up. Other than connecting with people on facebook chat Jillian and I have another way to stay sane in the valley. At least once a week we like to explore and find a new beautiful place to enjoy the sunset and talk about our successes of the week and the things that made us want to strangle small Peruvian children.
One of my favorite days this month was one day after class when a small group of girls from our summer class in Potrerillo took Jillian on an adventure through the chacras to pick mangos and other fruit. We spent hours wandering through a maze of rice fields, groves of mangos and plantain trees, and precisely designed canals. I made the trek back to my house that afternoon with a backpack stuffed full of mangos, as I do very often now, and a grin on my face that nothing could erase.
I’ve met two men in my town that speak English well and want to practice any time they see me. I have a practice/teaching session every Sunday with my new friend Hermes (42), in which we discuss our cultures and go over any new questions he or I have. We meet at my friend’s house and share our materials and after he usually has dinner prepared for me and sometimes a night out with the guys. Sundays are the usual drinking and social days in Peru and it couldn’t be more plainly obviously than in the campo. You see drinking circles all day and if you are male and aren’t feeling like drinking that day then its best you stay inside or have a real good excuse. I usually don’t mind drinking a little so there are many times where I go out and am social with people in my community. I bounce around from drinking circle to drinking circle trying the different variations of homemade liquors. My goal is not to get drunk but to converse with different people and let them know who I am. The first night out with Hermes and the and a few of his friends I ended up recruiting one more man in his thirties who wants to learn English and so slowly my practice sessions for adults may be growing. The other man who speaks English speaks it almost fluently and comes to my house at least once a week on business and I enjoy catching up with him and getting help with my Spanish questions that I can’t get across to other Spanish speakers.
Doing my encuestas is a struggle some days, but they are starting to come together and make more sense every week. I go with a health promoter or by myself to houses in the community and discuss/observe conditions in their house as well as health conditions of the family. The biggest problems usually turn out to be back pain and respiratory problems. In most cases this is probably due to the fact that the women cook with wood on the ground or on a low platform in a small room without any windows or other sources of ventilation. Because of this, the project I want to take on in my community is cocinas mejoradas (improved kitchens). This project will be part of a larger plan viviendas saludables (healthy homes). One more month of encuestas gives me another to visit houses and get to know more people in my new community.
Hanging out with my family or returning home is always a bright spot during my days here. I enjoy washing my clothes in the canal with my mom or sister on some days (the same I place I bathe temporarily while our house gets cements walls caked on the outside, preventing my shower area from being rebuilt). Other days I have gone on hikes with my family up into the hills behind our house in search of fire wood for my mom to cook with. These hikes provide a beautiful view of the valley and there happens to a lagoon and waterfalls that nobody ever explores but me. This has become my refuge when I want to relax in nature and I take advantage of it often. I have many memorable moments with my host family here thus far, but one of my favorites has to be when I came back to my house after more than a few beers to find my dad and a family friend with a crate half full of more beers. We danced and drank until 11:30 (the campo’s 3:00AM) until of course, we finished all the beer. Another great time was my sister’s birthday party we had the day I got back from Piura. We enjoyed dinner with Pepsi and celebrated with friends and family over music and gringo dancing. I like bringing back movies from Piura for my siblings and it’s always a big event when we get to watch a movie on my laptop together in our pseudo-living room.
Everything about my house remains more or less the same. I have a small gas stove kitchen set up in my room with which I usually cook one meal a day. I love going to the market in Las Lomas (a larger city and hour drive away) to buy veggies and random odds and ends, but I try to get more shopping done in Piura because the price difference is so vast. Because of the lack of desire I have to clean and dress any meat here I have become closer to being a vegetarian than I ever thought I would. I like the food I eat but I have not cooked meat and I don’t plan on doing so anytime soon. The pieces of meat I get from my host mother consist of goat or chicken and are usually strangely cut and contain more fat or connective tissue than meat. As I write this I am salivating just thinking about a big juicy cheeseburger in Piura a week from now. My door has provided a great level of privacy for me when I just want to shut everything out and watch tv series after tv series in my room. Privacy is something I have never had a lot of in my life and I know I will never take it for granted, especially after these two years.
I have attended Mass in the valley three times in the month of January (I can now say the Hail Mary in Spanish and parts of the Our Father). I put this part in mostly for my mother. This beats how many times I went to Mass in the States in the last four years, but I here I do it for the same reason as I did in the States, my family goes. I like the feeling of community you get when you go to church and it a prayer now and again doesn’t hurt anything either. We went to two different memorial services for two young boys that passed away and we made it to a regular mass in the church one community over. At all the services there was food afterwards as is the case with almost any event you go to in Peru.
As far as additions go to the family and pets we have had many people come and go and it seems like there are news animals running around every week. My father’s sister and nephews came to stay with us for a few days and the boys ended up staying for a week and a half longer than their mother to work in the fields and spend time with their cousins. My house has two bedrooms and a half bedroom connected to the living room or main area you walk into when you enter the house through one of two doors. I felt bad having a large bed while the boys slept on a tarp in the living room and my parents and siblings shared twin beds, but wasn’t about to give up my clean bed and room just yet. The boys were fine with sleeping on the ground and it made me think about all the people I know in the US who wouldn’t be able to sleep on a hard bed let alone a tarp on the ground. Plain and simple most Peruvians are much tougher than most (not all) Americans. Another week we had a family friend stay, as well as my father’s uncle and I’m sure there will be more in time.
All my dogs love me now and all it took was someone showing a little kindness and friendship to them. The dog as a great friend or pet exists with pets in Peru, but you only see it in the urban areas like Lima, Piura, or other larger cities. In site they are used to guard the house and gather up the goats in most cases. Anyways, the attitudes of my family members towards our dogs have become nicer and nicer in my time here. Blanca, our mama dog had five little white puppies and three have made to the walking and squeaking stage. My favorite and the puppy I’ve claimed is a little girl pup I’ve named Zoey. I plan to train her in English and Spanish and she will be my little shadow for the next two years and hopefully make the trip back to the US with me as well. As I am writing this blog Zoey is actually sleeping in my lap. In addition to the puppies we also have a new cat named Miche or we call him Botas Blancas (white boots). This is very funny in Peru because botas blancas as also a very popular folk song in Piura about a man who comes to town and steals all the men’s wives and girlfriends. Almost all the goats are pregnant from one male goat who hangs out up in the mountains and we ate our fighting roosters and got two different roosters for the big fight in June. These roosters are often times tied up right outside my room in the house. Again as with family members I’m sure more animals will rotate in and out with the exception of Zoey, Botas, and the other dogs.
Other random fun times from the month of January:
Swimming in the canal in Chipillico with Jillian and the young children her family
Other drinking/social circles in Potrerillo
Good random conversations with Peruvians on the way to or coming back from Chipillico
The day trip to Sapillica
Planting rice with my brother and cousin
Fishing for crabs in my lagoon sanctuary
Running in the valley in the mornings since I received my Ipod
Studying Spanish (It’s great to learn it when I can apply it)
Meeting with the mayor of the district of Las Lomas
o More professional than fun, but it was a big deal and important for work
Seeing tarantulas (as long as they are far away from my house). I hate spiders and they scare me but it’s a rush.
Trip to Sapallica with Jillian and my dad to meet all my extended host family
o Very beautiful scenery and the first time I wanted to put on a long sleeve shirt in months (the feeling only lasted for about a half hour)
