Projects...

So, usually I write blog entries about funny little stories that happen to me or events that are going on in my site. However, I’m sure quite a few of you are wondering out there what exactly I’m, um, working on? Yes, so I’m going to try and write out some summaries of things I’m doing in the name of the Peace Corps. :)

Quechua: One thing that I really want to do here is work primarily with the surrounding communities of San Marcos. There is a lot of money in the town itself but the surrounding communities have not been so lucky. About five of the villages close to mine do not have any bathrooms whatsoever. Not even a latrine or a hole in the ground. This is just one of the health issues that abound in this area. In doing interviews with many of the mothers of these communities, I discovered, rather quickly, that a basic knowledge of Quechua is mandatory in working with these populations. So, I’ve set up “classes” of sorts with a couple of women in San Marcos to help me study and practice the language.
I’m sure I will be struggling with this goal throughout my two years of Peace Corps service. One, it’s a new language. And two, the rules of grammar, syntax, most everything seem to be up to interpretation. One small example, I’ve found about ten verb endings so far and in my official class, we only went over four. There are different verb endings when you are asking questions, talking, telling a story, writing a story, etc. And no one that I’ve talked to knows how to write in this language, so that is an added obstacle.

Health Center: Through the health center, which I’m supposed to be coordinating most of my activities with, I’m actually doing very little. I am trying to find ways to support the health promoters, (a volunteer network that supports the health center by being a resource for their community in the areas of preventative health and first aid). So far, I’m still just attending the meetings but I’ve offered my services, including visiting each and every community and working with the promoters to hold public health presentations in the town. I think it’s a slow process to gain their trust and I need to push them a little more to actually utilize my presence.
I’m also working with the social worker at the health center in a program to train the professors at the elementary school to teach hygiene and general life skills to their students throughout the year. What happens is that I will train them one month about washing hands or nutrition, etc. and they will have that month to teach that lesson to their class. That way, when I leave, the teachers will know how to teach these lessons and I won’t need to be there, hence, a sustainable project (with fingers crossed.)

IDMA: This is an NGO that is working in the area. They are concentrated in the surrounding communities of San Marcos and are working with various families growing gardens and small animal raising both to raise the level of nutrition within their family and also to give them a source of income by selling their products. I’ve been tagging along and getting to know the projects, in the near future, we have plans to implement nutrition workshops for those families with gardens, to learn how to easily incorporate these new vegetables into their diets and to balance their food intake, instead of selling them to by more rice and pasta (which almost everyone does…)

ALMA: There are three girls in town that I took to a leadership conference earlier this month. With them, I am hoping to create a young women’s club to provide a safe space for young women in San Marcos to relax, work on homework, think about what they want to do in their future, and how to plan for it. Or, if that’s a little heavy, sit around and knit or listen to music. I would just like to make a place where young women here can feel free to express themselves.

Women’s Club: I have had a few discussions with women in town expressing interest in forming an association to socialize but also look into ways to better the town of San Marcos. So, I’m trying to follow up these comments to see if there is any, um, will to work behind them and if so, to try and form a club with these women.

World Wise Schools: Through a program funded by the Peace Corps, I’m trying to link a classroom in Peru with a classroom from the states and start a pen-pal program of sorts. It is still in the beginning stages but should be a fun way for high school students from both countries to interact and learn more about their respective cultures.

Work

See? I do work. This is a training for the professors of the elementary school in San Marcos. The guy who is closest to the camera, you can see the back of his head, wants me to marry his fourteen year old son.... Riight. I need to get a boyfriend just to avoid comments like that...

Quinceñera Commentary

I actually got invited to my first quinceñera last week! It was really fun and much better than I expected. That might sound weird and cynical but my impression of the whole ordeal was that it happened entirely too late at night and mostly consisted of drinking. Not fun.
The invitation said 9:30pm so I showed up around 9:50pm, a little nervous already because I live about a fifteen minute walk from the main plaza and usually don’t go out after, oh, I’d say about eight or so. And I dressed up, which I never do in this town either. Already a strange night. So, there are five people at the party when I arrive. The party actually started around 11:40pm when the girl finally came down stairs (I’m trying not to use names cause this is the internet and all… so bear with me) in her beautiful bride-like gown. Then she gave a speech, the father gave a speech, the godfather (they like to have godfathers and godmothers for pretty much any event here. This means that they paid for the dress, etc.), the boyfriend, the best friend. All very wedding like. THEN, they had a dance with the father, the godfather, the boyfriend, the grandfather… THEN, they had a dance where every boy in the place had to dance with, we’ll call her Maria, with Maria. And there were about 50 boys present so that took a while. Then, around 1:30am, we were each served a quarter of a chicken with two potatoes and chili pepper sauce. Then dancing. Lots of dancing. Then beer. Lots of beer. Then drunken men. Urgh.
All in all, it was a really fun night, I liked watching all the kids dance. All the girls had these exquisite dresses in bright colors and it was just fun to take it all in. Very nice evening, er, morning?

Quinceñera

The centerpiece of the room display.















Friends from school (her's, not mine). I just thought all of their dresses were really pretty and fun to look at. :)

















The girl of the hour! Isn't the dress beautiful?





















No one was smiling for any of the pictures! It was ridiculous! So, I was trying to make my Peruvian picture face.
















Then, for the dancing, she changed into her, um, dancing dress?

Choclo and Chirimoya

Working the booth at the Choclo and Chirimoya Fair in the town of Hauri. Choclo is a type of corn and chirimoya is a fruit that they grow here.












The queen of choclo and the queen of chirimoya. Don't ask. There are queens for most every event here. I dunno.















The chirimoya. Looks a little wierd but it's delicious!!
















Dancers in the plaza of Huari.






















The fountain in Huari. Yes, those are cats peeing. It's not clear why they decided this was a good idea.

Chavin Ruins

One of the buildings of the Chavin, they built them at an angle to prevent them from falling down during earthquakes. They also build them with one layer of large stones and two layers of small stones also to aid in stability.





















See? I told you I was in Peru. Llamas!
















One of the ceremonial plazas of Chavin.
















In the Chavin tunnels, this is the daughter of our tour guide, isn't she cute?




















Some of the "Cabezas Claves" of Chavin. These used to be on the ceremonial buildings in Chavin. One theory is that the heads depict a human form changing into an animal form.

More pictures

One of the women who is raising guinea pigs for fun and profit! :)

The beginnings of a school garden in one of the communities around San Marcos.

Ok, sorry, I like pictures of flowers.

Mother's Day Pictures

The Cordillera Blanca, as seen from the Callejon de Conchucos.













The mountains as seen from San Marcos, I heard that the nearby mine is going to destroy these mountains in a few years in their search for expensive metals and such. So, this might be one of the last pictures you'll see of these beautiful view.











That's our lunch baking, under that big pile of dirt.














That's everyone who I spent Mother's Day with! And the combi we arrived in...














After we got back, there was beer and huayno time! Nothing like dancing at the mechanic's shop to say Happy Mother's Day! :)

Happy Mother's Day!

There are a few holidays that Peruvians just seem to do better than in the states. One of these holidays seems to be mother’s day. (Get excited, Mom… this means we’ll be celebrating Peruvian style when I get back!) It’s one of those holidays where you get to hug (or an enthusiastic back pat, which I’m still getting used to) every woman you see that you think might be a mom and say, “Happy Mother’s Day!” as you walk down the street. This is way fun and awkward and I highly enjoy it.
In the bigger towns (San Marcos, Carhuayoc, Huantar) they hold raffles with Mother’s Day gift baskets (filled with pasta, canned milk, oil, etc.) bingo, skits, poetry, etc. I was not at these events. But they sounded really cool.
What I did was get up and go to my friend Carmen’s house at 6:30 in the morning and knock on a door. Since there was a big party the night before, and parties tend to end at around 6 in the morning, there were a lot of people still out on the streets, most of whom were slightly inebriated. (Don’t worry, Grandma, I was in bed by 8:30pm that night!) So, yes, knocking at the door. Fifteen minutes, lots of worrying, and then more knocking later, a sleepy Carmen appeared and we went to the market to buy food to get ready for the day.
I never know what to actually do when someone says, “Let’s meet up at x o’clock” and said time is well before the sunrise. In my experience, this means that either they are going to be there on the dot (25% of the time) or I am going to have to go find them and wake them up (50%) or I am going to look awkward hanging out at some random part of town for a half an hour and then go back to my house (25%).
Ok, long story short, we left at 8:15am on a combi to go “to the campo.” A combi is kind of a cross between a taxi and a bus. It has enough seats for fourteen people. As we headed off up the mountain, I made sure to count, just for blogging purposes, the contents of this combi. There were 24 people, two Pekinese dogs, perhaps around 100 potatoes, a large tub of ground corn, two dead sheep, and other assorted pachamanca makings such as two shovels and a lot of wood. Oh, and a lot of Huaino (kind of like “country” in the states or “mariachi” in Mexico, just google “Sonia Morales” or “Diana Paucar”).
An hour later we arrived to a beautiful sight! Ever since I found out San Marcos was my site, I was told it was on the other side of the Cordillera Blanca. A beautiful snow capped mountain range. I have never seen a snow capped peak from San Marcos. Well, I finally found them! Climbing in altitude, you can see the snowy summits peaking over the hills surrounding San Marcos. It was amazing! [I have to insert something, right now the radio is blasting in my house, like always…. Now take a moment to guess what song is blasting over the speakers… Ready? “Dust in the Wind” oh yes.]
We set up shop, wrapped the húmitas, heated up the rocks, well, I've described pachamanca making many times before so I won't bore anyone. While we were waiting for the rocks to heat up, we climbed a nearby hill to get a good view of the "white mountain range." Spectacular.
Also while waiting, we ate way too much, especially considering that we were waiting for the food to cook so we could eat it... And, we washed the two dogs in the stream. This basically cracked me up and the rest of the day was fun but if it hadn't been, it still would have been worth it to watch this family chase their soaking wet pekinese dogs around the Andes mountains to dunk them in a muddy stream. Outstanding.

ALMA fotos

Picture #1: Pretty flowers!

Picture #2: A sunset from the ALMA locale

Picture #3: My team, Ishinca! We won egg toss and tug-of-war in the ALMA Olympics!

Picture #4: I don't think we could do this in the states... There were two girls to each single mattress, and we mixed up the girls so they didn't know who was sharing their bed.

Picture #5: We did a skit for the girls because everybody likes gringos dressing up and acting silly! These are the three fairies that teach the main character, Nacho Macho, about gender equality.

Picture #6: One of the many workshops at ALMA.

Poultry Porn

Since I’ve arrived to this country, the large quantity of stray dogs or just dogs that stay outside in the street all the time have quickly acclimated me to seeing random bouts of canines getting it on as I walk about town.
However, it is apparently time for roosters and hens to procreate in and around my house. Oh joy.