Happy Birthday, Dad!

Well, I’ve officially been in my site for a whole week. It feels like it’s been a lot longer than that. I’ve introduced myself to the health post. I figured out when they play volleyball and played with them on Saturday! I’ve had two “classes” of Quechua, enough to get me excited and totally freak me out. Hmm.. Most people here understand Spanish but just walking down the street, it’s almost all Quechua and they certainly all talk to and about me in Quechua, certain that I don’t have a clue what’s going on . . . and I don’t. :(
There are two missionaries that live here too and they studied Quechua when they first got here and can speak it pretty well, perfectly, depending on who you talk to. So, they have been an amazing resource, they loaned me their books and might loan me some tapes and one video that they have in Quechua. Since this isn’t a “language” persay, it’s really hard to find resources. REALLY hard. Ok, so if it isn’t a language, what is it, you say? It is a dialect. The Quechua that comes up on your average google search is from Cusco (re: Macchu Pichu) and really doesn’t help me at all since most people here wouldn’t understand it either. Then there is the Ancash Quechua. Is this it? No, this refers to the main valley in Ancash, Callejón de Huaylas to be more specific. I am not in this valley (most volunteers in Ancash are but I’m a three hour bus ride away on the other side of the mountains). I’m in the Región Chavín, Callejón de Conchucos. So, it’s not even a major dialect. Jeez.
Sidenote: there was definitely a large explosion outside. Hmm..
I was hoping to also work on my Spanish so that’s adding to my frustration as well. Ok, so that’s the language. I went running with my host-sister a couple of times in the mornings and it was really fun! She is the only one in San Marcos (she studied in Lima) that runs or really exercises that I have seen. So we went running around and made plans to run over to this other valley where some other towns are, it was fabulous. Except for that the second day running I twisted my knee. Now it hurts to go down hill at anything faster than a casual walk. So, shoot. No more running. It was really fun too, I showed her some exercises and that we did at picturesque locations, very exercise video like.
Work. That’s why I’m here, right? My counterpart (the person that I was assigned to work with) was out of town the first two days that I was here and when she got back, she facilitated mine and Tsutsuy’s introduction to the health center. She also is arranging a lot of things for me, we have trips planned to all the small towns surrounding and has plans for the diagnostic that I need to do to take place in the five towns that are more set up to “be focused on” if you will. So I have trips planned to these places, where I will be doing “charlas” except I don’t really want to be doing that yet, but rather interviewing them all. So, my plan is to do a fun game slightly related to hygiene and then try and schedule some house visits. Schedule by the way, isn’t really the right word, I guess I just want to get to know them and hopefully where they live so that when I go back to talk to them, they don’t run away. And my counterpart also invited me to a training for health post workers on a program that they are doing which is health promotion, hence something I will be intimately involved with. So, basically she is great, but it’s all very spread out, and she gave me about three hundred pages of reading material to go over to make the community diagnostic questions. Right.
World map. About three weeks ago, somebody decided that we are required to make a world map somewhere during our first three months. This means December, January, February. School gets out in about ten days and then resumes in March. No one does summer school around here, despite my persistent questions and inquiries. Who am I going to get to paint a map? This is jumping a little ahead since tomorrow is the first presentation I am going to have with the professors at the high school so they might be excited about it or have an idea. Shoot, might even get some volunteers to paint it on the health post, gotta stare at something in the waiting room. Though paint fumes might not be the healthiest thing for sick people to be breathing in.
Basically, I think I’m making progress… I have three months to get all these requirements done.. I just don’t know if anyone is going to be here for the next two months….