Huaraz, Huari, San Marcos

Oh my goodness I’ve done a lot of traveling this past week. I was so excited to get out of my routine and had so many exciting things to do in Huaraz but when everything was said and done, I think enjoy staying in my site a lot more than I realized. (Did you hear that Peace Corps?)
Huaraz was super fun, Tsutsuy and I met up with Libby, Ben, and Ryan to share are respective experiences for the first three weeks. We did this sharing over a wonderful pizza dinner and again over a delicious breakfast where I had a veggie omelet and was quite content. I also got some laundry done… no this does not mean that I do not handwash all my own clothes. This means that I can not get my large items like sheets very clean in my little tub and in Huaraz they wash, dry, and press for three soles a kilo. Another way fun thing that I purchased in Huaraz was a sello. That would be a stamp, that says my name, voluntaria de Cuerpo de Paz, etc. And it looks quite official and it’s for writing official looking letters. Peru is all about official looking letters. See, the thing that I don’t get is that when I write this official looking letter and stamp it and sign it, it’s still not official, it just took a really long time to get together. I don’t quite get this. I do however, understand how it makes you feel important to get a cool stamped and signed letter. Anyway, I have yet to write an important letter, but my parents are getting a letter from me that just may be stamped and signed. This means I officially told them Merry Christmas, I suppose.
Ok, Huari. This was very informational and I’m very glad I went but on the whole, less fun. First Tsutsuy spend the night because we had to catch the 4:30am combi. Yes, that’s right. Nothing like wandering the streets at 4:30 to get in a combi and proceed to sit there until 5:10am (the woman we were meeting there showed up at 5:00am, by the way). Then when we got there between the something bad I had eaten the night before and the very cramped transport, I was sweaty, nauseous, and unable to stand up straight by the time we arrived. Basically, I was sick for the whole first day but after that everything was a lot better. And I’m actually getting accustomed to the Peruvian food. I’m a little worried about this for multiple reasons. I actually ate liver at the restaurant… and enjoyed it! (so did Tsutsuy!) I think it had something to do with the fact that it was very fried. Or it could have been that glorious white rice that accompanies every meal, I don’t think so though.
Training: The first day was 8am to 9:20pm, second day, 8am to 8pm, third day 8am to 2pm. No joke. It was insane. I was so trained out. One thing I thought was really cool was that when we broke up into groups, the doctors and staff used examples of their own posts and they all knew the population of people they attended, the population in each community, the people that were pregnant, that had children under one, under five, in extreme poverty, etc. just off the top of their heads! We would be choosing a family for an extreme poverty aid program and they knew all of their stats for their respective communities. I was really impressed. I was also really impressed with the program outlines given by the government, it all seemed really streamlined and mapped out each step, etc. Of course, after each presentation there was time for questions. This is where we saw that half of the stuff sometimes didn’t show up and other powerful leaders in the community sometimes got in the way of the successful execution of these programs, as well as the difficulty for some of those working at the health posts to correctly complete each task. All in all, it was a really cool learning experience and also made me realize just why everyone at the post is so stressed out all the time. Especially my counterpart because she is the one in charge of ALL of the programs that we went over in the three days, which includes working with the school systems and professors, individual families, communities, and municipalities. And of course all of these institutions have about a million things that they need to be doing and writing reports on.
We left on the five o’clock bus. It was packed. It was like a charter bus (in the 80’s at least) and we started waiting for the bus two hours early so we got seats but that same day, in addition to normal travelers, there was the training that just got out, so all health personnel were trying to get back before dark, and that day was the day for teacher evaluation so there were a lot of professors that needed to get home as well. Lots of people… So, apparently (I did not know this), people standing up on the bus is illegal. I found this out as we drove by the police station and proceeded to get stopped. The police man said that everyone needed to get off that was standing up do then much complaining and arguing ensued. About a half an hour later, the people finally got off the bus and the police had a talking to with the driver. Ok, drive, drive, drive… about ten minutes later, the bus stops and a lady runs on and tries to hide in the back seat. Then a police man comes on immediately after and tells her to get off, another talking to, perhaps ticket giving to the driver. The policeman had driven ahead in his car to make sure that the bus didn’t let back on any passengers. The lady had run down the hill to catch the bus again. (The road leading out of Huari has a lot of switchbacks because it’s a rather steep drive.) Ok, police, lady off, and we are driving again… for about five minutes when the bus driver stops again. This time there are no cops. About fifteen people get back on the bus. Three stops later, everyone is back. They all went running down the hill after they got kicked off! One of the women that works in the health post actually left all of her stuff on the bus so she could run faster to catch up with it.
So all that took an extra hour so we showed up an hour late to San Marcos and Tsutsuy spent the night again and we took the high school teacher’s combi up to Huaripampa (the only way to get up there without walking on the weekdays). So we went up and dropped off her stuff and then I walked back down. The next couple days were mainly spent recuperating. It was actually surprisingly hard to get back in to the routine, which was weird because I didn’t know I had a routine.