A Very Busy February

As I sit here in California Cafe, using the only reliable internet that I will have for the next 3 weeks, and I am reflecting on the craziness that was February. I have been in my site for 3 months now, and I have been here in Peru for almost 6! It is crazy to believe that I am 1/8 of the way finished with my Peace Corps service, and it is making me realize just how quickly two years is going to pass.
As previously mentioned, all of the problems that I had had with the school director have recently dissipated due to the support of my community. With the help and support of my community members, I was given the key to one of the classrooms of the school, and since then I have been teaching everyday (except Sundays) for about 3 hours each day.

Everyday I have been teaching English and environmental science to a group of about 20 children between the ages of 6-14. Most of the time, the kids refer to me as profesora, which means teacher. They have a ton of trouble pronouncing my name, which is consistently changing from Yessica, Joshica, or Yessie. I have realized that most women in the community at my age have multiple children and husbands. I became aware of this fact when I

was teaching, and in midst of a lecture, one of the 10 year old girls called me over to her desk. Naturally, I walked over thinking that she had a question, but to my dismay, she wanted to know why I did not have any children yet. This has happened multiple times in class, and its awkwardness never ceases to be. The girls make up for it by drawing me pictures on the board, and bringing me 4 leaf clovers. Actually, 5 of the girls brought me about 30 four leaf clovers at the beginning of one of our sessions, and then helped me place them between the pages of my books to dry. As in any classroom anywhere on the planet, some days are good days to teach, where the kids are quiet, respectful and attentive. The other days are like any normal school, with the paper airplanes, soccer balls bouncing, and endless requests for recess. I am not a huge fan of teaching English, but I understand the benefits of speaking English in my community.

This area is a popular tourist destination, and many English speaking tourists pass through my community to head to Laguna Llanganuco, start the Santa Cruz trek, or summit some of the many glistening peaks of the Cordillera Blanca. My real joy and happiness comes from teaching environmental science, and the true bio nerd in me finds it way out into the classroom as I passionately deliver lectures on endangered species, Peruvian mammals, erosion prevention and reforestation. Ahhhh science, you truly are my heart.
Alot of my time here is spent in my community, but a good chunk of it I spend working with the park guards from Huascaran National Park. As a side project to work on with my class, I am soliciting the park to receive 30 trees to plant at the school. I have been teaching a unit on reforestation, and I am planting trees with the children to show them the benefits of growing trees in your community. Later on, I will be working with the community to build tree nurseries for native tree species. Firstly, I am starting with the children.....

Speaking of trees, I recently worked on a project with Huascaran National Park to build a tree nursery for a widespread reforestation project of Quenual trees, a native species here in Peru. After a day of digging the beds for the trees, we planted over 3000 esquejes (stalks) of quenuales.

Myself and members of my community helped build these nurseries, because many of these people work in associations in the park, and are required to put in some work to support the park's conservation efforts. After the long day of planting I hiked back to my community with my other community members, with tools on my back and all.

Somehow, somewhere in the midst of manual labor, I hurt myself. I was sore for 2 days, and didnt think too much of it, just pent it up to a good day's work. After a few days, I didnt understand why my abs hurt terribly, because I had not been doing pilates or any other type of stomach exercise due to soreness. After a few days of this, I went running, where I discovered that something was very wrong with my ribs. After a trip to the doctor, I was told that I had a few bruised ribs and to take it easy for awhile. Aside from some pain after walking and breathing deeply, I am mostly frustrated, because this prevents me from bouldering on the weekends. In order to quench a little of that thirst, I will be watching climbing videos in site, in order to anticipate the next time I can get out and climb.

This weekend, I have been in Huaraz for 4 days, for the second installment of Quechua classes. Quechua is an indigenous language of this region, and it is completely and totally different from Spanish. Actually, a strange matter of trivia, the language of Jabba the Hut is based on Quechua.

Most of the people, actually all of the people in my community speak Quechua. The only time that I hear Spanish being spoken in my community is if they are talking to me, or to other outsiders that do not speak Quechua. Me speaking Quechua is something painful to hear, but hopefully after two years I will have some standpoint to understand and speak some of the language. I hope....

February was not only filled with much work and productivity, but lots of merrymaking as well, which deserves its very own post later today.....

Problems, Solutions, and Working with Kids

The first day that I came to my community, I went straight to the school with a formal letter of introduction, and an offer to hold summer camp for the kids (our summer is between December and March) with classes from environmental science, geography, naturalism, English and self esteem workshops. Since that day on November 24, I have had endless amounts of trouble with the principal, because she will not let me teach in her school. After a month a pressing and pushing she finally agreed to have a meeting with me to at least discuss some sort of class I could hold. The first meeting we had scheduled she did not come up the mountain, and the second, third, fourth and fifth meetings we had scheduled she did not show up to any of those either. Conveniently, the last meeting we had scheduled was the day before vacations, and, since she did not come, she has been on vacations ever since. Since then, I have been trying to find another space where I can teach, whether it be the health post, the meeting hall, or the community locale, anything will do. Last week I had a meeting with all of the local authorities of my community, including the mayor, health post official and the presidents of the different local committees. It was brought up in our meeting that my presence here is beneficial to the children, and that the community should take advantage of me giving classes. After this was brought up, I voiced that I had been trying endlessly to work with the school, to no avail, and that I was in the process of finding a space that would allow me permission to teach classes. After the community heard that the school director would not cooperate with me, they were livid and disappointed that she had refused my classes without speaking to any of them. The conclusion of the meeting was that the community authorities were writing a letter of support in my favor, and were all going to sign it and hand it in to the school director to go forward with my classes. I am absolutely grateful to my community for all of their support and help, because without them I would still be battling with the school director. Yesterday as I was organizing a work plan with the health post doctor, the school director happened to be up here on the mountain, and she just so happened to enter the health post. A discussion ensued, and the school director apologized to me for missing all of our meetings and failing to cooperate with me in the past. I accepted her apology, and she offered to meet with me today, in order to give me the key to the school communal, in order to begin teaching classes for the duration of vacations. She has also agreed to allow me to work with the English and science teachers, in order to support them and their classes for the upcoming school year. Hopefully, she will actually come to our meeting today, as scheduled, and I will be able to start teaching my own classes next week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other than battling the principal of the local school, I have been working with an organization called World Vision, and we have been coordinating activities with children and adults alike. World Vision is a Christian NGO that finds children in communities and connects them to a donor in either the U.S. or Switzerland. Each donor is assigned to a specific child, and they exchange letters and pictures. World Vision has a lot of money for projects, and unlike the Peace Corps, they give out a ton of stuff to the community.

Gifting and hand outs are something that I am prohibited from doing in the Peace Corps, because our goal is to begin sustainable projects with the community. Rather than act as leaders of projects, we are facilitators, encouraging full community participation and ownership. My first activity working with World Vision was before Christmas, when they arrived for their Christmas campaign to give out sweatshirts to the children of my community. My role for this activity was to lead different activities and games for groups of children that waited for their sweatshirts.

This past week, I helped coordinate and facilitate a three day workshop with World Vision for both the adults and the children. For the past three days, I have been teaching children every morning with workshops about self esteem and values. In the afternoons, we have been running workshops with the adults on community leadership, family violence, and the differentiation between discipline and abuse. Working with children is a rewarding and difficult experience. At points, the students are extremely interested and are respectful and attentive. At other times they are throwing water at each other and yelling obscenities in Quechua.

Along with teaching, I have attended all of the closing ceremonies of all of the schools in my area, which include 2 preschools, and 2 secondary schools. At all of these ceremonies, called clausuras, the children lineup and are spoken to by their teachers and principals to end the school year. At the clausura for the secondary school in Humacchuco, which is only about 15 students, the school received a gift from the department of education and the ministry of health for participating in a healthy schools campaign. For this ceremony, the women of the community prepared Picante de Cuy (fried guinea pig with potatoes covered in a pepper sauce) and a soup they prepared from sheep (we slaughtered a sheep from the wool and weaving program that the school runs). At the ceremonies for the two preschools, we were also served Picante de Cuy. Needless to say, that particular week I ate alot of guinea pig. The clausura for the school here in Huashao did not serve food, thank goodness, because there are many more students (the robust number of about 65).

Pigs, Proms, and Politicians

More and more often, I find myself in the midst of wondrously strange situations, which can all be accredited to the fact that I live in rural, Andean Peru. Most of the time, I just let these oddities pass, until I sit in my room, and ask myself “How the hell did that happen?” I have a huge, endless list of these passings, and I am sure that my next two years in Peru will surely fill me with days, months, why, even two years of combined strangeness to make returning to the U.S. a struggle not only for me, but for all of you that will have to deal with me. Today surely proved itself to be one of these days. As I was sitting on my front ‘porch’ in a light drizzle, building a shelf out of recycled materials, my disheveled neighbor ran up to me to recruit my help to control some sort of animal. Well, then animal turned out to be the neighbor’s pig, who had some sort of cut on her right hind leg. My job, as qualified as I am with pig rangling, was to maintain control of the pig, and scratch her belly, while my neighbor picked out bits and pieces of straw and fleas from her leg. Needless to say, the 200lb pig was unhappy and uncomfortable with a belly scratch filled day of surgery, and she bucked and fought her way away from us as best as she could. After feeling unsuccessful with animal husbandry and amateur veterinarian skills, I surely thought that my recruited service was finished, until my neighbor ran up the hill with a bottle of grain alcohol, with a dead, curled up snake in the bottom, and a bag of talc powder. Apparently the surgery was not complete until cleaning the wound with snake liquor, and then applying a hearty layer of talc. After successfully getting myself dirtied to the point where I actually decided to bathe, I was released to return to building my lovely shelf of garbage.
A few days after Christmas, I was invited, along with my family, to attend the prom of one of our neighbors. Here in Peru, the entire family and all of the family friends are invited to attend the prom,

whereas in the U.S. it is only the students and some teachers to supervise. The day of the prom I had traveled over the other side of the mountains to have lunch with Pete, Alex and Kaitlyn (other volunteers from Peru 14 who are the closest to me, by about 4 hours) in Yanamito. Because the availability of transportation is meager at best, I decided that once I came down from the mountain, I would wait for my family to descend and meet me in Yungay (the largest town closest to us, where most shopping is done and where the prom was being held). After dark, there is little to no transportation to leave my town, and my family waited for 4 hours before a livestock truck drove by to have any sort of chance of descending into Yungay. After waiting for about 5 hours at my aunt’s house, my family arrived, and we arrived at the prom at about 10pm. Here in Peru, everything operates on La Hora Peruana, meaning that everything is late, generally by an hour.

Although the prom was scheduled to begin at 9, the ceremonies and speeches did not begin until 11, where the students began to file in one by one in a ceremony similar to graduation. After many, many, many long winded speeches (as is the custom in Peru) the dancing and celebrations commenced, at about 1am. As soon as the wind changed from formality to celebratory, every group of adults found their way to the beer table and bought a box of beer, which is about 12 large beers. In the circle that I found myself in, with my family of course, we sat around about 15 boxes of beer.

For the first few hours, I successfully drank very little, pouring only a few millimeters of beer into my glass before passing it onto the next person. However, as the night progressed, old Quechua women were noticing my trick, and chastised me by pouring me full glasses again and again, then throwing me onto the dance floor to dance huayno with their nephews, cousins and sons (all of whom they were trying to encourage me to marry). After hours and hours of dancing, people trying to teach me bad words in Quechua, and falling asleep in my plastic chair, it was finally time to leave, at 6am.
The next day proved to be equally as interesting, although most of the day, at least the first half, was dedicated to sleeping. At some point in the day, I woke up to strange noises outside, and decided that since it was already afternoon, it was worthwhile to investigate.
Interestingly enough, I awoke to find a group of Peruvians dressed in red vests and hats hanging up a tarp and signs in front of my house. It turned out that this group was a campaign team for a certain politician that was giving out gifts, hot chocolate and cake to the children of rural communities, as a way to promote his upcoming campaign to be regional president of Ancash. Strangely enough, they had chosen to hold their event at my house, because it is close to the road and easily found.

Eventually, about 50 children from the community and 20 mothers showed up in front of my house to receive their gifts. A rule in Peace Corps is that we are prohibited from participating in any political rally, or showing any type of support or loyalty to any political party. Therefore, I was unable to help the campaign team pass out their toys, but I made myself useful with helping the mothers cook and open about 60 cans of milk with a pocket knife. As any Peruvian visiting Huashao is confused by my presence, the campaign team was completely flustered by an

American living in the middle of nowhere, in a farming community in the mountains. As I do all the time, I explained to them what Peace Corps is, what my work is concerned with and that I will be living here for two years. The conclusion they made from my eloquent speech was that I am a doctor. Not at all what I had explained. Anywho, after about 3 hours of listening to rants from the political team and watching them hand out dolls and trucks, they finally left, but no of course before giving me my own toy doll.

Back to the topic of pigs, two Sundays ago I was invited to my grandmother's house to help slaughter and prepare their pig, to celebrate my cousin's return to Lima. Luckily, I had just missed the actual slaughter, but I was present for the shaving, skinning and cutting up of the pig. Killing and cooking a pig is a full day event, and the entire family participates in the process. The men generally did most of the cutting and skinning of the meat, whereas the women did all of the cooking and peeling. Before we had our dinner of fried pork, we were given bowls of fried tripe, which, I can most certainly say, I will never be accustomed to.