I've taken up running!?!

I have been feeling pretty sedentary lately and not liking it a bit. It's probably my personal continuous battle against diarrhea coupled with that Peace Corps fun of trying to figure out what the hell I'm supposed to be doing all the time. In any case, I've taken up running and it seems to be helping on both fronts. What!?! You say in that incredulous tone I love so much. I know. I was also surprised at this development, but it's shaping up well. Fun times in Rinconada Llicuar. Reasons: 1. The loud speaker system in town wakes me up every morning at 5AM with the day´s news and events: Fresh fish for sale at Marta's house, PTA meeting at 3 at the elementary school, and telephone call for Sr. Alberto Rumiche at the public phone. It's pretty exciting and there's music. This seems like it would be quaint except it's 5 yes 5 in the morning and lasts for about an hour and a half. So at 5:30 AM a couple of weeks ago I was laying in bed thinking, ¨I should be doing something useful. I would love to be sleeping, but that is simply not possible. What shall I do?¨ 2. The day before I had 3 different meetings that no one showed up to and I was feeling generally ineffective. 3. I was also having this lack of exercise problem what with the great distance between me and the Brooklyn YMCA so I decided that as the sun was only just coming up and it was a balmy 75 degrees or so I would get some exercise. Running it is.

Since then I've done a little research on how to run, how much to run, etc... In doing so, I found The President's Challenge. Now the President is actually not my favorite guy in the whole world, but this challenge is pretty cool. It's a little exercise log and for me it's really helpful for motivation on those days when the loud speakers are going, but I just want to lay there and do nothing anyway.

http://presidentschallenge.org/

Lady Liberty in Rinconada and a few other shots

What you say? The Statue of Liberty is in New York Harbor? We have one too! I'm not sure what the story on it is, and no one else seems to know either, but I'm going to keep asking. In the square in fromt of the church in Rinconada there is a plaster 1.5 meter tall version of the Statue of Liberty on a pedestal.

My Room

Wee neighbors who come to visit every afternoon.

Sunset in Rinconada

It's Picture Day

Someday I'll get it together to get my photos to the internet cafe in a timely manner so that I don't make these long posts of only photos... Maybe? :)

Aurora and Elmer- I work with them at the health post in town where Aurora is the midwife and Elmer is a nurse.




Me having lunch with the family. The mom is Dora and the little girl is Ingrid 6 yrs, next to her brother Pepe 7 yrs, and their oldest brother Darwin 12 yrs.





Makin music in San Clemente with Dora's brother and cousin. They're doing a practice for aChristmas dance/music performance.

Salt... the fountain of life?

This is just an interesting article from the NY Times. Click on the title ¨Salt.. the fountain of life?¨ for the link. The difference between lives with and without mental disability... It's so amazing how basic nutrients have such profound effects.

airing my dirty laundry

In keeping with my current practice of airing my dirty undies on the blog, a funny thing happened to me last week. I was doing my laundry. This is an energetic process where I stand in the back yard with a couple of buckets of water and a blue plastic wash tub and make an attempt at scrubbing that no self-respecting Peruvian alma de casa would take for cleaning. There is a waste water system in town and it's new, so people are still getting used to using it. The only connection to the waste water system in our house is the toilet, so all waste water that doesn't get dumped in the yard goes down the toilet. I had successfully washed all of my clothes and was starting the rinse process, so I went to dump out the soapy dirty water down the toilet. As the water flowed out of the bucket so did a fairly new pair of white cotton panties which had been camouflaged by the grayish water. I dropped the bucket and with my other hand tried to grab the errant undies from the toilet but they slipped off the tips of my fingers and down into the nether regions of the new waste water system. Deep breath. Now I'm in Peru in the desert using very little water to try to get clean and I have my arm in the toilet about up to the elbow. I'm thinking, ¨Oh no! What if my undies stop-up the toilet? This is the only toilet for 7 household members! EEEK!¨ So I fish around in the nether regions some more since my hand is conveniently down the toilet anyway, but it was tough times because I started to retch when my thoughts started to drift to all the times that the water didn't agree with me and I was sitting on that toilet wondering how I was the only one in the house with explosive diarrhea. So I pulled my hand out of the toilet. Washed, washed some more, clipped my nails and washed again, got up some courage and did the only thing that I could think of- tell a household member that I may have stopped up their toilet but flushing my panties down a toilet where flushing means dumping a bucket of water- or 3- down the toilet until the color is clear and there are no floaters.

Even though the water did seem to be flushing when I dumped another bucket or two down the chute to test it out I could just see the toilet stopping up in a week and poor Martin sitting there trying to figure out what the hell was wrong, so to avoid this I decided I had to discuss this with someone. As I tried in my very best in very professional and respectful Spanish to explain this to the only family member at home- the dad, Martin- he turned bright red and started to giggle hysterically. I did likewise. We decided not to worry about them until the toilet actually stopped up. It has been a week and all seems fairly clear- so fingers crossed that there will be no taking off the toilet and fishing around in the pipes. Did I mention that they were new?!

Guess what I want for Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

101: bathing and shaving your legs in a paint bucket

Of the many skills that I have acquired as a Peace Corps Volunteer perhaps the most useful so far is expertise in bathing and shaving my legs in a gallon bucket that once contained green paint the color of my wall. There's this joke in the Peace Corps about how volunteers don't see a glass half empty, they see a glass half full and then they take a bath in it. I always thought it was kind of a dumb joke, but it's getting funnier.

In Rinconada Llicuar, the town where I live they turn on the water in the public water system for a couple of hours every other morning. Everyone fills up every thing in the house that will stand still. There are always at least a couple of big plastic garbage cans, 5 gallon buckets, enormous cooking pots, and in the case of my house, 1 gallon paint cans. Some older families also have ceramic pots big enough for me to crawl into. Somehow with all of the washing and cooking and bathing and cleaning that goes on the water starts to run really short by the evening of the second day. I enjoy trying to be clean, but I'm still wary of using too much water since I'm living in a house with a family of 3 kids, a mom, a dad, an uncle, and little ole me. I was standing over the paint can that the kids use to bathe and I was noticing that there wasn't really going to be enough water to fill up the larger bucket that the adults usually use. Alrighty then, I put some hot water from the kettle in the kid can and filled up the rest with cool water. In the bathroom with my tin cup, my cotton washcloth, my razor, and the gallon paint can I was giggling like crazy. The family probably thinks I'm bananas, but I didn't think that they would get it... and I thought that it was damn hilarious. When I was done: nice bald legs, un-smelly self, and not a drop of soap left on me. It's all about the tin cup and cotton washcloth.

My new travel recommendation and addendum to what we learned from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: never leave home without your tin cup and cotton towel.

a day in the cotton desert

As far as I can tell everyone in Rinconada Llicuar is a cotton or rice farmer. I haven't met any family that doesn't work a field somewhere. A few heads of household are teachers, taxi drivers, and radio program announcers, but each is also a farmer. They grow a few fruits and vegetables for their own consumption, but for income they grow Pima cotton. There are rice farmers too and they have a nearby reservoir that gets water from an underground aquifer. They use that to flood some of the fields and grow rice. The fields are gorgeous, amazing- tall coconut palms swaying in the wind, green mango trees with branches bowing under the weight of the fruit and farmers riding their horse pulled carts everywhere.

Yesterday a lady invited me into her house to drink chicha. It's a fermented beverage made of corn. Think pulque if you're familiar with northern Mexico. It's made by chewing up the washed ground corn and spitting out the mixture in a pot, you add water, boil it twice and let it ferment. It's not my favorite beverage I have to admit, but it's pretty important here. The people working in the fields drink it to help make it though the day. So I'm making it though the day. I'm also trying to avoid chicha de jarra, but there's also chicha morada which is a sweet purple drink kind of like kool-aid. That's good stuff.

Me and the Star Spangled Banner in Rinconada Llicuar

I went to visit my site last week. It will be in bajo Piua and the welcome was very intense. People were amazing. There are so many details that I could share, but basically the first morning I got up and led a parade of small children carrying musical instruments and a paper American flag that they had made. Then at the municipal building all of the local officials gave speeches, the Chief of Police, the Justice of Peace, the Mayor; it was crazy. I also had to make a speech introducing myself and thanking them for inviting me. It was incredibly humbling. I hvae no idea how I'm going to live up to all of this. It seems like a lot of expectations.

They raised the Peruvian flag and sang the Peruvian national anthem and then someone had SEWN an American flag and they wanted me to sing the Star Spangled banner. I SANG the Star Spangled Banner out loud to 150 people!!! Yes here I am, in Peru, doing things I don't usually do. I don't even really know all the words, but fortunately they don't either and there wasn't a microphone. Then, since the entire elementary school was there, the kids dressed up in traditional dress and did dances typical of different regions of Peru. They also had a Huayno band playing. Huayno is a traditional Peruvian musicand bands have names like Sagrado Corazon de Jesus, but they play a dance music that includes a big drum, trumpet, guitar, and other instruments that we have seen before in the US. I can't even describe what it sounds like. I haven't heard anything like it before.

These little girls were in a performance of the same dances a few nights later in the nearby larger town of Sechura. They did a great job. They're only first graders, but they preform in front of big crowds of strangers.


27 people, yes 27 including: 15 4th graders, 6 first graders, 1 infant, other adults and me piled into a four door flatbed pickup truck to drive the half hour to Sechura. It was the most people I've ever seen crammed into one truck. Fun times in Piura. More soon.

Rinconada Llicuar

I got my site today!!! It's in the Departamento of Piura (the red part on the map and in Peru the states are called Departamentos). Oddly, this is definitely not the site that my Program Director told me I would be in a couple of weeks ago, but it's very nearby. I will be working with the Ministry of Health near the Pan American Highway in a town called Rinconada Llicuar. I'm not sure if that's someone's name or what, but I'll keep you posted. It's 3500 people or about 850 families. I'll have electricity, water every other day from 8AM to 1PM, and a public phone in town. There is internet in the City Hall and in a nearby town. AND there is cell phone service so I think that I'll be getting a cell phone. I think that I will have a bathroom in my house which is really, really exciting. The highway near Rinconada is asphalt and it's only about 40 minutes from the capital of the Department, also called Piura. I can send an receive mail there so I'll have yet another address soon. I'll pass it along as soon as I have it.

According to the Peruvian census about 40% of the people have not completed primary school. Folks mostly cook on firewood, and only about 40% have a bathroom or a latrine. The other 60% just go to the bathroom in the fields. Average income is S/. 227 soles (Peruvian currency) or about $ 71 dollars (US) a month. So for a lot of folks it's a pretty tough life.

On Sunday I go up to Piura to visit my new site. I'm so nervous. In the packet with my assignment is a little schedule of what I'll be doing for the visit. They have a lot of stuff planned including a ceremony where they sing the Peruvian National Anthem and then the US National Anthem! There's a Traditional Foods event with the Comedor Popular, kind of like a soup kitchen, but people pay a very small amount for their meal and almost all of even the very smallest towns have them.

Wish me luck!!

Tomorrow: site assignments

Tomorrow the Peace Corps, dedicated to we-will-tell-you-when-you-need-to-know approach to information, will tell us our site assignments. We had some feel-good interviews a couple of weeks ago where we were supposed to talk about the kind of site where we could work best. In the interview where I was theoretically saying where I was interested in living my Program Director told me that she had my site picked out and that I would be working with an NGO, near other volunteers, and in a place with cell phone service. This is a very big hint because many of the volunteers partner with the ministry of health and live in more remote areas. In some ways this is a big relief. After struggling with depressing for a number of years I really don't want to fall back into that hole so the proximity to people whose culture I share and cell phone service are really very exciting. None the less it did make the purpose of the interview somewhat moot.

I did not take this photo, I just got it off the web, but this is baja Piura, the part of the state of Piura nearest to the coast and where I think that my site will be. (I'll keep you posted.) Last week we went to visit for Field Based Training and met a few volunteers. They have sand floors in their houses and get water twice a week. There are also chickens running around everywhere. Many of you know how much I love live chickens- that is to say, not at all. Those are some dirty, dirty animals. I lived with a family in Ecuador who raised chickens over a summer when I was in high school. It ruined me and if I ever find a chicken in my bed again trust me you'll hear about it :) Anyway I'm excited about being near the coast. There's a famous beach near there called Mancora. I'm looking forward to that!

We had a Halloween party the night before last. I have some great pictures. I was a Super Gringa. It involved a cape and mask. I'll post more pictures later, as soon as I can. Lately, my other pastimes include talking about poop in all it's bizarre forms ad nausea, carefully considering the symptoms of Giardia and comparing them to my own poo, and trying to avoid becoming too enmeshed the soap opera that my host family in Sta. Eulalia insists on acting out. Think Sex, Lies and Videotape quality drama. It's intense.

So it's Week 7 and it's harder than the previous ones have been, but I'm hanging in with good humor and good friends. I'm thinking of changing my name to Elena. Any suggestions about Spanish names that are somewhat similar to Ella and not a pronoun?

charlas con la posta de salud

So one of the big jobs in Peace Corps is giving little talks and doing activites with groups, like classes at schools, women's groups, church groups, etc... As part of training other volunteers and I have been working with the Health Post in Sta. Eulalia to talk about the vaccination campaign against rubella, some self esteem stuff for teenagers and basic hygiene practices. Here'a a little photo gallery of that.

The woman in the green is Sondra, the nurse at the Health Post.
The guys are Mike and Patrick who are performing (with me and Lauren) doing puppet shows and litte skits about rubella and measles for a group of 116 parents and a classroom full of 7-9 year olds respectively.
Lauren is introducing herself to 116 parents.

Senic Sta. Eulalia

Hi everyone! It's picture day. Here are some photos of Sta Eulalia. The street is the street that I live on looking down hill towards the Parque Sta. Eulalia and the Peace Corps training Center and the second one is a shot of the town taken from the roof of the Peace Corps training center.

Remember the Alamo!

Here's a little message from my dad today: Remember the Alamo. I'm a little concerned about the sentiment because as any good Texan knows, the the Texans lost the battle of the Alamo to General Santa Ana but hey I guess they did win independence from Mexico...

Viva la Tejanas!

Bedbugs and broomsticks

Ahh the wonders of renting a furnished room: bedbugs and dogs. I am either getting a ton of mosquito bites or I have bedbugs. I have not yet seen the bedbugs, but the mattress is inside a giant pillow case type thing so I have to take that off to look for the bugs. I'm a little afraid if I do that I'm not going to want to sleep on the mattress anymore and that would leave the floor- lame. Then when I wake up in the middle of the night scratching like a maniac and I go to get a drink or go to the bathroom who meets me at the door to my room? The super-adorable dog Quia the patio-dog. She always has incredibly muddy feet and loves to jump up on me. Maricucha, the mom of the house, generally shoes him away with the broom. Other dog training techniques in the family include yelling and swatting with a newspaper. Since I'm usually a positive reinforcement kind of girl I was trying to praise the dog for sitting and not jumping, but that just wasn't working. I have been reduced to keeping the broom outside my bedroom door and carrying it like a shield to the bathroom. The dog cowers just at the sight of the broom.

Over the weekend I decided that it was time to do something about the bedbugs so I took the mattress and put it on the tin roof in an attempt to burn the little bastards. I also put a whole lot of bleach water on it and let it dry. I washed all the linens and wrapped my is insecticide infused mosquito net around the mattress and the whole family thought that this process was pretty darn funny. And really I have to agree. So finally, fortunately I spoke with the Bug Master, my father and the proprietor of an exterminating company so named. He said that none of that will work and I should go get some Delta Dust. So now I'm in the market for Delta Dust. I'm not sure how to say that in Spanish, but I am pretty determined to figure it out. I look like I have ants in my pants ALL the time because I'm super itchy!

photos from back in DC

This year was the 45th anniversary of Peace Corps, so back in DC I think this was the evening of Sept. 15 we had this ceremony where former volunteers from Peru and Bolivia put little pins on us. It was the Peruvian flag and the American flag. Aren't I cute? John Hatch, the guy who started FINCA spoke and he was very inspiring.

All is well in sunny Chosica. We had biohuetos class- organic gardening yesterday at the Agricultural University in Lima. It was really cool. Every Saturday we're learning about what plants are native to Peru, the soil types, microclimates, a little bit of medicinal plants and nutrition. It's totally cool. I'm definitely going to try to plant a garden when I get to my site. Hopefully it will be a far cry from my very lame little ficus tree in Brooklyn. That little guy had a rough life.

Then we hung out in Jockey Plaza, which is actually an enormous shopping mall, but it's close the university and easy to get to. It was odd. We ate at a super fancy Pizza Hut no 8 year olds in their soccer uniforms or "Book It" cupons there. Hopefully next Saturday I'll make it central Lima. It's like an hour and a half from the university so it's a little tough to do on a Saturday afternoon, but with a little planning :)

Also I finished knitting my first pair of socks! Please admire becasue they took me like 6 months to make.

Also, I do have some good photos from here, but I haven't downloaded them yet. I'll put them up soon!

La rubeola?

Today I did my first Charla at a kindergarten and pre-kindergarten for parents on rubella. I think that they got a big kick out of it and I think that maybe a few more people will go get shots for our having done a charla. A charla is a little talk with a group about an issue- in my case a community health issue. We're doing community projects in groups for the Peace Corps training projects and the one guy in my group, El Gringo is way more of a blind jumper-inner than even I am. I have been accused of overzealously and blindly pursuing a goal more than once, but this you gotta see to believe. So, four of us went to visit the school to take them this poster about a free rubella vaccination campaign about a week ago and he asked if we could do a charla which would have been great, if he had mentioned to us that he was planning to do that. I was even more frustrated when the charlas that they requested were 1. Telling teachers about how to teach children with special needs and 2. We go to the school to give vaccinations. What you say? I know nothing about special ed and you would never let me get a syringe near you? Yes, you're right. El Gringo totally suggested to the teacher that both of these were doable things. He was alone in that conversation- big mistake. So we had a group that was willing to have us but they had pretty unrealistic expectations of what we could do. I mean it isn't inconceivable that we could find someone to provide these things to the school, but no kind of thought was given to sustainable or feasibility. In any case, this resulted in me and another guy going to talk to the teacher about a more reasonable topic and us talking out and me writing a couple of skits- one was about a pregnant woman getting vaccinated. Later, I happened to read in a brochure that pregnant women shouldn't go get vaccinated. So thank goodness I rewrote that one before we gave it.

It ended up being lots of fun, but I definitely learned a few thing. I am actually grateful to El Gringo for being willing to take the risk, but I do feel like I fixed a problem he created... I'll need to think about that a little more.

Fun facts about rubella from the CDC:

Rubella is a respiratory disease caused by a virus

Symptoms:
Rash and fever for two to three days (mild disease in children and young adults)

Complications:
Birth defects if acquired by a pregnant woman: deafness, cataracts, heart defects, mental retardation, and liver and spleen damage (at least a 20% chance of damage to the fetus if a woman is infected early in pregnancy)

Transmission:
Spread by coughing and sneezing

Vaccine:
Rubella vaccine (contained in MMR vaccine) can prevent this disease.

You do NOT need the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine (MMR) if:
You had blood tests that show you are immune to measles, mumps, and rubella.
You are a man born before 1957.
You are a woman born before 1957 who is sure she is not having more children, has already had rubella vaccine, or has had a positive rubella test.
You already had two doses of MMR or one dose of MMR plus a second dose of measles vaccine.
You already had one dose of MMR and are not at high risk of measles exposure.

You SHOULD get the measles vaccine if you are not among the categories listed above, and:
You are a college student, trade school student, or other student beyond high school.
You work in a hospital or other medical facility.
You travel internationally, or are a passenger on a cruise ship.
You are a woman of childbearing age.

My friend Shaina took this picture of me when I was in LA last year.. or the year before... I would love to put it up, but I have to see if it'll work.... It's such a big file. Any suggestions on making the file smaller?

And here's a good picture of Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry.... ahhhh NYC...

bartonellosis?

I'm taking on a cultural practice of Latin American newspapers and using really gross pictures to get attention. I got a pamphlet with a picture very similar to this from the Ministry of Health in Peru the day before yesterday.

I have had my first brush with tropical disease that I've never heard of before. It was quite exotic. A man in town died recently when he was bitten by a mosquito that carried Peruvian Warts or bartonellosis. Everyone is super-freaking out and taking their kids to the clinic post in town to get checked. I couldn't figure out what it was and so when I went to the google oracle I learned that it's endemic to Peru, Ecuador, and Columbia and they think that outbreaks coincide with El Niño which is kind of interesting. It's an old disease and the Inca had to deal with it even before the Conquistadors arrived. Fortunately, the treatment is a pretty simple course of pills taken orally, but the man who died didn't go to get treatment. It's a bacterial infection that causes anemia and then these red blood blisters or warts. Sta. Eulalia is sending pest control operators from house to house to fumigate and health promoters to give blood tests and pamphlets explaining about it. This man's death got the whole town in an uproar so the reaction is a little extreme for the danger, but at least people are paying attention and probably getting to see the doctor. On the other hand the public clinics are totally overwhelmed and the providers are running around trying to get everything done.

Yesterday I started my practical training and spent the day at the clinic and in a few high schools. They were doing some life skills trainings for peer educators. It was a really progressive an interesting model. psychologistst and health promoter from the ministry of health go to the school and give "train the trainer" presentations to a couple of kids from each classroom. This one was about assertiveness and good decision making but they also have "charlas" about issues like sexuality, self-esteem and drug use.

¡Viva el Peru! So far so good :)

Life as a crystal drinking yogi in Peru

So this is my first lesson in Peace Corps flexibility. Yesterday I was hurrying though my last 5 minutes at the internet cafe when I accidentally erased the whole damn blog. I was updating the title so that it included the is disclaimer about this not being an official Peace Corps site. grr...

Things are good in Sta. Eulalia. I live with a family that has 4 kids. The oldest is 26 and living and working in Spain. The next three are teenagers that live with me. So far I've been here 3 days and we have been to a birthday party of an extended family member everyday.

I walked into the house on Sunday after the Señora picked me up from the training center. I put down my suitcases and immediately went next door to a birthday party. I was sitting talking to people and drinking Crytal, apparently the national beer of Peru, and Inca Cola, definitely the national soda, when a group of Mexican Mariachi's came in to entertain the guests. We danced the congo and sang "Ai, yaiyaiyai canta no llores." What's the name of that song again? Fun times in Sta. Eulalia.

Tomorrow I go to the Ministry of Health to learn about their work. They're advertising a dog and cat vaccinating campaing this weekend in the square. I might be helping. Oddly this would not be the first time I have vaccinated animals against rabies.

I have been in the Peace Corps a week today!