Calling Me on the Public Telephone

I was catching up with my Dad on the phone today, trying to help him get set up with Skype so that we can talk more often and cheaper and realized that I may not have explained the public telephone in Rinconada with all the detail and context that it deserves.

Development has happened very quickly here in the lowlands of Piura. Electricity came to Rinconada Llicuar about 8 years ago. Since then townspeople have gained running water in almost every house (albeit for 2 hours every other day), a waste water system (i.e. flush toilets) in about 40% of houses, and occasional trash collection when the folks down at city hall remember. A few months ago there was even a cable television company going from house to house selling cable magico with more than 100 channels. In terms of communication there is a brand new Internet cafe in town and many families have a cell phone. These function during weekdays and when it's not very windy.

Yet the more things change the more they stay the same. The public telephone in town (1) is a satellite phone because most of rural Peru doesn't have land lines. It's almost like a regular phone but there is a delay of several seconds between you speaking words and your conversation partner hearing them. It's usually much cheaper to talk from the public phone than from my cell so if I'm calling internationally I usually make the extra effort. For some, like my grandfather who can´t really hear on the phone anyway, the delay is an insurmountable hurdle to conversation so I call him on my cell. Fortunately, he's home on weekdays. Others, like my brothers are willing to make the sacrifice in conversation tempo.

Before towns down here got electricity they ran some electric devices from car batteries. So for 50 years or so Piuranos have made good use of loud speaker systems or emissoras. Every town has them. This is a loud speaker attached to a tall bamboo pole that is connected to somebody´s house and someone, usually the housewife is in charge the microphone. These are very important ladies. They are in charge of making announcements like who is selling what, who hasn´t paid their PTA dues to the elementary school, and calling lost kids home for dinner. There are about 5 emissoras within earshot of my house and they have a schedule which they sometimes follow, that starts at 5AM. In the mornings they give a news and events report including what groups have meetings that day, deaths, prayer services and soccer scores. Emissoras are also used at all times that the emissora operators are awake to announce phone calls to the public telephone.

This leads me to my meandering point: directions for calling me on the public telephone.
If you're not in Peru call: 051-73-830426. Then speak to Senora Marta, a sister-in-law of the lady I used to live with, and tell her you want to speak with the Senorita Ella or La Gringa. She will ask you to hang up and call back in 10 minutes. Then she will send whatever kid happens to be walking by (because at this moment she is 8 months pregnant) over to Senora Freddis, Queen of the Emissora Operators with a message that I should come to the telephone. Senora Freddis will call me on the emissora and I will trot on over to Marta´s to receive a the call. After the conversation I will be called on to report back to Marta and Freddis on who it was I was talking to, the state of their health, and if this is perchance someone I will someday marry.

YouTube

Some fellow volunteers from Piura sent in the following to the YouTube Debates to be aired on CNN. Unfortunaltely a PCV´s budget is such that digital video cams are low budget so forgive the low quality but maybe we will get on TV anyway :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHglYdiYelE

Yellow Ella

There has been a national strike in Peruvian schools for about a month now and it's the middle of the school year here. (They begin on the first of March go until mid-December.) English language papers report the strike has only lasted a day or two and I have to say that that's just plain wrong. Most schools near where I live have been closed for nearly 6 weeks now. The teachers in my town, Rinconada Llicuar are not, for the most part, in strong support of the strike and have only closed the schools for about 3 days of the last month. I have been teaching 5th and 6th grade health classes weekly with only 2 cancellations due to the strike.

Yesterday, I was finishing my 6th grade health class when the union showed up at the door yelling, armed with rocks and yellow paint. Luckily, some parents noticed a group gathering and came to warn the principal of their nearest school. That principal called the other two schools farther down the road so they could lock the doors and warn the kids. The principal of the school where I was teaching came in to tell me that we should continue class as usual but the strikers would probably throw rocks and break windows and we should watch out for breaking glass. The kids were terrified. In my class one or two cried (but were really trying to look tough and hide it), some were just too upset to pay attention, and the others were peeking out the windows trying to get look at the strikers. Strikers were yelling at the teachers that they were yellow and that they should be supporting the strike. Rocks were thrown in Rinconada, but not in Llicuar, where I was teaching. Finally, after about 15 minutes that seemed like an eternity, the principal sent all the kids home (about an hour early) and let the strikers in to talk with all of the teachers. A general announcement went out on the town's loud speaker system (used to announce everything from phone calls at the public phone to who is selling fish to who owes money for their water bill) and many of the parents came. Fortunately no one was injured and in retrospect it wasn't a terribly dangerous situation but at the time it was terrifying.

Schools are closed today and tomorrow. We had a parent's meeting today at the school in Rinconada and the parents say they just want the school to be open so that the kids can study. The principal and teachers agreed that on Monday things will go back to normal. Even if the strike continues they will have classes with the teachers who do not want to support the strike. In the case of the school in Rinconada only one teacher will strike.

So what's the deal with the strike? I haven't found a decent online political analysis so I'll just give you what I know of the basics. Peru has historically allowed uneducated, unprepared people to get a teaching degree in a few months. These programs no longer exist but, there are a lot of unprepared teachers who have taught for 15 to 20 years in public schools because of this employment program. These folks had the opportunity to continue their studies in the public universities to get a bachelor's degree, many did while others did not. The current president wants to improve the educational system by instituting a testing program and firing teachers who do not pass after three attempts. Teachers do not want to be fired and thus are striking. They say that testing is fine, but if they don't pass they should be trained, not fired.

And they seem fond of rocks and yellow paint. I certainly went home a bit yellow that day, even though no one threw paint at me.

popular politics

New York Times Quote of the day:

"I voted for Bush twice. I backed this war from the beginning, but I don’t think I can look my kids in the eyes anymore, if my husband comes home in a wooden box, and tell them he died for a good reason."BETH PYRITZ, whose husband, an Army specialist, is on his third tour in Iraq.


Peace Corps Volunteers got together a few weeks ago to make this video for the YouTube Debates. Little confession: I had to ask "What's YouTube?" when they told me about this and I was swiftly informed that, "It's only the most popular website ever. Duh." Blush.

A fellow Peace Corps Volunteer offered the following as an idea for a question.
"In his 2002 State of the Union address, President Bush said that America needs citizens to extend the compassion of our country to every part of the world, and that his administration would renew the promise of the Peace Corps by doubling its volunteers (7,000 current to over 15,000) by 2007. It is now 2007........"

Current number of Volunteers and Trainees: 7,749
Current number of countries served: 67 posts serving 73 countries

The question that they ended up sending is more broad about how the new administration will address humanitarian aid. This certainly seems like a case of cutting international aid money to finance the war. And the war is unpopular even with the Republican base.

Smells like change to me.

Painting

Doin' a lot of painting of the house in the last few weeks and I have happily found generous help. There is a newly formed youth athletic league and the boys are so excited about soccer practice they they get to the field, right next door to my house, about an hour early for practice... or perhaps better said, the coach comes an hour late. In any case, they were sitting around waiting for the coach to show up and noticing that painting looked like fun, begged me to help. I got 12 very enthusiastic little helpers, ages 6 to 14. Happily, I had some brushes left over from when we painted the World Map Mural at the high school. At first, it didn't seem like a fabulous idea to let 12 kids loose in my house with paint brushes, but then I figured... What the hell. It's water base.

Before.

During.

After.

And Tania was kind enough to help

too! Maybe now she'll help me scrub the floor :)

Everyday God

The teachers' and Ministry of Health's strikes continue so I still have a lot of time on my hands to do fun things like paint my house baby blue and chase the pigs back into their corrals. And in a synchronicity of free time and needed time of type that doesn't happen often enough, the Urban Justice Center, a non-profit where I used to work will soon be publishing a report on the Food Stamp Program and New York City's large immigrant population. We did a lot of research on this issue back when I was a Research Associate there and in the last couple of days I have been helping a bit with the very exciting development of a final product, a report. Happily, I have the free time to read while the folks with whom I usually work lobby for better pay and less monitoring. I have also been devouring some of the spiritual and self-helpy books that my dear friend Dave has been feeding me with a very long spoon from the Big City.

The Violence of Love, a compilation of homilies by Oscar Romero, former Archbishop of San Salvador sat up and bit be back yesterday. These sermons were broadcast by radio in El Salvador in the 1970's. The everyday-ness of the November 20, 1977 entry was just what I needed yesterday. I hope that you like it. This is just the last half of the poem because the first part is too preachy for my taste. On the other hand, I always appreciate a reminder of the sacred everyday and a reassurance about the interconnectedness of spirits.

….
How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message
there in their cabs;
you are a priest at the wheel, my friend,
if you work with honesty,
consecrating that taxi of yours to God,
bearing a message of peace and love
to the passengers who ride in your cab.

So cheers to your taxi and keep and eye out for the new report!