My Peace Corps Adventure Birthday Approaches

On September 15, 2006 I first set foot in the Lima airport. It was stressful, insane and in a city of 8 million people, basically nothing at all like my life in Rinconada Llicuar which by all accounts can be best described as tranquilisimo.

Now I'm kind of pondering what it is that I have been doing for the past year and I'd say it's about 60% getting people to like me, maybe 20% trying to take care of myself (bathe, wash clothes, eat, etc...) and 20% something that looks a little like community organizing. I've never had a job quite like that before. Coming out of doing research at Riker's Island, the NYC jail it's probably a good thing that I pay a bit more attention to how I appear outside the shell I developed there. I mean working at a jail is really not conducive to developing a charming image and lets be honest, neither is living in New York.

I was sworn-in as a Volunteer on I think Nov 24... It was the day before Thanksgiving. So it isn't my Peace Corps Volunteer Birthday quite yet. I still feel the need to celebrate. I want to celebrate the generosity of people in my town, a softer and gentler me, and the odd work of trying to be charming so that people listen when I say it's important to wash your hands and so that they accept me in their piece of the world.

I (HEART) MIST!

I was waffling between New York and Washington DC as potential places to live when I go back to the US. This week I realized that I must add Seattle to the list. I haven't ever actually been to Seattle, but I love mist. I (HEART) MIST.

It never rains in Rinconada except when it does. El Niño is pretty much the only experience people have with rain, lightning or thunder. It also brings flooding, loss of life, loss of homes and loss of crops. People are terrified when it rains. They hate it, curse cold weather and are convinced that all kinds of physical maladies from arthritis to infertility result from temperatures below 75F. Frankly in Rinconada I believe it. There isn't any lightning in Rinconada except for during an El Niño. Pepe, my very adventurous little 8 year old buddy has never seen a bolt of lightning and never wants to. He is convinced that the local legend about the dog who was fried by a lightning bolt will happen to him on first sight.

Frankly I would be scared too. People grow cotton and rice in irrigated fields. The do not have a lot of control over how much water they get in the irrigation system so if there's too much water the crops will drown and if the temperature is too low the rice never goes to seed i.e. it never actually makes the rice. And normal lovely spring day temperatures here are in the high 80´s so 60F is basically freezing. People just aren't used to cold or wet weather and the whole thing is pretty scary.

But in Texas and New York, my homes there are thunderstorms and lightning and mist and the smell of rain. Which I do realize is ozone but, I think it smells amazing. One of my favorite things to do is sit outside when it rains and watch the lightning.

But it never rains, even in "rainy season" it only sprinkles for a few minutes once or twice sometime between December and March. Except this week. The earthquake has apparently stirred the sea currents and is making the climate much colder that it usually is. By much colder I mean a low of 60F. This is truly the coldest weather that I have ever experienced here. And there's a windchill. Result: There has been MIST twice this week! One day there was so much that water was running off the corrugated tin roves and falling in a rhythmic pat-pat onto the sandy streets. It took me at least 15 minutes to identify the sound.

Precipitation in the Peruvian desert is apparently always the result of a painful and emergent natural disaster (torrential rains, floods and earthquakes) but I gotta say, it really reminds me of home and hopefully of a place I've never been.

Privatization. I find myself a fan.

Click Title for an Interesting Article.

My family is good friends with a guy who runs a foundation, the foundation of a prominent natural foods store. He was in the Peace Corps with my parents in the 1970's and he is sort of like my godfather, or maybe he would be if he were Christian but that's beside the point. He is interested in development, is a Libertarian, is really, really into free market-ness, and loves to have heated discussions about it at Mexican restaurants with margaritas. You know the type ;) (Maybe you've met me? Except for that Libertarian business-eww.) He sent me this article that I appreciated. Maybe you will too. I don't subscribe to the Wall Street Journal so I can't post a link to Wall Street's site, but here's the text in Word.

I think it is poignant because it paints such an accurate picture of what I have seen here in Peru with regard to the economics of daily life. In Rinconada they used to pay 8 soles a week for electricity. Then electricity was privatized, they put in electric meters and the cost went way down. I pay between 5 and 6 soles a month for electricity (less than $2) to a private company. In the nearby provincial capital they privatized the water and the same thing happened: major cost reduction. So, folks in Rinconada are trying to privatize their water too and are in the process of putting in meters.

The thing about Internet in this article is also true where I live. Folks have Internet cafes but houses do not have bathrooms. They just go out to the corral where they keep the animals. That is a little more complicated in Rinconada than the article makes it sound because there is a waste water system, but people do not seem to be interested in connecting their houses to it. I don't completely understand, but I think it's something like, "We haven't ever had a toilet before. Why would we want to spend 500 soles to put in a bathroom now?" 500 soles is a lot of money here. I'm not always super excited about stuff I read from Cato but this is pretty interesting. What do you think?

One of the jokes about Peace Corps volunteers that runs around the Lima office is how volunteers enter all bleeding hearted and perfectly nice liberals and leave as Republicans. I frankly doubt it, but hey who knows?

Smugmug and More on the Earthquake

So I'm just posting a photo to see if I like smugmug. It's me at Larco Mar this shopping center in the Miraflores neighborhood of Lima built right on the shore. This beautiful sunset is from nearly a year ago!

My one year anniversary in Peru will be September 15! I need to come up with a good way to celebrate.

The news on the earthquake isn't getting better any time soon. So many people had their homes destroyed. There's no water, no electricity and no food. An old woman in my town has all of her kinds living in Ica and hasn't been able to speak with any of them yet. She is terrified. Churches and social groups are collecting money and supplies, but the effort is going to take a long time. Even just among the Peace Corps volunteers of course everyone wants to do something, because they're Peace Corps volunteers and that's kind of the mindset. But at this point there's nothing besides sending money and supplies. The volunteers who live in that department (Peruvian equivalent of a state) haven't been permitted to go back yet. We're still having aftershocks and there has been looting. There was even an article in the tabloidy newspaper, El Popular about a church group that is offering transportation to folks who live all up and down the coast but have family in Ica so that they can go to Ica and help, a kind gesture of questionable forethought.

Aftershocks

There were smaller aftershocks today. As before, I am fortunate to be far from the epicenter and I didn't feel them at all. Everyone is stunned by the earthquake and worried about their family members in Lima. Since about a third of the population of Peru lives in Lima it seems like every household has at least one family member there. The epicenter and most of the damage are farther south in the department of Ica, a coastal desert area not nearly as populated as the capital. As I understand it they suffered the most damage a loss of life. This is the department where the city of Pisco is located as well as the Nazca Lines, those huge piles of earth created by pre-Incan peoples in the shapes of a humming bird, a monkey and other figures. There are 5 volunteers living in the department and I understand that all of them were away at a training in Lima at the time of the earthquake and they're waiting to return until Peace Corps feels assured of their safety.

If you follow that red line, which is the Pan American Highway, I live 15 hours north of Lima. So it is quite a distance. So much that I can't get both Piura and Ica on the same map :)

For some reason I'm having trouble accessing Internet news sites. Only the New York Times seems to work. Our Internet connection has been really awful since the earthquake. I'm not sure if it's just the traffic or what. So if anything exciting happens that isn't in the Times let me know.

I'm also exploring smugmug.com. It's sort of like snapfish.com but you have to pay. The quality of the photos is supposed to be much better. I do think that snapfish is pretty sorry as far as quality goes, but I'm not sure if smugmug is worth the $40 a year. I definitely want to back up my pictures to an online site and be able to print them easily. Any thoughts on this? Experience?

Little shaky

We had an earthquake today. I didn't feel it at all, but I'm in the city at a conference and phones started ringing right and left. We didn't even feel it. My friend who lives north of me, even farther from the epicenter did feel it so maybe we were just in a sturdy building. In any case, our communications systems are suffering. Other than that I'm fine.

There's a Tsunami Warning issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. I had never heard of them before, but I've also never needed too. Then I read that it may have been revoked, but I'm having a hard time finding good information. Anyway, I'm going to do a little research before heading back to my coconut palm tree and rice paddy desert oasis.

This earthquakes thing is a little alarming but really interesting. I was in one for the first time in Sta. Eulalia. The wall just starting shaking and it took me a while to figure out why. By the time I realized what was happening it was over.

Today I was in Piura at this Peruvian Army conference center. Martin, the dad from the family that I used to live with came with me. We had a conference about using radio for development work. We made little programs about development issues relevant to the communities where we live. He has worked with a non-profit radio station in Piura for a number of years. He is a community based reporter and had the opportunity to go to trainings about journalism and reporting over the years so he was interested and excited to come. Most small towns in Peru have community radio stations that are important resources, especially in the mountains. Where I live on the coast people can get national radio stations so in Rinconada we don't have a community station. But I think that there's one in the next town over so Martin and I are going to see about trying to do a little show there.

Snail with a Limp

Not much happening in the campo... still. My dad used to say, ¨We're off like a heard of turtles.¨ whenever he and my mom got all four of us, a friend or two, and maybe the dog loaded into the brown Chevy Suburban. I have a feeling that I'm just beginning the understand the meaning of this phrase. But I haven't seen any turtles in Rinconada. There are snails however. I think a snail with a limp is the metaphor I want to adopt for now.

This weekend should be fun. It is the holiday for the patron saint of Rinconada Llicuar, la Virgin de Soccorro. Folks are cleaning up the park: sanding, painting, sweeping and trimming. I helped sand the rod iron fences today.

I also went into my shared office at Town Hall for my newly implemented Office Hours. I share with a very cool lawyer. She works in the DEMUNA office. DEMUNA is in charge of domestic legal issues, like child support payments and family violence as a local public service. She recently started to work at Town Hall 2 days a week to be a resource for these issues. She's cool and we have great conversations about legal differences between the US and Peru re. issues like rape, child support, divorce, abortion and the death penalty. Making friends, pretty exciting.

Plodding through trash... with cheerful enthusiasm?

Campo life seems to be moving at the pace of a snail with a limp. This week and last week comprise the semester break in the public schools so I haven´t been teaching. I was really hoping to get the initial research for the trash project started, but I haven´t been able to inspire much movement on the part of the local government. I go to Town Hall about every other day and try to get people motivated, but the Mayor has been on vacation so very little progress is happening. The research will include weighing, measuring and typing (organic, inorganic recyclable, inorganic non-recyclable) 8 days worth of garbage from about 50 houses in order to determine what treatment facilities we need. I could just do this myself as one of the Associate Peace Corps Directors suggested, but the Mayor and City Council Member in charge of health issues really want to get a sanitation engineer to do it. This is fabulous because it demonstrates that they´re committed to a quality, long-term project, a truly sustainable program so I'm just trying to keep pushing and reminding people that trash can make them sick and harm the crops. Yippee waste management! I was talking to Kate, a fellow volunteer who also has a trash project in the coastal desert and she made the excellent point that you just have to wake up every morning and try to move the project forward and after 2 years you get as far as you get. I think that's good advice so I'm going to try to do this with as enthusiastic and cheerful an attitude as I can muster... Some days that's harder than it probably should be.

The Mayor did find an engineer who seems great. He works with the provincial government on creating a sanitary landfill for the province and trash collection in the provincial capital of Sechura so that's AMAZING, but no one is exactly running to fulfill his work plan. In fact, the last time I was able to talk to the Mayor he couldn't find the work plan under the pile of stuff on his desk. In all fairness he did just move into a new office, but still. Then, on the up side 1. a work plan exists, 2. we have designated a safe place to put the treatment facility, and 3. this is a kicker- the town voted to prioritize the trash project in next year's city budget. Money is good.

In other news, my recent drama with my former boyfriend seems to be ending. It hurts and takes my mind away from this moment and this place, but I'm sure it's for the best for both of us. Thankfully I am blessed with amazing and supportive friends who are okay with all the ways that I'm a neurotic crazy person and are helping me call my head back to the here and now.

Breathtaking

5,300 meters was breathtaking. The Andes in Ancash line up in two parallel ranges, the white and the black, the former is snow capped the latter is not. A collage of some landscape shots: tropical glaciers, wet weather cactus, so much fresh air but you can´t breathe in the black and white mountains, communities of one family... me on a horse. What can you say except that it´s a land of contrasts?

Some fellow Peace Corps folks and I spent a couple of days at a hiking lodge above the capital city of Huaraz. I highly recommend The Way Inn Lodge if you're ever in Ancash and wanting to hike and rock climb only to go home to a warm bed with a down comforter and a homemade sweat lodge. I had to take a break about every 10 steps walking around in the mountains, but it was worth it and I was fortunate to have patient hiking companions. Then Tessa and I went to see a glacier called Pastoruri. It's melting into rivers of frigid water that stream off the mountain and down the 5,300 meters to the Pacific. It was heartbreaking to realize how much the tropical glacier shrunk in the last 40 years, leaving a wake of more than 100 yards of black rock.