Vida de Ella

Blog: Letters of Note

2011-09-14T12:26:00.000-05:00

Love it.

Valentine's Day

2010-02-21T18:31:00.003-05:00

I just started attending a Unitarian Universalist church here in Washington DC. I went to the service on Valentine's Day and heard many poems and songs about all different kinds of love. This one defintiely called the tears out of my eyes. I never thought that a poem entitled something as adjective-free as Parkinson's Disease could be so moving. That's love.

Parkinson’s Disease
by Galway Kinnell

While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
or rather lets it rest on top of his,
which is permanently clenched shut.
When he turns his head away, she reaches
around and puts in the spoonful blind.
He will not accept the next morsel
until he has completely chewed this one.
His bright squint tells her he finds
the shrimp she has just put in delicious.
Next to the voice and touch of those we love,
food may be our last pleasure on earth—
a man on death row takes his T-bone
in small bites and swishes each sip
of the jug wine around in his mouth,
tomorrow will be too late for them to jolt
this supper out of him. She strokes
his head very slowly, as if to cheer up
each separate discomfited hair sticking up
from its root in his stricken brain.
Standing behind him, she presses
her check to his, kisses his jowl,
and his eyes seem to stop seeing
and do nothing but emit light.
Could heaven be a time, after we are dead,
of remembering the knowledge
flesh had from flesh? The flesh
of his face is hard, perhaps
from years spent facing down others
until they fell back, and harder
from years of being himself faced down
and falling back in his turn, and harder still
from all the while frowning
and beaming and worrying and shouting
and probably letting go in rages.
His face softens into a kind
of quizzical wince, as if one
of the other animals were working at
getting the knack of the human smile.
When picking up a cookie he uses
both thumbtips to grip it
and push it against an index finger
to secure it so that he can lift it.
She takes him then to the bathroom,
where she lowers his pants and removes
the wet diaper and holds the spout of the bottle
to his old penis until he pisses all he can,
then puts on the fresh diaper and pulls up his pants.
When they come out, she is facing him,
walking backwards in front of him
and holding his hands, pulling him
when he stops, reminding him to step
when he forgets and starts to pitch forward.
She is leading her old father into the future
as far as they can go, and she is walking
him back into her childhood, where she stood
in bare feet on the toes of his shoes
and they foxtrotted on this same rug.
I watch them closely: she could be teaching him
the last steps that one day she may teach me.
At this moment, he glints and shines,
as if it will be only a small dislocation
for him to pass from this paradise into the next.

Galway Kinnell, “Parkinson’s Disease” from Imperfect Thirst. Copyright © 1994

Reminding myself that cyberworld IS the real world

2010-01-22T14:28:00.002-05:00

Following up on the curret status of affairs:
I DO have a cool job but I'm still facing some career path hurdles and disappointments.
I'm dating a man who I like but don't know very well.
I'm living in what is still a new city, even 9 months after my arrival.

Washington DC

2009-05-03T18:17:00.006-05:00

The job search continues even though I'm in an office all day, seemingly job having. It's my first time back in an office since I left to go to Peace Corps, so since August of 2006. It's only temporary and it's the perfect way to ease back into the working world. I loved being a Peace Corps Volunteer. I had a great time and I know that my projects made a great difference. So, now I'm temping at headquarters and although the work that I'm doing will probably not rock anyone's world I appreciate being there and know that it's a great opportunity to be in on the action.

At the same time I'm still looking for a job and I'm living in a new city. I turned 31 recently as since I am now officially in my 30s I want a job that will move me in the direction of my goals, so I'm reluctant to take just any job that comes along. There are so many interesting jobs to be done, it's tough to really focus and clearly define my central ambition. If I'm really honest my true, most important ambitions include things like having a family. I also want to have a super cool, stimulating, meaningful job. And so the job search continues.

In other news, I realized late yesterday afternoon that it was my ex-fiancee's birthday. He called me on my aforementioned, recent 31st birthday. I try to maintain a positive relationship friends with all of my exes, some are even good friends, but he's different. I want to be kind and respectful as I do still love him. But, I don't really want to talk to him. Ahh the wonder of the Facebook wall.

Capitol 10K

2009-03-12T23:16:00.002-05:00

I'm running! Come and join us. I'm currently reviewing suggestions for costumes.

The job search saga, Part I

2009-03-12T16:35:00.005-05:00

I just got back from Peace Corps and I use "just" loosely as today is day 71 stateside. I've been earnestly looking for a job for about a month now. I kicked off my personal quest with a career workshop and job fair by the Peace Corps's Career Services Office. I had done some job search work before the workshop, but not very genuinely or consistently. Last summer, while still a volunteer I started doing some online federal applications back in Peru, thinking of them as practice. Toward the end of service I was so busy that I had to stop. Very recently I learned that there's definitely a system for success in the federal application and I started out totally uninformed and on the wrong track. A few different resources helped me get on track. The Peace Corps Career Services is really top notch and my undergraduate's was pretty helpful too. My grad school office probably would be helpful as well, but they're hard to use remotely. For practical advice on applying for on federal jobs I found MakingTheDifference.org to be very, very helpful.

Results have been slow going for me, although I can't really complain because it has only been a month. In December, in my completely uninformed frame of mind USAID actually flew me to Washington DC to interview for my dream job, based on one of those "practice" applications!!! Sadly, but not surprisingly, I think I blew it. I was "not invited into pre-employment at this time." My oral interview was a panel in an odd room and I don think that they could actually hear me. Also, the complete absence of follow-up questions threw me for a loop, but is apparently standard in federal interviews. I think that they were trying to be impartial, but because I was unprepared for it, it just made for difficult communication. Also, it was my firs time speaking professional English in a year so that was challenging. The upshot is that they told me to reapply because they're lowering the bar a bit... uh thanks? Don't worry I have already reapplied :)

We're dealing with the worst economy in my lifetime and I'm looking for the best job of my life. Frankly, I think I'll get it. I'm a glass-half-full kind of girl. I'm 30. I've worked since I got out of college and I got an MA somewhere in there, so my next gig should really be a "career builder." I want to stay there for a good while, I need it to pay decently and I need it to have good mentoring and growth opportunities. Maybe it could also wax my car and wash my clothes, but seriously if the posts are any indication I really do think that there is a job out there. I'll just have to be open and creative. I'm applying mostly to federal positions so it's taking a while.

Quick and unrelated vignette on why Texans are the best people ever: I just got a phone call from my godmother's cell phone. When I answered the call a woman named Stephanie said that she worked at JCPenny's and that another customer just found the phone in a dressing room. She was randomly dialing numbers to speak with someone who knew the phone's owner. I said that I would certainly tell her and that my godmother works at Nordstrom's in the same mall so she's probably still there. Stephanie said, Oh does she work in alterations? Why yes she does. So, they know each other and my godmother's phone is waiting for her at the catalog counter in the hands of her acquaintance, recently turned friend.

In Defense of Food, ceviche and Dora's wisdom

2009-03-08T23:27:00.006-05:00

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan is blowing my mind. It's like an historically grounded summary of what you always knew - Diet Coke just can't be that good for you, my grandma's oatmeal cookies are in fact nutritious and delicious, and vitamins must be overrated because they're not actually food. In fact, its what my adoptive Peruvian mother was saying when she constantly asked me why Americans eat only food that comes from a can. I of course said, "Americans eat all kinds of fresh foods, not just foods from cans, blah, blah, blah." Now that I'm back I'm realizing that the brick-shaped frozen fruits and veggies, sealed tubs of organic spinach, sealed bags of salad, Duncan Hines cake mixes, cans of tuna and Goya beans, Kraft shredded cheese in a bag, sliced 12 grain bread in a bag, pita chips, plastic tubs of hummus, etc. are very, very different from her diet (okay, well that one I actually picked up in Peru when I was desperately missing tofu bagel shmear) and that she would not recognize any of these packaged products as being safe to feed to her kids.

The readjustment process coming back to the US from Peru after Peace Corps is coming along. I'm in Austin decompressing, noting differences that I never noticed before, spending time with my family and looking for a job... in that order. Even in my very traditional family, with whom I'm spending lots of quality time of late, family dinners are not so much cooked as assembled. Today we had savory, amazing enchiladas a la my mom made with ground turkey. All of the ingredients had wrappers except for the onions. Just to put it out there my mom is a woman who breast fed 4 infants for more than 6 months each, made baby food with a food processor, and would only allow us to buy that gross natural peanut butter where the oil separates and sits on top. She is not exactly a processed food princess. None the less the food at the supermarket is very... industrial.

In thinking about food, I want to post photos of a ceviche making extravaganza from northern Peru. The fish here is cabrillon... which I think is sea bass. This is a pricey fish even in rural norther Peru where these ladies' husbands work catching it. Usually these families eat fish called cabrilla, which is mackerel and a lot less yummy but this day was a special day. There was a huge party at town hall celebrating something or other. I don't remember exactly what but the mayor bought enough fish to feed an army.

I only just told Dora, my Peruvian adoptive mother, that I broke up with Michael (former fiancee) almost 2 months ago, and that Peace Corps jetted me off to the US from Lima on less than 48 hours notice. I explained the why of the matter, that when we got to Lima he changed. She took the opportunity to thank god that I had left and tell me that she never had liked that boy, he wasn't down to earth enough for me - of course. Then again, if you ask me pretty much anyone other than an incredibly handsome, kind, humble and fabulously rich doctor would have been less than desirable according to Dora.

So I'll leave you with Pollan's words of wisdom, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." And I'll add, in good company.

Happy Peace Corps Week!

2009-03-05T20:25:00.004-05:00

Peace Corps takes a week every year to promote their "third goal" which means that they educate Americans about people and cultures around the world where Peace Corps works. In conjunction with National Peace Corps Week I had the great privilege of speaking to all 300 or so of the students at an Austin-area middle school called the Ann Richard's School for Young Women Leaders on Wednesday morning. It's a public middle school for girls. The students were specially invited to attend, sort of like a magnet school and it shows. I was so impressed with the students. It was such a privilege to be there for a few reasons. First, the girls were so bright and interested. An 8th grader asked me what people in my town had taught me while I was a volunteer. Another girl asked me how the Peace Corps could help in places like Darfur because she was very concerned about the conflict there. Those girls are just stunning. Second, the principal was my high school English teacher. She was that amazing teacher in my life. She pushed and pushed me to create, achieve and take risks that I never would have taken otherwise. She was also super strict and was frequently referred to as the Dragon Lady. In fact I vaguely remember that the Haydon boys, skinny rodeo clown twins in my class, posted a cartoon of a dragon on her classroom door as a joke. I think it lived there for the entire 4 years I was in high school at St. Michael's Catholic Academy. It was a great experience to have this demanding woman see my work. Third, the school's Texas history teacher will soon become my sister in law. (Big Party here in June!) I'm happy to say that I think I may have scored her some points at work. Finally, I have been back in the states for 65 days today. It's helpful to me to talk about Peace Corps as I readjust and start to look for a job. Speaking of jobs, got any leads?

Austin Bikes

2009-02-23T10:00:00.005-05:00

Riding bicycles in Austin is fabulous. I mean who doesn't love to ride a bike? AND here in Austin it's warm, other bikers and drivers are generally friendly, and people think that you are forever hip if you show up at a party on your vintage Schwinn roadster instead of your old battered Honda. Let's be honest. It's just all about the digits.

I grew up in Austin but I haven't lived here in years. After I left I always took my bike with me. When I lived in Brooklyn, NY and in Rinconada Llicuar, rural northern Peru I rode a bike all over. One develops skills. In Park Slope, Brooklyn I was frequently being run off the road by aggressive women pushing baby carriages, only to then be picked up by attractive delivery guys bicycling Thai food to some hipster's houses. I thought that this situation balanced itself out. In Peru, The Gringa (i.e. me) doing anything was an incredible show for everyone in town, so The Gringa being the only woman to ride a bike was very entertaining for all. Role modeling, blah, blah, blah, but sometimes you just want to get where you're going so I took to riding through the rice fields where I got many fewer cat calls. Now that I'm back in Austin I have been surprised to discover that when it comes to road riding, Austin is treacherous despite it's green living and outdoors loving reputation.

It's true. There really are a lot of bicyclists in Austin riding outside and keeping their carbon emissions down in their morning commute, so you would think that drivers would be used to trying to avoid killing them. I guess traffic just varies so much. If you're riding during rush hour people are inching along impatiently, staring holes into the bumper in front of them and really they're not going very fast so it feels safer. Any other time drivers seem like they are barely looking at the windshield, much more interested in the radio, the iPhone, or the crying baby in the backseat. I feel almost ridiculous wearing my helmet when a Ford F150 pickup speeds past me grazing my earlobe on Enfield. I'm on a bike. That truck weighs a ton. There is no delivery guy to pick me up and invite me to dinner later. In any case, I know that living in central Austin is a lucky break for someone who loves bikes. There are some bike paths, even if they don't always go where you need to go. And like I said if drivers are paying attention they're usually helpful.

In sum, I am proudly announcing that on Sunday I rode down Enfield, a busy street, to meet my brother for coffee. I guess I figured that he's a resourceful guy, he would notice if I didn't show up and come looking for me. Right? It's only like a 10 minute ride from the house to Medici Cafe at West Lynn and 10th St. It was a very proud ten minutes and I highly recommend Medici for a victory chocolate chip cupcake.

You gotta watch that miss

2009-02-22T13:12:00.000-05:00

I almost never remember my dreams and I’m always jealous of all of the people who do remember what their subconscious was working through during their brains’ mini-vacations. In fact I get so jealous that I sort of hate listening to my friends’ dreams, but in spite of myself I love it when they try to think through what the weird and incongruous unreality might mean. So, I was giddy this morning when I realized that I remembered my dream. Last night I was awakened by a false smoke alarm (low batteries, all is well) and I think that because I was not sleeping quite so soundly I had a crystalline, memorable dream. I awoke terrified that it was real and was touching my arms and feeling around in my bed to try to get in touch with reality. Touching the sheet, smelling the waking, I realized where I was and had to smile.

I dreampt that was pregnant but for the entire pregnancy I hadn’t known it. Then, one day I was in the mall in Texas and just had a baby, not gave birth, just had a baby in my arms. The dream sort of skipped over the birth process. It was a girl. Oddly, in my dream I knew and was reasoning with all of the real details of my life. I recently returned from Peru, I even more recently ended it with my fiancée on a positive note; I am looking for work, etc. So, I had this baby and I sat down to breastfeed her in the neon encrusted and greasy smelling food court of south Austin’s own Barton Creek Mall. I walked away from the table and had a panic attack when I couldn’t find her. I guess she sort of slipped off while I was breastfeeding her and I didn’t notice. In my dream I was thinking, “Gee, this feels exactly like it felt when I was on my way to visit my family in St. Louis and I forgot my laptop at the gate in the airport.” I immediately ran back to the table and found the dream baby girl laying underneath, not crying but just waving her arms and legs and being a pre-person. The guy at the next table looked over, saw me picking her up and laughingly said, “Oh thank goodness. You gotta watch that miss.” Uh thanks random man. Maybe pick up the stranded baby next time?! Relief washed over me and then lightning struck, “Gasp. My ex-fiancée. She’s his too. How will he want to handle this? Good thing he’s far away.” The flash of light a la ex also brought new meaning to Random Man’s comment. “You gotta watch that miss.” I walked away breastfeeding the baby girl and wondering how to explain my personal immaculate conception and miracle birth to my parents. Then I thought, “You know, you are 30…”

Maybe this means that I will someday give birth to a laptop?

In sum there’s the unknown pregnancy, forgetting the baby girl, an odd amount of breastfeeding for someone who has never given birth or breastfed, my laptop, and Random Man. The cheesy online dream dictionary summary of interpretation is as follows: 1. Pregnancy symbolizes some aspect of your life developing but you might not be ready to act on it (unfortunately since I didn’t know about mine I’m not sure this counts); 2. Forgetting a baby means that you feel burdened taking care of someone else; 3. Breastfeeding means nurturing and suggests that you should be careful who you confide in; 4. Laptops signify the need to reach out and communicate with others under any circumstance; and 5. Random Man may symbolize the masculine part of myself, meaning the assertive, rational and aggressive side according to the cheesy online dream dictionary, or he may represent wisdom, forgiveness and friendly daily advice.

Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger Frosting 4 stars, Dallas airport 2 stars

2009-01-29T06:55:00.006-05:00

In my post-Peace Corps stupor where I live in awe of hot running water, wall-to-wall carpeting, and being pretty clean most of the time, I've started baking but I'm also starting to lose my mind. In some countries this is considered progress. The lychee-coconut cupcakes with ginger frosting got rave reviews from my friends and family. The lychee is subtle, if you're not told that the lychee there it just seems like an extra tasty, mildly coconut cake. The cream cheese frosting that includes ground and fresh grated ginger with candied ginger on top really won everyone over. I cannot say that I followed the recipe exactly. I started to but I used coconut cream from a can instead of from the package like they suggest because I had it in the pantry already. Maybe that was the problem, but the batter for the cakes was really, really thick, probably thicker than toothpaste and sticky, which seemed problematic. So, to make it just a tad thinner I used about 1/3 cup warm water and about 1/3 cup liquid from the can of lychee fruit. In the end they were moist and had a good texture, but the frosting... make the frosting. I even used low-fat cream cheese and it was so fabulous.

So now I'm on my way to St. Louis, MO to visit family. As you might expect the Dallas airport is mostly very uninspiring. But, the reason that I'm in the Dallas airport inspired me. I was getting on my 5pm direct flight to St. Louis when I realized that my laptop that I was bringing along to continue to look for jobs and show my grandma my photos from Peace Corps, was not in my hot little hand. EEEEK! Heart attack! In this moment I was literally handing the gate agent my ticket so I had to run out of line and look in the waiting area. It was GONE! An airport employee saw me nervously pacing around the waiting room and as we do not like nervous people in airports, doing unexpected things like running out of line, he came to see what was the matter. When he realized that I was looking for something he smiled.

"Green laptop?"

"Oh my God, YES!" I squealed like a sorority girl.

"Already down in lost and found."

WHAT?!?! You have to love Texas and so many places in the US where leaving your laptop in the airport waiting area in the middle of major financial hardship for most people results in it ending up in the airport lost and found and not in you losing all of those half done job applications, all of your Peace Corps photos and the $600 that it cost you. I could have kissed this man, except I was busy problem solving how to get to my grandma's house. Unfortunately, because the lost and found is far away from the gates and outside of security I missed the plane to go and get it. Then my new, indirect flight left late so I missed my connection. American wouldn't pay for the hotel so the Peace Corps budget had me sleeping in the airport. That I believe is bunk, but whatever. I slept on a Coleman cot, with my laptop, in the back corner of the employee lounge after kindly gate agent took pity on me. Trying to regain my mental acuity is a bumpy road but, the road is sweet with cream cheese-ginger frosting.

The Unforseen cupcake on day 25 back in the US

2009-01-24T14:53:00.006-05:00

I borrowed these images from edwardsaquifer.net

I'm starting to feel reemerged in the place and culture of my hometown. Austin is famous for being a cool, young, fun, creative place to live and like all Austinites I'm proud of that reputation but, the growth that Austin has experienced between the time I was a small child in far south Austin and today is ambiguously breathtaking. It's like I don't know if I'm once again watching the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen from the top of the hill at Davis Lane and William Cannon, or if I've been hit in the stomach with freeways, toll roads, and people who literally have bumper stickers advertising their zip code like it's freaking Beverly Hills. That and I'm lost all the time. I literally have no idea where all these freeways go. I guess my excuse is that I've really only lived here about 3 of the last 13 years. I can't stay but I can't really stay away either.

I'm so fortunate that some dear friends who served in the Peace Corps live here in Austin. Angela, Patrick and I went out to St. Edward's University last night where they were showing a movie called The Unforeseen about the growth down in south and west Austin and the fight local environmental groups put up to protect Barton Creek and the Edward's Aquifer. If you're not from here it's hard to explain what these mean for Austin. The creek feeds an huge natural swimming pool that is a place every Austinite remembers fondly and where many, many of us learned to swim. The Aquifer is the drinking water for all of the surrounding area but it also creates a really interesting ecosystem around here. If you're traveling here from west Texas you really notice when you get to the Hill Country because there is just so much more water. Anyway the fight to protect it was complicated because people wanted to move to this great place and economic growth is good for those of us who have been here a while. And a lot of it happened about 5 minutes down the road from the house I where I grew up. The film does great justice to the complex picture and interests at play, particularly for the main developer of the time Gary Bradley. It would have been easy, but not very compelling to make a movie about the greedy and evil land developer. Laura Dunn chose instead to examine the power and influence of our economic system in each of our lives.

So, as I deal with my ongoing reverse culture shock I'm going to make cupcakes. My brother recently moved out of a house where he lived with roommate who was a chef. We found tons of prepared Asian foods buried in the depths of the pantry, including canned lychee fruits and coconut cream. I'm off to make some Lychee-Coconut Cupcakes with Ginger-Cream Cheese Frosting. I'll tell you how they turn out.

Robert Frost's Inaugural Poem for President John F. Kennedy

2009-01-20T11:31:00.002-05:00

I'm watching the inauguration of Barack Obama, my country's first black president. This poem about becoming was read by Robert Frost at Kennedy's inauguration.

~ The Gift Outright ~

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia.
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak.
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.

~ Robert Frost; 1874-1963 ~

And we're back!

2009-01-09T17:21:00.001-05:00

The last sunset in Rinconada.

I had to take a break from blogging for a while. I see this blog as sharing my experiences, what I'm learning, and what's going on in my bubble. For a while there was just so much happening so quickly that I didn't know how to summarize it for your reading pleasure. I missed you and I do apologize for my unexplained absence. Thanks to all of my friends and blog readers who contacted me to make sure that all is well.

So, my life in brief since Nov. 2, 2008:

Nov. 4: I closed Peace Corps service. DONE! My fiancee, Michael and I watched my country elect the first African-American President from a raucous and celebratory living room filled with gringos in Lima, Peru.

Nov. 6 - 13: I bussed it up to Ancash,Peru and hiked the Santa Cruz trail, a 3 day hike that reached 4,700 meters in the central Andes.

Nov. 19 - Dec. 9: I flew down to Argentina with my friends Casey, Amanda and Travis for a 3 week adventure. We visited the bottom of the world, Ushuaia where we hung out with a very kind guide named Leo. Then we bussed it up to El Calefate and El Chalten where we hiked in some beautiful mountains and celebrated Thanksgiving with Argentinian beef and a delicious Argentinean Malbec. Further north, in Bariloche I got hoppin' mad with a guy who nearly erased all of my photos when he was trying to burn them onto a CD. To calm my nerves Casey and I tasted copious amounts of wine and rode bikes in Mendoza, where I discovered that not all pink wine is gross. And finally, in Buenos Aires we ate lots of beef at fabulous restaurants, drank lots of wine, and watched living tango chess in a park.

Dec. 9 - 16: I returned to Lima where Michael and I spent a week with my parents and his family, getting to know one another and having meals together.

Dec. 17 - 20: I went to Washington DC for an interview with the US Agency for International Development (USAID). They freaking paid for me to go to DC from Lima for 3 days! I was stunned. I really didn't believe that it was actually going to happen.

Dec 24: I celebrated la Noche Buena with Michael's family in Lima. Missed my family terribly and felt more than a little guilty that I didn't go home for Christmas. But, I got over it and partied it up with Michael's family.

Dec 29: I realized that Michael and I have some pretty profound issues to work out and that I wasn't going to be able to resolve them from Peru, so far from my regular US life. I called up Peace Corps to ask them to fly me home, about 2 weeks earlier than expected. I received an email from USAID saying that I was no longer being considered for the position. :(

Dec 30 - 31: Flew to Austin arrived Dec 31 around 2:30PM.

Dec 31: I rang in the New Year with my parents, brother and his nearest and dearest at a party in his new condo. We toasted to love and life and my own shamelessness. My family was so happy to see me that they even took a temporary break from being mad at me for not being home at Christmas.

Jan 1: I gave out all of the Argentinian Christmas gifts that I had been saving for my family.

Jan 2: I bought and iPhone and some new underwear, and later obsessed about fabric for bridesmaid's dresses in my brother's wedding with his fiancee. She settled on shiny green for her big day in June.

Jan 3: I started actively hiding in my parent's house because I realized that everything in the US is huge, loud and fast. But, decided that I must escape once in a while to take advantage of my 10 day free trial gym membership.

Jan 6: I went to the social security office to try to replace my lost card, but I left after about 10 minutes of feeling like I was inside a Far Side cartoon and decided to return to hiding in the house. While I was hiding in the house I decided to call up the consulting firm that does the USAID interviews and see about what went awry only to discover that I didn't NOT get the job! It's not a "yes we love you" but, it's way better than a "no and please don't call again." The email that I received on Dec. 29 was an automated email generated when the online application service purged my application, but USAID IS still considering my application. YIPPEE!! a better kind of unemployed.

Jan 9: I did some more hiding in house and bought some makeup in an attempt to recover from the oh so glamorous Peace Corps-look.

Current state of affairs: I'm in Austin for at least a month and probably two. I'm still engaged and we're working on our problems. I'm looking for a job in a really rough job market. I'm going to visit family in St. Louis Jan. 28 - Feb. 4 and will be in Washington, DC for more job search fun Feb. 10 - 13.

And she's out.

2008-11-02T17:38:00.003-05:00

Thoughts from back on Nov. 2: We left today. It has been a whirlwind over the last few days and I'm very, very tired. I'm finished with Peace Corps! I'm missing so many people in Rinconada and I'm sad to leave all of them but I'm also feeling very accomplished. I was so hesitant to do Peace Corps in Peru when they told me we would have to live with host families and it certainly had it's ups and downs but now that I'm leaving I'm so happy to have Dora and Martin and their family as friends. I will miss Dora so, so much. I do feel like I've gained a sister.

Big news.

2008-10-24T18:30:00.009-05:00

Big news. The big news for me lately is that Michael and I have decided to get married. My parents are less than overwhelmingly supportive of the idea and because I'm of the opinion that ideally, marriage is about the whole family and I'm close to my family, this is disappointing and difficult. But, they care and this is genuinely what they think so I appreciate their honesty. Hopefully we will resolve everyone's concerns in the near future. I think their biggest concern is just, "who is this guy?"

Also, we rode my neighbor's horse, I voted for Obama, I finished 2 big murals of the world map in two different elementary schools, we sat on the porch and hung out, and I finished the improvements on the water system at Llicuar Elementary with the 500 soles or so that were left over from the water system project in Rinconada Elementary.

At Llicuar Elementary have doubled the size of their cistern, replaced a faulty water pump with a higher quality model, and installed a metal box with a lock around the pump so that no one walks away with it. At the same time we've been working together to get their accreditation from the Peruvian Ministry of Health as a "Healthy School." Accreditation includes training for teachers and students in public health issues, like hand washing, and institutional improvements like getting a working water system and a plan for trash management. I am pleased to report that they now separate organic, inoroganic and recyclable garbage. We're still working on appropriate disposal, but you know, little by little. I think we've completed all the requirements so they should be ready to get their certificate early next year.

I have written almost nothing about the work at Llicuar Elementary. Apologies, but photos to come. I've been busy falling in love. In Peace Corps it seems impossible to untangle your personal life from your professional life, and I even struggle with this issue in the US.

Peacing out in 25 days

2008-10-08T15:15:00.010-05:00

Moonrise in Rinconada.

The Devils Dance at the Fiesta de San Lazaro.

Goodbye party with my favorite Piurano and Tumbesino gringos!!

Finished the world map mural!!

Michael, me and friends at a town fiesta for the patron saint, San Lazaro.

I cannot believe it has been so long since I posted. The final days of Peace Corps are just flying by. 25 days to go! Apologies for not posting more often.

I'm content with the way that things are wrapping up. I have these flashes of complete disdain for my work when I think of the projects that almost happened or my pipe dreams that never came to be, but then I get to talking to my neighbors and friends or playing with my kids and remember that we have made some great progress. I'm writing arm loads of reports, going to Lima to get poked and prodded, checking for things like tuberculosis and parasites, and trying to come up with some good going away gifts for my friends in town. So far so good.

My new boyfriend, Michael has been in Rinconada for nearly a month now. He is a city boy from Lima, a city about the same size of New York. He's from Callao, the part of Lima near the airport. We recently decided that if Lima were NYC, Callao would be the South Bronx. If you live there you really like it and if you're not from there it sounds fairly intimidating. He is constantly saying things like "That chicken has feathers on it's feet!" and "Why do they start the loud speakers so early in the morning?!" Yes, my thoughts exactly. I just forgot that those things were novel and Peruvian countryside specific. It's an interesting moment for me to have an outside perspective because I'm reassessing my time here, my work, my relationships with people and so it has been wonderfully supportive to be able to show it all to someone else, another outsider trying to make a life here.

In other news. I'm working on the water system at one more elementary school, making their cistern bigger and installing a new water pump so that they will have running water 24 hours a day. We had a big going away pool party and BBQ this weekend for the volunteers living in Piura and Tumbes (states in northern Peru). Michael and I finished a world map mural at an elementary school with a group of kids that I work with and we're finishing one more in another school before I head out.

Lima, Lima, Bo-bina

2008-09-22T17:58:00.006-05:00

Michael and me in the Plaza de Armas in Lima a few weeks ago.

I'm in Lima for a few days doing my final medical checks for Peace Corps and having a few meetings at the Peace Corps office. It's crazy there because all 113 volunteers in Bolivia were evacuated last Sunday and Monday. They've been in Lima all week trying to figure out what to do next. Apparently they have started the evacuation process by traveling to central cities about once a month for the past six months. Some thought that this would be just another consolidation, but the program in Bolivia has been indefinitely suspended pending resolving the political unrest. They kicked out the US ambassador recently so... it might be a while. In spite of the craziness for the poor folks at the office I'm there getting poked and prodded and pooping in cups.

Michael, Atari guy from Cuzco has moved to Rinconada. He is living in my old house and looking for a job. If he finds one he'll be able to stay there until I leave on Nov. 2. It has been fun to have him there. I've done everything on my own there for so long that I'm not used to having another outsider around to share it with. He seems to get it- my work, the lifestyle, etc... and he is respectful and understanding of the culture there. Even though he is Peruvian, being from a city of 9 million makes your life pretty different. So it has been refreshing, especially now that I'm just winding up my projects and going to a lot of ceremonies, to look back on everything in hindsight with fresh eyes. I'm not sure how well his job search is going. I don't imagine that it's all that promising, but I would love it if it worked out for him to be in Rinconada until I leave.

Sunday was Sept. 21, the 5th anniversary of my friend Kali's death. She was like a sister to my brothers and me and I still want to pick up the phone to call her every day. It's crazy. I went to church for a little while, just to be quiet and remember, and to send some positive energy to her son who is now 6 and is about to enter 2nd grade. Michael went with me and I know he was sitting next to me thinking more about the myriad of issues from his own life but it was still really supportive to have him there.

Finishing up with Lazarus

2008-09-06T18:45:00.006-05:00

It's decided. My last day in Rinconada Llicuar will be November 2. I can't believe it's almost over. It's like I'm trying to speed up and slow down at the same time. I have an impressive to-do list to make happen before I leave, like finish the 2 murals that I'm painting and write about 10 reports to Peace Corps, and find a place for the new volunteer to live but, I mostly just want to hang out with my host family.

I also met this really cool guy when I was in Cuzco in May and I think he's going to be moving to Rinconada next Saturday. The plan is that he move into my old house and stay until I leave, so for about 6 weeks, which seems crazy, but feels right. I have a feeling it will cause quite a stir in town but, he's Peruvian and for 2 years now everyone has been asking me when I will marry a Peruvian so, I think that they'll be excited.

Next weekend is the fiesta for the patron saint of Llicuar, San Lazaro. There will be fireworks, dance expositions, these Peruvian horses called caballos de pazo,and my personal favorite cumbia bands playing until like 6 AM. There is also a procession in which they carry a statue of the saint around town and stop and different houses to pray.

I like that I'm leaving with Lazarus, coming back from the dead. I certainly wasn't dead before Peace Corps, but I do feel renewed. It's like having new lenses in my glasses, a new perspective.

Inca Kola

2008-08-31T16:53:00.005-05:00

I think I'm in love. This very cute man just told me, "Being without you is like eating grilled beef heart on a stick without drinking Inca Kola."
Poetry by TV comercial. Nice.

Machismo in meetings... grrr

2008-08-25T15:08:00.005-05:00

Some days Peace Corps does very little to rock my world. To be fair, other days it's awesome but, today I'm going to gripe. Recently, in Rinconada Llicuar we've been meeting about getting a new volunteer to replace me when I leave. The director of the health program for Peace Corps in Peru and the coordinator for my region came out to Rinconada to coordinate with the government and community groups so that the projects will be ready to hand off to a new person. My community partner at the health post was supposed to be there but unfortunately and somewhat surprisingly but, not overly so, never showed up. I presented a review in PowerPoint and turned in a preliminary written report of my work up to now. Then the Peace Corps folks, very helpfully, pushed the municipality folks to stop dragging their feet as they are wont to do. In doing so the male regional coordinator called a second meeting of everyone in the room without consulting me first, making me look at best unprepared and at worst incompetent because I'm a girl. I know this sounds extreme but the only women working at the local government plan the parties, clean the bathrooms, or write letters for the mayor to sign. I just recently got all the men there to start calling me by my last name, the same manner in which they address one another. Now we're basically drinkin' buddies. This is so much better than being someone who they cat call. This was a major breakthrough for me because they listen better when they're comfortable speaking freely. Although the lieutenant mayor does still think that I am "a radical liberal," he also says that cannot be helped because I am a North American woman. Worse things have been said about me and I like this guy so whatever, what are you going to do? So, imagine my surprise when the Peace Corps guy who is supposed to be backing me up makes it appear as though he is in charge of running the projects that I have been doing for the last couple of years.
I talked to the Peace Corps guy today. It certainly was not his intention to be undermining, it's just that he doesn't have to think about his gender creating a barrier to his work. Ever. He's a tall guy with a mustache, apparently the height of the power look. He thanked me for mentioning it and I think he was sincere. I really respect this guy. He's good at his job and hopefully his grasp of gender power dynamics is improving.

Thank you once again for your support!

2008-08-22T13:10:00.006-05:00

Ruth was showing me her excellent hand washing technique... until another kid grabbed the soap from her and went and dropped it into the toilet. Don't worry. I made him fish it out and then wash his hands.

Again, thank you so much to everyone who donated to the potable water project in Rinconada Llicuar. We made enough money to put running water in the elementary school in Rinconada and we still have about S/. 600 left over to fix up the system at the other elementary school in Llicuar.

We finished up construction in Rinconada in late July and we are in the process of a series of trainings to teach cistern maintenance, how to use a toilet, hand washing, and keeping the bathrooms clean. I know it sounds weird to teach someone how to use a toilet but, a lot of people don't have them so they do things like stand on the toilet rim to squat over, thus potentially falling off or in, or they put toilet paper in the toilet which will cause major plumbing badness. All over Latin America used toilet paper goes into a waste basket with a lid that is kept next to the toilet.

The principal in Llicuar is writing a work plan for his school and should give it to me very soon. Hopefully we will finish that fairly quickly. It is a matter of installing some valves so that when their cistern is low the pump doesn't lose pressure and stop working. He also wants to paint.

I have attached:
a translation of the thank you letter that the principal gave me. His version has a lot of official looking stamps on it. I'll try to scan it and post it soon.
a detailed budget.
a photo gallery of the project.

At the very end of the day we raised S/. 6,243.94. There are about 3 soles to the dollar and unfortunately the dollar was pretty low in July 2.7 - 2.8 but we still had more than enough. There were costs associated with Paypal and transferring the money here so we lost about S/. 300 there but all of the rest went to the project in Rinconada and we're left with about S/. 610.

So thank you once again to:

Alyssa Domsal
Andrew Walters
Barb and Jim Hudgens
Daniel Bauerkemper
David Carey
Denzil and Betty Bush
Don Brophy
Ed Menghi
Grace Carey
Jennifer Parish
Jeremy Daw
Jessica Hickok
Joe Hudgens
John Bennett
Kelli Crawford
Ken and Sue Davies
Lynn Berg
Megan Bartlett
Ned Ewart
Pamela Lovelace
Philip Sansone
Rebecca Widom
Robert Schley
Robin Lazara
Shaina Steinberg
Sharon Brown
Spire Press c/o Shelly Reed
Stephen Lesche
Tanya Stanger
Theresa Ebeling
Tina Trinh
Tom and Stacey Bush
William Wuertz
Wendy Bach

Donkeys and Skinny Leg Jeans: Preparing for Home.

2008-08-17T16:20:00.004-05:00

I have to print the very supportive conversation that I had with my dear friend Pam about my coming home. This pretty much sums up how surreal it feels.

Pam: Just reading about everything you've learned and mostly your OPENNESS to learning (as I get older I realize that a lot of people aren't necessarily dumb but totally unwilling to admit that they have a lot to learn) is really impressive. Now that I have praised my most darling of Ellas and very bestest of buddies I feel it is my duty to tell you that the site of your crazy muddy jungle feet makes me want to run down to Peru, hose you off and stick you in terribly uncomfortable but awesome looking shoes. I know you just can't wait!!!

Ella: Awwww thanks! I have been fantasizing about a certain pair of high heeled knee high boots... Are those still in? Because I really want to wear them and probably will even if they're oh soooo last year.

Pam: Good news they are still in... one caveat though, the whole '80's thing where you get the skinny jean and tuck it into the knee high boot is back. So far I haven't seen any shoulder pads, but the layering, the flashy jewelry and tunics are back.

Ella: Dear God, no! I swear to you that I will not wear shoulder pads. And, skinny leg jeans?! Absolutely not. You've seen my calves. Those are such a bad idea, even for people with amazing legs. Flashy jewelry, well I actually do that anyway. What's a tunic? Oh God. I can't wait to go shopping.

Then I went home and attended a procession of la Virgin de Socorro the Virgin of Aid. There was an army of little girls dressed like angels throwing flowers and about 10 strapping, but very exhausted looking men carrying this very heavy statue around town for more than 4 hours. And I helped chase my neighbors escaped donkey back into its corral.

Peace Corps Magazine Questionnaire

2008-08-09T14:03:00.004-05:00

So, Peace Corps Volunteers put out this magazine with profiles of volunteers who are leaving. A friend tells me I should share my profile:

In Rinconada Llicuar I worked as a trash cheerleader and camp counselor, taught yoga once in a while, did self-esteem and leadership work with youth in jail, coordinated previously non-existent communication between local groups, read stories to kids, stamped of all sorts of documents, painted murals, and my favorite, became a professional nudge of people who are not particularly interested in outside input. We started a trash project with the local government, youth health promoter programs in two elementary schools, and a hygiene promotion program that included installing running water in a school. It was quite a ride and totally worth it.

1. Most useful thing you learned in training
A Peru 4 guy whose name I don’t remember came up to Sta. Eulalia and we were hanging out in the cancha de fulbito when he told me, “Just don’t do anything that you don’t want to do.” Oddly miraculous.

2. Most amusing misconception about the U.S. that you’ve heard at your site:
Mister Kennedy, from the WWF is apparently my next door neighbor in Texas.

3. Least favorite project in your Peace Corps experience:
Hands down, my least favorite project happened when the club de recreación that I started formed a volleyball team. Just say no to organized sporting events as I don’t think that there’s a word for “sportsmanship” in Spanish.

4. What movie most resembles your PC experience?
Christmas Vacation. It hurts at the time, but is hilarious after the fact, and like Chevy Chase I just keep bringing it upon myself.

5. Why your host family made your two years more enjoyable/interesting/survivable:
My host mom made me cucumber salad almost every day AND listened to me cry AND loves to gossip. She’s awesome.

6. Why your host family made you want to run and hide in your room:
My host mom is very concerned about my getting married, preferably soon, preferably to her brother or the mayor. 30 too old to be single and beautiful... Thanks?

7. Most share-worthy puking story:
My wee neighbor Milagros loves to swing really high in my hammock but I usually don’t let her for fear that she’ll fall out. One day, were playing football with the kids on the block and she disappeared. I went into my house looking for her and found a little puddle of puke under my hammock. Using my keen detective skills, I followed the puke trail across the street to her house and found her there looking green. I asked her what happened and she said that she wasn’t going to swing too high in the hammock anymore. I had no idea I should have been worrying about her getting motion sick.

8. Most share worthy story involving your underwear:
When I moved in my host family’s only connection to the public waste water was their new toilet and we were dumping all waste water down there. One day as I was washing clothes I went to dump out the grayish soapy water and I saw a white cotton pair of undies rush out of the bucket into the toilet and disappear into what should be never-ever land. Of course I tried to catch them because as we all know cotton underwear that actually fits is no easy find in Peru. Sadly, my white cotton undies slipped off the tips of my fingers and went right down the toilet. I already had my hand in the toilet from trying to catch them, so then I tried like hell to fish them out, until I started to retch because I recovered my wits and realized where my hand was. Then I had to go tell my host dad that I backed up the plumbing for his household of 7. He listened kindly to my garbled story, turned bright red, and started to giggle as he asked me, “You really put your hand down the toilet?!” Then he went next door and told the whole story to the neighbor.

9. If you could change one thing about Peru, what would it be?
People would have enough self-esteem and confidence to express their creativity. (I plan to work on making that change in the US too.)

10. Why your province is obviously better than all the rest:
Piura! The land of eternal sunshine, awesome beaches, Costabella, ceviche, mangoes, Cappuccinos, Aaron, Tessa, Alyssa, Lizzi, Patrick, Tania, and I’m there.

11. Any meal item you tolerate in Peru that you would never have eaten back in the States?
Did you know that it is actually possible to eat a cow’s hoof?

12. Peruvian cuisine that you’ll get a craving for when you’re back in the States:
Ceviche, cremoladas, my host mom’s sudado, maracuya, little tiny bananas, fried sweet bananas, limones, lime juice as the world’s most versatile condiment, limas, habas, cremoladas, guanabana, lucuma, cremoladas, guayaba, ciurela, cremoladas, pepinillo dulce, cremoladas, queso fresco, mangoes by the quintal, cremoladas, cherimoyas, vinagre de chicha, pollo a la brasa and did I mention cremoladas?

13. Favorite coping mechanism:
Calling up one of my amazing, fabulous, hardcore, funny PVC compañeros and ranting. Playing football (American football a la Nerf) with my neighbor boys. Chocolate. Reading trashy novels.

14. Advice for the newbies:
See number 1.

15. Biggest surprise encountered during your service:
When my friend Rosa asked me if I knew what yoga was and if I could teach it. I’m serious. That really happened.
Or, when during my first visit to Rinconada I was forced to sing the Star Spangled Banner in front of 200 people.

16. What´s your legacy?
I ran every day (we’re talking legend, not reality). We put in running water at the elementary school. I did not marry the mayor.

17. What´s next?
Job. Will work for bagels.

18. Craziest thing a Peruvian has tried to convince you of:
Chucaque, an illness you get from being embarrassed, gives you a cold. To cure it, you rub a newspaper all over you and then set it on fire on a cement floor. Read the burn mark it leaves so that you know what gave you chucaque and you can either get revenge or avoid it. My cold did go away afterwards. I just couldn’t go to the police station anymore.

19. Any random first impressions you had of fellow Peru 8ers:
Andrew very kindly offered to help me carry my luggage when I arrived at the Holiday Inn in DC. I think Mike sin barba hid those moccasins with the fringe under his bed in Tumbes.

20. Will you listen to cumbia in the US?
YES! I’m not ashamed to admit that I sing along to Grupo 5.

21. How will you spend your PC readjustment allowance?
Traveling and I expect I’ll have to buy a suit. Okay, actually I have a whole wardrobe already in mind. It does not include anything made of fleece.

22. Best compliment you have received in Peru:
Really, really good looking man at Queens discoteca: “You dance well, for a gringa.” Also, I’m almost convinced that I am both tall and blonde.

23. Favorite discovery in Peru:
Cremoladas de maracuya and pod casts. Also, trekking is super fun.

24. What your community/host family considers your strangest behavior:
Running, eating vegetables, putting trash in bags, reading, not being married, and moving to Peru without my family.

25. If you could do it all over again, would you? Would you change anything?
I would start slower, talk less and listen more. But, for all my mistakes I had a really, really good time and made amazing friends.

26. What made your site tolerable?
The afore mentioned amazing friends, my hammock, my bike, my host mom’s sudado de pescado, and the amazing maracuya.

27. What makes Peru 8 PCVs stand out?
Tame is better and involves more singing around campfires.

28. Most amusing pick-up line given or received:
A taxi driver told me, “Baby, marry me and I’ll take you wherever you want to go!” Uh, couldn’t I just pay you the S/.2? What an embarrassingly low bride price.

29. Favorite Peruvian holiday: Velaciones. Definitely.

30. What story of yours most frightened family members back home:
Hi Mom, I’m teaching a leadership seminar to some guys at the jail. No, they’re just first time offenders.

31. Did folks from home visit your site? What happened?
My mom and dad came to visit and the kids at the school where I work put on a show of traditional dances for them: marinera, huayno, and a lip-sync to Shakira. It was also my birthday so they sang me happy birthday and them made me dance a waltz with every male in attendance. And since it made me cry they all love to tell that story.

32. Favorite Spanish word/phrase/dicho:
Sí o sí. Yes or yes. As in: Today we're having a meeting, yes or yes (no matter what).
Encamotarse: to sweet potato or to fall in love

33. Fullest that you have ever seen a mototaxi/combi/bus:
It’s a tie. In both instances the mototaxis had their backseats removed: 1. Two hog-tied full-grown, alive horses. 2. Two calves, that’s right live baby cows. Folks in bajo Piura can do amazing things with a moto.

34. Most text messages that you have received from a Peruvian in love in 1 hour:
45. I wish that I were exaggerating. To be fair, I returned about 20 of them. He was cute until he was crazy and I had a lot of time on my hands, okay?

35. Most beautiful place that you have encountered in your time in Peru:
Either the sunset over the Rio Marañon on the way to Iquitos or Catarata de Gocta in Amazonas. Breathtaking.

Chachapoyas and beyond

2008-08-08T18:14:00.007-05:00

Feet of Jungle Ella. Getting unstuck from mud in Chaco sandals makes very interesting noises.

Gocta Waterfall

Red drawings by peoples unknown in times unknown.

6 people in a 4 person tent trying to sleep...

Gocta

Kuelap petroglyph

Peruvian independence day recently passed and the schools get a two week break for the holiday. It's their break in between the semesters. Excellent timing for me because I get a good excuse to go on a little vacation. Six of us Peace Corps Volunteers set off for Chachapoyas, a town on the edge of the Amazon Jungle. It's an interesting ecosystem. People call it the jungle, but it doesn't look like the Amazon looks in Iquitos at all. It looks like a cloud forest, maybe with more mud.

We went to a pre-Incan archaeological site called Kuelap. We also hiked up to Gocta, either the 3rd or 16th highest waterfall in the world, depending on who you ask. It's so beautiful. Skinny-dipping was frigid and short lived fun. The waterfall was "discovered" in 2006, very recently. I say "discovered" because there are lots of little towns around there, but no one thought of it as a tourist destination and they hadn't really measured the waterfall. There's apparently another (larger?) waterfall sort of nearby in the same province, but it's more remote and more difficult to get to. In any case, Gocta is more than 700 meters tall. It's sort of like two waterfalls, one underneath the other. The first fall is just over 100 meters and the second is 600 plus meters. We hiked up and camped between the two falls. It's breathtaking, so unbelievably beautiful. The camping was an intimate experience with 6 of us crammed into a 4 man tent. Being one giant human spoon seemed like a good idea until we tried to sleep on one side without moving all night long.

On the way up we walked by some ancient red colored drawing on the rocks. The "guide" (I use that term very loosely) pointed them out, but didn't know who made them or anything about them. The next day we hiked down the other side and the whole time my hiking partners were very kind about the fact that I am as slow as Moses. After we got lost in the jungle on day 2 I know I was trying their patience, but in the end we found our way out of the jungle and had a great time. Then I went to another archaeological site called Karagia. It's these cool sarcophagi built on the face of a cliff where God only knows how they got up there. I still need to do some research on the archaeological sites. There isn't a lot of information or guides, even in the provincial archaeological museum in Chachapoyas. It's only slightly less comic than the American Museum of Natural History's North Atlantic People's exhibit with all Boas' artifacts where labels like, "stick with hook on the end" abound.

Runnin' in Pacasmayo, La Libertad, Peru

2008-07-21T18:14:00.003-05:00

The mighty 13 minuite mile :) Fun times.

We filled the cistern today!

2008-07-18T14:55:00.002-05:00

The water system should be in working order by Monday!!! I can't belive it's finally finished. Thanks so much to all of you who made this dream come true. Rinconada Elementary has RUNNING WATER!

Handwashing. The Key to the Universe.

2008-07-15T19:41:00.003-05:00

Okay, so maybe that's a little extreme but, it's just so true that here and in much of the developing world. My dear friend Tina sent me this article from the NY Times today.
This is sooo true. It's tough to get people to WANT to have clean water, eat vegetables, go to college, have babies at a hospital or just near to emergency care, etc... This lady is brilliant!

Immigrants and Food Stamps Pub!

2008-07-09T17:44:00.004-05:00

I almost forgot! I have a new publication coming out tomorrow in New York. I'm only the third author and I haven't been working on this stuff for a while, what with the living in Peru and all. It's from my old job at the Urban Justice Center. The supervisor that I had there, Rebecca was just a rock star, very intense, but very good at her job. We did research for advocacy purposes about the implementation of the Food Stamps Program in New York City, so basically we were just trying to figure out how to get more Food Stamps to more people efficiently and legally. In New York there are a lot of new immigrants and a lot of new immigrants are really struggling financially so some are eligible for Food Stamps. The report makes some suggestions to the city about how to make Food Stamps more accesible to immigrants.

There are all kinds of issues with people being weird about immigrants getting Food Stamps. "Those people come here and take advantage," kind of bologna. But, after interviewing a hundred immigrants or so about food stamps I feel like I'm in a position to say that it is a very rare person who is willing to ask for help if they don't REALLY need it and a lot of people who do really need it are still too proud or too scared to ask for help. Also, the eligibility guidelines are very strict so a lot of documented immigrants aren't eligible and if they're not documented, well that's a total lost cause. Anyway, I think Nourishing NYC: Increasing Food Stamps Access in Immigrant Communities will be available at this link starting tomorrow. It's a lot less polemical than I am here. You know, data and all.

A Couple Little Earthquakes

2008-07-09T16:41:00.002-05:00

We've had some eathquake action this week in Peru. The one that was biggest in the news was in the far south of the country, in Arequipa where Colca Canyon is located. I was just there in May with some friends and it is a spectacular place with a rich heritage and history. Fortunately, I think that there was only 1 death and a small number of injuries.

I didn't even feel it up north here in Piura. I found out about the quake when I recieved several kind emails from worried friends. I'm happy to say that I'm fine and everyone I know is fine.

I did run the 10K over the weekend and had a blast down in Pacasmayo, famed for its giant cement factory. "Run" might be a strong word for what I do, but I did jog the whole way and it was a lot of fun. I actually usually run a slightly longer loop, but I never actually run the whole way. I usually start walking and getting distracted by pretty red and green parrots and cool bugs about 3/4 of the way through.

Runnin' and Dancin' for the 4th of July

2008-07-03T14:48:00.006-05:00

In my Peru life I run, well okay I jog. I do NOT run in my US life, although I'm thinking that may change when I return if I can find a pretty outdoor place to do it. I started running here becasue I couldn't make it to my eliptical machine at the YMCA and it's warm all year long. I run through the rice paddys and cotton fields at sunset among stunning coconut palm trees cutting tropical silhouettes into the firey setting sun. Being there makes running a lot easier. Don't get me wrong, the first 10minutes or so are still torture, beautiful torture, but still torture.

This weekend a couple of fellow Peace Corps volunteers are helping to put on a run to raise money for their town's library. It's taking place in a town called Pacasmayo, located between Chiclayo and Trujillo. There's a marathon, half marathon, 10K, and 5K. Anthing involving the word marathon is just silly so I'm just doing the 10K. I hear that there are free t-shirts involved.

So, that'll be my 4th of July celebration. The run AND I taught my Youth Health Promoters to line dance to Dwight Yoakam today. The kids always ask about traditional dances in the US because traditional dance is such a big deal here. Every festival and anniversary celebration includes a traditioanl dance celebration. I don't think that you can leave elementary school without being able to dance huayno and marinera. I figured the electric slide was a close to a traditional dance and this native Austinite has.

Potable Water Project Moving Right Along

2008-06-27T17:09:00.009-05:00

Cool kids learned thumbs up from a Jackie Chan movie.

The chief mason Senor Juan and his brother break ground for the cistern.

Principal Niko, Profesora Betty, and Student Body President Kike roll the rooftop water tank into the school yard.

The cement and rebar truck came and everyone helped unload. It was so heavy that the truck got in the door of the school okay, but after it was unloaded it was like 10 inches taller so it couldn't get back out under the low entry way. So all the adult neighbors and the folks walking by climbed up into the bed to weigh it down so they could drive the truck back out!

Before! Professora Betty and Principal Niko collect water in trash cans and big aluminum pots.

We're making good progress on installing the potable water in Rinconada Elementary. We have the cement tank and we're working on attaching all of the pipes and electrical stuff once the cement hardens. It needs to sit for a week or so.

Nuptuials a la Peruana

2008-06-22T12:34:00.006-05:00

Last night my dear friends Tessa and Manuel got married! Tessa came to Peace Corps with me and in October, a mere 8 months ago, met Manuel at her town's anniversary celebration. She lives in this teeny tiny town in the mountains and Manuel was there doing his year of rural service as a doctor, required of all Peruvian medical grads. It was a privilege to be there to celebrate with them.

Condors in Colca Canyon

2008-06-15T11:50:00.005-05:00

Check out this link to a video that I took of the condors in Colca Canyon! This image has really stayed with me. These birds are so beautiful. It's weird they're basically just enormous buzzards that float around on updrafts all day, but they're also majestic dinosaurs. It was a breathtaking experience. Today I'm planning my classes for the jail. The goal of the administration is really to develop self esteem and leadership skills and I have great materials for that. However, the guy in charge to the technical programs told me that the inmates learn all these carpentry and artisan skills but lack business management skills, so he asked if could I teach some business stuff. I of course said sure. I'm now supposed to combine the two, which in theory is really a good idea... In theory. Now I'm just freaking out that business is not something that I actually know anything about. In the words of Homer Simpson, "Doh." I think I'm going to do a class on double entry bookkeeping, which is easy enough to figure out from a book and two more sessions on writing a business plan, which I'm hoping is also easy enough to figure out from a book. Hopefully, my limited business skills can still be helpful. Eeek.

I can't feel my face! Or why Aaron Groth should be your babysitter.

2008-06-11T18:42:00.003-05:00

Here's an article that I wrote with my buddy Aaron for our volunteer newsletter, Pasa la Voz.

3,700 meters is ridiculously high and frankly, just existing up there will really set you back, much less hiking around and climbing rocks. But, we’re hardcore. We hike, we camp, and we do so while living better through chemistry. So, when a troupe of Peru 8ers (those of us who arrived together in Sept. 2006) decided to do up Peruvian independence day 2007 at the Way Inn Lodge above Huaraz and the truly hardcore decided to don crampons and hammer their ice picks into the top of Ishinca, we called up the Peace Corps docs, Jorge and Suni to usurp the soroche (altitude sickness) with those magical altitude pills everyone talks about. After all, Ishinca is at 5,550 m, definitely up in a space where the air is thin enough that us costal folk are sloshed on one Cuzqueña beer and even the mountain dwellers among us are breathing extra hard.

The Peru 8 contingent has since learned that the magic pills, packaged by the Peace Corps office in the ubiquitous brown paper bag with Your Name in magic marker, in fact have a proper name, acetomephaline. We’re hardcore. We’re not fine print people. What directions? We get a pill, we take it and we call it a day. Sitting around the Way Inn at dinner no one noticed Aaron watching the storm clouds cover the glaciers of the Cordillera Blanca while carefully cutting his pill in two with his pocket knife. We just assumed he was sitting over there sipping scotch and spacing out. We chowed down on an approximation of gringo granola natural foods store fare, hung out on the front porch telling lies, and then with a budding headache bid all good night and turned in.

Most of us slept down in a charming room often referred to as “the cave” that night. The two gringo friends of Melissa whimpered from their down comforters, “Can anyone hear me? I can’t feel my legs.” “Anybody? I cannot feel the area between my shins and thighs.” Meanwhile I was just hoping that they would shut up because my ears were ringing so loudly that I thought my alarm clock was going off. Every word just made the ringing louder and the pain behind my eyeballs more excruciating. Not being able to feel my legs or hands was the least of my problems.

Meanwhile, in a tent outside snug in his zero degree sleeping bag, Aaron prepared for hibernation. Kevin and Brian soon followed and commented on their general state of wellbeing.

Brian: I cannot feel my face. No really, my face, I can’t feel it.
Kevin: S#@! I can’t feel my face either!
Brian: I can’t take it any more.

Aaron’s not sure what Brian did when he couldn’t take it anymore, because he fell right to sleep. Aaron awoke at 5:30 a.m. and saw freshly fallen snow blanketing the Cordillera Negra and tumbled into breakfast ranting about the beauty of nature, blah, blah, blah.

Breakfast was coffee and the dull roar of complaints as we commiserated over the questionable presence of various seemingly essential body parts. Promises to never again take the altitude pills followed shortly. At this point Aaron asked, “How much of that stuff were you guys taking?” We all retorted, “Just one freaking pill!” Aaron suggested label reading and kindly offered to lend us his pocket knife to cut those pesky 500 mg pills in half.

Shopping for construction materials Saturday!

2008-06-11T18:32:00.004-05:00

We got the money to Peru! It took a small miracle and cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 and for some reason the bank here is very secretive about the actual fees. They can't actually tell me how much it cost me to wire money into my account or they'll have to kill me or something, but whatever. We got the cash!
The Project Committee is made up on the school principal, Prof. Niko, the second grade teacher, Prof. Betty, the student body president a fifth grader named Kike, and the PTA president Sebastian. We met on Friday and discussed some price changes for materials as inflation is pretty crazy here right now. (The prices of rebar and cement have gone up about 10%!) We also planned our trip to price out all the construction materials. On Monday we drove into Piura after school and went around to a few different construction material stores and got price lists. So now that we know where to buy what we're off to make the purchases on Saturday. The construction should start next week!

Peruvian Jail on the Side

2008-05-27T18:21:00.003-05:00

I just got back from inscribing 15 incarcerated guys into a class at the Piura jail. A lawyer friend and I put together a 4 session class on business planning including lots of activities on developing leaderships skills and self esteem. I had been putting off writing about this on the blog entirely because my mom is going to flip out. But, I'm so excited to be starting. We have class every Tuesday morning in the month of June. The director of the Piura jail is a psychologist and she's creating all of these progressive therapies for the prisoners. I have been surprised at how progressive it is.

The facilities are decidedly sub par. The place smells like a sewer and I haven't been allowed into the older cell blocks so I'm sure that the living conditions are frightening. It's overcrowded too. It was built for 1,700 and houses more than 2,000. But, there are two new buildings with living quarters and those are surprisingly good. There are several workshops for carpentry, mechanics, and arts and crafts. There is even an education program for literacy, including a small library.

It's also much more tranquil feeling than Rikers was. I worked for the NYC Health Dept at Rikers for a short while in 2006. There was always an under current of violence and there were frequently ¨lock downs¨ in which all of the guards came rushing out in riot gear and you were just supposed to smash yourself against a wall and not move, potentially for hours until they got the fight or lost inmate sorted out. Rio Seco is more like a small town. Everyone says good morning and good afternoon. The guys cook together and do their laundry in the courtyard together. It seems like the inmate on inmate violence is less there than in Rikers.

This is going to be a really busy few months. I've finally been here long enough and know enough people that I can really get into the projects that I've been wanting to do. Five months to go! The question is: how much can I get done in the time remaining?

Good things are running

2008-05-26T14:23:00.003-05:00

I'm still high on the 24 hour a day running water that's going into the elementary school. I just transferred all of the money from Paypal $1325.39 into my home bank account. I'm waiting for all the checks to clear and then I'm probably going to need to wire it to myself. I'm looking into just transferring it into my Peruvian bank account, but I'm not sure that's going to fly. My best bet might be to Western Union it to myself. Professor Niko and I have a materials shopping date set for the morning of the first Saturday in June!

We spent the weekend celebrating my dear friend Tessa's pending nuptials to Manuel, a kind doctor who she met on top of her mountain. She lives literally at the end of the highway. Peruvian doctors do a 1 year internship working in rural Peru after they finish medical school and Manuel was placed in a tiny town about a three hour walk up the mountain from where she lives. They met at her town's anniversary dance.

We threw them a little vegetarian soiree at a ceviche restaurant Saturday night. Then we went out dancing in true Peruvian style and rolled into our hostal at sunrise with reggaton beats pounding in our ears.

Happy Memorial Day in the US!

Running Water Coming Soon!!! $2015.12

2008-05-22T16:09:00.004-05:00

We are so grateful for all of your help. I told Principal Niko or more formally, Prof. Manuel Nicolas Chully Chunga today and he did a happy dance. He's a serious principal parody, not a "happy dance" kind of guy, so I know he was thrilled. Then we went and took "before" photos of the aluminum pots and plastic garbage cans that they now use to save water. The goal is to start construction by June 1 and finish by July 1. We shall see how Peru's fates like that schedule, but I have high hopes. At the suggestion of a trusted teacher friend I'm going to form a committee to execute the project. It will be compried of the principal, the PTA president, a teacher, and myself to execute the project and update parents on the progress. So, hopefully parents and teachers will feel like all money matters are transparent.

More sincere thanks go to:

Joe Hudgens
Rebecca Widom

Our Current Total:

$2015.12

Wahoooo!!!

Wahoo! We're Gettin' Runnin' Water! $1894.62

2008-05-21T13:45:00.004-05:00

We officially have enough money to put in running water at Rinconada Elementary!! Between money promised and what we've got actually in hand there's $1894.62

Thank you!

I'm telling the principal tomorrow! He will be so excited. I'm totally bringing my camera. (I didn't tell him much about how fundraising was progressing because I didn't want him to be very disappointed if it didn't work out.) Keep checking for photo updates :)

Thank you so very much to everyone who donated. There really are 300 families in Rinconada who are much better off for your generous help. We may even have $100 or so left over; if so, I'll be checking with the principal and PTA to see how they want to use the funds. I think it's likely that we can fix some broken desks and chairs, get uniforms for a couple of kids who don't have them, buy school supplies like copy paper, chalk, and markers, and maybe even get some computer accessories.

Special thanks to our most recent donors:

Philip Sansone
Ed Menghi
Robin Lazara
Wendy Bach
Jessica Hickok

The Inca Trail

2008-05-20T14:38:00.009-05:00

Llama and vicuna crossing.

The beginning of the Inca Trail, KM 82.

Our hiking group at Dead Woman's Pass, 4,200 meters high. The name really says it all.

Fun times in Cuzco.

Love for Atari, even in Cuzco.

Condors in Colca Canyon.

I made it! 4,200 meters high and 45 kilometers long, ending up at the Sun Gate at Machu Picchu.

Pragati my rock star college buddy came down recently and we went traveling around with her very cool cousin Dipesh aka Dr. Peace Monkey and we made a trip to Arequipa and Cuzco. We were going to hit Lake Titicaca in Puno too, but were deterred by some strikes due to the APEC meetings.

So in Arequipa we stayed in the city and in a town in Colca Canyon called Chivay, which is a name seriously close to my favorite fancy beer brand. There we saw the CONDORS! It was gorgeous.

Then we went on to Cuzco and hug out in the city dancing and playing, went to the Sacred Valley and hiked the Inca Trail. I made 2 major life decisions on the Inca Trail. 1. I'm never smoking again (not that I ever have Mom) and 2. I'm marrying someone who likes hiking, trekking, going to the beach, and generally being outside and getting dirty. It's such a fundamental part of what makes me tick and what makes the universe in general go round.

In short, the Andes are shockingly beautiful. Come. See.

Project Budget and Latest Donations

2008-05-19T16:52:00.002-05:00

We're about half way there with the fund raising for a water system in the elementary school. So far we have raised $1150, minus the Paypal costs that comes to: $1117.94.

Some folks have expressed interest in donating, but haven't actually sent anything in yet, so there may be more in the pipeline. I really want to start construction in June, so I need some tips of fund raising. Ideas anyone?

Many, many thanks to the following generous donors:

Andrew Walters
Barb and Jim Hudgens
Daniel Bauerkemper
David Carey
Denzil and Betty Bush
Ed Menghi
Grace Carey
Jennifer Parish
Kelli Crawford
Ken and Sue Davies
Megan Bartlett
Ned Ewart
Pamela Lovelace
Robert Schley
Shaina Steinberg
Sharon Brown
Spire Press c/o Shelly Reed
Stephen Lesche
Tanya Stanger
Tina Trinh
Tom and Stacey Bush
William Wuertz

Also, the detailed budget is linked to the title of this article, if you're interested.

Criticisim of Peace Corps

2008-05-08T09:47:00.003-05:00

from Atlantic Monthly

$915 for water at Rinconada Elementary!

2008-05-08T09:42:00.002-05:00

Good News! We have $915 collected from PayPal from Rinconada Elementary. There is more promised in paper check form that is not included in this balance! So, we are well on our way to meeting the goal.

Tomorrow I set out on the Inca Trail. 4 days, 4,200 meters into Macchu Picchu. I have been training but I think that this will be a humbling experience!

I will update again next week when I get back.

Please keep passing the word about our project!

Already $324.92 for Water at Rinconada Elementary!

2008-04-30T15:24:00.004-05:00

CLICK THAT BIG YELLOW BUTTON TO MAKE A DONATION!

I'm raising $2000 to get 24 hour running water installed in the elementary school in Rinconada. This project will provide a rooftop water tank, a subterranean cement tank, a pump to get the water from the ground to the roof, and pipes to connect all of these.

We started fundraising Sunday April 27, 2008 and as of today we have raised $335. I'm using Paypal, which charges me 2.9% + $.30 on each transaction, so we actually have $324.92 available to date. Only $1675 to go!

In this area of the Sechuran Desert the folks who can afford it store water in tanks on their roves and underground. We want to install such a system at Rinconada Elementary. With 200 kids in grades 1 to 6, the school has bathrooms with flush toilets connected to a modern municipal waste water system but, they cannot save enough water in their plastic trash cans and large aluminum cooking pots to flush the toilets and wash all the little hands for the 2 days in between their turns on the water schedule. (We do A LOT of work on teaching kids to wash their hands. It's huge for reducing diarrhea.)

The principal, PTA and local government have all made significant investments to improve the bathrooms in the past year. They replumbed all 10 stalls in the boys and girls bathrooms, a badly needed improvement. (Last year the "flushings" were running all over the floor.) Local government also bought one rooftop tank but, the school needs another one and the school does not have the pump that they need to move the water to the roof. These investments of about S/.1,200 or $430 were hard won and now both school and government are just out of money for the project. That's where we can help.

So that big yellow button is for donations. Please be generous and tell your friends and family.

Thank you for your kindness and generosity.

Somebody at the NYTimes and I Have Good Timing

2008-04-23T16:30:00.001-05:00

Somebody at the NY Times is thinking about the US prisons and how they compare to others around the world too.

Me and Jail

2008-04-22T16:37:00.006-05:00

I've been spending a lot of time in Peruvian jail lately. Happily, I have not run afoul of the law but I'm working on starting a class for inmates at the local penitentiary in Piura. The class is supposed to outline basic business skills and work on self-esteem. "But, Ella," you say, "are you sure that you want to impart your um... business sense on anyone else?" Don't worry. I'm just going to use a curriculum that Peace Corps Volunteers working with small businesses designed. It outlines basic accounting, writing a business plan, and such. I'm not telling anyone how to spend their money. The self-esteem work comes in the form of group work and presentations. It's just 4 class days in June and afterwards the director and I will reassess, both what is being taught and who is teaching it. (I have a secret plot to try to get a small business volunteer placed there, working with my friend a who used to be the lawyer at Town Hall in Rinconada.)

I was shaken by how incredibly humane the conditions are in the jail/prison.(The two do not seem differentiated here. Inmates are imprisoned close to their families without much regard for the severity of their crime of the length of the sentence.) Rio Seco makes Riker's Island in New York look like Abu Gharib, not to put to fine a point on the matter. Inmates in Rio Seco cook together, eat together, and work together. Inmates speak to each other and the guards without any obvious cowering in fear. It's a small town, for better or worse. Every inmate that you pass tells you "Good afternoon," just as folks on the street in Rinconada do, and not just to me but to the janitors and the secretaries and guards. There are workshops for carpentry, artisanry, and even guitar making. On Sundays the powers that be open the jail up and visitors as well as shoppers from the surrounding community come to buy the inmates' products in a kind of jail-house-market, so inmates make a little money.

Rio Seco is like anyplace in Peru. Rules are much more about social morays than about regulations. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of rules and problems. As a visitor, I can't bring in my camera or cell phone and a myriad of other random and inexplicable things. Today when I went they wanted to keep my sunglasses, but I acted like I didn't understand the officer and said "No thank you ma'am," so she let me keep them. The day it started pouring down rain while I was there, I was wearing a white button down shirt with black stripes and a bright pink bra. I was trying to leave though the exercise yard at the moment of the downpour. It was like God got a giant bucket and wanted to play Peruvian Carnival. This caused quite a stir, I assure you, but quite frankly not any more of a stir than it would have caused on the street in Piura. In fact, it was a much more controlled stir because I felt like the guards were keeping an eye on me. Also, in the inmate population of about 2,500 men there are about 5 HIV positive inmates and 12 active tuberculosis cases. (Most Peruvians test positive for TB on the skin test and I probably will too after Peace Corps.) The jail/prison is badly over crowded; it was meant to hold 1,500, but currently holds 2,500 and this causes health and safety problems of all stripes. I'm sure that I'll find out more about the negative side of things as I work more closely with inmates, but as far as first impressions go, after about 5 visits now, I'm fairly impressed.

The current director has only been there for about 3 years and I'm told, has changed things dramatically. She is a psychologist and sees all the workshops, worship activities, and groups like AA as therapy. They talk the therapy talk at Rikers too, and there are a lot of good people at Riker's working hard to make life a little safer and easier for the 15,000 inmates, but it certainly feels like an uphill battle and it's much scarier to physically be there. In Rio Seco there are no lock downs requiring tens of officers to run into the dormitory areas in full riot gear. And there are certainly more cases of both HIV and TB in New York than in Piura. (Although as a percentage I think it might be comparable. I'm not sure. Riker's is so much bigger that it's hard to say.)

I got interested in working in the jails after I testified in a murder trial. My best friend/sister's husband was convicted of killing her about 5 years ago now. In Texas, the law lets victims put witnesses on the stand to attest to what great people the crime victims are so that the defendants look really bad and get worse sentences; they're called character witnesses. They're very controversial. When her dad and the DA asked me to testify it didn't even occur to me to think about saying no. It was the first thing that I could do for her mom and dad after her death that actually felt like it made any difference. I'm still glad that I did it. It was important for me too, as I was so angry and hurt and alone. But, after that I got really interested in what happens to inmates. I know it sounds like some kind of not all that subconscious guilt thing. But, I don't actually feel guilty. He got the maximum sentence possible for his crime, which was life in prison. In Texas that means the possibility of parole after 35 years. I think it's a just sentence, to be totally honest. On the other hand, I knew this asshole and sat across from him at Thanksgiving dinner more than once and whatever I think of him my sister loved him and he's the father of her son. Jailed guys get kind of forgotten and get talked about as scary monsters safely hidden behind big locks and chains. Some of them scare me. He should scare me and he does. On the other hand, I think that men like him need care and with it can maybe get better. I hope so anyway. I love his son with all my heart.

Turning 30 in Peru!

2008-04-14T20:14:00.003-05:00

All cumbia all the time. So, I'm journeying on through the usual music scene here in Peru. The Mayor of my town, Don Walter invited my host family and I over to his house in the evening on my birthday. There was chicken, rice, cumbia, and Crystal beer and chicha (fermented corn beer type stuff) for the crowd of people that magically appeared. People in Rinconada are so generous all the time and it really continues to astound me. I know us ex-pats always say stuff like that, but it's ridiculously true. I went to 3 birthday parties for myself, all thrown by friends who just decided that it needed to happen. It was so kind. I hope that I can follow their example.

I'm not sure that I'm getting much work done lately. My Solid Waste Management project has stalled because the local government (i.e. the mayor who threw the party) doesn't really want to spend the money on the project, even though legally they're supposed to. I'm working in the elementary schools and love my kids, and I had all kinds of big plans for what I was going to get done here, but I think if I just have as much fun with people as I've been having I'll be happy with my time here in Peru. I'm talking myself into that anyway. I still wrestle with an overachiever streak left over from Catholic school conditioning.

I'm also still furious that they painted over the world map mural that my kids painted at the high school. I bawled like a baby when I saw it. So, I've decided to get funding from the mayor to paint 2 more, one at each elementary school, hopefully in time for the anniversary celebrations at each school.

I'm also thinking of taking up a collection for all of those I know to put in some decent bathrooms at the Rinconada Elementary School. They're so gross. They have flush toilets that 1. are not connected to a 24 hour water supply and 2. are not properly attached to the floor so when there is water to flush them "it" goes all over the floor. I wish I were exaggerating. AND I just found out about 3 cases of cholera in Llicuar so we have to be super careful of the water now. It's so contagious. So, I'm trying to make the improvement project happen. I've asked the principal for a budget breakdown with the materials and work costs. I'll keep you posted and hope for your support when the time comes.

More on the Peruvian Amazon

2008-04-01T12:35:00.004-05:00

Guides Ricardo and Carlos and their dugout canoes took us on a three day canoe trip though Pacaya Samiria, the 2nd largest National Reserve Park in Peru.

Fun times in Pacaya Samiria.

Our guides thout it was hilarous that I wanted to play Tarzan in thigh high water.

Gamaniel caught a pirannah one morning and we ate it for breakfast.

Base camp. It's flooded with more than a meter of water for half of the year and the other half you can play soccer in front of it. We went in wet season. No soccer was played.

These crazy palm trees look like dinosaurs. It's not hard to imagine an earth a meter deep in water and filled with the animals that I've only seen at the American Museum of Natural History when you're paddlng around there.

Peace Corps Peru Team Chaco makes it out of Pacaya Samiria in one piece.

The Giant Anteater who lives at the Butterfly Farm in Iquitos likes oatmeal.

Sunset on Rio Marañon in between Lagunas and Iquitos is one of the most beautiful things that I've seen in my life... and the Texas sunsets that I grew up on are pretty damn impressive.

What to do next...

2008-03-30T13:27:00.007-05:00

It's starting to hit home that I'm finishing Peace Corps in 6 months and I need to decide what to do next. There's sort of a panorama of future options, but they generally all involve getting a job, having a family and being a responsible adult at some point in the foreseeable future. (So stop worrying mom.) The questions that remain are where to live and what job to do there - so not small questions. Lately, I waffle between Austin, Texas, the DC area, and the Peruvian Amazon, my new favorite place on earth. For jobs, one of the ideas that I'm toying with is opening an alternative therapy and healing center, of course this is after I go to school to get another master's in some kind of counseling profession. I feel like the fates might be aligning in that direction. (This plan of changes weekly of course, but for now this is interesting.) Then, today on CNN's list of the best places to open a business Georgetown, Texas, a small town just north of Austin where I went to college, is number 2 and Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of DC is number 5. I have sort of always known in the back of my head that I want to own my own business, or at least somehow be my own boss. It gave my dad such great opportunities to spend time with us and be able to support us well, which is part of what I aspire to.

Okay, so that is post is not just me waxing poetic about my future and boring to death everyone who doesn't live inside my head. Wanna see some composting toilets? These were from the program that CARE was executing down south in the earthquake zone. I was down there helping them with some hygiene education and training folks on how to care for their latrines. It was interesting and I really think that CARE is a great organization. Despite the usual management and logistical problems that come from trying to pull of projects in distressed areas for a reasonable cost they can really can get some stuff done.

These are the before toilets - located over the irrigation canal:

This is the inside of the composting latrine. These cement toilet and urinal things are designed to sepearate the... liquid from the solid. Wet poop doesn't compost.

Proud proprietor of a composting toilet:

They may not have bathrooms but the sand boarding is AWESOME in Huancachina:

My entire explanation of why I want to live in the Peruvian jungle: (This is no where near Ica or the earthquake zone, but it's where I went following working with CARE)

Tarapoto to Yurimaguas to Lagunas to Pacaya Samiria to Iquitos

2008-03-28T16:01:00.003-05:00

Iquiteña, indigenous jungle cerveza, delicious... or at least the best beer in Peru

Howler Monkeys at Pilpintuwasi (The Butterfly House) in Iquitos

The view from the 3rd deck of Eduardo IV, our boat from Yurimaguas to Lagunas down Rio Huayalla

The Watermelon Slayer at Laguna Azul, near Tarapoto

Aaron and I mototaxi it around Iquitos

Back from the Jungle

2008-03-26T10:02:00.002-05:00

I have learned that when I travel I must bring the cord to my camera to upload the blow by blow photos. The Pacaya Samiria Reserve was AMAZING. It's a protected area in the jungle, home to crocodiles, monkeys, jaguars, sloths, incredibly cool frogs, medicinal plants, piranhas, tarantulas, tapirs, and other animals that I had never heard of before. We canoed around the park for 3 days and camped out in a house on stilts in the river. I highly recommend the whole experience, it might be my favorite place in Peru. Then on the plane trip back to Lima we flew over Huascaran, the highest peak in Peru and the Paramount Pictures mountain. It was breathtaking. I happened to glance out the window and literally gasped. Photos soon. Back to work for now. Cariño.

Jungle Boogie

2008-03-19T11:01:00.002-05:00

Yurimaguas to the head of the Amazon in Iquitos in 3 days. Pink dolphins, monkeys and sloths, oh my.

Also, I learned about Takiwasi, a very cool center in Tarapoto that couples traditional Peruvian medicine, specifically ayahuasca with modern western medicine and psychology to treat addictions and other illnesses or conditions. Ayahuasca is a mixture of plants found in the Peruvian jungle used by indigenous people to induce a trance state that is part of a healing process. (There are also a lot of curious foreigners interested in trying ayahuasca that visit Peru.)

Paracas

2008-03-11T16:49:00.003-05:00

I've been working in southern Peru where the earthquake was and there's a nearby National Reserve called Paracas. Paracas is what I imagine the surface of Mars to look like, but on the coast of the Pacific Ocean and with a huge image of a candelabra formed into the side of a hill overlooking the sea. Archaeologists think that it’s the work of the Paracas People who lived in southern Peru before the Inca, and that it’s a compass pointing north and south for ritual purposes. But, no one really knows. The Islas Ballestas are home to sea lions and PENGUINS! Hot weather penguins! It's an endangered species called the Humboldt Penguin, very cute, an excellent endangered species poster child if you ask me. We saw a baby sea lion learning to swim. It was paddling along behind its mom and would crawl up on her back to rest every few minutes. When she would dive under he would get a little frantic, look around, and dive behind her.

Free Orange Trashcans

2008-03-06T09:06:00.002-05:00

CARE gave out 200 kits yesterday in 3 towns where they're building latrines. Kits include a 45 gallon orange trash can, of the kind that are used all over costal Peru to save water. The kits also had plastic plates and cups, soap, a smaller bucket with a faucet for saving boiled drinking water, a small pitcher, and a big CARE sticker to put on the giant orange trashcans.

It's 6 months after the earthquake but many, many communities still do not have a safe water source. The Municipal Government sends around a truck every so often, but it doesn't some at a regular interval so people are always very worried about having enough water. They were excited to be able to save another 45 gallons. The family of 6 that I lived with in Piura goes though more than 100 gallons in 2 days between washing, bathing, drinking, cooking and cleaning, and they're very conservative about the way that they use water. Being here is really an eye opening opportunity as to how much water human beings need to live.

In the first community we gave out 100 kits and it was madness and chaos. CARE made 240 latrines in that community in 240 different households. But, they only had 100 kits and gave them out on a first come first serve basis, on a weekday morning. There were many, many people waiting in the hot sun fighting and yelling that they should get the kit over their neighbor, that family X got 2 kits, etc... It was totally heartbreaking and a rather disappointing commentary on CARE's organizational skills. Ideally someone would have gone out there the day prior to sign up 100 families based on need. It's very hard to decide when everyone is in so much need, but as CARE executed the distribution the people who could advocate for themselves best got the most support, while the people who were not as able to advocate for themselves lost out and those folks are usually the worst off. When everyone has such dire needs it’s really hard to prioritize limited resources but what’s frustrating is that the resources shouldn’t really be so limited in a huge international aid organization like CARE. Distribution in the second and third communities went better because there were enough kits for all 70 households and in the 3rd community the CARE worker there had all 30 families signed up organized. It was much simpler and CARE met the expectations of all of the program participants. This is disappointingly unusual in aid work, so it was really great to see.

Another interesting part of the equation was that the kits apparently came from individual donors in the United States. The Project Manager started the distribution by giving a little talk explaining who CARE is and where the donations came from and people overwhelmingly grateful. At the end of the day we left the third community well after dark and much more humble for people's expressions of gratitude.

Festejo Music and Resilient Southerners

2008-03-04T12:02:00.004-05:00

Here in costal southern Peru people lost houses, schools, public potable water, waste water systems, soccer stadiums, food, medicine, work, and just about everything after the earthquake. It was terrifying for a lot of children because it happened around 6pm and many parents were on their way home from afternoon work in the fields, so lots of kids were alone when it struck. Folks here are picking things up and starting over, poco a poco. They're even starting to have fiestas again.

This area, Cañete and especially Chincha are famous for Afro-Peruvian music, created by African slaves brought to Peru about 200 years ago. Chincha held an annual festival of Musica Negroide over the weekend and we were able to go and hear a mixture of Festejo, Negroide and Zapateo. The party didn't even get started until well after midnight when the band showed up. Revelers danced Zapateo around a yunsa, a tree, its branches filled with gifts that is cut down as part of the dance. When it falls everyone runs to the tree to collect the loot. We made friends with some fellow party-goers and apparent amateur stand-up comedians who have a vineyard and make their own Pisco, a kind of brandy typical of Peru that was named for the city just south of here. Hopefully, I'll report back about the flavor of their Pisco and grape picking soon!

Letrinas Ecologicas

2008-03-02T12:02:00.002-05:00

Composting toilets are above the ground pit latrines that convert our poop into compost to be used on plants with large root systems i.e big trees, but not small edible plants i.e. your herb garden. Peace Corps as I understand it doesn't usually encourage composting toilets becasue when done incorrectly they can be a dangerous vector for disease. On the other hand, when done well they're much better than the dry pit latrines that we usually make becasue they do not result in a huge buried well of human excrement five years down the road when the latrine fills up and as long as they stay dry they're less gross than pit latrines along the way to compost.

Here in Cañete, Peru I'm spending a couple of weeks supporting CARE in some of their work reconstructing after the earthquake. I really like CARE as an organization and think that they do great work up in Piura where I live so I was excited to come down here. They're doing a whole latrines project, mostly with pit latrines and in some areas with waste water systems, regular bathrooms in towns that were lost all their buildings and infratructure in the earthquake on August 15, 2007. I'm working in some very poor communities right on the beach without waste water systems and with very high water tables, but where it almost never rains. If you dug a pit latrine it would fill with water even though we're basically in a desert. So, CARE is building above the ground composting toilets in those beach communties.

The model that CARE is using is really interesting. It has a about a four foot tall poured cement basin separated into two sections by a cement wall barrier. This empty cement cube is capped with a cemet top with one hole in each side, looking down into the poop chambers and on top is a little closet with a door where you can do your business. The kicker with composting toilets is that you want to poop to be very, very dry so you cannot pee in them, which is lame, inconvinenet and hard to get people to really do. So, this model comes with a prefab toilet that catches the urine and sends it out a pipe into a dranige field next to the latrine and lets the poop fall into the cement poop chamber. You use one side for about 6 months or until it fills up. Then, you let it sit and compost for 6 months while you move the toilet over to the other side and commence pooping. It's a very cool model.

Cañete with CARE

2008-03-01T09:42:00.002-05:00

I'm spending a couple of weeks down in Cañete, a province of the department of Lima that was hit by the earthquake of August 15, 2007. A couple of other volunteers and I are working with CARE Peru to make some latrines and prepare people to take care of the latrines. We're also doing some basic hygiene education in health fairs in these little tiny beach towns. Today we're going to a community called San Pedro that is home to 23 families. We're going to play games like Jabon, Jabon, Microbio (Soap, soap, germ) a variaton of Duck, Duck, Goose and Flip cup with water to teach dehydration prevention. It should be fun.

CARE is building what they call Ecological Latrines in these little towns becasue they're on the beach and have a very high water table. These are composting toilets. I'm excited to see how they work and what people think of them. So far folks seems pretty into it. The families have to dig out their own drainage fields and clean up the latrine site as ther contribution to the project in order to get the latrine. They also have to help assemble and carry the pieces over to their houses. This is no small feat as it requires hauling plywood boxes that are about 8x8x6 from the assembly site to their houses on donkey carts without scratching, smashing, or otherwise damaging them.

More on how composting toilets work soon.

Improved Gossip

2008-02-22T18:07:00.006-05:00

I went to talk to a friend about these rapes since I am still freaked out. She a lawyer and works in the municipality to offer free legal services to women and children, working mostly on domestic violence and child support. She told me that there have been two rapes locally in the last month, but only one by a mototaxi driver. That case did happen more or less as I was told that it happened. The legal stuff went somewhat better than I previously thought, she pressed charges and he was convicted and sent to jail. He was incarcerated for just a few weeks and is now back home driving his moto. The second rape was of a woman in her home by her drunken former partner. She didn't press charges.

In other lighter news, this week I’m off to Cañete, a town in the southern coast that was devastated by the earthquake. We’re working with CARE Peru on a project to construct latrines and promote hand washing.

The other novelty of late is rain. It is rainy season. It theoretically rains from late December until early April here, but last year in “rainy season” it rained 3 times for about 10 minutes each time. This year it has rained maybe 8 or 10 times and a couple of nights it was all night long. This is causing calamity. Rio Piura, usually a sad trickle looks like the Mississippi. The bridge over Rio Piura, the bridge that I cross to get into the city is shaking laterally and is about ready to crumble and there is a crowd of people gathered at each bank to watch the show. Hopefully that will stop soon while the bridge is still standing and I can still get to the city.

And finally, it was Rinconada's 43rd Anniversary on Tuesday. The fun part of the 43rd Anniversary Celebration was after the very long ceremony in which the recently, apparently incorrectly elected Señorita Rinconada Llicuar fainted due to heat stroke everyone in town hung out in the plaza, danced cumbia and drank chicha. In an unfortunate last minute turn of events I helped to judge the beauty pageant in which Srta. Rinconada was elected. The 3rd judge on the panel didn’t show up and when Martin asked I just couldn’t say no. I of course didn’t know which girl was “supposed” to win and really, how do you judge a beauty pageant anyway? Now there’s this group of snot-nosed twenty-somethings who are not speaking to me because the judges (i.e. I) picked the wrong girl. Oh how I hate beauty pageants. They’re really not good for us ladies. I mean I can’t lie. I wish that I didn’t like watching them, but I do. It’s the clothes or something? In this pageant 45 of the 50 possible points came from 3 categories: dress, spontaneity and grace, and general beauty. The other five possible points came from verbal answers to two questions about local culture and politics… Ug.

Trying to Travel Safe

2008-02-21T12:28:00.004-05:00

In the last month there have been two rapes on the road into my town from the city. This is alarming for obvious reasons and because everyone knows who the rapists are and they are not in jail. In Peru the perpetrator cannot be held "without evidence" and it always takes longer to get physical evidence of a rape than it takes to charge the accused, so they walk around among us theoretically awaiting trial. Also, in order to get evidence that you have been raped in Peru you have to go to a particular clinic where a doctor examines you and fills out the right forms saying that you were raped. As I'm sure you can imagine, lots of women do not put themselves though this or cannot make it to the right clinic because it can be a challenge traveling to the city and then their rapists go free. In these two cases, the rapists are mototaxi drivers who work in between Rinconada, my town and La Union, the nearest market town that you have to pass though to get to the big city of Piura. These are guys who are from small towns in the area who everyone knows and who drive everyone's mothers, wives, daughters, and friends home at night so everyone is scared.

I do travel in the evenings between Piura and Rinconada, and many women from Rinconada do the same to get to and from work or university. I get home as late as 9 or 10 PM sometimes. I was talking to a friend who is a mototaxi driver and says that I should try to get back by 7 or 8 at the latest and that I should only ride with drivers who I know well. This makes good sense, but complicates getting home quite a bit as there are many, many drivers and everyone knows everyone else, but to be honest I'm still trying to remember names and who is related to whom. He and others also suggest that I travel with someone else but, this is hard too. Fortunately, my dear friend who just made it back to Peru from medical treatment in the US brought back pepper spray and gave me one. It seems smart to have even if rather alarming all the same.

In Peace Corps Training the cheeses down in Lima were against any kind of self-defense training and said that Peace Corps Washington holds the same position. Their argument was that they are afraid that we would get in to more danger by fighting back or being excessively aggressive after a training... so misguided at best. Anyway, I will be traveling earlier and probably spending more nights in Piura City so that when I have to do something in the evening I don’t have to travel back in the dark while I thank my lucky stars for the amazing self-defense and anti-violence training that I had in Brooklyn at The Center for Anti-Violence Education.

Prayers

2008-02-18T11:35:00.002-05:00

Keld, my youngest brother just wrote to tell me that Tim Gaines, their friend from childhood overdosed last night and passed away. He was 27.

It is difficult to remain friends with someone with a serious drug problem. They just keep letting you down and often they end up alone in their world. I know that my brother Denzil tries to hide his sensitive and loyal heart behind the tattoos and ZZ Top beard, but I think he feels the loss in a deep way. I wish I could be there. It can feel so hopeless when someone you love is hurting themselves and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Please keep Tim, his family, and my brothers in your thoughts and prayers.

Telling a Donkey About Ears

2008-02-17T15:47:00.003-05:00

Recently, I learned that the Englih language axiom, "the pot calling the kettle black" has a rough Spanish equivalent. It's, hablando a un burro sobre las orejas or, "telling a donkey about ears."

Con cariño.

Sex in the City on the Big Screen

2008-02-15T18:11:00.003-05:00

My time in Peace Corps continues to surprise me. I spent last night, in the rural northern Peruvian desert, watching the cancelled HBO series Sex and the City, projected onto the blank white wall of my cement bunker house with a few volunteers who live fairly nearby. I have a minor, admittedly unhealthy obsession with the show and as this is not an uncommon problem among my peers, I'm not as ashamed of it as I probably should be. The difference here is that most of those other women just Netflix the thing. Peace Corps volunteers develop complicated networks of DVD lending to accomplish this feat and go to extremes with big screen viewing at a Mexican food and Valentine’s Day party.

Fortunately, the Municipality had a free heath care campaign yesterday as part of the town's anniversary celebration and I showed some educational videos about domestic violence with Peace Corps' projector. Since it was sitting in my living room waiting at ready for a similar demonstration on Monday afternoon I thought it couldn't hurt to take advantage of the situation. I think tonight I may choose a more family friendly video and invite the neighbours over; perhaps Mulan dubbed in Spanish. Fun times at Ella's Neighbourhood Theatre.

Rinconada Does Carnival in Pyrotechnics

2008-02-14T17:48:00.004-05:00

These fishermen get together every year and make a plywood boat that they pull around the soccer field as it shoots fireworks and throws gifts into the crowd.

These folks are SERIOUS about fireworks.

Carnival in Cajamarca Pics!

2008-02-14T17:37:00.003-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day! ¡Feliz Dia de la Amistad!

These guys were just hanging out in the plaza having a great time.

This is my new buddy Hilmer.

Before.

After.

Feliz Dia de la Amistad!

2008-02-13T18:25:00.005-05:00

I don't know if it's blogger or if it's the fact that my internet connection works on a geological time frame, but photos from Carnival are still coming "soon" and I'm using "soon" in the Peruvian sense of the word. They are fabulous I assure you. Think good-looking men dressed in diapers, water balloons, and me covered from head to toe in pastel paint joyfully skipping though the streets of Cajamarca grinning ear to ear.

We had the last dance for Carnival in Rinconada Llicuar on Monday night. Armonia 10 was absolutely fabulous. In the world of Northern Peruvian Cumbia they are rivals to Agua Marina who played about a week ago now. Armonia 10 won the fun factor as they played some American rock songs and I was happy to oblige my fellow Rinconadans as they LOVE to learn new dances, especially when they involve the Gringa making a fool of herself by trying to teach the neighbor's grandpa how to dance hip-hop. Gramps is great and at 80 years old is digging up sweet potatoes in his field, but I'm still tired.

I'm spending my evenings watching Sex in the City DVDs on my laptop. Thanks to my friend and fellow Austinite Kate who OWNS the box set in all its pink plush glory. We're not talkin' pirated Lima crap, oh no, we're talkin' the McCoy. It's a nostalgic experience and makes me love and hate New York even more. A shout out to Las Ladies, only one of whom still calls The Big Apple home, but that PhD thesis researched at I-kid-you-not Paddles in Manhattan is going to be a blast to read in a year or two. D, don't move, please. We need someone in Manhattan so that we can celebrate New Year's properly. Sex in the City is making me miss New York so very much. I'm rolling all the possibilities of what I can do after Peace Corps around in my head and I am faced with my usual problem: the world is big and there are so many cool places to live and jobs to do. New York, DC, Austin, the Peruvian jungle? The novel recent addition, now that I'm about to turn 30 is that I want to settle down, marry and have some kids (or maybe a kid) at some point, not soon, but sometime. I know. It's so provincial, but I would be lying if I said I didn't want it. What would it be like to be an old lady in a rocking chair on a front porch without that? Who knows. Maybe I'll find out, but I hope not.

We are still doing English Classes in Summer Day Camp. I'm basically going though this CD of kids songs that I picked up at a teacher's supply store over Christmas in the States. My kids can now do a rousing version of "Are You Sleeping Brother John?" You would be impressed at their singing diction and we're working on translating the singing to speaking.

Other than that life has been pretty much about partying lately. Carnival is my new favorite holiday. I think Velaciones is now a close second. Oh but the other exciting good news is that the mayor's girlfriend moved into his house, so there's no more talk of me marrying the mayor. This has made meeting with me mayor easier and more fun.

Happy Valentine's Day! Much love to all. Forgive my spelling, as spell check seems to be working within the geological time frame.

Beauty by Tony Hoagland

2008-02-07T15:42:00.000-05:00

Here's a poem that a friend sent me today. It's breathtaking.

Beauty

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.
After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I'm probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
that was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men
looking for just one with the kind of
attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness was done,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it.

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed about the way that things can go,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

¡Viva Carnival!

2008-02-07T15:38:00.000-05:00

I'm back from the Cajamarca Carnival festivities. On the way home I stopped off at the Inca Baths in Cajamarca to get the paint out of my ears in the mineral hot springs. Everyone ran around like crazy all weekend throwing water balloons and paint at one another. We hit the market and got our own supplies of water balloons and paint. I learned that for Cajamarquinos there's apparently nothing funnier than gringos dressed in polleras (traditional skirts) throwing paint. I was covered head to toe in some lovely pastels, but also something that smelled like sewer water, not ideal.

I got back to Piura on Monday morning, did some Peace Corps meetings, and then headed back to Rinconada where I have been partying ever since. There has been a Yunsa (where they cut down a tree with gifts like plastic buckets adorning the branches) and a town dance every day. Each Yunsa is crazier than the last. Last night's featured a playwood boat on wheels, about the size of a station wagon, made into a frame for the fireworks display and festooned with the same kinds of gifts as the Yunsa. First, the band played marinera and there was much dancing and chicha drinking. Then, they chopped down the tree and everyone went running to win loot. And finally, the big finish was a parade with the boat, crazy costumes and marinera down to the soccer field where they set off the fireworks on the boat and the band played faster and faster and faster until the dancing was really just everyone jumping up and down and yelling. It was a blast.

The town dances are all cumbia all the time, of course. Cumbia groups are called orchestras and they're bands of around 15 men in matching outfits. There are horn, drum and guitar players who perform synchronized dancing to their synthesizer beats while they sing and play. Last night The Caribeños played, the night before it was Agua Marina, and the night before that it was The Caribeños again. The next dance is Saturday. Ash Wednesday doesn't slow Carnival party much.

Photos to come when I'm at a computer that will load them in this lifetime.

Paint Balloon Fight and Pisco Sour Day

2008-01-31T15:00:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I'm off to Carnival aka a weekend long water balloon and paint balloon fight up in the mountains of Cajamarca. Photos to come.

Also, the Peace Corps doctor just sent around an email advising us all that Feb. 2 is Pisco Sour Day. They're delicious. Have one if you can. The doctor recommends it.

New Discoveries in Valleys

2008-01-26T14:47:00.000-05:00

Apologies for checking out for a while. I'm sort of in a valley of the progression of peaks and valleys that comprise the Peace Corps experience. I'm not thrilled with the progress on my trash project. The town voted to put the project in its budget for this year. Here in Peru all town are required by law to do what's called Participatory Budgeting. There are town meetings where people discuss projects and decide on options for projects and improvements. Then, citizens vote on priorities in a public meeting. It's a cool system, very progressive. So, the town decided they want a Solid Waste Management Project. It's not clear to me that the mayor is being very transparent about the budget or evidencing in any way that they are in fact going to work on the projects prioritized by the community. Maybe I'm missing something. I really hope that I'm missing something. Ugggg. It's also just lonely lately. Life as a Gringa Freak Show strikes again.

On the upside:
I love Wildboyz. I realize that this show has come and gone and I'm arriving at this state of cognizance a little late. If you know me you're probably not surprised at the tardiness of my discovery. It's absolutely my new favorite show. My nearby Peace Corps Volunteer friend, Tania had the DVD's and I saw it for the first time at her birthday slumber party the other night. I must get Wildboyz.

AND there are parties. Many parties. Carnival started a week ago. It will last for weeks after Ash Wednesday and Rinconada Llicuar's anniversary is in mid-February. There are dances, parades, dance competitions, and fairs galore. Also, Rinconada Llicuar will be electing Miss Rinconada Llicuar again this year. Last year they wanted me to judge. This year they want me to be a contestant or Miss Carnival. Pageants. My favorite.

Here are some spellbinding shots form the Yunsa de San Sebastian. A Yunsa is a traditional celebration for Carnival. Folks chop down a tree, place gifts in the branches, and then hoist it up to be chopped down with an axe so that it falls into a crowd. Everyone runs at the falling tree to collect their gifts. Please note the front loader used to lift the tree. This is no small falling tree. There was also my neighbor Nicole's 2nd birthday and the arresting introduction of Marcy the baby goat to Scooby-doo my stealth panther cat.

Orlando helps the front loader lift the Yunsa into place.

Raising the Yunsa is team work for all ages.

The San Sebasitan funders take a Crystal beer and marinera dancing break from chopping down the Yunsa.

Choppin' the Yunsa

Local cumbia masters Sin Limites (Unlimited) put on a show after the big event.

Nicole and her daddy put on a fabulous party.

Marcy and Scooby meet.

Parasites, yunses, and cumbia, ooh my.

2008-01-22T15:06:00.000-05:00

It's another sweaty day in the Sechuran Desert. Today I've been working on a project with Doctor Franciscio at the Health Post. He has wanted me to do short programs about health issues for the town loud speaker system for a little more than a year now. I did a few when I first arrived but, the good humor of the emisora operators only lasted so long. The loud speakers are literally bull horns tied to a long piece of bamboo on somebody's roof. They’re called emisoras, literally emitters. Town's people pay 1 nuevo sol, about 33 cents to announce that they're selling fish, having a meeting, hosting a mass for a family member who passed on, or sending a hello message with an accompanying regatone song to a boyfriend or girlfriend. I don't really like talking on the emisora and people will only stand for The Gringa’s Spanish at 7AM for so many days running. So, I talked Dr. Panchito into recording himself talking about parasites and what not. Today he came over to my house to finally make the recordings with the microphone on my MP3 player. I had been to the Health Post to do this about 5000 times and could not pin him down. I finally I mentioned the project idea to Carlos, the Lieutenant Mayor who got excited about it and now asks the doctor about it every chance he gets. Fortunately for me, this situation put a bit of a fire under Dr. Panchito. He picked the topics, now he has recorded the shorts, and I’m trying to show him how to use the computer to edit programs on preventing parasite infection, respiratory infections, dehydration and diarrhea, and Dengue fever. There are all kinds of radio shorts on different health topic floating around so I'm taking a little of this and a little of that to edit together burn onto CDs to give the emisoras. The teaching computer skills may or may not actually work out. I got this software in a workshop to help with the editing and learning to edit sound has been fun. But, Dr. Pancho is a serious and hard to amuse kind of guy.

The first Yunse of Carnival 2008 was all that I anticipated and more. It’s absolutely my favorite party of the year, called the Fiesta de San Sebasitan. It’s not a huge national fiesta or anything; it's only celebrated in Rinconada. Everyone throws talcum powder at everyone else. I was complettely covered. Every last hair on my head was white. The tree with the gifts that they chop down, the Yunse, was friggin’ ENORMOUS. They used a front loader to stand it up in the lot where they had the party because the forty guys trying to pull it up with ropes couldn’t lift it. I’ll post photos soon. The men and women who will help pay for the party in the coming year took turns chopping down the yunse and when it finally fell everyone ran to collect their t-shirts and plastic buckets from the branches. It’s like a piñata. Everyone comes running but, it's not a paper machet bull or Winnie-the-Pooh. It's this enormous falling tree, incredibly dangerous, but fun.

Then the bad played and everyone danced cumbia and marinera until the wee hours of the morning. I ran off home at around 2 AM when my favorite buddy the cop got too drunk and grope-y. Half a block away, in my bathroom, I was washing the talcum powder out of my hair and getting ready for bed when I heard the singer start yelling at the cops to get the bottles away from people. It seems that the fights were breaking out. At the end the drunks didn't get out the machetes so everyone was fine. I discovered that I like chicha, the fermented corn alcohol that is common here. I usually avoid it, as when I first arrived everyone wanted me to drink with them and I had diarrhea for like 2 months. I think that I have acculturated in the meanwhile.

Also, I’m starting a new little project for myself and I want to read some good memoirs, any favorites to recommend?

CARNIVAL!

2008-01-19T18:09:00.000-05:00

Carnival is starting! The party that is happening tomorrow was the best party of the year last year and Peruvians have bleeping FABULOUS parties. There's a Cumbia group coming and the family that owns my house is the Mayordomo, or the people paying for the party. This means that there are goats to be killed and eaten, trees with gifts in them to be chopped down and LOTS of chicha to be consumed. I love Peru. I even like chicha. (Those firefighters changed my mind...)

Here's last year:

What's Eating Me

2008-01-15T13:42:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about food lately. I know. What's new, right? I was so excited to go back to the US for a short while to see my family to be sure but, to be honest my list of things to do was mostly comprised of food. I wanted to eat bagels, gorditas and tacos, mixed field greens salad, all things with ranch dressing, salsa and tortilla chips and pizza... remember pizza? I also wanted to drink good beer and wine. Then I got there and the holidays were upon us, so there was tons of food everywhere and really I couldn't go anywhere without eating tons. I'm excited that food is a social event in life. I like it. I like sharing food with new people. I love eating new foods in new places, even when it is mondongito which is cow intestines and I officially HATE the taste of cow intestines and the truth that they are in fact intestines. (You know what gathers in intestines, right?) But, when the firefighters from Piura came out to Rinconada yesterday and they wanted to eat mondongito and drink chicha and I wanted to hang out and make friends, guess what I had for lunch. That is to say, I am not a fan of the food world view that food is body fuel; people are machines; people need fuel and therefore they should only eat the things that give them good fuel. Give me a break. Humans: cultural, social creatures. We like to make friends too.

On the other hand, in the US I was barraged with lots of junk food, food that wasn't particularly good, food that my mom and grandma did not make, food that I didn't really want to eat but, that I ate anyway to be social and because it was around and when my family gets together we eat. It was odd. I found myself thinking, “Isn’t it elegant that in Rinconada we eat all things with a spoon and for dinner most nights I have steamed fish soup, caught in the nearby ocean by my neighbor? I felt healthier when I was eating the food in Rinconada. This is weird. Half of the kids in Rinconada are malnourished. What in the hell is going on there?”

I was thinking about all of this and then on Sunday my friend Cynthia gave me this article that appeared in the NYT Magazine early last year by Michael Pollan. This is the guy who wrote "The Omnivore’s Dilemma." I have not read it but, it has come highly recommended and I hear it might be floating around in the permeable and liquid Peace Corps book exchange. In Michael's article I really appreciated the starting point that eaters are the important center in food discussions, not nutrients. In order to study food scientists break food down into nutrients. Then they try to figure out what each does in the body, what other nutrients they interact with to do this, how they do it, how they arrive, how they leave, why they work that way in some people but not in others, blah, blah, blah. The questions get harder and harder to answer, and we don’t know if we’re asking the right questions, or only some of the right questions, and we don’t know what we don’t know about food. None the less people have been eating for a long time wihout knowing very much about nutrients and many seem to have done okay while the ones that didn’t do so well died off. The processed foods that I was chomping back in the US sort of trick the senses that humans have evolved to decide what and how much to eat. It’s stuff that tastes like strawberries but is not. It’s tomatoes in December. It’s fats that come in forms that do not appear in nature. It’s big bottles of fiber or fish oil or Vitamin B. It’s Oreos, Snackwell’s or Chips O’Hoy. And I love all that stuff, epecially Chips O'Hoy. So, why did I feel healthier back in Peru where my kids have parasites and anemia, and weigh way too little?

For me I think it’s the social component of food here in Peru as much as it's my getting to eat more whole and fewer processed foods. I was thinking about this back in October too… And it’s still true. I’m way healthier here for eating with family and eating the stuff that they eat plus some (okay, a lot of) extra fruits and vegetables.

Respect the Poet

2008-01-11T15:57:00.000-05:00

Lower your pants, all of you: you're in the presence of a poet.
-Varguitas in Aunt Julia and the Screenwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa

Homecoming

2008-01-05T12:37:00.000-05:00

Coming back to Peru feels like coming back home and I am grateful to the fates for that. I went to the store last night to buy Gatorade and Tylenol to feed my nasty cold where the shopkeeper called me Cholita about 47 times. I was thrilled. I usually get Gringa which means white girl rather than Chola as Chola describes someone who looks Peruvian, someone with long straight hair and dark olive skin. Peruvians use Chola as a term of endearment but Ecuadorans sometimes use it as an insult against Peruvians, kind of a racial slur. As a foreigner I never use it so as not to be misunderstood and offend. This lady was clearly not calling me names and I got to feel like I blend at least a little; my giant foreign gringa status is shrinking ever so slightly. It's the little things.

Coming back to Peru should be shocking, but somehow it's not that big of a deal to go from Targets, 40⁰ F weather, my mom's bizarre affection for gold lamé Christmas decorations, and introducing my dear friends from the Big Apple to the Three Cow Ranch to sitting with my laptop at the fancy hotel in Piura blogging in 40⁰ C weather. It's even the same time here as in Texas for half of the year and only an hour different in the other half. It will likely be more disquieting when I get to my house, but as I'm quivering with fever I've decided to heal in the big sweaty city before I go to my tin oven dust bowl to be entertained by the very neighborly Pedro and Dennis, ages 4 and 6 respectively. I can't wait to see Scooby-doo! (He's my cat.)

I hadn't realized just how much I missed live music, or at least live music that isn't cumbia run mostly on synthesizers, until I got to Austin. Back at home in the "Live Music Capital of the World" I was a fiend. I was playing with the car radio like I had an analog tick. I went to see Live Oak Decline play at HiLo as well as Jon Dee Graham and Dale Watson and his Lone Stars play on New Year's Eve at the Continental Club. My citified friends from New York, Toronto and Los Angeles tolerated my love of country or at least Austin Country and as far as I can tell Las Ladies had a fabulous time taking in the sights and sounds at The Continental. We also ate fancy Tex-Mex at Vivo, which seems like an oxymoron but was delectable. Fancy I tell you, as in there was valet parking. Don't worry. I wasn't totally yuppie-fied, although that would be easy to do in Austin. I also munched nostalgically on a plate of gorditas at my favorite taco place on Oltorf and S. 1st with a name that I can't ever remember.

Now it's back to the grind, ceviche, and my bike. There are summer camps to plan and recycling separation centers to fund and front porches to sit on.

Back Keeping Austin Weird

2007-12-28T17:15:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays! It has been a whirlwind being back in the US. I got here on the 20th and I thought it would be a shock to be back but nope, reentry is no biggie. Sometimes in Peru I miss home so much that I forget all of this: my family the support and the um... dynamics, my amazing friends and their eccentricities, ginormous grocery stores with strawberries and tomatoes in the middle of winter, Target, bagels, my goddaughter and bathtubs with scented bubble bath are all here and really always will be. Right now I'm where I need to be znd it's beautiful, especially when it's hard and I'm looking forward to the next year of playing with the kiddos and talking about trash with the mayor.

Las Ladies, my New York girls who are now scattered to Los Angles, Toronto and Harlem get here tomorrow. I'm so looking forward to seeing them and showing them my town. I just realized that the friendly neighborhood homeless transvestite in Austin, Leslie is listed in Wikipedia. I hope that he's not actually still homeless as so many people know him and try to support him. Some friends of my parents actually hired him to jump out of a birthday cake a la Marylin Monroe for JFK a few years back. It's these things that pinch me with a nostalgic twinge as I consider moving back here when I finish Peace Corps. There are pros like my family, delightful and quirky fun, and an enticing music scene but also cons, like so much laid back-ness my anxiety around not being chill enough keeps me drinking copious amounts of caffeine and listening to Asleep at the Wheel all hopped up is just incongruent. I'm not actually built to be this laid back. I'm told that I'm way too much of an overachiever for this town. Overachiever is incredibly un-hip here. In fact I think that you get kicked out of the east Austin bar scene for admitting to having taken the Foreign Service Exam while refusing to wear vintage. Fortunately, I do like vintage so I pass. Sneaky, eh? There's also DC to consider.

Here's one classic Austin oddity with excellent breakfast tacos:

Other recent events in my life include the Lima Mid-service Medical Checks Extravaganza, meeting my goddaughter, family style holiday fun in St. Louis, and spending Christmas in Austin with the family.

A Return to the Land of Eternal Sunshine

2007-12-14T15:35:00.000-05:00

After spending the most time that I have spent in a large urban area after leaving New York I'm finally back in the campo. I was in Lima for almost 2 weeks for Mid-service Meetings and Medical Checks! Now I'm in Rinconada Llícuar for just a few days before I head off to Austin for Christmas. In Lima I became a frenetic ditz and frequent Starbucks consumer. I couldn't think straight with all that big city commotion. I was pretty quick back in the Big Apple but, I think that I have been campo-afied over the last year. I can only hope that I will eventually bounce back enought to at least be able to make it in the suburbs. Highlights include a PowerPoint presentation of my work this year, no cavities, and no word on my parasite count yet. I'm deciding to assume that no news is good news. I also spent many an evening catching up until the wee hours of the morning with folks from my training class, listening to live jazz, and learning Lima's public transportation system which is quite the adventure.

I'm not gonna lie. I feel like a slacker heading off to the US in the middle of Peace Corps. I did not plan to return to the States until the end of Peace Corps. It is definitely not hardcore and I sometimes enjoy a fantasy that I am quite hardcore. After all, I do own fleece, Chacos, and a pocket knife now. But, good things happen and so it goes in the USA I'm spending quality time with my grandfather, attending goddaughter's baptism, hanging out with my brothers, spending New Year's with my girls from graduate school aka Las Ladies, stocking up on essentials like cotton undies, and doing some preparation for hiking the Inca Trail with Pragati in May. Wahoo!

In the interim I'm hoping to get my Christmas gifts all sorted out and figure out how to transport an impressive quantity of ceramics from Rinconada to Piura to Guayaquil to Miami to Dallas to Austin. Did I mention it's going to take me 3 days to get there?

Also, my cat is limping all over the place for an unknown reason and my host family has taken to calling him cojido which basically means the gimp... I’m hoping to get a different kitty-sitter for this trip.

Lima Blowing my Mind

2007-12-07T12:20:00.000-05:00

I've been in Lima since Monday and it's totally blowing my mind. I'm sitting in a McDonald's eating a S/. 2.50 cheeseburger and posting on my blog. I haven't seen a donkey cart in nearly a week and I have showered every day for 4 days in a row! I haven't smelled this good in months. I also stay up way past my 9pm bedtime to drink wine, eat at Italian restaurants, and go out on the town to listen to live Latin jazz.

I'm staying at this hostel that's like being in a fraternity house. I was talking to a friend on the phone from the rooftop terrace and a group of not-all-that-sober guys were hanging out when one of them put on a gnome hat, took off his shirt and started jumping up and down like a monkey. I think it might be a bad sign that the funny smelling, straggly haired Spanish guy on the top bunk has become really, really hot. We're not in the campo anymore Toto.

Today I'm going to a training with an international non-profit organization called CARE so that I can go down to Ica in a couple of months and help with the earthquake relief effort. I'm excited about being able to help and learning what it is to do emergency relief work, but I'm having a hard time really being here mentally. I'm going back to the US for Christmas and New Year's and I'm so anxious and excited to go I cannot concentrate on work at all. I'm going to visit my grandparents, be the godmother for my dearest friend's baby at her baptism, and party it up on New Year's Eve with my girls from New York. Blowing my mind.

Mid-service

2007-12-03T10:44:00.000-05:00

I just arrived in Lima early this morning on everyone's favorite mode of transportation: the overnight Ittsa bus/cama from Piura to Lima. The 15 hour bus ride has gotten normal for me, but if a year and a half ago you told me that I would take a $33 bus ride for 15 hours instead of taking a $100 plane flight for 1 hour, that is back when I was living in New York City and earning a salary, I'm pretty sure that I would have informed you of your insanity and offered to take you to see my therapist. Money has started to mean something different than it did before when I made 15 times what I make now but still school loans are still looming. I think it's a good thing as I have never been one to be overly concerned with finances. It's definitely driving the point home.

I have been here for more than a year now so I'm in Lima to have medical checkups, to go to some meetings to present what I've been doing, and to help with starting this new program called a Peer Support Network. I have also been charged with bringing new clothes back home to the host family, colors sizes and styles all specified in great detail. And you know, none of this seems all that odd or novel anymore.

What else has gotten normal now that I have been here a year?
-Having water every other day for 2 hours, when the well pump is not broken
-Sharing my patio with Chau and Fa, my disco chickens who have go-go boot shaped feathers adorning their feet
-Town wide loud speakers that start at 5:15 AM with a Christian Evangelical talk show followed by a run down of who is selling what that day and a review of the front page news
-Having a house with cement floors and a hammock and wee neighbors who visit to sing a song called "I'm a happy tree" to the tune of "I'm a Little Tea Pot"
-Having my friends from home write and call with major life events like writing their first book, losing the dream job, getting the dream job, breaking up, getting married, having babies, going blonde, turning 30, getting a new therapist, finishing graduate school, getting yet another new boyfriend or girlfriend
-Eating delicious fresh fish soup everyday for dinner
-Speaking at all public civic events and being referred to as an "autoridad" like the mayor and city council members
-Being Professora Elita or La Gordita Gringa
-Running through the rice fields and watching the sunrise
-Eating tamarind Popsicles out of little bags on the front porch of Dora's house
-Having tons of incredibly cheap and delicious fresh fruit available basically when ever I want it
-Just waking up and being in Peru

But novel stuff is still a daily thing:
I took my host family to the movies on Saturday. They had never been before and they absolutely loved it, especially the kids (Darwin 13, Pepe 8 and Ingrid 7). We rode the escalator at the shopping center and they were totally terrified but, then after the movie asked to ride it again. We saw a Disney movie that in Spanish is called Dog Fireman, but I have a feeling that is not an exact translation of the English title. Dora loved the fact that it had a moral at the end, stuff about good parenting and taking care of your family. Hopefully we will go again, next time on Discount Tuesday.

Giving thanks in the cloud forest

2007-11-25T16:45:00.000-05:00

I'm just down to sea level from about 9,000 feet after spending Thanksgiving in Bosque de Cuyes in Ayabaca, Piura, a cloud forest and national protected area in northern Peru with fellow Peace Corps Volunteers Angela, Patrick and Aaron. I baked a mango and apple pie on a charcoal fire for the feast and hiked for hours everyday. It was gorgeous. I also learned that could totally bake a mango pie. I thought mango would be too soupy by itself, but it was not at all. And my mom's pie crust recipe cooks up great on charcoal in a Dutch oven.

We took a hike on Thanksgiving morning out to a quiet spot in the cloud forest and just sat for a bit and meditated. I listened to the quiet and the birds and felt like I was swimming in the green and the fog. Everything grows on top of everything else, trees, moss, orchids, vines, insects, mold, mushrooms, ferns, and epiphytes (a new life form to me). The clouds are like animals. They come and go through the mountains as they please. I stood on a peak, watched them move in and out, and they all made me feel breathtakingly small. It was very easy to remember how much I have to be thankful for there.

The last day I went out with a group of bird biologists and my friend Aaron's youth group and they taught me the names of the birds that I had been seeing in the forest. There were hummingbirds called Quinde Jaspeado and a kind of turkey that lives in that little patch of forest called Pava de Monte. The kids LOVED tramping around in the forest and telling me about all of the different species.

My favorite bald woman

2007-11-15T12:47:00.000-05:00

This adorable child is Devlyn. It's beautiful and kind of mind boggling that life goes on without you while you're off drinking coconut milk and zooming around South America in mototaxis.

Can't wait to meet her.

Unfortunately Managed Economies or Why I Can't Get a Ride

2007-11-10T15:50:00.000-05:00

The motorcycle taxi is a beautiful Peruvian phenomenon. Here in Bajo Piura, the coastal northern lowlands of Peru, the mototaxi is the transportation option. It goes everywhere. It carries everything. It carries everyone. I have seen an entire women's volleyball team board a mototaxi, a space that your average North American might assume fits two people comfortably. I have seen a mototaxi with its passenger-seat removed carrying TWO full-grown hog-tied horses. I have seen a woman in late labor lumber into a mototaxi and speed off like lightning into the rice fields and down the bumpy dirt path from Rinconada to the nearest hospital. I love mototaxis. I’m bringing one back to the US and driving it around Brooklyn.

The only place the mototaxi seems absent in my Peruvian life is on the paved highway between Rinconada and Llícuar on Wednesday mornings at around 8:20 when I need to go teach elementary health classes there. Mototaxis speed up and down this highway all the time, but for some reason on Wednesday mornings it's like trying to get a cab in Red Hook, Brooklyn at 3AM on a weeknight. Admittedly, it's only a long half an hour walk from my front door to the front door of the elementary school in Llícuar but, on Wednesday mornings in that wormhole of transportation, I'm usually running late and lugging posters, markers, graded papers, 5 kilos of dry beans, 300 balloons, 50 empty plastic bottles, and any number of oddities that are really my means of communicating with my students. Most Wednesday mornings I find myself wandering the main street in Rinconada begging all of the drivers to take me to Llícuar while sweating on and squishing and wrinkling absolutely everything that I'm carrying. I tell drivers, “I will pay. I will pay extra! Please! Don’t make the gringa cry. ” Not exactly in those words.

Sadly, no one goes to Llícuar from Rinconada on Wednesday mornings, therefore none of the 10 mototaxis waiting for a fare can take me. I curse as fiercely as possible with my New York City mind during every refusal while with my Peruvian mind and physical body I smile and say, “Ahh yea, por supuesto.” Of course you cannot take me to Llícuar because you need to sit here and read the paper and wait another hour to make S/4.00. New York City says, “I'm paying. I just want to go 5 minutes down the road. What the hell? I’m teaching your f@#%ing kids!” The worst thing that you can do in Peru is appear ungrateful or proud and I feel both with some frequency, especially during these interactions. New York City me says, “S*#t!”

I mentioned the situation to a driver friend and he kindly, if a little exasperatedly, explained that the morning cluster of mototaxis is actually a line they see but that I do not. The line is managed by the Association of Mototaxi Drivers and the guys suffer major social isolation and are penalized by a fine if they hop the line or take me to Llícuar and try to keep their place in line. The morning "rush," if you can call it that, moves in the opposite direction to the nearby market town of La Union and in the 20 minute trip there a driver can earn S/4.50 (S/1.50 a head with three passengers). Llícuar on the other hand, is only a 5 minute mototaxi ride in the opposite direction. It should cost S/0.50 but, the driver loses his place in line if he leaves to take me to Llícuar and only earns .50 while maybe, possibly, on a long shot, losing S/4.00. On the other hand, if there are about 7 mototaxis waiting around at the stop to make the trip for S/1.50 a head with three passengers each that would mean that for the last guy in line to get make the trip 21 passengers need to appear at the stop and frankly my dear that's just not going to happen in Rinconada at the height of any kind of Wednesday morning "rush."

I’ll even pay S/1! Sometimes that gets the juices going and I get a ride, but only about 40% of the time, the times when the guys on the board of the Mototaxi Association are not around. Basically, I need to find a man willing to gamble if I want to get a ride to Llícuar.

It occurred to me that this is a quintessential example of the problem with managing economies. The Association makes it their job to manage the equity of the distribution of work so that people don’t go snatching all the fares, running over small children and lose chickens in the process… like in New York City. The kink in the plan is that it’s hard to predict where people are going to want to go and when they're going to want to go there. Or more generally, it's hard to know what people are going to want to buy or sell and who they’re going to want to sell it to. So, if you make a bunch of rules about who can sell what, when, and to whom, it can seem like it makes stuff fairer and generally better for everyone. It certainly can ease social strife from disgruntled mototaxi drivers and their wives who had their jobs and S/4.50 swiped by quick whippersnapper drivers. But, and it’s a really big but, everybody can end up losing perfectly good money if the rules go against the interests of the consumer. In other words, if I can't get a freaking ride they must lose money. I mean rules can be good. For example, “Do not buy mercenary services” is an excellent rule in my book but, I’m talking about a ride to Llícuar and that in my humble opinion, is perfectly good money.

Everyone told me that Peace Corps would turn me into a Republican. I was really hoping that they were wrong. Democrats have much better hair and generally much hipper outfits.

Vanity note: Please overlook the fact that I'm about 25 pounds above my normal weight in the photo. This is a photo from when I first arrived in Rinconada and well, leaving for Peace Corps was very hard.

Velaciones

2007-11-03T12:10:00.000-05:00

Velaciones, is All Saint's Day, the day after Halloween. It's cause for celebration in many Latin American nations, maybe all of them, and Peru is no exception. In Mexico it's called Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead but here it's called velaciones, which means something like "candle-ings." It's my new favorite Peruvian tradition. I went with my friend Dora and her family to the cemetery in Sechura where her loved ones are buried. Everyone was there, literally the entire town went to Sechura. Rinconada must have been a ghost town save for the few dad's who stayed behind to guard the livestock from rustlers. When we arrived at the cement burial vault that houses the various niches where families bury their loved ones I thought for the 100th time how much the structure looks like a giant honeycomb, each cement niche houses a casket. We built a tent of bed sheets, rice sacks, and algaroba wood sticks around it and ourselves to protect us from the cold wind off the Pacific. The cemetery was transformed into a field of glowing tents. Inside each tent entire families gathered on woven reed mats called petates with blankets, coffee, and sandwiches. Everyone from 2 week old infants to 85 year old grandmothers huddled around the burials, put half a dozen or so candles in each niche, and designated the kids' to change them before they burned out to keep constant light for those who had passed on. Then the stories stared. I head about Crazy Tío Santos who apparently had the best racy jokes ever and while everyone was rolling on the ground remembering I had to laugh trying to imagine what that joke about the donkey cart could possibly mean and why it was funny. They talked about their grandmother and explained all of the ingredients in her best dishes to me. It seems like it would be morbid to camp in a cemetery and talk about dead folks all night but it was a fabulous party. Vendors came a set up outside the cemetery and all the young people were wandering between the booths. There was even a dance in the high school across the street. We just hung out and had a blast. I wish that we did Velaciones in the US. I think that I'm going to try to start the tradition when I go back. I bet my grandma would be into it and in my family everyone follows her orders.

During the daytime celebration of Velaciones children take little plastic bags from house to house and get angleitos or sweets from families that have lost a child in childbirth, infancy, or early childhood. Most families here have suffered that loss so the kids come back with quite a stash of sweets and take them to the cemetery with them at night.

My dad sent me these funny blinking jack-o-lantern earrings for Halloween and they were a big hit with the kids.

Resource List

2007-10-30T19:10:00.000-05:00

2 Screwdrivers
5 Volunteer trainees
350 Elementary school students
2 National anthems
1 Play about self-esteem
1 New set of sheets
5 Besos de moza

I'd like to share my resource list for last week and I have to tell you that I am totally exhausted. I had a blast with the new volunteers who came to visit as part of their training. When they arrived to Piura we took them directly to Cappucino's, our favorite restaurant which serves screwdrivers with fresh squeezed orange juice. In the morning, I asked them to put on a play about self-esteem for all 350 of my students. They went to both of the schools where I work and did it up. All the kids were into meeting the gringos and asked them all kinds of questions about themselves and life in the US. They even asked us to sing the national anthem. We did a fairly painful but, very well received rendition. Then, all of the students sang the Peruvian national anthem to us. The language facilitator responded with a traditional ballad from Lima and finally my dear friend, the first grade teacher sang a traditional song from Northern Peru about Algarroba, a tree related to Mesquite that is native to this area. It was the most beautiful impromptu karaoke cultural exchange I've ever witnessed.

This week, in processing and reviewing the play in health class the kids were able to tell me the message loud and clear. Apparently, it worked great and Peace Corps certainly has some interesting lessons up its sleeve. Kids still are not my thing despite all the time I spend with them here. I like what I'm doing for now, but I'll be glad to not be a health teacher anymore when I go back to the US. I'm trying to figure out how to make a second master's degree in something that will let me be a therapist/counselor worthwhile financially. I'm glad that I went to grad school, but it was not that great for my pocketbook. Of course, neither is Peace Corps...

With the Language Facilitator here I was reminded of how bad by grammar still is and I'm inspired to try to make it better. It's really a question of me being lazy. I need to pay attention to the way I speak. I became fluent in an Ecuadorian trial by fire when I was 15. I landed in rural Ecuador all alone and needed to get by so I just started talking and trying to understand and be understood. When I went back to school I failed the only class that I have ever failed, high school Spanish. Thinking about all of that made me nervous and I was forced to indulge in my new favorite food Besos de Moza… one a day to be precise. In English this means a kiss from a pretty girl. Cute, no? It’s a cookie with a large dollop of marshmallow cream on top that is completely covered in chocolate. Like a cool s´more without a campfire. Totally amazing.

And, I almost forgot to mention that in all of this busyness my new kitten got really mad at me for not being at home and my helpful neighbor closing my back door so he couldn't get it his litter box. His revenge was to pee on my bed. In all honesty I haven't had a pet since I was 18 so I had forgotten the love that is cleaning up after animals. Here's what I learned: follow with hand washing and one more Beso de Moza.

Lately

2007-10-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

Here is the reason that my greatest personal casualty in Peace Corps will be my dental health.

Meet my one-eyed-people-eater who Tessa and I christened Scooby-doo Newton John. In truth my wee neighbor Pedro came up with Scooby-doo, but Tessa and I added Newton John.

Mototaxi bliss

Eternity

2007-10-26T14:57:00.000-05:00

My dear friend Dave the Jazz Musician cum Poet just sent me this poem that he penned and I think it's amazing. He is also available for music events in the general New York City area. I'm sure he'll give you a good deal.

Eternity

Not a line,
but a point.

My nephew, Chase,
runs from the back of the house
to the front,
and then back again.

I try to catch him on one of his passes –
whatcha doin',
I ask.
Just runnin',
he says,

and on he goes.

Authority, Autonomy and Creativity

2007-10-21T17:31:00.000-05:00

I was talking to my mom on the phone about my recent shenanigan with my Country Director here in Peace Corps Peru and I was complaining that I felt like the authoritarian leadership style is ineffective and creates an environment that makes me want to run and hide under a rock, or maybe just away for a stealth beach vacation. She said she thought it was just the easiest option and does get results in the short term. She doesn't think it's a good way to keep good employees long term but, if you're working with a 2 year contract no one is going to worry about keeping you. I wonder if that's true. I mean if you hire a small group of people who you're in very close contact with it seems like it's easier to keep tabs on everyone's motivation and outcomes and go for long term growth in terms of human resources. But, if you have lots of volunteers most of whom haven't had jobs before scattered throughout the Peruvian highlands is authoritarian the only way to go? There are a lot of people, especially us overachiever Peace Corps types who really don't think that we're living without working as hard as we can. Even so, there certainly are times when I could try harder, do better or just try different options and I need some leadership to get me there. But is a methodology that mandates rather than lets you figure it out plausible inside this big and unwieldy bureaucracy? I have to think so.

I'm reading a book called The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid. It's a great book and it's also sort of what I like to call a social science no brainer. It's a detailed but succinct description of how large companies are losing opportunities when they do not think of the global poor, the infamous masses who make less than $2 a day. It also criticizes lenders who haven't thought to market loan products to entrepreneurs with low incomes. So, for example here in Peru Pantene sells shampoo in little ketchup packets that cost 2 or 3 soles instead of big bottles that would cost 18 or 20 soles. One of it's basic assumptions that I completely agree with is that globalization is not something that you can really be against as it is a global economic reality. For me, it's sort of like being against grocery stores. You could try to buy direct from farmers and ranchers but it wouldn't really be feasible for large numbers of people because grocery stores are just the way of our economy. Anyway, why am I rambling and what does this have to do with leadership? I'm thinking about creativity and autonomy. The people "at the bottom of the pyramid" find the most innovative and appropriate technologies for their lives. If they are too constrained by having no capital or the power to use the resources that they do have they cannot contribute to the global economy and if multi-national companies don't take advantage of their insights they will lose money and probably not know it because they missed the concept that a market is there at all. I think it's that way for human resources too. If inside a company the human resources are so constrained by their rules and bosses that they're not allowed to create, doesn't the organization lose money? Or in the case of NGOs and government aid organizations, don't they miss out on development opportunities? How do you manage that with accountability in an environment where there are no profit margins to be the end all be all of measuring success?

Eating with People

2007-10-16T17:06:00.000-05:00

I liked this article from the NY Times. I was thinking that my life in general feels healthier here and I think that living with people who are intimates, sort of like family, rather than just roommates is a big part of the reason. I mean it's weird to say because I do not exercise as much as I did in the US and I certainly do not eat the variety of fruits and vegetables that I used to because they're just not available but, I still feel healthier. It's also weird because some might characterize my living situation as me living alone. I have several rooms to myself with a separate door to the street- some might call that my own place, but the backyard is one with that of the family that owns my house. I hang out a lot with the family that shares my house/compound area and I eat with another family that treats me like I'm part of the extended clan. Peace Corps Peru policy is that all volunteers live with a family for their entire service, so the family that I'm currently "living with" has their own door to their own structure and is connected to my house by the yard. I do hang out with them almost every day. Usually, we just drink tea and watch TV in the evening and I go to their family events like Sunday family gatherings, the prayer services that are held for the anniversaries of deaths, and birthday parties. I feel like this situation is helping with my nutritional health. I am also taking a daily multi-vitamin, so don't worry :)

My Non-existent Dating Life as a Campo Gringa

2007-10-15T11:17:00.000-05:00

I recently learned a new word: brichero. A brichero is apparently a Peruvian man who seduces gringas in order to get money or a visa (see The Spanish Word of the Day). As you may know, I have to learn everything the hard way. I generally try to accept and embrace the humiliation and aggravation this causes me but, every once in a while it's still stunning. Here's my latest lesson reaffirming for the millionth time that first instincts are really the way to go. We had a mini-crisis in Rinconada Llicuar recently because the antenna that gets the Internet signal was damaged by a dust devil and the family that runs the Internet had to save up to get it fixed. No Internet, Eeek! As a result, I was going into La Union, a larger town up the road pretty frequently. This is no big deal because it's very close by, it just costs me more because I have to get there and back in a mototaxi. But they have these amazing candy/cookie things there called Besos de Moza so that makes the trip worthwhile. To add to the adventure, the competitive judo fighter who runs the Internet cafe loves to chase the ladies and has for the past several months been trying to get me to go out with him. He has probably asked me out 27 times and I have always said no and kind of regretted not inventing a happy marriage with a Peruvian when I first met him. That's what I usually tell taxi drivers because they always ask and really it's amazing how much nicer they are when they think that I'm married to a paisano. It has been a lonely few weeks in Rinconada Llicuar and in a moment of weakness, tempted by the idea of movie popcorn I said, "Sure, I want to go to the movies. Call me." I think that he may have gotten some less than bright ideas in his state of ecstatic delight because the next thing he said to me was, "So my friend tells me that if you marry a North American you can get papers to go to the US. So for example, if I married you we could go to the US." Blink, blink. Did that really just happen? I gaped and then I explained that yes it's true that spouses of citizens can work in the US and eventually get citizenship but, some unlawful members of our society charge for that service and by the way isn't it a horrible idea to either break the law or yuck, to get married? Classic, I'm thinking myself out of my good instincts once again.

Castillos and Mr. Burns

2007-10-14T12:37:00.000-05:00

I missed my first party in Peru last night. Parties here seem like they start anytime someone is moved and then end three days later with the sunrise. When I heard we were having a party for a saint called Sr. Cautivo de Ayabaca and then my friend and fellow Peace Corps Volunteer, Alyssa was in the big city taking care of some errands I invited her to visit Rinconada and celebrate. People in town love meeting gringos and I love for my American friends to know about my daily life so, with common interests life is easy. Alyssa and I made a delicious spaghetti dinner, played with my new kitten Spot (whose name may change soon), and heard the party start thinking that it would dawdle on for 3 more days. When we went out to wonder at the revelry the square was totally empty and they had already set off all of the fireworks. Fiestas here are designated as such by castillos, several story-tall bamboo geometric structures with fireworks tied to the corners. Castillos are among my favorite things in Peru. They involve moving parts and bamboo bell shapes that spin off into the crowd shooting fire. Sometimes they are formed into costumes that a guy gets inside of and then dances a dance called the Vaca Loca (Crazy Cow). Alyssa and I polished off our bottle of red wine and headed out to the town square to find empty silence. Everyone in town was huddled around a television set at the store. Peru was playing Paraguay and the score was 1 to 1. Not being very well informed about soccer I had no idea this was happening, or even what tournament it was.

In other news, I have been spending my Internet hours in a debate with my authoritarian and patronizing country director. When I started Peace Corps we were given five vacation days around Thanksgiving and he decided to cut this down to three. He pulled a fast one, put his decision in the minutes of this meeting and then sent around a new copy of our handbook, a 100 page document that of course no one read. After a few weeks he said, "Nany-nany-boo-boo you should have spent your time lawyering the documents that I sent around. Te-he I took two vacation days from you." He didn't break any rules or laws to do this so there's really no hook for recourse but still, no one even made him feel appropriate shame for being lame because they're scared of this guy who looks like Mr. Burns. I felt that I needed to take that on as authoritarianism is one of my angry buttons. The outcome of our hopefully professional conversation is that I am officially not his favorite person and he actively threatened me. Now I need to send him an email that ends with him being okay with writing me a solid letter of recommendation within a year. Hopefully it will be a magical email. Wish me luck. I am charming after all.

Then, I went to this amazing workshop about child development and education methodology this week. The town government paid for it and had the schools cancel two days of class to invite all the teachers. I'm not sure it was worth the kids missing school but, it was really interesting for me to get to brainstorm about learning toys and games that focus on the different sensory groups and different developmental stages.

I also was invited to give a lesson at a newly formed after-school center to elementary-age kids signing a song about trees to the tune of I'm a Little Tea-pot. I wish that I could claim the creative mind for this song, but my friend and fellow volunteer with a gift for early childhood education, Tessa wrote it.

It goes something like this:

Yo soy un árbol muy feliz
Desde mis hojas hasta mi raíz
Llega el sol y la lluvia y
Crezco, crezco, crezco, crezco así

She might kill me because I'm not exactly sure those are the words that she wrote, but something like that.

Back to El Solazo Norteño

2007-10-05T11:02:00.000-05:00

Here's me on a recent field trip with the police station youth group! (Random and unrelated to text.)

I'm happy to be back in sunny Piura. I didn't realize how much Lima's gray skies were weighing on my spirit. In Lima's backpacker hostels travelers from the northern hemisphere exploring Peru enlightened me. Listening to their impressions after my first impressions have long worn off reminded me of my own North American lens that I carry with me always. It's easy to forget it's there. But somehow when watching a trivia drinking game with Australians and Brits playing against my fellow countrymen my culture and homeland come rushing back. I love the US and my home, but it's easy to be insulated there. It's a big country, basically linguistically homogeneous, and yet quite proud of its diversity... which compared to a place like Peru with multiple language families, ecosystems, and conquerors is pretty tame.

It also occurred to me that sharing the workshop that my friend Libby and I did at training for the new volunteers this week might offer some insight into the life of a Peace Corps Volunteer. The class was about working with "community partners." When you get assigned to a community in Peace Corps you are also assigned a person and a local agency,your community partner. This can be a complicated relationship because you are not employed by or really beholden to this partner agency, nor are they to you. Libby's husband Ben labeled this the paradox of the professional volunteer. So for our workshop we wrote skits to try to get the new volunteers to problem solve around building these professional relationships.

Community Partner Episode #1: “Sabotaged by mediocrity"
After six months in site, you have a forged an outstanding partnership with the local office of an international NGO. This relationship has allowed you to funnel the NGO’s money and resources into an improved wood-burning stove project. Planning has gone well and the budget is fixed for the installation of thirty stoves in your community over a three month time period. The first few workshops go superbly and you are impressed with the preparation and professionalism of your NGO partners. As you enter the second month of the project and families are beginning to build their stoves, the project gets more intense and time consuming. A series of disappointing events transpire. The faithful NGO engineer arrives late to several meetings and the families complain about his punctuality (especially because timeliness has been a central theme of the project). He apologizes at the next meeting stating that projects elsewhere have also picked up pace and his office responsibilities have increased. A week later, he interrupts the training with the bad news that the budget has been cut and there are less materials available and, therefore, fewer families will receive support. The families are understandably upset and the next few meetings are dominated by logistical discussions about who should get the support. Because you live in the community much of the complaints fall on your shoulders. How do you feel? What should be your course of action?

Community Partner Episode #2: When did I become a rock star?
After having been at site 2 or 3 months you realize that a group of community members worked together to get you there. News to you. This group includes key community contacts: your socio comunitario (community partner) and other health post personnel, the school principal, mayor and city council member in charge of health. They are thrilled to have a gringa around and invite you to speak at EVERY possible public event from izamientos (weekly flag raising ceremonies) to kid’s parties to PTA meetings to begging you to sing the Star Spangled Banner at a ceremony with 500 people held to welcome you. How do you channel all of this excitement into action?

Community Partner Episode #6: Missing out?
You have a great, friendly relationship with your socio comunitario (community partner), the technician at the health post. He is professional, energetic, always follows through, and creates activities that are concrete and feasible. Because he is good at his job and a workaholic he is very, very busy and sometimes does not come to your community for several weeks at a time. You have a lot to do and like to work independently but realize that sometimes you miss out on health post events because no one told you about them. How do you feel? What should you do?

Gato Limeño

2007-10-03T13:10:00.000-05:00

I have been in Lima for the past few days working on the newsletter that Peace Corps sends to all health volunteers in Peru. I also got to go and help with a workshop for the newbies at the new training center! We did skits about relationships with community partners and professionalism. Now that I have been here for a while training seems like a very long time ago. It was great to be around all the aspirantes (in Spanish you trainees are called aspire-ers). They're all so excited to be here and begin this new phase of their lives. It was really refreshing and inspiring to be around.

In other news, I have been looking to get a cat and the lady across the street from me in Rinconada gave me a kitten last week! After about 4 hours of non stop crying at my house and a flea bath that it really hated I named it Perico, a nickname for someone who talks too much. Then, I went out and when I came back the kitten was gone! While I was looking for it in the middle of the night there was a pretty strong earthquake and I decided that maybe fate was sending me a no cat message. The next day I went to see if that kitten had gone back to mom and it sure had. I asked if I could leave it there until I come back from Lima. We shall see if it actually ends up coming to my house. I'm thinking it has sent a clear message, no. Please note Perico's very angry facial expression.

Oddly, when I got to Lima a friend of some fellow volunteers who lives here had just picked up a stray that looks exactly like Perico. She wants to take care of it but can't have a cat where she lives. So, she is going to send it Piura with me! And when I say send it to Piura I mean that she is going to put it on an airplane to fly to Piura on Monday. She's worried about traumatizing it on the bus... where I'll be on my way back to Piura.

The Economist Explains Peruvian Mines Madness

2007-09-25T18:32:00.000-05:00

There has been a lot of unrest around mining in Piura recently. Campesinos in the mountains are very against a new mine that a Chinese company wants to open. Most of the mining companies here are foreign owned and supported by Lima, regulated by a Ministry of Mining instead of an environmental protection agency. It's a contentious situation because of the history of exploitation in the mountains. Communities do not buy the copper and they do not get any jobs. They're just left with the dirty water and leveled mountains. The communities near the proposed mine decided to hold an election to vote to try to block the mine. The day of the election the mines held soccer games and gave away free bags of rice and sugar to keep people from going to the polls. People still voted in droves and "no" won by something like 97%. Peace Corps called down the volunteers who live in the surrounding area for fear of violence. My friend Aaron who lives in a nearby community tells me that in the end things were safe and calm but, people are worried and really working to prevent the mine from opening.

Community Map and the Plight of the Technologically Challenged

2007-09-24T12:26:00.000-05:00

I found a satellite image of Rinconada Llicuar to share! I can actually see my house on the map, but as it seems perhaps a bad idea to put a map to my house out in ether-land I'll withhold the little blue balloon :)

Also I just realized that I've had my blog set to block comments and that probably is related to me not getting any comments for about a month now! Technologically challenged. I guess living in the campo will do that to you.

View Larger Map

Peace Corps... and the Miss Llicuar Pagent?

2007-09-23T18:41:00.001-05:00

It has been an eventful few days. I have been mourning Kali, my friend who passed away because I think of her even more at this time of year. The anniversary of her death coincided with interesting women-focused events here in Rinconada Llicuar. One was a Youth Conference held by the local government to celebrate the first day of spring. The lawyer who works at Town Hall offering free legal services to women and children gave talks about legal rights in abusive relationships and the services she offers. I talked about trash because I am the Trash Cheerleader but, I also did a self-esteem charla that worked well! I think that I really got across the connection between self-esteem and healthy relationships. It was a beautiful privilege to be able to remember Kali while doing that workshop.

Finally, at the elementary school in Llicuar they are celebrating their 46th anniversary. This is a very big deal. All schools here celebrate their anniversaries every year. In Llicuar they pick 2 queens to preside over the festivities. One from 1st - 3rd grades and another from 4th - 6th grades. I hate beauty pageants. They happen all the time here and I hate it. Then the principal asked me to judge this pageant. I stuttered in response but, I had to say yes. I did complain to Gloria, the 5th grade teacher that pageants are culturally very difficult for me because I think that they send the wrong messages to girls. They reward beauty rather than intelligence, values or abilities. Then, I showed up the day of the pageant, Gloria was the president of the planning committee and there were 3 judging categories: self-confidence, whether or not they answered the questions that we asked correctly, and diction! There were no 7 year-olds with makeup and no polyester dresses in the heat. The 1st grader wore pigtails a Cinderella t-shirt and pink jeans and all the other girls dressed very similarly. Here's me with two of the contestants! Perhaps not ideal, but still the best "beauty pageant" I've ever been to because it had nothing to do with beauty!

Breathing though Anniversaries

2007-09-20T18:43:00.000-05:00

Rene, one of my dearest friends who I met on the first day of 7th grade, and her husband Jared had a daughter today, their first. Child rearing here and now! I wish them all the blessings possible to support them with love in this parenting adventure. It started a little early! But really, due dates? Who needs them? Devlyn Michelle waits for no one.

I can't help but be reminded that the breath of life waits for none of us. This amazing joy, my niece(!) erupts into the world just as the 4th anniversary of another dear friend's death approaches, or maybe bears down on me would be better said. Kali's husband murdered her in their home, their sleeping baby boy in the next room 4 years ago tomorrow. When I found out I had just returned to my apartment after hearing the Dalai Lama speak. I had the surprising privilege of testifying at his murder trial 14 months later. I say privilege because the experience helped me make sense of the loss and finally I felt like there was a small something that I could do for her mom. I saw Kali's husband and Philip's father jailed for life that day. In Texas that means that he will be eligible for parole after 35 years. He will be 60 years old. A few months later I saw Philip adopted by his maternal grandparents, creating a loving, safe space for him in his jarring and confusing reality. He started first grade this month and when I look at him I see his mom in his lazy left eye. So as he looks out at each gorgeous Texas sunrise, his navy blue backpack and Scooby-doo lunch box overwhelming his small body on his way to his hippie school in the hills west of Austin, I wish him the breath of vivid life and the feeling of the wind on his cheeks. Finally, on her birthday, her first day in this world, I wish Devlyn and her parents all of the hope and love they will need to weather the storms and to live joyfully, breathing new life.

Happy Anniversary to ME

2007-09-17T18:49:00.000-05:00

Saturday was my 1 year anniversary in PERU!

I should probably write something sappy and sentimental about my expectations 1 year ago, anecdotes about how it has been better than ever imagined and not at all what I expected, my self-effacing and humorous insights about my own misconceptions, how I have changed for the better, and how much I love small town life in Bajo Piura. I could write all of those stories as they would be absolutely true but, I haven't been feeling particularly sentimental lately. I'm borderline overwhelmed and generally bubbly. Life is good, as the T-shirt slogan goes.

I was at an Ecological Park over the weekend celebrating my anniversary on an overnight trip with 44 kids in the police youth program called Colibri or hummingbird. My kids were thrilled with the news that bunk beds exist in the world and not one kid would sleep in a top bunk alone for fear of falling out. I'm not exactly sure how having 2 people in the twin bed helped. I slept in the boys dorm (on a bottom bunk), theoretically to keep things under control. They climbed all over the beds until around midnight and then woke up at 5:30 to fold their sheets. I would have been annoyed at the negative impact on my beauty sleep except it was so damn cute. I mean they literally got out of bed at 5:30 AM and started to fold sheets in teams of two small boys with very large sheets without any adult yelling at them to do their chores.

So drink a toast to 1 year! I prefer cosmopolitans and I haven't had one in a while.

Factiod

2007-09-13T18:06:00.000-05:00

Last night I was reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, which is an amazing book if you haven't read it. It set me to thinking about the particular economic realities of Rinconada Llicuar and sent me on a search of my calculator.

There are about 500 households in Rinconada Llicuar. At least 64% of them do not have bathrooms inside their houses or latrines (pit toilets without running water), so about 320 households. It costs about 500 soles to build a bathroom that includes a flush toilet (with a bucket), walls, a cement floor and connection to the waste water system. The current exchange rate is 3.15 soles to the dollar... My college loans are significantly greater than the cost of putting basic bathrooms in all of the houses that need them in Rinconada Llicuar.

It's not everyday you get a Times editorial....

2007-09-13T15:32:00.000-05:00

This is intense. I'm so excited about the press around the most recent Urban Justice Center report on Food Stamps. UJC is a non-profit advocacy organization where I used to work. Last year we released a study about the difficulty folks encounter when they apply for Food Stamps. This year they wrote a follow up about trying to stay on Food Stamps. And soon they will release a third report about immigrants and Food Stamps. I'm so glad they're getting so much good press. Food Stamps are such an important help for people who are just scraping by.

Article from Sept 6 detailing the report's findings.
Process for Keeping Food Stamps is Criticized, Ray Rivera

Today's letter responding to findings by David Hansell, a guy who basically runs New York State's Food Stamps Program! I love it when policy makers pay attention!!!! :)
Food Stamp Program, David A. Hansell

Today's Editorial
Why the Hungry Refuse Help, Editorial

And I would just like to add that David Hansell mentions that the Governor of New York is working on changing the rules so that working families can apply for Food Stamps over the phone. (Currently, they have to take off work to apply, a policy of questionable forethought.) This was a recommendation of the report we released last year! It's so cool when they listen.

Children, lots of children

2007-09-11T17:44:00.000-05:00

I never thought of myself as a "kids person" and since I've joined Peace Corps I would say that about 70% of my work is with kids. This has been totally amazing for me. I mean I suppose it could have gone very, very badly for me as well as for the wee ones, but happily I think that we're all having fun and learning something. Among the things I am hopefully learning is: yell less. Opportunity knocks.

In the last week I went on a field trip to an archaeological site called Chosis and an ecological park in Sechura with 150 kids:

I helped 2 elementary schools organize Clean Community Marches to educate the town:

We did a Trash Pick-up at one of the elementary schools. (We will do another on Thursday!):

We also put on a movie series at the high school that included "March of the Penguins" and "An Inconvenient Truth". Finally, we finished the study on the per-capita production of trash of various types in Rinconada Llicuar by weight and volume, but the kids didn't participate in that. Whew. Nap time?