Giving thanks in the cloud forest

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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....

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.