How to Make the Big Bucks

So this past year, my whole job in site has pretty much been working with health promoters- both big and small. While I’ve spent a lot of time and energy forming 23 teen promoters with my PEPFAR project, I inherited a great group of adult health promoters form the previous volunteer. These guys (and gals) are great. While they have become pros at doing radio spots and more recently have been delving into the area of house visits and charlas (only after I have lit the fire under their kekes), I think the real reason they like their job is because we manage to have a lot of fun. This is the key to success. I mean let’s be honest, being a health promoter is great and all and I’m sure they get that nice, warm feeling inside from helping their community, I don’t see any health promotion project like that being sustainable without a little incentive. And it doesn’t need to be money.

Peruvians love parties. So I throw them. While I’ve heard that some people in the sierra don’t even remember the month they were born in, let alone the year, my host mom in Tumbes can rattle off any birthday of any family member up until her 3^rd cousin. So I make a point to celebrate them. I have 15 promoters and lucky for me, their birthdays are all grouped together. During the month of November, we celebrated three and managed to put together a great party and it really didn’t cost a whole lot. We just had music, chicha, beer, and a homemade cake. The best part was just not doing work together and laughing at the volunteer Lindsey try to dance.

However, when money is an issue (and it is for my town because the mayor gives me zip to work with), I raise it. Bingo nights and rifas are great, but they’re just not really my thing. I hate selling tickets to stuff. I mean, even as a Girl Scout I hated the idea of going door to door to sell cookies. I’m pretty sure I just made my mom and grandma buy enough to make my father hate Thin Mints by the end of the year. So instead, I made the people come to me.

The perfect time presented itself when I was showing the movie JUNO to my town with the help of my teen health promoters. We planned it for a Thursday night and outside in the town’s coliseo so a) people could walk by and just come in and b) because my coliseo is big and can hold a bunch of people. The way I managed to raise money was through the adult health promoters selling popcorn and chicha inside (purple corn drink with lots of sugar).

An hour before the movie was scheduled to show, I could be found with seven other health promoters going to town on making popcorn. I even got the guys to get in the kitchen and get their hands dirty with stuffing the salty-goodness into tiny little plastic bags and stirring immense amounts of sugar into the chicha pot. It’s all about beating machismo folks. Despite the fact that we burnt like half of it and I realized that oil really is vital to making popcorn, we managed to sell like 20 bags. And since the popcorn was super salty, this created the dire need for people to quench their thirst with the delicious-chicha. I should have been a business volunteer.

So, what I’m trying to say is, parties and fundraisers like this are ways that my adult health promoters and I have been able to work together and have a ton of fun, but not necessarily in the health promotion area. It’s doing FUN stuff together like this that make people remember why they’re committed to their job, even when it doesn’t involve getting a paycheck. And despite that we only made 14 soles that night (turns out most people don’t want to drink cold chicha on a cold night- because as you all know, it causes AIDS and the bubonic plague at the same time), that’s still enough to buy a few beers and bocaditos for the next birthday party.

velaciones

All soul’s day, which Peruvians celebrate on November 2nd, is easily my favorite holiday here. Halloween isn’t too popular although I’ve heard that it is in Ecuador, but Peruvians tend to celebrate the two days afterwards a lot more. The first day is All Saint’s day- the day when people go to the cemetery to celebrate all of the saints and children that have passed away without sins. They call the babies “angelitos” because they died before they had time to commit sins, which I thought was interesting. People buy little “crowns” or wreaths of flowers and place them on the crosses and tombs.

Being lazy and tired from celebrating Halloween the night before, I did not care to join in the drinking and dancing that everyone else was partaking in. But starting the next morning, or All Soul’s Day- I was down. We started the morning by dropping off flowers at every dead family member’s grave between the two cemeteries in my district. This included both host grandpa’s, an uncle, some great grandparents and then distantly related people that I still to this day am not sure of who they are. After dropping the flowers off, we went home to have lunch and to chillax (abbreviation for chillout and relax). At around three, armed with candles, matches and cardboard boxes, we marched back to the cemetery to settle in for the evening.

Now first off, there are a lot of differences between a cemetery that you would find in the states and one you would find in Peru. In the states, the graves tend to be underground and covered with a nice area of grass or maybe a small tombstone. Here, unless you find buying matches a luxury, everyone has a “tomb” made for them. This is an aboveground grave, lined and topped off with cement. These cement structures can vary in decadence from just a sole cement-coffin to graves that have entire one-room houses built around them. I call those graves “shrines” and they kind of freak me out because they have iron-wrought fences around them and once I’m inside, I get claustrophobic and want out. I don’t like to be stuck under the same roof with a skeleton. Also, grass does not exist so just picture sand and dirt around the graves with little children running and climbing all over them. I felt badly for the people buried because I’m sure they don’t appreciate little children running all over their graves.

Now fortunately for my town, the cemetery just got electricity a few months ago, which allowed a mini-carnival to show up and set up shop outside the gates. I have never seen so much as a water fountain in a graveyard back home but here I had 10 different ladies trying to sell me fried chicken with French fries, two ice cream men on bicycles, three tent-restaurants offering everything from dried pig guts to birthday cake and maybe 50 kids with bags of popcorn and potato chips strung around their neck, walking through the cemetery and selling their goods like the beer men at baseball games. Talk about resting in peace. Oh yeah, there was beer for sale too.

So, Peruvians call All Soul’s Day “Velaciones” because everyone brings candles (velas in Spanish) to light at the graves all afternoon and through the evening. Some people stay all night. This in all honestly, became beautiful once the sun went down and you could see hundreds of people gathered around thousands of little candles in the graveyard. The cemetary is a ways from the actual town so other than the tent-restaurants, there isn’t any light except for the candles. I personally loved watching families and friends interact and hang out while waiting the candles to burn out and I thought to myself how nice this would be if it was customary to do this in the states. After a few hours of walking in between graves and socializing with people, I sat down with my host grandma and a few of my cousins to light candles next to her late-husband’s grave. At first I thought it was weird how everyone was just sitting on top of his cement box with his body inside, but being tired, I soon found myself actually lying down on it at one point. I used to hold my breath every time I passed a cemetery in the states- here I can actually go to sleep in them. The only thing I could not get over was how my host grandmother, who is still very much alive (as stated before, she is the town butcher), has already had her grave dug and made next to her late-husband’s. I mean, it’s topped off with a thin layer of cement that can be easily taken off but pretty much all that is lacking is my grandma actually in it. Does anyone else find this morbid? Best part is, we (including my grandma) are all SITTING and hanging out on it at one point or another. However, I’m pretty sure that isn’t customary because one of the Peruvians I was talking to that night told me they thought that was a very “triste” or sad thing to do. To make your own tomb before you, well, well you know what I mean. So that was weird.

After about six hours of this, or around 9 at night, I decided I was cold and tired and headed home with my host mom and sister. But I hear that some people stay up all night with their candles lit. I think that it could be worth it to stay here another year and do that again.

Concurso de Cometas

Translation: Kite flying contest. Like stated in my previous blog hace tiempo (a long time ago) my host aunt Maritza decided to host a kite flying competition for all the kids in my town. After a few post-ponings due to various reasons, we finally had it one Saturday afternoon. I had been planning on going just to watch the kites but my involvement grew to extraordinary proportions when I was chosen by Maritza to be the sole judge of the competition. Disclaimer: I hate public speaking and making decisions, especially when it involves deciding which child got to take home a prize with them. I would have never signed up for judging had I known I would be the only one involved.

So Maritza appointed me to be the town judge which was fine until I was handed a loudspeaker with a horn on it. Now, my Spanish proficiency has increased 1000 fold but I still get nervous when speaking to 100 people with a loudspeaker. But I wasnt really left with a choice. There were also four prizes involved to be given out depending on who I thought should win.

At the start of things, I was really impressed. People hand-made all of their kites and they came in all shapes in sizes. There were some designed to look like airplanes, someone made some geometrically-complex cube that somehow flew and there was even a little lady that brought her daughter and a kite that was just a cutout of a hand-drawn superwoman (unfortunately that one didn’t fly). I actually thought for a second it was going to be easy to judge.

Once the kites managed to get up in the air, the sky looked so pretty with tens of kites floating peacefully above our little town. And every child seemed to be having a good time.

Then the time came when Maritza nudged me to start judging. I decided that the prizes would be given according to four categories: The kite that flew the highest, the kite that went the farthest (some kites didn’t go up but away), the best decorated kite, and finally, the most unique kite. The latter two I gave away instantly, the cubed-kite won most unique, and a heaxagonal kite that had so many layers of tissue paper formed in the shape of a star that it looked like stained glass won best decorated. That was easy. The question was which kites were up the highest in the air and farthest away. Considering I had just had my sunglasses stolen, I had to look up into the sky of a town that is situated 3 degrees below the equator with no eye protection. I think I burned my corneas. And to be honest, every kite was high up so it was hard to distinguish which one was the winner. The same goes for the kites that were in the running for being the farthest away. I swear they were all flying above the next town over.

Everybody else began to notice this too because they all began to start shouting at which kite was the winner. This is when things got stressful. I’ll have you know that Peruvians are very competitive when prizes are involved and I had a few parents and children telling me which ones were the winner. And since there was no other judge, my voice was the end all be all. My word was law. Maritza had made the right decision when she appointed me and not herself and the judge.

However by the end, I made my call and handed out the prizes. I had to deal with some unhappy kite-flyers and grumpy parents afterwards but what can you do. That´s life. I was just happy that I was able to drink some Inca Cola and eat some cookies afterwards.

Tumbes... we´ve got SOL

It´s true. Both the sun and soul type. There are eight of us here- Alyse, Ian, Greg, Isha, Anne, Sarah, Robyn and myself. We are a good group. We all have strong personalities and by the grace of God, we all click (most of the time at least). The month of October made me finally realize how amazingly lucky I am to have such a good group of friends supporting me here throughout my journey (don’t worry Kris, Chris, Babs, Annie and Katie you´re all included too- you just don’t live up here).

So yeah September and October were crazy months. Most notably, I was robbed in a moderately ugly way. I have been robbed before- and I´m not talking about being pick-pocketed. But for some reason this robbery two Sundays ago left me very shaken. Maybe it was because I was robbed in plain sight of ten of my townspeople and not ONE stepped in to help me. Maybe it was because four men jumped me completely out of the blue. Maybe it’s just because I felt so alone crying on the sidewalk and asked a man with 7 cents in my hand to take me home. Either way, the day afterwards I was down in the dumps and almost wishing a giant natural diaster would wipe out Tumbes and all of the chorros with it. I was lacking a cell phone, so calling someone wasn´t really possible. However I did manage to send an email via to the closest volunteer to my site. Within HOURS I got a surprise from both Robyn and Alyse, with Robyn bringing her boyfriend Ryan along and an awesome package of sour patch kids and Alyse bringing me a bouquet of flowers. It only got better with time and while I won’t go into details, I ended up with so many check up phone calls, a loaf of banana bread, a machete, and a Tumbes departamental flag. Talk about a support network. Thanks to them, I never once thought about going home at that point and I still don’t now. (P.S. anyone reading this blog just know that I am FINE and okay and not hurt). This unfortunately happens.

So yeah that was great and after I managed to devour the pack of sour patch kids, it was the end of October and we had to think about Halloween and saying goodbye to Robyn and Sarah (they are finishing their two years of service). While I like Halloween, I hadn’t really given a lot of thought to how I would spend Sunday night. Fortunately for me, Alyse was on it. We all spent the night in a hostel that Alyse decorated with cotton spider webs, black plastic spiders and black and orange balloons ( I have no idea where she found all of this considering Peru doesn’t really celebrate Halloween). We made a bonfire, roasted stuffed green peppers, made s´mores, ate popcorn balls and worms in dirt (you know, gummy worms, pudding and Oreos) and had a genuinely great time. Well at least, I did.

Basically what I´m trying to say is that while Robyn and Sarah are leaving this week, I will be really sad to see them go. They have both been such an inspiration to me throughout my time here. I have gotten very comfortable with our group and I can only hope that the new volunteers that will be arriving here in the end of November will be just as awesome. Long live Doombes!

Let´s go fly a kite

While the sun has been in hiding this past week, kids in my town have taken to scourging the area for spare plastic bags and lightweight wood called “ caña” while contracting their dads and older brothers to sew/paste everything together to form a hexagonal-shaped kite. As I’m writing this blog, my aunt Maritza just came marching through my house announcing that there is going to be a great “kite” contest this week, complete with prizes, to see who can build the most attractive and most successful kite. I have solicited the help of my 9-year old cousin Artur to help me making mine.

So for the past few days when I have gone outside, there have been no less than two or three kites flying in the sky with one or two kids attached to a line at the other end. It’s actually very cute. On Thursday I spent the better half of an hour with the kids from my street learning how to fly a kite. I mean I guess I already knew how to but I hadn’t done it in a while and apparently according to the expertise of my cousins Artur and Michel , my technique was not up to par. It also didn’t help that I kept getting the meanings of “ tie it up” and “ let it loose” confused. When they’re high enough up in the air, they begin to look just like fish swimming in place with the tails flying behind them. It’s really quite beautiful to see a few of them up in the sky all at once. Eventually though, the kite got stuck in a tree and then the rope snapped while trying to pull it down. No matter. They were back at it today with a brand new one.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure kite season is meant to stick around for much longer. Today the sun came out with a vengeance, as if he almost wanted to warn me that the next 8 months of my life will be filled with nothing but UV rays and oily skin. I cant say I’m surprised; however I was just getting used to the coolness of the winter months here when the thermometer hits a lowly 75 degrees in the evening.

I guess I should be thankful that I’m dealing with this hot weather today and not yesterday. Yesterday I held my first big, public activity outside. Category? District Marathon. Time? 9 in the morning. Distance? 5 kilometers. Participants? Anyone between the ages of 10 and 18. Location? Very dangerous road that passes through my town but is the only thing paved so thus the only option. Number of attendees? 50. Number of people that fainted? Only one.

So to put everything in perspective, I’ve got two main projects going on here this year in addition to some smaller, secondary things I’m doing in my spare time. One of my main projects has to do with AIDS prevention in my site. Specifically, to form a group of teenage health promoters that can teach their classmates about how HIV is transmitted blah blah blah… how to prevent teenage pregnancy…why not to do drugs… how to use a condom… those sorts of things. In Tumbes, prostitution is very much legal and drug use might as well be too. So we’ve got a lot of AIDS going on; in fact, Tumbes is #1 in the country for highest number of per capita cases. Go team (note sarcasm). So while I’ve been teaching this group of about 20 kids about all of the themes listed previously, we’ve decided to do some activities that involve the town to get public knowledge out! Our first activity was this 5km marathon.

Now, I should preface everything by stating that I live in a town where many kids (maybe even most) can be labeled as un-ambitious to lazy. I was faced with a large-scale uproar when I proposed the idea of running roughly 3 miles (from one end of the district to the other) without stopping. “No one wants to go that far”, “We’re not used to exercising that much” or “ I can’t” was the gossip. In order to appease part of the public, I decided that yes, maybe 3 miles was a little too far for a 10 year old to run so I shaved off a kilometer and a half and instead made two finish lines; one for kids ages 10-12 that was 1 ½ Km shorter and then another one for the rest of the kids.

With the help of Tumbes’ ministry of health department (which donated water), my town’s health post ( which donated the use of an ambulance- complete with doctor) and the town police (to block off traffic), I felt as if I really had a lot of support from my community.

Earlier this week, I had been meeting with my little teen health promoters to record messages advertising the marathon and then playing them on our town’s loudspeaker (yes, the same one I still want to take an axe to every morning), with Rihanna or a Britney Spears song playing in the background. These teen’s had also made a ridiculous number of posters that we had taped all over the town’s traffic signs and houses along the road that had messages displaying information about teen pregnancy, different types of contraception that exist, and why HIV sucks.

So needless to say, there had been a lot of preparation that had gone into this “marathon” and I woke up yesterday feeling nervous! It wasn’t like the other types of nervous I’ve felt while being here (like talking in front of people or avoiding the dark alleys in the city), because this time I felt nervous because I felt like it was kind of the first big indicator of the influence that my teens and myself have on our community and whether people would decide to come out to participate. If no one decided to show, the whole town would know because while a lot of people didn’t want to participate, there was a large number of people that knew it was going on and I did not feel like having a bunch of hard effort go to waste with no marathon to show for it.

So imagine my surprise when I walked over to my health post yesterday morning and people were dressed and ready to go 45 minutes BEFORE the marathon was supposed to take place! NOTHING starts on time here and I am very used to waiting 2 hours for a meeting to start. I was ecstatic. I was even more ecstatic when more and more people kept coming every minute until I had at least 30 kids ready to go, with signs on their back saying things like “ Use a condom” or “AIDS kills” or “Abstinence is the answer.” It was GLORIOUS.

While I don’t think the head of my health post was very impressed with the results (because a. he was going to have to drive them to the starting point about a mile away in the town’s ambulance and b. I just don’t think he would be impressed with anything I did unless I learned how to cut atoms with scissors), it didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that the kids came. Even the “cool” older boys that I swear to God I never thought would do anything if it didn’t involve girls or being lazy.

With the help of my teen health promoters, everything started off great and I watched as 50 kids from all around the district hit the ground running for the finish line. Two other Peace Corps volunteers form the area (Sarah and Ian) came over to help and we all took a car so we could drive by the kids and cheer them on and take pictures. I have not felt as happy when I saw the kids giving me double fist-pumps in the air as they ran farther than many of them had ever run before. I took a total of 87 pictured in 60 minutes.

Five kilometers down the road Sarah, Ian and I waited for the older kids to come across the finish line. The first kid Josue, came in at around 18 minutes. Bit by bit, more started to trickle in (some in sandals which is insane) and despite getting an unknown phone call telling me someone had fainted, everything seemed to be going well. But things only got better. After the first 10 or so big kids had come in, I started to see some of the younger kids come in through the 5Km finish line. These kids didn’t even need to be running this far! They could have stopped a kilometer and a half back!! They told me they came this far because they just wanted to. To see if they could do it. I was amazed. Even my younger host sister Prixi who is 14 and fat and eats terribly and whined after walking for a half hour the day before did it! You could tell she was so proud of herself, and I was too.

After passing out bananas and water, we waited around for the kids to get hauled back to town. I went home, sunburnt and sore-throated and immediately went into Tumbes city for some ice cream. And despite the fact that every kid I’ve seen so far today has told me they have blisters or that their legs are sore, I know they are proud of themselves and I am proud of them too.

375 days and counting

This past month has made me feel bombarded with drama (and no, not the theatrical kind, despite my recent addiction to Glee). While on a normal day, my town gossip could rival that of any middle school, the month of September has been especially exciting and given people even more to talk about.

I would say the majority of gossip and town-talked about issues are centered around the upcoming elections we have this October 3^rd. All of the town and regional mayoral seats are up for grabs and I have never seen so many ridiculous people run for office. In my district (my town plus four others) for instance, we have a total of 8 candidates running for office. I would say maybe ONE seems decent enough to not secretly stash most of the town’s budget away into his own pocket. That’s not a joke either.

However, there´s one guy that really gets my blood running. His name is Pepe. So Pepe is this severely- obese man that doesn’t actually live in my town (which I´m pretty sure is against the mayor-rules) but for some reason, is still running for office and has an annoyingly-large amount of support. So last night was his big ¨last night before the elections¨ meeting in our town square. For some reason or another, this meeting which was organized for him to “ explain his budget proposals” had fireworks and the town drug-addict dance on a stage, in a thong, with “ Pepe” written over her two butt cheeks. Oh, I almost forgot, her daughter (which she should have never been allowed to have), danced on stage in underwear too, albeit not in a thong. It was a night like this that made me question why men who advocate for this type of show during their “budget meeting” are allowed to even hold any type of power. But of course, the people loved it (or so I’m told). I was appauled.

So anyways, every morning I wake up at 6:30 to the rap and song mixes the political parties have made supporting their candidate on the loud speaker. I guess it’s my version of an alarm. And every night, a candidate holds a meeting in one of the towns to discuss their plans or budgets. Now, everyone in my town is divided amongst who they have decided to support. This of course causes problems. Now maybe things get “nasty” in the states in anticipation for the November elections but I have NEVER heard of people throwing bags of URINE at their fellow townspeople. Yes you heard me, bags of urine. Complaints have been filed because during one meeting, eggs, rocks and urine were thrown at those sitting in the town square by others who obviously weren’t happy with their candidate selection. However despite complaints, it still keeps on happening and I can only tell you how happy I will be with October 4^th rolls around and all of this will be over. Needless to say, I will not be spending election day in my site.

On a much happier note, my community health promoters and I threw a joint- August and September birthday party last week. I volunteered to bake a cake with my jank-ass oven that a) plugs into the wall and b) once caught on fire. So I baked a mean chocolate cake (recipe to be divulged at a later time) and brought it to the party. The party was being held at one of the promoter’s houses and I’m not sure why we picked his house because his wife is evangelical and that means 1. No drinking 2. No dancing and 3. No music and prior to going, we all decided that as a group we would all chip in for beer. So anyways I walk over to my promoter’s house with my cake in hand and upon getting there, I realize that my town’s without electricity and in a half hour we will all be sitting in a circle, in the dark and without music.

In order to avoid this calamity, I ran home to get my portable and battery-powered ipod speakers. Since mine was the only form of musical entertainment available, I had a room of 20 Peruvians listen to whatever came up on “shuffle.” This included Bruce Springsteen and Arctic Monkeys- definitely not what they’re used to. However, after an awkward five minutes passed, my health promoter Peter whipped out his air guitar and started playing along. Then we all started dancing. It was a real cultural-exchange.

So other than birthday parties and elections, my family has been dealing with some guinea pig baby issues. Four months ago, my brother bought two guinea pigs (or cuyes as we call them) to raise and mate and eat basically. He made them a little corral for them to live in outside and there was a brown male and a white female. The female is no doubt, the largest and fattest guinea pig I have ever seen in my life. She looks like she could eat a cat. Anyways, so we (my family and I) all assumed she was pregnant and we were super excited to start our own cuy-breeding business. However, as two months went by and no babies appeared, it was decided that she was just fat and not pregnant (the guinea pig pregnancy period is 60 days).

Because not a lot happens in my town, my family (extended family that is) and I have all been discussing the fertility of our female cuy and putting bets on whether she would ever get pregnant or not. Seriously, I would talk about this during breakfast, lunch and dinner- “ What’s wrong with the cuy”? “ Pol (my brother), don’t scare her, you’ll make her spontaneously abort”, “Maybe she’s just a lesbian.” This conversation lasted the better of four months.

So we’ve had this annoying, fat and non-pregnant guinea pig since June and we’ve had nothing to show for it. However to my surprise, yesterday (September 27^th) my brother found me and told me we had two new additions to our family!!!! At first I thought we got more chickens or something like that but then I realized the female guinea pig finally got knocked up and gave birth!!! The babies were actually really cute- except for the fact that they come out at like 4 inches long and with tons of hair. It would be like if I gave birth to a baby that was 3 feet tall and already had hair down to her shoulders. So that was a little creepy.

So anyways, my family is really happy we have two new additions to the family and I’m glad we can all finally lay our heads down at night and stop obsessing over a damn guinea pig.

Going in a completely different direction, I would like to thank you all for officially being blog-followers for over a year now! I’ve hit the one year mark on September 11^th and it feels really good to have a year behind my back. I didn’t do anything special that day except grab a chicken sandwich to go and a slice of apple pie (which gave me a severe case of diarrhea the whole next day- a cool 19 bathroom trips that morning alone) but the day did not go unmarked as I reflected how much I’ve grown over the past year! It’s been a good run, but I’m not done yet!!! Thanks so much for all of your support guys, it has gotten me through.

I am no longer LOST

For those who I had the privilege of living with my senior year of college (the lovely Julie, Maggie, Colleen, Herzog, Ali and Tina, and even Pfeff and Latta though technically I wasn’t paying Shady Nook´s rent and instead just slept on their couches), you all know too well the spell we fell under the second semester of senior year. It came in the form of J.J. Abram´s magical TV creation- LOST. I remember days when I gladly skipped evolution and microbiology classes to stay in bed with the snow falling outside, tucked in with my portable heater on full blast and my coral accent wall reminding me of warmer days, watching as the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 fought for their lives on a mysterious island for HOURS. Seriously I would watch this show for hours. I had missed out on the previous four seasons and had no problem spending my days catching up on what I had missed. I remember one day when I managed to watch 8 HOURS OF TV IN ONE DAY. I guess we could all call that my ¨low point¨ in life. However I would probably do it again if given the chance.

So imagine my dismay, anxiety and frustration when I got my invitation to come to Peru and my service would happen to fall during when the last and final season of LOST would appear on ABC. I wouldn’t be able to watch and find out why the group of survivors had crashed on the island, if they were all going to get off, what the smoke monster really was and how the series would end. The months earlier this year passed, as I pined for cable television or some way to keep up with what was going on and as the last episode aired on MAY 24??? I was going crazy with not knowing how it all ended.

You all are probably considering me crazy and obsessive but try watching seasons 1-5 and NOT craving to know how it all ends.

So, imagine my excitement, joy and bubbly feeling I got in my stomach when I went to Lima two weeks ago and bought the pirated $5 version of the WHOLE LAST SEASON. That´s right- 18, 40 minute episodes for 5 dollars. Since then I think my family had considered me a downright narcoleptic because I would march up to my room around 7: 30 for ¨bed.¨ From there I would turn on my computer and immerse myself in what I had a year and a half before- the epic story of LOST.

So at the point of me writing this, I have finished the last and final season. It took me about a week and I finished on Sunday night, crying harder than I cried while watching Field of Dreams or Finding Neverland. And I can say with satisfaction, I am happy with the ending. I had read that a lot of people weren´t, but for me, the ending was enough and I turned off the computer contently.

Now I think I´m ready to watch it all over again.

Bat rats

Today during breakfast, my cousin was sweeping the ¨sala¨ or ¨family/living/hang out room.¨ She had stayed the night to do some homework at our house and before she left, she started to sweep the sala. Now this ¨sala¨of ours gets swept by my host brother, sister or mom everyday since so much dust comes in. They move the three chairs and sweep underneath and then proceed onto the kitchen.

So there I was, eating my three pieces of buttered- bread and coffee for breakfast when my host cousin said nonchalantly ¨Yeni (my host mom), come here and look.¨ The tone that she uttered this phrase made me think she had found something as interesting as a dirty-sock underneath one of the chairs but no. It was a rat. A giant, hairy, dead rat. It was lying on it’s side, paws stretched out, mouth open. Obviously dead. Now I should count my blessings and thank someone that the rat was dead instead of alive but I´m not sure if that’s the case. I kind of wish it had been alive so it could have scurried away during the night without me having to see it as I was applying butter to my bread.

The only person that even picked their heads up from the table to see the creepy crawler was my mom who actually CHUCKLED as she went and got something to pick the rat up with and toss him outside. No one else even thought this remotely revolting. Minus me. As quickly as I could and before I could process the vision in my head, I downed my coffee in one gulp and shoved the remaining piece of bread into my mouth and headed to my room to privately gag.
Apparently my town has had a rat problem, I have just not been made aware of it. Sure I knew there was one here and there like the one I saw the week before scurry along the street in Tumbes and run UP SOMEONE’S LEG, but other than that, I had no idea MY house could have been serving as one of their havens. So, in response to that problem, my host dad called up his friend who came in and gassed the house, which was the reason we found our little dead friend in the sala.

Almost all of the other volunteers have seen rats in their house; my friend Ian watched one die before his very own eyes as his family chased it around his room with sticks to beat it with. My friend Alyse is a little different though. While she has had the most rat-sightings in her house (averaging maybe one a night), she has no problem with this. “ As long as they don’t eat my food or crawl into my bed, I’m okay.” This may be due to the fact that Alyse is from Oregon and grew up with two rats as pets throughout her life. The most favored one was “Bat- rat”, a furry friend that her family kept as a pet that would wander around the house freely. Alyse speaks with such regale when reminiscing about Bat-rat ,” He used to be the cutest thing- he loved sleeping in the fresh laundry while it was still warm from getting out of the dryer. “ I guess this is when you use the term- “ different strokes for different folks.” Turns out Bat-rat’s hobby turned out to be his demise when he accidentally snuggled into the wrong pile of laundry and ended up in the washer- but I won’t go into that story nor the lingering effects it had/has on Alyse’s life.

All I’ll say is, maybe if I had Bat-rat as a pet when I was a child, maybe I would have felt a stab of pain as the rat in my house was carried away. But since I was given a puppy instead, I was glad to see that rat go.

cops and robbers

Yesterday I was wondering what I should write a blog about; if I should write about Uncle Ruco and his uncanny resemblance to both Lionel Richie and a pornstar with his handlebar mustache and jerry curl, or if I should have written about Aunt Isa, who at 39 still can’t read and write and has her children do her “ literacy homework” for her. I was really debating. Until yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday I went into Tumbes to celebrate Sarah’s 26^th birthday. Sarah is one of the two older volunteers here in Tumbes and is finishing her service this October. Lucky bitch. So we were all supposed to meet up for her birthday to get dinner or something.

On my way into town, I drive past a wide open, hilly space of land that’s just labeled“ police property” although I’m not really sure what that means since everyone just dumps and burns their trash there. However yesterday there had been a mototaxi(basically a motorcycle with a hatch on the back to carry people around in) stopped on the side of the road and an older man sitting on the ground next to it. Of course my car stopped and found out that he had just been robbed by the man he was driving and the man was trying to steal his moto. By the luck of God (and I mean like lottery-style luck), a police truck happened to be driving by and deduced what happened. Three policemen ran after the robber (or choro as we call them) and caught him and he was running off into the trash-filled hills. By the time my car got to the scene the man had just been tackled.

We proceeded to stop the car and watch for five minutes as the thief was beaten with three billy clubs and being kicked in the face and punched simultaneously. Having lived in a sheltered area and only traveled through Southeast D.C. and Gary, Indiana with my windows up and my car doors locked- I had never seen anything happen like this before. Nor did I think that this type of punishment happened. Of course I knew it went on in Peru, but I had never seen in up close. It was one of those things that you didn’t want to watch but for some reason you coulndn’t look away. I only looked away when I saw the man’s limp body being shoved into the police truck- undoubtedly going to jail.

When I came home last night, I told my family. My sister said it was good that he got beaten up the way he did and I wasn’t sure if I agreed. I mean of course this guy was bad- he was robbing an elderly man at either knife or gunpoint- but watching him get repeatedly kicked in the face didn’t make me feel any better.

But that stuff is normal here. I don’t think I’ve ever written about how rough Tumbes is, but that stuff happens daily. My own host cousin is in jail for shooting a man point blank in the face to steal his mototaxi, which is worth maybe fifteen hundred dollars. Did I mention he was 17 when he did it? Did I also mention he was from a respectable, pretty well-to-do family? Walking around at night in the city is not an option and I always carry mace in my hand. I was telling a nurse from my annex town that in the states I was shocked when my mom left her car doors unlocked when she went into the grocery because in this part of town, that car would be gone in less than a minute.

And it’s not just cars but ANYTHING. Up to a 50 cent drink that I bought for a bus ride and set aside. But that’s the way it is I guess.

a lesson on being cool

In case any of you were questioning my courage, my dedication or my perserverance while working in this country- don’t worry- I will put all of your questions to rest. I never thought I would wind up in a place where the bubonic plague still existed, vampire bats run rampid- biting children at will, earthquakes shake the earth, and cows jump over the moon

But I did and it makes for some interesting conversation starters between myself and you patriots who still find yourself living in the states.

So, Lindsey, what’s new over there in Peru?

Oh you know, nothing much, there was a 7.0 earthquake in Ecuador yesterday which shook my town pretty badly for a minute or two. You?

In reality, I was staying five hours south of my town in a hostel and was able to sleep the earthquake entirely, but my host family said it gave them a definite jolt.

In other news (actually news that has been sent in links from you all), I learned that in the Amazonas area, vampire bats have been responsible for the deaths of 30 children and there have been over 500 reports of bites in general. I don’t know why the bats are biting people (some say it’s because of a lack of food), but I have no desire to find out. Can you imagine? It’s like what happens in movies when Dracula latches on to the jugular of a young, innocent girl.

On my way back from Alta Piura last weekend, visiting Megan and Chris, I luckily was able to get a seat for the 7 ½ hour bus ride. Too bad my legs didn’t fit so well (since the average Peruvian height tops of at 5´3¨) behind the seat in front of me. No matter, I felt rather badly for those who had to stand up the whole time. However, my sympathy diminished when the one man got on the bus with his rooster and positioned himself standing so that the rooster´s green- feathered tail would stick right in my face. I don’t know where everyone brings their roosters to once they get down to the city but I would estimate that around 10 were on my bus and maybe 1 WASN´T crowing.

On this bus ride we managed to drive straight into a herd of cows moseying along the road (totally normal) and while trying to push them along with the engine of the bus, the cows in turn ran and jumped over a 5 foot fence. It was like they were deer! I have NEVER seen cows jump but I assure you now that they can.

Lastly, the volunteers have been made aware that there has been a break out of the bubonic plague in La Libertad, a department about 12 hours south of Tumbes. Yes, the same plague that decimated Europe centuries ago. Thankfully, theres medicine and so no real threat but I had no idea until now that the plague actually still existed! Crazy right?

So in all, I´d like to think that Im living a pretty courageous life down here, despite the fact that I still can´t kill the spiders that crawl in my room. Who knows, maybe that will change with time.

Glee

I got back yesterday form a long week of in service training down in Piura where the volunteers and our Peruvian counterparts spent the days building improved mud-cooking stoves (cocinas mejoradas), latrines, gardens, compost, boil, bio-digestors and mastering tactics of animal husbandry. It was a lonnnnnnng week but I was happy I went and am now even happier to be back in site and on my own schedule again.

Last night I was talking to my mom when she informed me about the new hit TV sensation, Glee. I have heard vaguely about this show but have never watched an episode. In an effort to give me something to do with my free time, my mom bought the first season and is shipping it down to me.

As my mom was giving me a low down on the plot and the expected date of when I will be able to pick up this “awesome package” she mentioned that it could be something fun for my family and I to watch.

Umm…. you mean you bought me the Spanish version?

No, she was just wondering if my family understands enough English to watch it with me.
She got silence on the other end.

If speaking phrases such as “Sorry, friend”, “What is your name” and “Mister” qualify as “speaking English” then yes, my whole town is fluent. However, as I replied to my mom, I think TV episodes tend to involve a bit more dialogue than just that, so no, my family, let alone any Peruvian I have ever met than has not been my language instructor or a Peace Corps Program Director, will not understand an episode of Glee.

Despite my futile attempts at reversing this situation and teaching English once a week so some 11-year olds, my monthly quizzes still all come back with Spanish written as answers. Can you name 5 out of the 12 months of the year in English? Sure! Enero, Febrero, Marzo, Junio, y Diciembre. While the Spanish translation for months of the year do appear as cognates in English, that does not mean a check mark is placed next to Spanish-written answers on the English exam.

So, if any of you that are left with lingering doubts about the language barrier here and may think I am exaggerating my difficulty with communicating with other people- I am not. Just so you know! Love ya mom, can’t wait to watch those! I´ll probably be doing it by myself though.

Babies and Bread

(written two Wednesdays ago)

It´s ten till three on a Wednesday afternoon. I just walked into the health post 10 minutes after a baby was born. I had been with the mom to be the majority of the morning, basically just pretending to do work while I hoped that I would get to see a baby being born. At 1:45 I went home for lunch and by the time I got back not even an hour later, a little baby boy was born. He was adorable. How cool.

This week has been a little slow to say the least. My highlight was Monday afternoon when three health promoters and I made a compost pile. I had been saving up my vegetable scraps and pulling dried grass out of random fields and shoving it into a giant market-bag. The only thing that we all were missing was the animal guano, or poop if you will. I didn´t think any of the other promoters would take it upon themselves to go out and scoop up a bag of it in the morning. So, when Monday morning rolled around, I found myself in my grandma´s backyard, scooping up goat guano with a shovel. However, upon arriving at the house where we planned to make our pile, we realized that the 10 pound sack I managed to bring wasn´t going to cut it. (Side note: I had left the smelly bag with the mother of my health promoter at her house- she had no idea what compost was, let alone that we were making a pile of it in her backyard, when I kindly asked her if I could leave my sack of s$!# with her while her son was gone. Thankfully, she complied).

So the three of us health promoters get to the fourth health promoter´s house with a 1 year old in tow that someone was babysitting- all ready to get dirty. Then we realize we need more guano. So Yoxsy (the only boy health promoter) and I go off and sneak into his neighbor´s cow field to steal some of his manure. We forgot the shovel and since we wanted to pass by unnoticed, Yoxsy and I ended up scooping up the manure with our hands and filling a giant bag before running away. I love campo life.

I have a bit of advice for any volunteer that finds themselves in a tough spot with Peruvians- maybe you got off on the wrong with some of them or maybe you´re too broke to buy their one year old some birthday gift. Or maybe you just want to make some friends. I have one answer that has thus far, solved the majority of my problems; BANANA BREAD. I have made it for birthdays, for health promotion events, for fun, and as incentive to get people to come to things. My recipe follows as is (note Peruvian price too):

-3-4 ripe bananas (costs a little under twenty cents here) S./0 .50

-1 cup of sugar S./ not sure, but cheap

-1 egg (30 centimos)

-1 teaspoon vanilla (like 5 centimos)

-1 teaspoon of baking powder (20 centimos)

-1 ½ cups of flour (S./ 1)

-A pinch of salt (nothing)

I then throw it in a super sketchy and fire-prone bubble oven for about 30 minutes, or if I´m doubling the recipe, for an hour. Don´t touch the bubble oven. En serio.

I made this banana bread for my health promoters after the composting session and once again, I was asked for the recipe. Maybe I should start making for my teen health promoters- then maybe they´d come to the meetings.

Things I find amusing out here in the campo

I really love it when I read outside my house. I may go out with the intent on reading, but I am able to get maybe 2 pages under my belt. I usually end up spending most of my time saying hello to people who are walking down the street or talking with whatever family member who is sitting outside at the same time. But if I;m lucky my four-year old cousin Ulysis is sitting outside playing with rocks or sticks or something. Ulysis loves to a. color b. cry and c. tell stories. My favorite is the last one. He knows two stories by heart- Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs and has told me many versions of them both. However, Ulysis has a pretty significant lisp and I usually need a translator to understand him (for instance, when trying to say ¨finger¨ he pronounces it as ¨fart¨ which at times, can make for interesting conversations.

So today I was just sitting outside when I heard Ulysis crying in his house for whatever reason. So I walked over, picked him up and gave him the book I was reading (Indian Summer by Alex von Tunzelman- (great book and thanks to the Cady family for a. Their great taste in literature and b. For lending it to me) and asked him to tell me a story. Immediately he jumped into telling me about the big bad wolf eating grandma and having huge teeth and what not while I tried not to laugh at how adorable he was, pretending to read my book out loud with a serious lisp.

This week in general has been busy- lots of meetings with health promoters and community families. Today, I went to advise some of the families that there was a meeting today in the health post about hygiene. So I walked over to my annex town called Tacural to seek out two families. I had completely forgotten where one of the families lived and the other I knew lived around the soccer field somewhere off in the middle of nowhere. After searching for the soccer field for 30 minutes on back paths covered with trash and by dirty water canals I came back right to where I started walking huffing and puffing. I had done a full circle. If that wasn´t annoying enough, a lady stopped me in the road and asked me if I was scared walking around alone. I said no, why to which she replied ¨Oh well, because you know that crazy man with AIDS was heard to be walking around the cemetery last night with a dirty needle, sticking people.¨ Now, I have heard this rumor for the past week and so have my comrades in their sites so I believe it to be false but nevertheless, I got a little more anxious walking around those back-road paths looking for these far-out houses.

Okay, so I finally found the house- sitting perched atop a giant sand hill and banged on the door and yelled until a girl my age came and let me in after realizing I wasn;t the ¨crazy guy¨ running around. So I chatted it up with her and said hello to her two-year old boy which I always forget and refer to him as a girl and convinced them to come to the hygiene talk.

Twenty minutes later, I had found the second house which sat on a taller and steeper sand-hill and talked with the mom (4 years my junior) and her baby and tried (albeit unsuccessfully) to convince them to come too. To top off my journey, I managed to slip, fall and go down the majority of the hill on my butt. I´m pretty sure the mom saw everything but heaven forbid she say anything- woof.

On a completely different note- I would like to inform you all of some sunbathing advice I was given the other night at dinner (since it is summer after all). Applying coke (the soda, not the drug) to your skin and smearing it on acts as baby oil and serves as a great tanner. Coming from a family with a long, long history of skin cancer, this sounded like the most absolutely ridiculous and maybe dumbest advice i`ve ever heard. Putting baby oil on is bad enough, but coke? For real? Talk about a hightened stickiness factor slash direct absorption of those chemicals into the skin (although I`m sure the absorption through the intestinal lining isn’t a whole lot better). Anyways, so yeah, go stick that in your back pocket.

i´m back

I don’t know whether or not to embark on a description of my 20- day stay in the United States, for I fear if I do- I will never finish this blog. I’m hoping that all of you who ready this know I was home during the month of June and what was expected to be a 12- day stay turned into a 20-day one, due to my hospital visit and my gastrointestinal episode(s) which I will only refer to as “Peru’s vengeance because I left it.”

Alas, those twenty days home could not have been better spent in any way, shape or form. It started off with papa bear moving me up to first class on my flight back so I could rest comfortably and be closer to a bathroom- great idea. Props to Kev for doing that and even better, surprising me so I had no idea until the lady at the ticket counter told me I would be flying ¨priority¨for the next nine hours. I legit cried. Then, I spent four days with five of my best friends from college, which upon being reunited, you would have never thought we had gone our separate ways over a year ago. I went to my uncle Tim and aunt Patty’s wedding where I indulged in scotch and ginger ales (call me grandma) and ate perhaps the best meal I have had in years. Not to mention the wedding itself was beautiful. I tubed along the Shenandoah river, went to the movies, went out to my favorite restaurants, hung out at the bay, played chess with my mom, laid by the pool, and saw so many family and friends that there was no way for me to leave unsatisfied. I reaped the benefits of being loved by so many caring and amazing people that if I learn nothing else from this experience of living in Peru for two years, I’ve at least recognized how lucky I am to have friends like you all. So to all of you that I saw when I was home- thank you.

So I did find it hard in a word to come back here after eating hummus and salads instead of rice and potatoes for 20 days. I traveled through Ecuador on my way there and back and my way back was definitely SO MUCH BETTER because a. I did not get hallaciously sick and have to convince a random stranger to take me to a 24 hour pharmacy at 4:30 in the morning, b. I did not get robbed by a hotel employee and, c. because I was traveling with my friend Isha. So the way back went much more smoothly and as a bonus, the next morning I went with (almost) all of the Tumbes folks to the national mangrove park that we have up here in Tumbes. We traveled by canoes as a guide explained to us all about the wildlife and delicate ecosystem that exists there, the types of mangrove trees that grow and a bunch of other stuff that was frequently interrupted with photo-taking. The highlight? Climbing like legit-monkeys across mangrove-roots that stick out of 3-foot deep mud.

Continuing with my awesome travel experiences, I went and visited a bunch of other volunteers in Trujillo and Pacasmayo, where there was an international marathon being held (disclaimer: it was organized originally by a peace corps volunteer 3 years ago). Pacasmayo is a small town, 2hours outside of Trujillo that sits on cliffs overlooking the Pacific. I, being lazy, did not run, but served as the official photographer for everyone that did. While in Trujillo (third biggest city in Peru), I went to see some ruins called “ Huaca del Sol y Huaca de la Luna” with Alyse (from Tumbes) and another older volunteer- it was tres chevere. In all seriousness, it was pretty interesting walking thorugh a five story ruin still in the process of being excavated from the Moche culture wayyyyyyy back in the day. See facebook eventually for pictures.

One thing that I noticed while being in Peru this month was the national frenzy surrounding the world cup- even for a country that didn’t participate (note: im pretty sure Peru’s soccer team is the worst in S.A.). Nevertheless, I was walking through one of the streets of Trujillo during the Brazil- Holland game and walked by a crowd of about 80 people huddled around a television on the street. It was so Latin America-y and so cool. Would you ever expect to see that in the streets of New York one morning if France and Japan were playing? Not likely. So I of course, took a picture.

All in all though, the four days I spent in the Trujillo- Pacasmayo area were pretty great. I saw a bunch of volunteers that I hadn’t seen since November when we left for site because they are either a. in a different program or b. live far as f--- from me. So a reunion was definitely in order- and no better time to have a bunch of Americans together than on the fourth of July!
So today being July 13th, I’ve been back in site for awhile, trying to haul ass and get my projects going. It’s a lot of work- I woke up this morning stressed and took an extra 10 minutes to get ready so I could get some Enya- music time in. The plus side of being in Tumbes this month is that it has cooled down a bit (we’re in winter). So I have actually seen the thermometer drop to 73 degrees. May not sound like much to you all since I’ve heard it’s pretty hot up there but after living for MONTHS with the thermometer stuck at 95-100 degrees with NO AIR CONDITIONING- this is paradise. I am actually wearing a t-shirt with sleeves today.

So that concludes the end of the first blog I have written in a month and a half- life has been moving fast and I’ve been doing all I can just to keep up. I hope this all finds you safe and shoot me an email if you’re bored. Please.

To hell with children

Okay I woke up today around 7:30 and took the thirty cents my mom gave me to go buy bread for my aunt who makes it down the street. 30 cents buys you about 10 small pieces of bread that I guess resemble the rolls they give you in restaurants. It’s a pretty good deal. Upon arriving to Aunt Fernanda´s house I found her inside sitting at a table not selling bread. Distraught because the only meal I look forward to here is breakfast (because I only eat bread and butter), I walked home to ask my mom who else sells bread.

Walking the maybe 250 yards between my Aunt Fernanda´s house and mine, I said hello to my uncle who was standing next to a goat lying down on a table at my grandma´s house (remember- my grandma is the town butcher). I have grown quite accustomed to see recently- killed animals being skinned and cut up but I have not grown accustomed to seeing them die. Only after had I walked past my uncle Koke could I see my uncle Reneé holding a giant bowl (I´ll call it the º blood bucketº) beneath the billy goat gruff´s neck catching the blood that spewed out of it´s aorta as it died. Grossssssss.

Not done.

Just then, Golber (Reneé`s dog) spontaneously started a fight with my neighbor Roxanna´s dog (forget his name) over who got to eat who knows what part of the goat. I screamed because they went at it hardcore and I had just woken up 10 minutes before and was still in a stupor. Since no yelling or kicking on both of my uncle´s parts could get them to stop from telling each other´s ears out, uncle Reneé took another recently-skinned goat´s fur (or is it pelt? Hair? ) with the testacles STILL ATTACHED and began whacking the dogs with it. Blood went spewing and through all of this I managed to carry on a conversation with a teacher standing there about an AIDS workshop we have next week. Totally normal, right? Right…

So this week´s been going well I guess. Yesterday I had my first pen-pal writing session with two classrooms in the primary school which was adorable. After 2 hours or work, lots of glue and crayola usage- I walked out of the school with 22 letters written, signed and stuffed into hand-made and decorated envelopes. It was realllllly cute and I will be sending the letters to a group of students that my friend Annie teaches in Cajamarca (other department far away). I will not get into my opinions on Perú´s school system and how the children are taught, but it was like pulling teeth getting these kids to use their imagination and get creative when writing.

Let’s see, I have still been meeting with my teen health promoters and I really like how those are going. Hopefully by the end of the year, I´ll have them working and giving lessons on HIV in their classrooms.

Ummmm… oh yeah. I never really had these in the states, but sometimes I get the urge to cook here. Maybe it´s a subconscious attempt for autonomy, but unfortunately autonomy does not exist in my house´s kitchen. I swear to God, Emeril himself could be wanting to cook in my kitchen and my host-mom wouldn´t have it unless she was there hovering over him or doing it for him. This is my life.

So yesterday I decided to introduce a foreign dish- BANANA BREAD. I bought a bunch of bananas at the market and went to town last night. You can buy 7 bananas for 30 cents here- also a good deal. I don’t think there is a place on earth where bananas and plantains dominate life so much. I mean, people here eat them with every meal, my dad´s clients pay him in bananas and banana/plantain fields dominate so much land you could get lost for years in the fields without finding your way out.

So using my GHETTO electric oven that has already caught fire before, I cooked 4 bananas, 1/3 butter, 1 ½ cups of flour, 1 cup of sugar, some salt, baking soda and vanilla for 35 minutes. Within 10 minutes of my taking of the oven lid, the whole product had been eaten. In Peace Corps terms, I think I hit jackpot in the º Early Winsº category. My cousins were fighting over who got a second piece and my cousin Yosari was licking the pan afterwards, which was sad because there was nothing there for her to lick. So she just licking up plain metal. So what am I making today? More banana bread. It´s all about the cultural exchange, people.

In response to the title of this blog, I hated children with a passion on Monday. I teach English once a week and I loathe it. Everyone wants to learn English and I could be in the running for the worst teacher ever. Plus, the kids don´t learn anything- we just end up drawing. So on Monday I go to my annex town and greet the 24 monsters in the classroom. We were supposed to learn the days of the week. I don’t think I got passed º Good morning class.º Within 50 minutes, I began to question if I ever wanted to have children. These kids are 10 and 11 years old- not THAT young. Well, apparently the were too young to understand the importance of not responding to a classmate by hitting him with a giant stick. Or that it´s bad to punch each other (two girls got in a fist-fight). I also didn’t approve of people ripping up their classmate´s tests or sniffing the glue or alcohol in the teacher´s cabinet (I'm not even going to go into questioning why there was alcohol in the cabinet. So I have realized that being an elementary school teacher is not in the future for me and after leaving the classroom I went straight to the snack kiosk and bought some therapeutic salty potato- chips that were articficially colored to look like bacon.

On another note- are you all prepping yourselves for my arrival? I´m sure you´re not as I realized today that I have only told maybe six friends (five of them being from Miami) that I am coming home for a short visit this June. Yes, as in 9 days to be exact. I am very excited. Excited actually might be an understatement. Either way, I am going/ coming home for ten days from the 6^th until the 17^th of June. I am traveling through Ecuador, which is exciting because other than the market on the border I have yet to discover the world next door.

So until then folks, Goodnight and Good luck.

And I just got back from Lima

And I just got back from lima. I have a love hate relationship with lima. I hate it when I arrive and then after a few days I don’t want to leave. I guess it’s a little similar with site. After being here for a while. I don’t want to leave and then when I do leave for a few days, I am totally okay with not going back for a few more.

But I came back late last night after lots of long bus rides with some much better than others. I went with a fellow Peruvian that I hadn’t met until two days before our departure date but she ended up being great. We went for a project design and management workshop- basically learning how to make super projects that work and are sustainable. I definitely needed this because I felt like the last few weeks I had spent running around with my head cut off. So Jacky (my peruvian friend) and I designed a boiling water project- nothing too extreme, just well put-together. But that’s besides the point.

The interesting part of my trip to Lima was me going to visit my host family after six months and some of life without Pilli or Jeremy. The thing was, I lost my cell phone last week and therefore lost my host family’s phone number. So, I showed up randomly on Monday night- knocking on the door. Talk about a weird feeling… everything looked the same, everybody looked the same and the house still smelled the same. It was pretty cute to see my “grandparents” get really excited to see me and I felt loved. My little cousin Kayla came over and asked me where I had been the past six months and was still wearing the same sweater I left her in six months ago. Unfortunately, Jeremy was asleep in his own house down the street so I didn’t get to see the bugger but I did see Rebecca (host mom), my two host sisters, my host uncle, my host grandparents and Kayla. I ate some corn with queso fresco and explained my life living as a Tumbesino up north. The two hours I spent there passed like seconds.

The only piece of bad news I have is regarding Pilli. Of course, I grew to love that dog a lot, and so asked about her whenever anyone from Tres de Octubre called. But when I asked about her this time, she was nowhere to be found. Saturlina (my host grandmom/ Pilli’s mom) told me Pilli had gotten sick developed a lump or something on her neck and is now living with someone in another neighborhood. Kayla then added that Saturlina KICKED Pilli out. I don’t know what or who to believe, but I do know that Pilli while under the care of a stranger, is alive and I guess that’s all that matters. But I was sad nonetheless.

I would probably say the weirdest part of that whole trip was using the bathroom again. As I entered, de ja vú kicked in to like, the millionth degree and I remembered how many pain-full hours I spent in there. I’m telling you, if I had a few more episodes like the ones I had in that bathroom, I would not be in the Peru anymore.

So that basically concludes my trip to Tres de Octubre; it made me sad to walk out but I don’t know why- I saw a little old lady on my way out, who used to wash Abby’s clothes up the street and she remembered me even though I think I only said hello to her three times in total. She asked about me, about Abby and if we missed Tres. I don’t know if she knew that Abby left but I told her she was good nevertheless.

On Thursday afternoon while waiting for my bus back north, I went to visit the Catacombs at the Iglesia San Fransisco in downtown Lima. I highly recommend them. I think the tour was 45 minutes at max but walking underground to see open tombs full of skulls that are 40 feet deep is sooooooo creepy and the underground passageways themselves could have been the set for any horror movie. But the history behind them (which I don’t feel like going into) is pretty neat and twisted in a sort of cultish kind of way. Yeah.

So as I’m writing this blog, I am back in San Juan- the heat hit me like a ton of bricks when I walked of the bus, but I’m happy to be home. I’m going to visit the Mangroves on Tuesday, which is super exciting and I’m surprised I haven’t been there yet (they’re only a half hour away). But there known through all of Peru, so hopefully they won’t let me down. See you folks.

Day count: 249 days in Peru
Días hasta cuando regreso: 19

i am sending this blog from a bus....technology equals awesome

Alright, this week was interesting to say the least. Well, or maybe I should say hectic- in general I was running around resembling a chicken with my head cut off. Speaking of, happy mother’s day! We’re finally killing our pet turkey today to celebrate- this bird’s time has come. She has taken a habit to sleeping perched right outside my room and leaving poopy presents in the shower and at my doorway. Not to mention she chases the other little chickies that I like around the corral. Mmmm…

So one of my projects here is forming a group of teenage health promoters from my three local high schools. Our focus? AIDS. Yep HIV, VIH, AIDS, or SIDA- you can say it how you want. There’s a lot of here in Tumbes- for a lot of reasons but I’m trying with my health post to train some teenagers so they can turn around and teach their friends and classmates about the importance of wearing a condom and well, all of that great stuff. So I decided we needed to have a meeting this week. The problem was, was that it felt like no one was working in my health post that week- especially my counterpart- she was out on sick leave. So I just planned the meeting myself- all down to pleading with the municipality to lend me the town ambulance that afternoon to go pick up the chicos from their towns. But it worked! I had 19 kids come and I thought it all went pretty well- thanks to the support I had from some other volunteers and three community health promoters. We drank generic inca cola and ate cookie crumbles (I had dropped the box of cookies earlier that day, causing them to smash into a million little pieces). Next meeting is scheduled for may 19th.

So HIV meeting was a success- but losing my cell phone the day before was not. I hailed a car to take me to my annex town and while leaning my body out the window to whisk off some excess sweat of mine, my cell phone slipped out of my pocket and into the car without me noticing. Don’t worry- I noticed 2.5 minutes after I got out of the car and was asking the school director for her cell phone number. Of course I didn’t remember what the car looked like, who the driver was, or where he was going so I could just hope he’d be a good Samaritan and deliver back the device to the only person that could read the English messages stored. Hah.
Within a half hour, the phone was turned off- never to be seen again and I was left, s.o.l. The only comfort I took was in sending my now lost phone and whoever was holding it- a message that read,

“God is watching you and so is the U.S. government.”

Alas, it was in vain because I never saw the little guy again.

So as you can imagine, I was in a sour mood that afternoon. I had also just been tricked out of 50 soles in a Peruvian bus station and then lost my prime time seating to lima (which is where I am headed today). As I sat on my front porch, pouting, eating an ear of corn, my 4 year-old Ulysses, decided to dance for me. He swirled his hips and sang some inaudible song because he has a terrible speech impediment and Lindsey is pronounced “Isi.” He grabbed my oversized sunglasses then and put them on his face and continued his dance until he yelled “oh my skirt”! I had no idea what he was talking about until he ran out of his house with a grass leaf skirt on that his mother had sewn him. I’m talking like a legit hula skirt. Here is a picture, that of course, does not do it justice:

My mood was improving and I ran back into my room to grab my video camera.
I came back and videoed Ulysses dancing but the best part was when he took all of his clothes off (shirt, sandals, and shorts) and danced in nothing but his hula skirt and his bright red undies.
So my day went from a 1 to a 9 on the greatness scale and I was really happy Ulysses decided to let me video his dance party.

My last tidbit story is yesterday I FINALLY made it out to the campo to Greg’s site. I still hadn’t been there and it’s only 45 minutes away! His town was having a mother’s day celebration weekend and he invited us all to the fun. Of course, there was a cock fight involved and so he invited the rest of the Tumbes volunteers to check it out. We were a. the only white people (obvi) and b. two other girls and I were three of the four girls who decided to watch. We stayed for a little while, had a beer and then had to get back before the combis stopped running. Unfortunately, we wanted to go back today because the town was having a “Cock War.” This is so much more than your normal “Cock fight.” It involves six roosters in a ring, and only one comes out alive. Talk about intensity. It sounds like something you would expect to see in a Gladiator movie. Too bad I will be on a 22 hour bus ride… tear.

Reality Hits, in a good way

Yesterday was the III Encuentro Regional de Promocion de Salud en la region de Tumbes. A heath promotion convention or sorts. My health promoters were nominated for “best health promoter team” in all of Tumbes.

In order to get to Tumbes yesterday, we (11 of us) had to fit in an ambulance that was smaller than a station wagon. I felt like a chicken being shipped off to the Purdue factory. But we all made it, in one piece and with out poster board intact.

We sat around for EIGHT hours, listening to different schools, health promoter groups and health posts give their shpeal on how they exemplified good health practices. It would have been okay if we were given a break but we weren’t. We ate lunch in our laps as we continued to listen to the speakers. I couldn’t’ take it any more at one point and left for an hour to get a slice of watermelon, use the internet and buy some cell phone credit. My butt was getting sore- I had to get up and move around.

Anyways, at 4:00 they announced the winners yesterday and my town won 1st place for best health promoter group!!! I was SO proud of the health promoters and you could tell they were really proud of themselves too. We won a printer for our health post and everyone got an official document with their name on it, signed by the mayor of Tumbes and some other important people. I ask a lot of these health promoters and some of them give a lot of their time to work with the health post and promote community health in San Juan- and they do it for free, or maybe for some crackers at the end of the day. So for them to get some official recognition like they did yesterday was well worth sitting around the whole day in a dress (given it was 100% cotton, floor length, and I sat Indian style in my chair).

Tomorrow to celebrate our awesome-ness, we are all going to the nearby beach and hanging out all day. I’m baking cookies. Yipee!!!!

Also, I would just like to publicly congratulate Maggie and Pfeffer (no way I’m using your first name pfeff) on successfully completing their first ½ marathon!!! I know they trained hard this spring and I just want you all to know how proud I am of you two!

Also, I would like to wish my awesome mother good luck tonight at the Children’s Hospital Charity Event. I know you’ve worked hard mom and have a great time tonight!

Okay, that’s all for today, happy first day of May people and I’ve got 36 more days to go until I get to visit home!!!!

Reality Hits

Though every week I feel like I could tell you all many things about the amazing on-goings of my town, sometimes I tend to leave out the harder stuff. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t like to write about it, or if I don’t want you all to know about it.

This week my uber-cute 11 year old cousin spent the night at our house. I came down for breakfast that morning, trudging around my new book-of-choice. It was a book by Robert Baer, a retired CIA operative that spent twenty years traveling the Middle East and Europe and fighting the war on terrorism at a grassroots level. Included in the book are a few pictures, most notably one of the U.S. embassy after its bombing in Beirut in 1983, and one of the twin towers smoking on September 11th.

Chela asked me flat-out why people like the terrorists hate Americans. It was 7:00 in the morning and my whole family had their ears perked for a response.

Not having a kid or ever have explained this topic to a youngster, I had to think of an appropriate, kid-friendly response. I threw in the thought that the United States represents a lot of things some people don’t like or don’t understand and one of those things is our liberalism (I then defined liberalism). Some people are really conservative (a.k.a. lacking women’s rights among other things) and between their language and culture, they think that they should kill us.
So that was interesting and much unlike my usual breakfast conversations. It did make me feel good though Chela replied that she didn’t think I was evil. One point for Peace Corps volunteer!

Later that day, I went to a going away lunch for this nurse in my town that I think is rather attractive and sad to see go. While waiting for my health post to get their act together and leave I poked my head in to see a man that had just been brought to our health post and was hyperventilating. I asked my counterpart what was up and what I thought she said was that he had fallen in the river and almost drowned. Well, that’s reason enough to get upset. It wasn’t until a little later that I really found out what happened after asking a few more questions.

To celebrate Earth Day, the man (actually a high school teacher) took his class from the city for a “nature walk” in my annex town next door. Everything was fine I guess until a group of kids snuck away to go look at the river (the one I used to bathe in before hearing there were alligators). I’m not quite sure how everything happened but one of the boys ended up in the river and disappeared. I don’t know if he fell and couldn’t swim (most people can’t even though we’re next door to the beach and river) or if he got caught in a whirlpool but he wasn’t seen again and the kids ran back to the teacher to tell what happened. The boy was presumed dead and lost when the teacher had to inform his parents an hour later.

The parents, told that their son had drowned but there was no body to prove it, told the teacher if he couldn’t find their son, they’d kill him.

That’s why he was hyperventilating in the health post. Out of grief and fear.
Three days later people found the boy’s body washed up next to the Tumbes bridge 5 miles downriver. To be honest, I’m amazed they even found it.

Not until then did I realize how dangerous the river Tumbes could be. Between a 15 hour period, its height can rise 10-15 feet from the rainwater that washes down from the mountains out towards Ecuador and when it’s swollen, it runs like Great Falls. During the dry season, people cross it all the time, on horses or just by swimming to get to their banana fields but I guess this time of year is different. I just find myself feeling badly for the teacher who thought it would be nice to take his students on a field trip on his day off.

Almost One Month Later...

Sorry peeps, I started this blog three weeks ago I just haven’t been able to finish it- I have no idea why!!! I think it’s because I have so much I could write about

Que tal amigos! It has been foreverrrr I am well aware, but cut me some slack; life has been going at the same speed of an F5 tornado. So yes, in this blog I have decided to highlight certain random points of my life instead of writing one that could compete with War and Peace.
First off - my birthday. I have never had, nor do I think I could ever aspire to have, a birthday as great as I had on March 24th, 2010. It was phenomenal. And I don’t mean in the sense Joseph Gordon-Levitt got down on bended knee and proposed to me. (although, don’t get me wrong people, that would have been great). It was just that I had to hold back tears after being witness to the unlimited kindness of my family and friends. I woke up to see my mom and cousin shucking potatoes to make a special birthday lunch that took HOURS TO COOK. I sang karaoke with my entire health post that all got together to celebrate my first birthday away from home. I danced the Macarena and ate guacamole with the other volunteers that came over to hang out and had a two hour dance party sober in my living room with my cousins. But these descriptions still do not give the people justice that I was with. It was incredible how many people remembered, came by to give me a hug, and truly were happy to spend time with me. I received the most thoughtful presents from neighbors, family, friends and even my sister’s friend’s mother crocheted me the most beautiful skirt I have ever seen, and I have never even met the woman.

These Peruvians continue to surprise me (note: this is where you are supposed to pause and think about all of the goodness in your life).
Okay, now that that’s all done and briefly described, I will let you in on my adventure to the jungle of Peru.

Well, I guess I should start off by being politically correct and telling you that I didn’t actually go to the deeeeep selva of Peru and travel by boat or try any hallucinogenic cactus drinks. I went to the “ baja selva” or lower jungle. This means I was in between the “deep selva” and the really high sierra, or mountains of Peru. So it made for a perfect climate. Sans humidity, sans sunburn, plus all the adventure I needed in a four day period.

Plus I got to reunite with some of my best friends in training.

And all of the greatness started off with a bidet. Yep. You wouldn’t think that a Peace Corps girl like myself would ever find herself in a situation when she would be using a bidet in South America and while on a Peace Corps budget. That’s because it wasn’t the Peace Corps budget that allowed me to use the glorified fountain- it’s because I stopped by to say hello to my friend who was staying at the luxurious hotel with her mother in Miraflores, Lima (shout outs to you Babs and Mrs. Bab) who was visiting that week. And in addition to that perk, my friends Katie, Annie, Babs, and I watched MTV music videos for two hours before we hopped on our night bus to La Merced, Pasco.

Moving on…

So to let all of geography wizards know, I was in the department of Pasco- next door to Húanuco and Ucayali, which is as close as you can get to the middle point of Peru. While there, I traveled to the towns of Oxapampa and Pozuzo to explore and stay in the GERMAN colonies that were founded there back in the 1850s. It was incredible. After driving by combi for 5 hours along a terrain that was bordered by a 1,000 foot cliff and a mountain on either side, let along no sign of civilization whatsoever, we suddenly came upon a town that looked like it was out of Hansel and Gretel. It was incredible. At first I couldn’t decide whether it was creepy like M. Night Shamalan’s movie “The Village” or if it was a really cute, rustic antique town. After two days, I decided on the latter.

We stayed at a lodge owned by a German-Peruvian that fed us delicious breakfasts every morning and was furnished with the comfiest beds I have slept in since leaving the States. We hiked a lot, went to a 300 foot waterfall and swam around, traversed a bat cave, saw the famous Peruvian “Cocks of the Rock” in a bird sanctuary, I tried sugar cane alcohol for the first time, went to Easter mass in a German- built Catholic Church, had a very successful hostel party until four, and ate falafel and hummus (my favorite meal) while passing through Lima.

Overall, it was best vacation I could have had.

I mean, to describe how it felt to stand underneath a 300 foot waterfall was crazy!
But it came at a price. The combi trip alone getting to this far out colony was insane and made even more so by our decision to go in the rainy season. After our first thirty minutes on the the combi to go to Pozuzo, I asked the driver if any of the combis had driven off the road/ cliffs before and into the river anywhere between 50-1,000 feet below. He replied no, but then immediately supplemented that statement with “no one drives of the road, the mudslides are what carries them away.”

That was the longest three hour car ride of my life as we drove along the edges of mountains where parts of the road (that term is being used as loosely as possible) had been washed away completely by mud slides into the tumbling ravine below. I made sure the Peruvian I was sitting next to had unlocked the door and was ready to jump out if it looked like any air flying was in store for us. Aunt Carol and Uncle Doug- remember when you all said you took the scariest road ever to Kapalupa in Maui that one year? With all of the crosses lining the sides of the road? This was like that, I’m guessing, but with a lot more mud.

What I deemed the funniest part of the trip was when we went exploring a bat cave. Loaded with headlamps and flashlights- we climbed into a hole resembling the rabbit’s from Alice in Wonderland and found ourselves in the midst of a fruit bat hideout. Yeah, the bats were cool I guess, but the funniest part was exploring the guano-filled cave with fourteen of us, some lacking headlamps and others wearing only Chacos on their feet.

After getting stuck in a locker when I was thirteen years old (don’t ask), I definitely had some chlaustrophobic feelings as I climbed in between rocks and could only imagine how it would feel like if I got lost in there. But I didn’t so no harm done.

After leaving the bat cave, we all went out to get dinner. I managed to find a place where I could wash my hands thoroughly of the guano that was staining them brown and then anti-bacterialized the hell out of them afterwards. However, I cannot say the same for all of the people I was with.

My friends and I picked up some street food and went to eat in the park. My friend Annie bought a papa rellena, which required her to eat it with her hand or a plastic fork. The fork wasn’t really doing its job as Annie ended up eating most of it with her hands. Until I pointed out that her hands were still brown and she had residues of bat guano on her face.

Annie never washed her hands.

Annie’s hands were brown.

Annie was sticking her hands in her mouth.

Annie was essentially eating bat poop.

I am wondering if I had ever laughed harder in my life than I did in those 3 minutes.

Granted, Annie also pulled grenadillas (citrus fruit) out of a trashcan the next day and ate them because they still looked “good.” I will admit, I ate one of them, before throwing it away because I felt weird eating someone’s garbage from a Peruvian public trashcan. But hey, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure right?

So right now as I look at my computer screen, Microsoft Word tells me I’ve written three pages. I feel like that’s a pretty heavy blog and your eyes are all tired by now so I will stop. But thanks for reading all of this, I’m sorry I didn’t put it up sooner. Hopefully I can write another one this week detailing what I’ve been up to for the past eight days as I’ve been traveling northern Peru for my “early in-service training.” It wasn’t a vacation people, I will tell you that. Stay tuned!