Discomfort

As I step on the small alvocado green 15-seater bus, my mind is immediately taken back to my other life by the aromas of exhaust and mildew. My other life where I am tough and accustomed to discomfort and simple conversation. My other life, that is more difficult in many ways, but the simplicity keeps me complacent. I find myself at ease heading back to site after a good 12 days of vacation; the best vacation I have ever had up to this time. I begin to ready my body for the less pleasurable ride ahead along with the rains, mud, and darkness that are in front of me as I adjust my backpack between my legs and sink into the overused seat cushions beneath me. To prepare my mind is a slower process and endures the change throughout the journey beginning with the smells as the air thickens with hints of sweat as people fill the bus.

I become astonished at my resiliance to discomfort as I look at the seat across the isle from me and notice stains on the cushion, no doubt from the oral discharge of a weary passenger in the past. In seconds thereafter, I begin to feel the moisture between my back and the seat behind me from the morning heat and try to avoid considering the residual sweat particles that reside in the seat that are now mixing with mine. I think that my resiliance is a learned behavior executed by simply ignoring the discomfort and alleviated by the fact that no one else seems to be troubled. Once moving, I contribute to ignoring the discomfort of the trip by falling asleep, something at which I have always had success and in this time, it was no different.

As I awake from the jerks and accelerations, I find myself in a semi-lucid state and begin to try and put things into perspective again. I am headed back to site after a long vacation to the jungle with my friends. It feels as if I have been gone 2 months even though it has only been 12 days. My vacation was a time where I felt at ease, could easily express myself to my friends, and enjoyed the luxuries of eating what I wanted, sleeping when I wanted, and spend what I wanted. In light of this, I had continually battled with feelings of guilt. Guilt because I got to do and experience what many people in my site never could. Guilt because while I was having fun in the jungle, the people at my site were working and my projects were at a standstill. Now I was going to be back and face the questions about what I had done on my vacation and try to sugarcoat the fact that although I supposedly lived like them, I had certain benefits that they don't have. This is everypresent in my mind.

Now I am back at site and looking at how to take on from where I left off. After unpacking, cleaning, and visiting close friends, I quickly remember all the things that need to go on my to-do list. I see myself taking on too much like I did last year. I am trying to isolate a few important projects to follow through with more effectively, but we will see what actually happens.

Stayed tuned for pics and descriptions of the jungle and a summary of my projects in site. Enjoy pics of my site in the meantime.

My site at night with nightly fog rolling in.

A Little Bit of Sum'n

It's amazing how much one's mindset can change in a little over a year about certain aspects such as cleanliness, happiness, what is edible and what is not, and most significantly (yet broadly stated): life. You can hold you're laughter back about the life part, this is not one of those posts that try to get too deep and philosophical that it ends up being cliché and crosses over to the sappy side. I am simply saying that when so many key aspects of one's physical environment is changed, it tends to affects the ways that one thinks and in turn can change one's motivations and goals. I won't get into why my views on cleanliness have been altered to spare the reader (which may be my mom) of judgment of me and my showering and bathroom habits. However, getting at what I now find edible is something I barely find worthy of writing about, although maybe myself a year and a half ago would disagree. Now the only thing that I am challenged by is how to allow myself to eat more bone (I am now able to consume the cartilage!). I now almost enjoy mondongo (intestines of cow and pig) and prefer rellenos (pig intestine filled with blood, Yuca Leaf, and Yerba Buena), Cuey (Guinea Pig), and other dishes that are probably interesting to hear about but now can't even quite think of since it's a part of my daily diet.

Happiness however, is still something that confuses me here. I am caught between my views in the States of being happy and how people are seemingly happy here. I see people in poverty, people with lots of responsibility, people that have nothing to do, and people that have no life term goals or opportunities, simply content with how things are going- enjoying fiestas, dancing, smiling, conversing. This confuses me. Up to now, this confused me more internally and unconsciously, but now I think I have been able to articulate it to myself. I arrived here subconsciously thinking "why are people wasting so much time in remedial tasks rather than trying to advance and provide themselves with opportunities and ease for their futures and their kids' future?" Now I understand a little more after being here for a while. I think it's a mix between not having trust or confidence that they are capable or worthy of it, becoming so entangled with daily chores and daily life that the big picture cannot be seen, and that advancement (or, my previous perception of advancement) isn't necessarily their goal. Seeing this, along with reading some books such as Three Cups of Tea and Irresistible Revolution, has helped me to understand that what I -slash my culture - view as important in life isn't necessarily what others view as important in life or what IS actually important in life. I have seen through my time here, that yeah, people want better stoves, latrines, and infrastructure to better their lives physically, but really, I think everyone (as individuals) just want people to care, to listen. I feel that people have appreciated more from me simply visiting them on a continual basis than what I can provide them (although they appreciate handouts too). In all sincerity and for risk of being cliché, I have found the most valuable thing that I can give people is my time.

Peace Corps is a huge choice, and it is for the reason that I was initially afraid of. A problem doesn't affect you if you are unaware of it, but once it comes into view, a new responsibility is then placed at your feet to accept or not...

It's Been a While

Umm... hi. I guess I've kinda neglected this thing lately (lately = like 5 months). Whoops. Well I honestly have no idea how to summarize all the crazy,inexplicable, halarious, confusing, interesting, and fun events that have passed since then, but I'll try to remember a few; at least the interesting ones.

----ADVISORY: After reading this over, I realize there is a lot of complaining in this entry, so beware, and try not to judge me too much... I think this entry helped to diffuse some embedded frusteration (which should probably be saved for a journal instead of a blog).

First, an update in my work and general life. I guess this will provide for some necessary background. I just got back from a trip home to New Mexico for Christmas! It was very much what I wanted and needed. I think it also helped me to appreciate Peruvian culture more when I returned. Before I left I was getting a little frusterated with the slowness and ineffciencies in the culture here. I feel like you want me to insert an example here so:

The other day I needed to buy an in-country plane ticket for an upcoming trip. I went to the LAN office to to buy my ticket. I selected all the necessary information and then was told that I needed to go to a bank to pay them (w/ my credit card). Once waiting in the line at the bank for about 30-40 mins, I finally get my turn to speak to the bank attendent only to realize that no, in fact they do not accept credit cards there. Right. Okay. So then, knowing that I cannot make my purchase without cash (which I did not have, which is another story in inefficiency), I decided to go back the hotel and rest since it was late and I was tired from running errands all day. The next day, I was able to borrow cash from a friend, and then went back to the LAN office to repeat the process since I was aware that whatever takes place in the system when buying a ticket goes invalid the following day. So then it was time to wait in line at the bank again, but this time, paying with cash was thankfully not a problem. I then went back to the LAN office with my reciept showing that I paid and to see if there was any fun tasks ahead of me. My favorite part is what follows:


Me: Hi, I just paid and here's my reciept. Now, what do I need to do?
Lady: That's it, you're all done.

My friend: So is there not any type of validation you have to do on your end to prove that we paid?

Lady: Oh yeah! Hold on (going back to the computer to enter in the reciept information).

Me: Thinking: riiiight... so what would have happened if I would have just walked away without knowing that she had to do that?

Moving back to excuses why I haven't kept up my blog, I was also super busy the months before with scheduled activities EVERYDAY of the week, which gets really tiring when there aren't any days of descansa and you have to cook most of your own meals, and people continually want to get you drunk and keep you up forever and everything runs behind schedule and people take advantage of your time and you should spend time with your host family and family friends and you don't sleep much and your shower doesn't work and you have to walk around your house and downstairs to collect water. -Sorry for the unprovoked tangent-. I would travel most of the days to the campo meeting with JASS's (Junta Administradoras de los Servicios de Saneamiento), or water and sanitation committees and teaching disinfection methods and clorination processes. This consists of organizing the meeting by sending out invitations (convocatorios) and/or radio announcements, collecting materials to take like chloro, a bucket, a venonuclisis hose and dropper, brushes, and most importantly transportation and people to go with you! The organization part is usually the most difficult and most challenging. When we get there, we usually have to walk another 10 mins - 1 hour to the meeting center and wait another hour for people to start showing up. After we make small talk for 20 mins, we start a meeting and then head to look at the water system. The system can be anywhere from 10 mins away to 1.5 hours away, always uphill. Here are a few pics of the nice views we get to see though.

Speaking about some of the work I've done in the meantime:

I organized a Healthy Living project along with the Municipality and the Health Post in a nearby caserio after completing surveys about the needs and wants of the community. The project included various educative sessions and a few hands-on workships to help promote health in the home. The themes hit on aspects from personal hygiene to family well-being, family trash management, safe water use, nutriction, and went over the common illneses that the families face. The families that completed the necessary requirements are receieving materials to build better stoves, which relocate the smoke from the wood outside the house therefore not contaminating the air inside house which can affect various health aspects for the family members among other benefits (preventing lung disease, eye problems, back problems, and is overall a healther way to keep food away from animals and bugs on the floor).

Now that I'm back and it's rainy season, I have a lot more time. Most of the people here head to the city because it can be a miserable season to be here. First offi, hardly any people are here; secondly, it rains all the time; thirs, the mud is terrible and the raods become dangerous. Sweet right? Actually, I am enjoying it. I'm teaching math to 3rd and 4th graders at the summer school that the municipality puts on. I am also enjoying meeting with the tourism committee that I got invited to be on.

Well I think I've mostly caught up on where I'm at. I'll try to think of better stories for the next time. I think the issue is that after dealing with some situations, nothing really stands out anymore as unusual. I'll try to keep better track! (and keep my complaining to my journal).

Downtime

I have been in site for almost 7 months now... wow. And in Peru for 10? That can't be right. Sometimes I feel super-integrated (whatever that means), but other times I feel like I am still just a stranger in another country.

Right now I feel a little stuck. This week I was pretty unproductive with another fiesta (anniversary of one of the colegios), my counterpart being out of town, and outright laziness from my own lack of motivation lately. It's definitely been a down week, but nothing compared to what many volunteers go through. Overall I am very happy; I'm in a great town with internet, some cell phone service, a partial variety of food, and a beautiful view everyday! The rough times for me come from guilt from being here and simply feeling incompetant, unproductive, or outright inutil. Is that an English word or Spanish word? I don't even know anymore.


On a positive note for today, I had a fun session teaching minis (kids from pre-school) a little English. Like I said before, I'm not sure how useful it is for them, but I know I sure have fun hanging out with them and just doing something productive. The kids at that age sure give a lot of love and I can feel it. I think because a lot of times they don't get attention at home. I will also be starting to teach an English class once a week for kids in the institute (ages 17-24). I normally wouln't be inspired to do this and don't see a huge benefit for them, but this group has expressed a big interest, and seemingly a lot of people will come. I'm looking to use it as a group to have some fun, play some games, and give them whatever help they want in learning English. They have a lot of benefits since English is everywhere.

A Little bit of Everything

So I'm not too sure how to start this one because there's so much to say since my last blog, but I think I will begin by illustrating a sample experience from the other day to paint a picture of a typical day in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer. I wake up to frigid and still dark winter morning in my poorly supported bed matress. I hestitate to leave my well-blanketed, yet still slightly insufficient bed domain still beaming with residual warmth from a good night's rest, but find the will power to thrust myself into the day by throwing the covers off my warm body and popping out of bed. I look around in slight dissapointment to find a somewhat disordered house from me lazily throwing previously worn clothes and work materials due to a recent increase in schedule. I decide that a shower is worth the effort today in spite of the coldness because I hadn't showed in two days due to not running in two days and I should appear more presentable and not smell for the meeting that I was to attend in the morning in a caserio (small annex) about an hour away. Skipping forward past the terribly cold shower and preparing breakfast, I now find myself holding onto metal bars in the back of a truck on a windy muddy road with a health post worker. We are heading to another Peace Corps volunteer's site with my JASS (Junta Administadora de Servicios de Saneamiento: elected group from the community to be in charge of the water) to attend a training on administration and operation of JASS. Holding on tight through the bumps and rotations of the truck, I look around at the vast green scenery and valley below (way below) and ask myself: Where am I? Am I really living here? I realize my confusion about reality by hearing from within the truck a song I haven't heard in years by The Outfield (80's music). This reminds me of my childhood and my sisters back home which explains my confusion due to such cultural intertwining that I experience. I get brought back into reality realizing that I am cold from the rain that I now feel in addition to the reminance of my bone-chilling cold shower earlier that morning. I quickly remember that I should pay attention since I brach hit me in the face last time I was riding in a truck on the very same road.

It's crazy that I've been here for more than 6 months-a half a year in site!- but I still am amazed by the fact that I live here and how beautiful it is here! I can honestly say that this is the happiest that I've been in a long time (not that I was that unhappy before) and that this is exactly what I was wanting from this experience. It's indecribable how satisfying daily interactions can be exemplifying the integration that has taken place in this period of time that I have lived in my site. I am utterly content by the work that I am doing and the progress that I am TRYING to make. I realize how difficult developement is. But it's strange that I can actually feel the developement taking place. I've always wanted to live in the past to see and be a part of developement, and now I have the chance. I've told people how I feel like I've went back in time but with a few modern-day conveniences like phone and internet.

So moving on to real news and updates in what I have been doing here. I got to be the padrino (sponsor) of two olympic games, one for the technoligical institute in my town and one for one of the 'high schools'. Funny story: the communication issue does not just reside in the language barrier... so I was elected to be the sponsor of this 5th cycle of the nursing program at the institute and had understood (along with the madrina-other sponsor- who speaks spanish) that we were to buy sporting shirts just for girls. We later found out that we were supposed to buy unisex shirts since there were also boys in the group. THIS WAS NOT THE FAULT OF MY INABILITY TO SPEAK OR UNDERSTAND SPANISH! It's just a part of the culture for things to be unclear. Like for example, time. A meeting at 8am means it will start anywhere from 8:30 to 10:30 depending on the perceived importance of the meeting. This can waste a lot of time for a PC volunteer. Nuff said. Back to the olympiadas, my boys soccer (fulbito) team ended up winning the tournament, and I ended up getting to play a game with the professors, which was fun even though my team lost.

Seriously?

I'm beginning to think that I'm not supposed to go back to site. So here's the story. Please don't judge me... I'm a little embarassed to say so, but I haven't been in site since the 24th of March. Wow! So all my out-of-sitedness has an explanation, which was discussed on the previous blog post up to my AIDS workshop which ended last Wednesday. After this I had made plans to go home the following day, as would be expected, but started feeling sick, so I stayed another day. I felt worse, so I stayed another day and started taking an antibiotic after talking with our doctor on the phone. Then I felt a little better and was more confident in not having a fun case of diarhea or vomiting during the 5 hour roller coaster ride back to site, so I decided to leave the following day. I was a little nervous about being weak because all I've eaten the last 3 days was like 6 Ritz crackers and a half a piece of Pizza (bad idea). But I was able to pack up all my stuff that I needed or picked up throughout my almost month-long excursion (which is a lot) and manage to get it to the bus terminal to head to site. I get there, have them put my stuff in the backage area, go to pick up my ticket that I reserved the previous day and realized the lady had forgotten to write my name down to reserve my seat. I could have stood for about half of the way, although I'm not sure I could have handled it today. Based on my options, I decided that another day of rest wouldn't hurt to get myself better, I could see my friends that are in town one last day, and just deal with lugging my stuff around one more day.

So here I am back in the hotel spending more money for another stay, still not in site, and feeling super guilty and like an unproductive Peace Corps volunteer. One day I will get back to site. I'm hoping that day is tomorrow.

It is evident by my 'mood' demonstrated in this blog that I am not super happy with the situation at hand (mainly due to guilt), but as I look as possible positives I see that this guilt may provide me with some extra drive to be a badass worker when I return. There you have it: Bad; and Good.

Instead of putting pics up of the hotel room that I stayed in for the last 3 days, which would be super boring, here are pics of other fun things over my month-long 'excursion'.

I'm a congrejo!

Out of Site Out of Mind

Man, I've been out of site a lot lately and have undergoing some feelings of guilt. Although many of these reasons have been Peace Corps related, and the others Peace Corps appproved, I am looking at going back to a whole new world in my site. After getting back from Reconnect, I had to head out again for something called PDM which is a project developement workshop to be attended with selected community members. I went ahead and attached a vacation trip to Ayacucho with a few awesome Peace Corps friends Frieda and Fletcher (aka Fletch City) to visit my sponsor child. He is a great kid and always had a smile on his face. I had brought him some gifts: a soccer uniform of Peru, a soccer ball, stickers, writting and drawing materials with colors, and some books. He seemed to really like them, which made me happy. We met in the NGO office along with the mom and members of the NGO and then headed to a park to play. The experience was great but went by fast. I was very glad I had that opportunity since it is so rare that sponsors have the opportunity to visit their sponsor kids.

After the PDM workshop, I felt much better about getting a good sustainable project started. Instead of spreading my work throughout several caserios, we felt that choosing one or two and doing a lot within those caserios would be more sustainable and overall a better idea. I can't wait to get the project plan together and start! I'm happy I have a project that I'm excited about now. Unfortunately, I won't be back in site until a few days after Easter because it wasn't really worth going back to site between my arrival from the PDM workshop in Lima and a regional meeting in my capital city. After the regional meeting, I had another couple-day period that I chose to spend visiting Eric's site near the regional capital. I loved his site (except the mosquitos) and realized how different the Peace Corps Peru atmosphere is for everyone. I went along with Matt and Mark and we helped a bit with the World Map project and a trial compost batch. Eric's host family was great. The mosquitos were not.

Now I'm back in the regional capital about to head out to the beach with other volunteers to celebrate our semana santa vacation. When I come back I have another workshop on AIDS and HIV through a US government initiative and then I finally get to go back to site. I've been gone for so long and feel pretty bad and guilty about it. I head that it is drying up and the sun us out, so it should be pretty different to see. I can't wait to start being outside and running again in site. This is a difficult season for the Sierra volunteers. I still think I like it better than the mosquitos though.

I hope everyone is well. Send questions if you have them! Have a happy Easter!