Lessons learned: beware of holes in the sidewalk and chained monkeys

by Micah

Life in Peru continues forwards much like it does elsewhere in the world. We seem to be getting busier as time goes by, which is a good feeling. As has been mentioned in previous entries, our first three months or so are to be almost entirely dedicated to a thorough Community Diagnostic, and lots of the time we spend "diagnosticating" basically boils down to having conversations that range from very informal interactions to somewhat formal sit-down interviews. Although we've been busy with that, sometimes we just don't feel that busy, so the fact that our time is becoming more and more occupied is nice. To give our diagnostic process a bit more formality, we have developed and begun implementing a survey with high school students, which has taken up a lot of our time this week. The only official project we're supposed to initiate during our first three months is the painting of a world map with a group of youth in some sort of public space. After a series of meetings with administrators and teachers at one of Chota's high schools, we finally had our first meeting with the group of students with whom we'll be undertaking this project. They were a bit reserved during the first meeting, but I think that once we put brush to wall, they'll start having fun. We'll be sure to post pictures as the process unfolds.

Some other highlights since the last update include a trip to Cajamarca, our departmental capital, last weekend. It's a seven-hour bus ride, so we don't go too often. Actually, this was my first trip since arriving at site in August. (Alisha stopped there on her way to a meeting in Lima several weeks ago.) We saw a bunch of people from our training group, and we had a lot of fun. Also, Alisha fell into a hole in the sidewalk and sustained some massive bruises. I was unable to aid her, since I was already occupied with helping a blind gentleman find his way to the plaza. It's not often that all of those circumstances present themselves at once, so we've had some good chuckles about it.

In other news, we were walking around one day when we heard this loud animal screech somewhere above our heads. We were surprised to discover that the screech's source was a small monkey chained to a second-story balcony. We plan on capturing a picture very soon...