So Close

By Alisha

Semana Santa (which is consists of Holy Thursday to Easter Sunday) is a big holiday in Peru and a lot of people take the opportunity to travel during these days. A lot of Peruvians head to the beach to have an end-of-the-summer blowout while others stay home and have more of a traditional Easter celebration. Micah and I and three friends of ours from our training group decided to go to Chachapoyas, which is the department capital of Amazonas (the department to the east of were we live in Cajamarca). Near Chachapoyas are various pre-Incan ruins including Kuelap, which is sometimes, called the Machu Picchu of Northern Peru. There are also beautiful hikes and one of the tallest waterfalls in the world. That being said we were really excited to experience this relatively unknown (outside of Peru) tourist attraction.



On a map it appears as through one could almost walk to Chachapoyas from were we live in Cajamarca, but we were told that the best route is actually from Chiclayo on the coast. From Chiclayo there is a paved road the entire way as well as routine and secure bus service. What else could we ask for? After meeting up with our friends in Chiclayo (we have been on a bus 17 hours at this point) we headed out to finish the last 10 or so hours to Chachapoyas. Everything was going smoothly until at about 3:30am the bus stopped and we were told that the bus was not able to pass on the road ahead, but as soon as we could pass we would. After pondering the information that we will pass when we can pass and wondering what that meant we drifted back to sleep. At 6:00am the bus hadn't moved and it was getting light enough to go outside and check out the situation. We were surprised to see around 40 other buses with weary travelers wondering around. After considering our options: hiking to Chachapoyas, walking back to the last town to see about another bus back on the coast, or sitting on our bus indefinitely, we decided to start walking back in the opposite direction to try to get back to the coast and salvage our vacation. When we reached the end of the buses the last bus had decided to turn around and head back to Chiclayo and then Trujillo. We hopped on and decided to go to Huanchaco the beach near Trujuillo that we had visited last November.


After a 12-hour bus ride we arrived in Trujillo and happily got off of the bus since we had spent the last 25 hours straight on buses (at this point Micah and I have been on buses for 37 hours).


We ended up having a nice and very relaxing vacation which included a Peruvian Eric Clapton cover band which is something that everyone should experience at least once in their lives. The band covered such classics as Tears in Heaven, Layla, and Spoonful. The only problem was that no one in the band could speak English. Nonetheless it was magical.

Working hard for the money

By Alisha & Micah

This is our friend Claudio, an Afghan hound
who prances around Chota. He is by far the best
looking dog in town.

It has been a while since our last post and we are finding ourselves content and busy with work. To give you an idea of what a Youth Development Volunteer in Chota does, here are some of the projects that we are currently working on:

Health Facilatators with the University of Cajamarca-Chota
For the past two months we have been meeting with a group of nursing students in order to train them in a variety of health-related topics so that they can develop a series of presentations aimed at educating high school students, whose current health education is lacking.

Youth Groups with a local NGO
One of our community partners runs a program aimed at combating child labor. We are collaborating with him on four different youth groups in three communities for kids involved
in child labor. We have been doing a variety of activities related to healthy lifestyle
development and vocational planning.

Self-Esteem Workshop with Kindergarten class
We live down the street from a kindergarten and we thought it would be fun to do some
self-esteem activities with the 5 year-old class. So far, so good.

English Club
When we arrived in Chota, our host family expressed interest in us teaching their two children English, and we thought that it was a great idea to work with them on some English skills. Well, word of our English Club is spreading like wild fire and has become the bane of our existence. Literally every single time we meet (twice a week) new parents show up begging us to make their kids fluent in English. It is really hard to turn people down on the spot and we feel like there is an expectation that there is the expectation that we will continue to teach English for the remainder of our service. The problem is 1) we are not English teachers and 2) there is a big gap between the parents' desire for their children to learn English and the children's motivation to do so. We really don't have a problem teaching some English, but we are going to have to make some changes in order to have some control over the number of participants. Hopefully, English Club will be a very short term project.

Environment Club
At the end of last school year, we were approached by a highly motivated student from one of the high schools in town. She was very interested in collaborating with us on some environmental projects, especially instituting recycling at her school. We are now working with her and a group of high school seniors to plan some Earth Day activities (Earth Day is completely new to Chota) and try to impliment environmental education and a recycling program at their high school. This is a really fun project because everything has been the ideas of the students who are really positive and motivated.

Baby English Club (thanks to Micah)
The mother of one of the students in our environment club runs a "bilingual" daycare. Problem being that neither she nor any of the staff speaks English. At all. So, she asked us to help them out by coming and exposing the babies and toddlers that attend her daycare to English. Since Micah happily agreed, we are now spending an hour a week speaking English to children who hardly speak Spanish due to the fact that they are 10 months old.

PTA Meetings with Early Intervention Program
We are bringing the fun back to monthly parent meetings at an early intervention program for children with disabilities. We are not sure how much fun is really being had, but hopefully the parents are learning new approaches to incoorporate their children into daily activities and into the community.

The Children's Shelter
Work continues with the children at the Albergue. We have done lots of self-esteem activities, sports, nutrition, arts and crafts and...English! This is still one of our favorite places to work.

Addionally, we are planning to start a few more things within the next month, including a Friday night movie club to give young people a positive social activity and a program for university students studying to be English teachers.

For the Easter holiday we get a few free vacation days and are planning to go to Chachapoyas. Stay tuned for pictures...