Before coming to Peru the thought of Peace Corps stirred up images of small communities, rural living, lack of electricity and lack of running water. Micah and I were placed in a site of more than 30,000 people, with electricity, widely available Internet (including wireless), cell phone service and a large daily market filled with fruits and vegetables. We have water service daily, but only for about 2 hours in the morning. The realization of living in a large community with many amenities was a shock to what we had expected our experience in Peru to be and while our community is somewhat isolated there isn’t anything that we need that can’t be found in our site. There are of course advantages to having so many amenities in our site, but sometimes I find myself wishing I were living in a small community where everyone knew who I was and everyone knew what I was doing.
We seem to have found a solution to wanting the experience of a smaller site as well and for the past 9 months or so, we have been working with youth groups in two communities outside of our site doing a variety of activities and are currently teaching a weekly vocational orientation course. We hike about an hour and a half to reach one of the communities and about 45 minutes to the other community. These projects provide me with a sense that we are reaching a group of youth who on average are more disadvantaged than those living in the city. We have also seen a big difference in the youth groups. Most of the youth in the community farthest away from our site wear traditional clothing and are much more reserved than youth we have worked with in the city or in the other youth group. I feel a sense of accomplishment just getting to know these youth and have seen many of them open up more and more as we have developed a trusting relationship with many of them.
I also look forward to our hikes out to these communities. People we meet along our route are likely to greet us as we pass and express interest in what we are doing in their communities. We also get this interest and reception in our community, but it’s a difference type of experience that is hard to explain. Many times the interest people have in us in our site revolves around us teaching them English or doing some other type of activity with their children. It is hard to continually explain that while we teach some English we aren’t able to teach English to everyone. In contrast, when we meet people along the routes to our youth groups people have a general interest in us and want to ask us a few questions about the United States. There are few requests for programs or for English classes. It can be refreshing to have a nice conversation with someone without a request for something.
In a few days we will complete one year in our site. The groups of Peru 13 (we are Peru 11) will start their service next week and Peru 14 will arrive in a month. With most of Peru 9 finished with their service this month and Peru 10 finishing in November we will soon be the next group getting ready to close our service.
