Week in Review

By Alisha

It's summer break here in Peru. While it can get really warm on the coast at this time of year, where we live in the mountains the temperatures are moderate. Our summer is really a rainy season, which at this time last year was much, much worse with heavy rains almost everyday. Students are on vacation until classes start again in early March. Our host mom and our host brother and host sister are visiting family in Lima and Ica and many students travel to the coast for summer programs or to visit family. Our house and our community are a little bit quieter this time of year, but there are still plenty of kids to work with. We are getting our sports clubs and our literacy project off the ground for our summer projects.

There are always funny anecdotes and small things that happen in our daily life worth sharing, but I think we are so accustomed to life here that we don't share them in our blog. I thought I would share some of this week's gems.

On our way back from an outlying community an older man called us over to talk. Our conversation went a little like this:

Old guy: Hey come over here. You aren't from around here are you?
Me: No, we are from the US.
Old guy: I didn't think you where from here. What are you doing here? I always see you walking.
Micah: We are volunteers who work with youth.
Old guy: And what about the old people? You don't help them?
Micah: Well...
Old guys: Can't you give old people shots?
Micah: We aren't health workers.
Me: We work more in education.
Old guy: Oh okay. So, you can't help me with agricultural projects?
Me: No, we don't have any training in that.
Old guy: Oh well, I like to stay informed. Sometimes you see foreigners and sometimes they bring terrorism.
Micah: Do you think we are terrorists? Because we're not.
Old guy: No, you guys are good. I talked to you, so you're good.

We also visited the site of a new health volunteer in the area. Her site is about an hour hike outside our community. We stopped by her health post, ate lunch at her house, hung out with her host family, and even had a jump rope competition. It is always difficult to leave someones house, since they often tell you to stay longer or offer you food as you are trying to leave. At around 4pm it was time for us to make the hike back to Chota, so we politely tried to say goodbye to the family. The host mother told us to stay a little longer and asked me what time it was. I told her that it was 4pm and that we really should be getting back. She then told us that we had plenty of time since it was really 3pm. Confused, I looked at Micah, but he had no idea what was going on either. The woman went on to explain that in January "summer hours" (I can only guess something like daylight savings) start so instead of it being 4pm right now it was really 3pm. We told her that we had never heard of "summer hours" (since Peru doesn't have daylight saving), but didn't argue. Shortly after we managed to make our escape.