Pretending to be Health Volunteers

by Alisha & Micah

Peace Corps Peru has 5 programs currently operating throughout the country. They include Youth Development, Small Business Development, Rural Community Health, Water and Sanitation, and Environmental Awareness. As youth development volunteers, Micah and I work in many of these areas; however, this week we visited the sites of two health volunteers near us to help them out with some projects in their communities.The Health Post in San Juan de Lacamaca

The first stop was San Juan de Lacamaca, located about 2 hours from us where we spent the day helping with a cocinca mejorada (healthy kitchen project) that will burn wood more efficiently and channel smoke away from the cooking area. Our regional coordinator then showed us how to build a seed bed for starting plants like onions, lettuce, and tomatoes. We finished up the day (which happened to be World Water Day) with a short talk on water purification methods.

The nearly complete Cocina Mejorada

Getting ready to plant some seeds

Yesterday, we spent the morning in Lajas, where another health volunteers lives, about 30 minutes from Chota. Along with some other volunteers in the area and some youth from Lajas we put on a play about trash management for the two elementary schools. The goal of the play was to get the students and teachers thinking about recycling, composting, and creating micro landfills where trash is buried (instead of burned). The health volunteer in Lajas intends to start a recycling program in the schools in the coming months.

Waiting for the play to start

Trash in the river is a common problem

The actors honing their craft

Micah with the frightening Trash Monster

Working with volunteers from a different sector turned out to be a nice change of pace. We were able to see ways in which their communities are both similar to and different from ours, which is always an interesting experience.

Back to Class

By Alisha

School is now back in session as of the beginning of March and Micah and I find ourselves reconnecting with many of the teachers that we worked with last year. Today was our first class in the community of Colpa Tuapampa, which is about a 4-mile walk outside of town. Earlier in the week we coordinated a few things with the teachers we know from the school and decided to assist them with a class on sex education. We made the trek out to the community this morning in the rain and mud and arrived early to present our program to the director of the school. I wanted to be sure that we didn't step on his toes with the start of the program, so we arrived in plenty to time to go over our ideas with him and ask his formal approval of the project. Our experience in Peru has been that school directors and teachers encourage us to do whatever we want, whenever we want. Today was no exception. We talked about the program with the director for about 3 minutes, and then the conversation drifted to questions he had about the United States, which led to a smorgasbord of conversation topics. One weird hour later, we had covered the following:

• 9/11 - detailed questions about the motivations of the attack and if the towers will be rebuilt (a very common question, so common, in fact, that we were asked the very same thing again about 30 minutes later by a student )
• British colonial history of the United States (including architecture)
• How could there possibly be African Americans in the US if the country is a former British colony? Followed by a brief explanation of slavery and immigration.
  
• Osama Bin Laden- Where is he?
  
• Population control in China
• Property laws in the United States
• How much money our parents make
• When will we have children? (We are asked this at least 20 times per week)
  
• Average height of people in the US
• Earthquakes
• Family violence (including incest)
• Bestiality

A year-and-a-half ago we would have left his office completely bewildered, but now this type of conversation seems strangely natural.

Argentina

by Alisha

Micah and I just returned to Chota from a week-long vacation in Buenos Aires. We rented an apartment in the city with some of our friends from Peace Corps Peru and spent our time leisurely wandering around the city. We checked out some of the tourist spots like the Plaza de Mayo, Fine Arts Museum, Modern Art Museum, and the famous Recoleta Cemetery where Eva Perón is buried. We spent time in many of the neighborhoods and parks in Buenos Aires and ate and ate and ate. We had heard a lot about the great steak, empanadas, and pasta dishes before our trip and we were not disappointed.

Evita Perón's tomb (above) in the Recoleta Cemetery (below), which is one of the most exclusive cemeteries in the world.

A view of La Casa Rosada (Pink House) from the city's main plaza (Plaza de Mayo) where the president lives.

Even the hot dogs were delicious!

Colorful houses in La Boca neighborhood. The Boca Juniors soccer stadium is nearby.

Puente de la Mujer, a pedestrian bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava (who also designed the Milwaukee Art Museum), in the Puerto Madero neighborhood.