Alisha & Micah in Peru

Leaving home/Going home

2010-07-13T18:41:00.005-05:00

by Alisha & Micah

Today is our last day in Chota. We'll travel to Cajamarca tomorrow morning and take a night bus from there to Lima, where we'll spend a few days doing final paperwork and exit interviews before flying back to the States on July 22. It is hard to believe that our two-year Peace Corps service is coming to an end. When we arrived in Peru on June 6, 2008, we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into. We were filled with anticipation to find out where our site would be, what kind of work we would do, and what our host family and our community would be like. More than two years later, we can look back and see the life we built here for ourselves. Working with Peruvian youth and their families has been has fun, frustrating, challenging, eye-opening, and educational. When we reflect on the work we've done, it's difficult to know how much progress or change we've made in our site. We certainly felt like we were banging our heads against a wall a lot of the time. However, the balance of our work experience has been very positive.

The opportunity to come to know Peru in the way we have come to know it is one of the best components of our experience in the Peace Corps. Working with local agencies, living with a host family, traveling throughout the country, and attempting to develop solutions to problems that people face here every day has given us a profound understanding of this beautiful country's human and physical geography. Not many people develop that sense of understanding about their own countries, let alone a foreign one, and we're both aware of the good fortune we've had in this regard.

We would like to thank all of those who have followed along with us through this blog. It's difficult to distill our experiences into semi-regular missives like these, but we hope that you have enjoyed reading about our experiences. We certainly have enjoyed recording them here.

To anyone who is reading this blog and is considering going abroad, whether to work as a Peace Corps volunteer or a volunteer or employee of some other organization, or to study, or to travel and experience a new place, we hope that our journey will help to convince you to do so. You'll have good and bad experiences, but, ultimately, you'll be better for having made the effort to understand people who are different from you.

Chota Fest 2010

2010-06-29T10:19:00.017-05:00

"The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta."

The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

by Alisha

Our town's annual party (also known as the Feria Internacional San Juan Bautista de Chota or La Fiesta Brava) was held last week. Thousands of people come to Chota from the surrounding areas and throughout Peru. Many people who grew up in Chota or have family from the area return to celebrate the fiesta and reconnect with their roots. This year we met several groups of North Americans with family ties to the area who came back to Chota for the fiesta. Like last year, the town party included a Marinera dance competition, fire works, exhibitions of traditional foods and local artisan products, a beauty pageant (reinas campesinas), concerts, dances, and, most importantly, bullfights.

Several other Peace Corps volunteers made the trip to Chota for the fiesta (pictured above: our friends Elizabeth and Nicole). We took a trip out to a rock forest one morning to check out the strange rock formations that cover a field about an hour outside of town. The rocks have been shaped over the years by rain and wind. Our host family's dog, Tobby, came along for the ride and had his first experience riding in the back of a truck.

Micah and our host sister, Nicole, enjoying the afternoon at San Juan Pampa

The town party includes two days of activities at San Juan Pampa (San Juan field) which can be best described as a fair. Thousands of people congregate to watch moto-cross, horse riding competitions, the beauty pageant, the corrida de bufas (imagine guys dressed up as clowns running around a rink with very small/tame bulls and the comedy that may ensue). Generally, people go to eat, drink, and be merry.

Food vendors set up shop by tenting off a space and by cooking fried pork and cuy (guinea pig). Typically, each stand is complete with an enormous, freshly killed pig, that meat is cut from throughout the day. The cuyes are also butchered on site. The fresh meat is then cooked over an open flame.

People arrive early to find a spot on one of the hills surrounding San Juan Pampa.

Pictured above: Alfonso de Lima (Peru) and below: Hérnan Ruiz "El Gino" (Colombia)

The three Spaniards from left to right: Alejandro Esplá, Sanchéz Vara, and Juan José Padilla

"'Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.'"
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway

The main attraction of the fiesta in Chota are the bullfights, and the stadium in town seats around 12,000 people. This year five bullfighters from Spain, Peru, and Columbia participated in the three days of Spanish-style bullfighting. Chota is known as the capital of bullfighting in Northern Peru, and outside of Acho (the bullfighting stadium in Lima), Chota is said to have the best bullfights in the country. Last year, Micah and I went to one day of the bullfights. It was a shocking experience and one that I did not plan to repeat. However, this year Micah and I attended all three days of the bullfights. It is difficult to explain, but I found myself appreciating most aspects of the bullfights this year. The fiesta was a very good final exclamation mark to (almost) end our time in Chota. We had a great deal of fun and were able to spend a lot of time with our host family and some of our Peace Corps friends, which is something that we appreciated, since we don't have much time left in Peru.

The Wall

2010-06-21T16:00:00.004-05:00

by Alisha

A few months ago I took some pictures looking out of a window on the third floor of our host family's house. Here are the views I captured:

We recently returned from a trip to Lima and instead of the picturesque views from the same window we found this:

The house next door has been under construction for quite some time and it appears the neighbors decided to put another floor on the house. They literally put a brick wall about three inches from our window. When I asked our host mom about it all she could do was shake her head since our window is technically in violation of some kind of code that prohibits windows that face neighboring homes. Only in Peru!

Camp ALMA

2010-06-10T08:49:00.006-05:00

by Alisha

This past weekend the volunteers in my department of Cajamarca put on Camp ALMA (Actividades de Liderazgo para Mujeres Adolescentes/Leadership Activities for Young Women). Volunteers from all over the department had the opportunity to bring youth from their communities to participate in the event.

I was one of the primary coordinators of the event, so from writing the grant and coordinating the activities for the weekend, it has been a busy couple of months. I'm happy to say that the weekend went really well and the participants had really positive things to say about the camp. The girls participated in activities focused on leadership, such as creative thinking, building teamwork, and presentation skills. Another large component of the camp are sessions led by local professionals that focus on health and career planning. The close of the camp was really bittersweet for us. With just over a month left in Peru, this event was the last large event that Micah and I will be involved with, and the realization that we will soon be saying final goodbyes to the youth we have made special connections with was really overwhelming.
Volunteers participating in one of the team-building activities

The only photo I got with the girls that Micah and I brought from Chota.

Good Eats

2010-05-24T09:26:00.011-05:00

by Alisha

People have started asking us frequently what we will miss most about Peru when we leave in a couple of months. My first response is always "the people." While quite general, my first response is both true and what people usually want to hear. My second response to the question is "the food." This answer usually invokes a discussion of the traditional foods prepared in our region. When I start listing off my favorite foods (I've tried just about everything there is to try by now) people kind of light up. There is great pride taken in the preparation of traditional foods and no town party or anniversary is complete without a competition of who can prepare the best traditional plates. The gastronomy of Peru is incredibly diverse and varies greatly depending on the region (coast, mountains, or jungle). The types of foods prepared on a daily basis also depend entirely on economics. The diet of many volunteers consists of inexpensive and filling foods like rice and potatoes with few vegetables and little protein. Because Micah and I live in a larger city with a family that owns a restaurant, we eat really well.

Lunch is the biggest meal of the day and of us consists of a starter, soup, and entrée.

Some typical starters:

Yucca in Huancaína (wan-kay-eena) sauce - Yucca is cooked, mashed, stuffed with cheese and then fried. The Huancína sauce is made with milk, cheese, and a Peruvian yellow pepper called aji amarillo. Papa a la Huancaína - The same sauce described above covers thinly sliced boiled potatoes.Ocopa - Another potato based starter, only the Ocopa sauce is made with peanuts and a locally grown herb called huacatay.

Choclo con queso - It's corn and cheese. No butter or salt accompanies corn on the cob here. It's all about the saltiness of the cheese mixed with the mild sweetness of the corn.

On to the soups:

Caldo verde - A traditional soup with a potato base, egg, cheese, and locally gown herbs.

We also eat a variety of soups with vegetables, potatoes, yucca, rice, and grains like wheat and quinoa.

The main dish:

Chicharrón con papa verde y mote (Fried pork with green potatoes and corn) - A dish typically prepared on Fridays or Saturdays in our community.

Carapulcra - Dehydrated potatoes, boiled and cooked with pork and chicken, aji panca (type of Peruvian pepper) and mirasol (chili peppers), garlic, and other spices.
Arroz con pollo - Pretty self-explanatory - It's chicken and rice, but it's really, really good.
A beef and been dish

A stew of cooked wheat with chicken, tomato, onion, and peppers. Like most main dishes it is served with a healthy portion of rice.

Thirsty?
Chicha Morada - A traditional drink made with boiled purple corn, lime juice, and then sweetened with sugar, pineapple, or other fruits.

Closing Service

2010-05-18T12:31:00.008-05:00

by Alisha

Before heading to Lima for our close of service conference, Micah and I spent a few days in Ancash, where the tallest mountains (pictured below) in Peru are located. We checked out a national park and a beautiful lagoon (pictured above).

Once in Lima, we were reunited with the rest of the small business and youth development volunteers from our training group for a final conference. We got all the information we need to finish up our Peace Corps service. We will officially finished with Peace Corps on July 22.

We returned back to Chota where we continue to wrap up our projects. We are facilitating a reading, writing, and creative thinking workshop for elementary school students. In addition, our English activities continue and I am planning a leadership camp for young women which will bring together youth from all over our department.

As we are preparing to leave Peru, the next group of volunteers will be arriving in June. We recently went with our regional coordinator to visit some potential new sites for incoming youth volunteers. Peace Corps Peru is looking to expand from the current 140 volunteers to around 300 volunteers within the next three years. We met with school directors, health workers, mayors, and other officials in four communities that will most likely receive volunteers from the next training group. The landscape was really amazing and we snapped a few pictures. At one point we where driving above what seemed to be an ocean of clouds.

On Wisconsin!

2010-04-24T10:57:00.002-05:00

by Alisha & Micah

After a seemingly endless application process, we are excited to know where we will be headed when we complete our Peace Corps service in a little under 3 months. Alisha will be studying law and Micah will be studying Hispanic Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

When we left Wisconsin in April 2008, we didn't know if we would ever live there again, so we are very excited and happy to be returning to such a great state.

Holy Week, Ayacuchano Style

2010-04-12T19:12:00.003-05:00

By Alisha

Micah and I spent a few days before Easter in Ayacucho. Located in the central mountains of Peru, Ayacucho is known for its traditional celebration of Holy Week. The city boasts 33 churches, one for each year of the life of Jesus Christ, and takes religious processions to a whole other level. There are amazing murals done on the streets around the plaza and bulls that run through the streets (to some extent- since they are tied to ropes and led by horsemen).

Murals made with sawdust line the streets
One of the many churches in Ayacucho
A gigantic retablo - traditional folk art usually depicting religious scenes
The Virgin Mary as past of the Holy Thursday procession
Pachamanca - a traditional dish of the area cooked with the use of hot stones in an earthen oven. It includes chicken, pork, lamb, sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, potatoes, green lima beans, cheese, a tamale, and some spicy aji (pepper) sauce. What you see is the serving for 1 person!

The Sunday morning Easter procession is the most impressive. People crowd the plaza to see the an image of the resurrected Christ leaves the Cathedral and goes around the main plaza one time before returning to the Cathedral for Easter mass. The icon sits atop a two-story structure made of wood and covered in white paper and candles and is carried by about 200 men.

Pretending to be Health Volunteers

2010-03-27T09:57:00.006-05:00

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

2010-03-19T18:01:00.002-05:00

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

2010-03-10T15:46:00.006-05:00

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.

La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow)

2010-02-03T21:19:00.004-05:00

by Alisha

The Academy Award nominations came out earlier this week and for the first time a Peruvian film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. La Teta Asustada or The Milk of Sorrow in English is the second film by writer/director Claudia Llosa. The movie follows Fausta, beautifully portrayed by the Peruvian actress Magaly Solier, who is suffering from the "Milk of Sorrow" disease. A disease popularly beleived to be passed from mothers who were raped or abused during their pregnancies to their children. The movie captures the blending of coastal and mountain culture that is occurring in the capital city of Lima. In the capital these cultural changes have come about as the population has grown largely in part due to the migration of people from the mountainous regions to the coast following a period of civil war that Peru faced in the 1980's.

La Teta Asustada is a beautiful film that mixes the modernity of city life with traditional Andean beliefs. I would highly recommend this film as well as Claudia Llosa's first film Madinusa.

We will be keeping our fingers crossed for a win come Oscar night!

Week in Review

2010-01-16T20:02:00.002-05:00

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.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-26T10:57:00.001-05:00

by Alisha

Our second Christmas in Peru has come and gone. We celebrated with our host family with a dinner, presents, panetón (traditional Christmas bread), and hot chocolate.

Christmas is a low production event here in Peru. Families that can afford to exchange gifts usually give a few things to the kids, but generally presents are not exchanged between adults. There aren't shopping crazes, overly decorated houses or Christmas music that starts playing in November. Decorations are simple except for nativity scenes that can be found in many homes and businesses and can feature hundreds of little figures.

While it has been nice to spend Christmas with our host family from training last year and our current host family this year, we will be looking forward to seeing our families and friends next year. So bring on the Griswold family decorations, the holiday traffic, the never ending Christmas music, and the snow!
Wishing all of our friends and family a very Merry Christmas!

Lajas!

2009-12-20T18:46:00.003-05:00

by Alisha

After living in my site for over a year, I finally made it to Lajas where my friend Julie, a health volunteer, lives. I'm not sure what took me so long to visit her site since she is only a 30-minute car ride away. In true Julie style she wasted no time and took me on a death-defying hike* to a series of small waterfalls about an hour outside her site.

* only a minor exaggeration

Poetry as Inspiration

2009-12-19T09:28:00.005-05:00

By Alisha

While Micah is spending time with his family in the States, I’m in the midst of end of the school year festivities. School is ending this week and students will have summer vacation during the months of January and February. That means graduation ceremonies and other end of the year celebrations are keeping me busy. I was even invited to be the godmother of one of the students in our youth group for his high school graduation.

Yesterday I attended an event in one of the communities outside of Chota where we have a youth group. The communication teachers put together a really interesting event. The teachers and students honored an elderly community member by putting together a poetry recital using the poems written by the community member. It was a really great idea to use poetry composed by a community member in order to inspire the students to write poetry and express themselves though art. It was also really touching to see the joy it brought to the author to see his poetry preformed at the local school. The poems were simple and about daily life and struggles. Topics included the corn harvest, discrimination, corruption, and tuberculosis. If I can get my hands on some of the poems I'll try and post them.

Very Bad News

2009-12-14T11:17:00.003-05:00

by Micah

I am very sad to report that I am back in the U.S. for a short stay because Kim, my new stepmother, was killed in a car accident on December 3. Peace Corps was kind enough to to give me two weeks of emergency leave and pay for my trip home. I've been back for a little over a week and will return to Peru on December 20.

This is a very difficult loss for my family, especially for my dad. As readers of this blog know, he and Kim were married in October, so their time together ended almost as quickly as it began. That we lost my mom to cancer seven years ago and now Kim is devastating.

I did not have a great deal of time to get to know Kim, but I can say that I grew to love her in the short time she was in my life. Part of the reason for that is that she and my dad made each other happy, and to see my dad lose that is crushing. I wish I could express the essence of what made Kim such a wonderful person, but I don't think I'm ready to do that right now. If you follow this blog, please keep my family, especially my dad, in your thoughts.

World AIDS Day

2009-12-03T14:31:00.005-05:00

by Alisha

World AIDS Day (December 1^st) has arrived in Chota. This year Micah and I wanted to do several activities to bring HIV and AIDS awareness to our community. Where we live there are presumed to be a low number of HIV/AIDS cases; however, reliable data isn’t kept for our region. While HIV/AIDS are thought to be of a greater program in coastal areas and in jungle regions we felt strongly about bringing more attention to these diseases. Especially necessary is more information and education in the areas of prevention and understanding that this is a disease that can effect anyone not just certain populations.

Activities started off with a parade of health workers and our youth health promoters. We handed out information on HIV/AIDS.

On World AIDS Day we ran an art contest at one of the high schools and asked students to paint pictures depicting the prevention of HIV/AIDS or something representing that people living with HIV/AIDS should not be discriminated against. We had some really great submissions from which we choose winners and finalists who will receive sets of art supplies. All of the artwork will also be displayed in the local cultural center through the month of December.

Today our group of youth health promoters presented a play to around 200 students from their school. It was great to see how each of them improved as we prepared for the shows today. All of them took pride in the endeavor and tomorrow they plan to present the play at the local jail.

Remember Tobby?

2009-11-23T15:06:00.002-05:00

by Alisha & Micah

Last weekend, we went on an outing with our host family to a popular place to have a picnic lunch. Tobby, the puppy you may remember from a few months ago, joined us and here are some pictures of him in the countryside.

Camp VALOR

2009-11-19T11:14:00.005-05:00

A group of participants and volunteers at the camp's closing ceremony

by Micah

Every so often, Peace Corps volunteers from a given department get together to plan and execute a youth leadership camp. Last weekend, volunteers from Cajamarca put on a camp called VALOR for boys aged 13 to 18 from all over the department. The camp was held in Baños del Inca, which is just outside of the city of Cajamarca, and Alisha and I decided to take three boys (Frank, Alex, and Roel) who live at the orphanage that we've been working at since we arrived in Chota.

Frank, Alex, and Roel

The camp was great. In addition to activities and talks on teamwork, goal-setting, healthy lifestyles, sexuality, and ethics, the 30 boys who attended participated in a vigorous debate session so that they could put their knowledge of ethics and argumentation abilities into practice. For a number of the participants, this was both their first time in Cajamarca and their first time hanging out with other boys from different areas of the department. I'm very glad that Alisha and I were able to participate, and we hope to plan a similar camp for girls in May or June.

Alisha and I making fools of ourselves

Jenga was a HUGE hit

And so was Scrabble

Wedding Crashers

2009-11-01T13:02:00.003-05:00

With our host parents César and Milagros

By Alisha

October was a month of weddings for Micah and I. First our host parents decided to tie the knot after being together for around 15 years. Even though Peru is around 85% Catholic our experience has been that many couples do not get married before living together and having children. This may be due to a lack of social pressure to get married or that idea that many men do not want to be tied down my marriage.

The Peace Corps Volunteers from our area at the wedding

We then traveled back to the States to visit family and because Micah's dad got married! We had a really nice time visiting friends and family in the States. We drove through Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota seeing as many people as we could in the 10 days we were back. Congrats Jim and Kim

Jimvasion!

2009-10-25T07:47:00.005-05:00

Crazy gringos!

by Micah

This is the first of several long overdue posts. In September, Alisha and I went to Lima for our one-year medical checks (we're both fit as fiddles) and some project meetings, and we had also planned for my dad to visit us since we would already be in Lima. So once all of our medical exams and meetings were over, Alisha, my dad, and I went on a five-day trip to Cusco, which is located in the southern Andes. The vast majority of people who travel to Peru do so almost exclusively in order to visit Cusco and Machu Picchu, and now I know why this is such a popular travel destination. We visited Machu Picchu, saw lots of small towns and archaeological ruins in the Sacred Valley, and did a great deal of walking around the stunning city of Cusco. Here are some pictures:

Machu Picchu

Alisha and her new friends

Dad at Sacsayhuamán

After spending several days in Cusco, we headed to Chota so my dad could see where we live and work and meet our host family and friends. Dad accompanied us to all of our normal activities, and I must say that he was an absolute hit with everyone in Chota. He danced circles around everyone at a birthday party in the children's shelter where we work, helped us do some playacting in an English class, and generally brightened people's day. It was great to have him in Peru with us.

Expectations

2009-08-17T12:02:00.006-05:00

By Alisha
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.

Tobby

2009-08-07T17:32:00.001-05:00

By AlishaThe newest member of our host-family. Tobby (pronounced Toby). He's a month old and he's awesome.

I smell a rat...

2009-07-10T10:59:00.001-05:00

by Micah

At the beginning of June, when Alisha and I were preparing for our trip to Ica and Arequipa, Alisha was getting some luggage out of the top compartment of our closet (which is built into the wall in our bedroom). Since only luggage and other things that we don’t use very often were being stored there, we hadn’t opened that top compartment for a while. So we were unpleasantly surprised to discover that everything was covered with mold, serious amounts of mold. Since then, we’ve been keeping both the upper and lower compartments of the closet open let them air out. This piece of information is crucial to the story that follows.

On Tuesday night, Alisha was awoken by a series of loud noises in our room: a box of pens and pencils being knocked over, scratching sounds, and the like. I, a heavy sleeper, didn’t notice a thing, but Alisha simply couldn’t get back to sleep because of the incessant noises. In her sleep-deprived state, she imagined that some large animal had invaded our room and her slumber. After several hours of anxiety, she woke me up, so I started hearing the sounds as well. It honestly sounded like there were multiple rats in our room, which is an unnerving thought at 4:00 am. Alisha spent about 30 minutes panning the room with a flashlight, but we couldn’t catch a glimpse of our little friend. Alisha couldn’t take it anymore, so she decided to go to the living room and try to get some sleep. I stayed in our room trying to locate what I assumed to be a rat. After a while, I heard some plastic bags rustling, and I suddenly remember that we had several plastic bags stored in the top compartment of our closet, which was open. So I jumped out of bed, turned the light on, and stealthily approach the closet. I rustled one of the bags with my hand, and it rustled back, so I knew the rat was in there. I shut the closet doors, turned out the light, and climbed back into bed to listen for more rat sounds, just in case the one I trapped in the closet had brought friends. Fortunately, the only sounds I heard came from the closet’s upper compartment.

We couldn’t deal with the rat right away because we had some work to do Wednesday morning, but when we were finished, we went back to the house. María, a family friend who happens to be an expert rat killer, was there. So the three of us went to our room to exterminate the rat. Well, it wasn’t nearly as simple as we all thought it would be. I’ll spare you the gory details, but you should know that it took 30 minutes, several small wooden boards, a broom, and iron rod, a broken television antenna, and an umbrella (wielded by Alisha, who was screaming and jumping up and down on the bed for the duration of the ordeal) to eliminate this ferocious beast of a rat, who, by the way, measured about seven inches in length (without the tail!) and had a vertical jump of at least four inches. We’re still traumatized, and we don’t know if even time will heal our wounds, but at least we’re sleeping well.

Peruvian Good Reads

2009-07-08T12:57:00.003-05:00

By Alisha & Micah

Work has kept us relatively busy, but there are always rainy days, time spent waiting for meetings to start, and generally more time to read for pleasure than we have ever experienced before. While we both enjoy reading, Micah is an avid reader and up to this point has read over 60 books. Our host sister loves joking with Micah about how much he reads and has coined the phrase, “Sácate la nariz de los libros y goza de la vida.” (Meaning: Get your nose out of those books and enjoy life).

We thought it would be interesting to review some of our favorite books written about Peru or by Peruvian authors.

Alisha’s Top 3

The Peru Reader: History, Culture, Politics
By Orin Starn (Editor), Ivan Degregori (Author), Robin Kirk (Author)

This book is an excellent collection of articles, short stories, poems, and photographs that provide the reader with an overview of the diverse history in Peru. I found it especially interesting because of our time spent living in Peru. One of the articles focused on the region where we live and the development of a community justice program (rondas campesinas) that continues today. While it may help to know a bit of background information about Peru, I think that anyone interested in Peru or planning to travel to Peru would enjoy this book. Peru is so much more than Machu Picchu and other popular tourist destinations and this book can provide the context for curious travelers who really want to understand Peru in context while visiting.
War by Candlelight
By Daniel Alarcón

This collection of short stories by Peruvian born author Daniel Alarcón, left me intrigued and wanting to read more by works by this up and coming author. Alarcón (who writes in English) was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and later returned to Peru to live in one of the poorest parts of Lima while studying on a Fulbright scholarship. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Lima and the story “City of Clowns,” which first appeared in the New Yorker Magazine.

Lost City Radio
By Daniel Alarcón

I just finished reading this book, and I enjoyed it immensely. Written by the same author as War by Candlelight, this is Alarcón's first novel. The story is based in a fictional country (the closely resembles Peru) following a war. The main character, Norma, hosts a popular radio show that helps reunite family members separated by the war. While she provides the voice that calms and reunites the nation, she is tormented by the disappearance of her husband. Norma then meets an orphan, Victor, who may hold the clues she needs to understand what happened to her husband and what role he might have played in the war.

Some of Micah’s picks
La ciudad y los perros
By Mario Vargas Llosa

This is the first novel that was written by Peru’s most celebrated author. It tells the story of several students who attend a military high school for boys in Lima, which provides and harsh, violent, unforgiving, and morally ambiguous backdrop for adolescence. It is an important novel in Latin American (and world) literature, not only because it is a piercing meditation on power and the abuses thereof, but also for its innovative narrative techniques. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. For those of you interested in reading it in translation, you can find it under the title The Time of the Heroes. I’ve read several other novels by Vargas Llosa and have enjoyed them all.
Un mundo para Julius
By Alfredo Bryce Echenique

This is the first novel written by Peru’s second-most celebrated author (who I walked by in a neighborhood in Lima one day). It narrates a few years in the life of Julius, the youngest child of a very wealthy upper-class family in Lima during the 1950s. Julius is a curious, sensitive boy who would rather spend time with the army of household servants employed by his family than do anything else. In this novel that tells the story of a very wealthy family, we catch glimpses of the “other half” that give us the feeling that the world inhabited by Julius and his family is only very tenuously connect to the rest of the world’s reality. To me, this novel’s enchantment lies in the narrator’s tone, which strikes a perfect balance between sarcasm and tenderness. The English translation is called A World for Julius.

Un lugar llamado Oreja de Perro
By Iván Thays

Iván Thays is a young author from Lima, and this is his most recent novel. It uses the aftermath of the brutality of the Shining Path conflict (in this case, in a small town in Ayacuho, a place called Oreja de Perro) to tell the story of a journalist who is experiencing unimaginable personal losses. It is a very sad story that is told with a great deal of tenderness. Unfortunately, it has yet to be translated into English.

Party On

2009-06-26T12:55:00.007-05:00

by Alisha

The party is full on in our site this week. Chota's "international fiesta" San Juan Bautisita has a parade, concerts, bullfights, fireworks, beauty pagents, and competitions in horse riding, dance, and moto-cross. Artisans and food vendors line the streets and with thousands of people coming to the fiesta each year, the new plaza is packed with people every night. It is a lot to take in.

My favorite event thus far was the Marinera dance competition even though I didn't make it to the end of the competition. Scheduled to start at 3:00pm, the competition started at 4:30pm. The first round ended at 6:30pm. This left semi-finals and finals to be completed and we made our exit at this point. I'm much more patient than I was when I first arrived in Peru, but the length of events and meetings can still be a shock to my system.

Two days of the fiesta are spent at San Juan pampa (field). A variety of competitions are held through these two days and literally thousands of people (I've heard between 50,000 to 80,000 people) stake out a spot on the field or on the surronding hillsides and sit and sit and sit, all day long. It was fun seeing the girls from surrounding comunities compete to be the "Flower of Chota." Again, my ability to last a full day let alone two days waned.

Here comes the international part of the fiesta. Bullfighters from Spain, Mexico, Columbia, and Peru compete for three days killing a total of 18 bulls. My first and possibly my last bullfighting experience was yesterday. I am somewhat torn on bullfighting. In one respect, I can understand why it is considered an artform full of tradition and spectacle. That being said, it was really brutal. One part of the fight includes a picador (lancer) who comes out on horseback to stab the bull with a large lance. This was in and of itself disturbing along with the killing of the bulls of course, but one of the bulls also took down the horse and the horseman. Both escaped injury, but it was horrifying to watch. More horrifying was when the matador from Mexico was gored, twice. According to news reports he will recover after undergoing surgury.

The party continues on through the weekend and while it is really an impressive event. It is hard not to keep thinking about the amount of money spent this week by the local government. While some parts of the fiesta are sponsered by private companies, the majority of the funding comes from the local government's budget. In addition, after 9 months of work and an obscene amount of money, our new plaza is now complete. It looks generally like the old plaza and its design included the addition of four traffic lights. It is hard to believe that the first traffic lights in town arrived before potable water or the electrification of surrounding communities.

Vacationing in Ica & Arequipa

2009-06-22T21:15:00.005-05:00

By Alisha

My youngest brother, Kyle, and his friend, Ethan, visited Peru! We spent a little bit of time in Lima and then headed south and visited the departments of Ica and Arequipa.

Ethan, Kyle, and Alisha in Lima hanging out with our pigeon friends
In the department of Ica we checked out the Islas Ballestas (nicknamed the poor man's Galapagos), which are full of marine life. We saw dolphins, Humboldt penguins, Peruvian boobies, cormorants, sea lions, and pelicans.Outside of Ica is the Oasis of Huacachina. We tried sand surfing and had a great time on a dune buggy tour of the sand dunes.
We took a flight over the Nazca Lines, a series of geoglyphs in the desert. There are hundreds of figures thought to be created by the Nazca culture between 200 BCE and 700 CE. Above is the best picture I got during our flight over some the figures, the whale.

Next stop was Arequipa, the second largest city in Peru. Where we also visited the Colca Canyon. The canyon is more than twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and is home to Andean Condors.

Chachani - one of three volcanoes surrounding the city of Arequipa

Overlooking the cathedral and Plaza de Armas in Arequipa
Condor at the Colca Canyon

One Year

2009-06-01T17:39:00.003-05:00

By Alisha

Micah and I are just a few days away from completing our first year in Peru. When we first arrived in Lima last year we didn't know what to expect. I only knew a few words in Spanish and Micah had little experience working with youth, but I think I can speak for both of us when I say that I think our transition into life and work here in Peru has been pretty seamless. This is not to say that we haven't felt frustrated, questioned what we are doing, or wondered if our work is really benefiting anyone. In fact, those are things that I think about on an almost daily basis. Our feelings of contentment in our work and life here are really a testament to the people that we have met during the last year. We have been fortunate to have really understanding and accommodating host-families both during training and now in our site. We have made lasting friendships with people in our community and with other Peace Corps volunteers. These relationships have been really important in feeling at home here in Peru.

However, while I was thinking about how to summarize my impressions of our first year in Peru, I realized that no matter how comfortable I feel in my community, with the language, or with Peruvian culture in general there are always things that continue to surprise me.

When Micah and I first arrived in our community I knew that we would get a lot stares, and that was understandable. People were curious about the really tall, really white people hanging around. I really didn't mind whistles, staring (I mean stop-everything-you-are-doing, no-shame, 1-foot-from-my-face staring), or whispered comments. In fact, I expected this response and might have actually been disappointed if no one seemed to take an interest in us. I also expected that this interest would generally wear off over time...I was wrong. After being in our community for 9 months, the stares and comments continue. At times, it feels as if interest in us has intensified. The allure of being the topic of conversation has diminished and being called “gringo” twenty times while walking across town can be really annoying.

We have also encountered misconceptions and interesting questions about both ourselves and the United States.

Cuy (guinea pig) is a popular food here and many people find it interesting that in the States guinea pigs are pets. While having a discussion with a student in one of our youth groups about this difference, she told us that her high school teacher had told her that instead of eating guinea pigs in the States we eat rats. Micah and I looked at eat other and confidently responded that her teacher was mistaken. We don’t eat rats.
Another person we met was under the impression that we only eat canned food.
We like to have kids try and guess our ages when they ask us how old we are. Micah tends to get outrageous guesses, like one kid who thought he was 56 years old.
My host mom was convinced that there must not be potatoes in the US based on my lackluster performance in potato peeling. I tried to explain the concept of a vegetable peeler as opposed to using an unwieldy dull knife, but it was a lost cause.
Mothers are also very interested in what Micah and I may have eaten to have caused us to be as tall as we are. We tried to explain the combination of vitamins and genetics, but have most mothers seem to be content only when they hear that we eat a lot less rice than Peruvians and a lot more vegetables.

We are sure that the next 15 months will be just as interesting as the first 12 have been!

A Narwhal Riding a Segway & Cinco de Micah

2009-05-05T12:41:00.003-05:00

Our class of kindergarteners who after a 6 week self-esteem workshop are all happier, healther, and have a self-esteem level off the charts. Or so we hope...

By Alisha

Today is Micah's birthday and as you can see in the picture below he looks very much like a narwhal riding a segway. Happy Birthday Micah!

On another note Micah and I were reminded again of our "celebrity" status in our community. We frequently get a lot of stares and questions, but we have now been living here for over 8 months and people continue to surprise us with their interest in us when we are out and about. My favorite example of this occurred yesterday. Micah and I were walking out of town to a neighboring community where we have a youth group. As we were walking we were met with a funeral procession. It is customary to have a procession on foot with a band, which leads everyone to the cemetery. Micah and I stopped walking to let the procession pass and to show respect. A woman and her granddaughter who were in the procession stopped, looked at us, and asked if they could take our picture. So we said yes...then they continued on with the funeral procession.

Rambo helped us move with our host family into a new house last week. Thanks Rambo!

Homemade scrabble (made with bottle caps) = best idea ever

So Close

2009-04-20T17:56:00.003-05:00

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

2009-04-05T10:11:00.000-05:00

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...

Carnaval in Cajamarca

2009-03-12T11:32:00.002-05:00

By Alisha

Micah and I couldn't miss the celebrations of carnaval in Cajamarca, which is known as the capital of Peruvian Carnaval. Celebrations can start as early as the month of January, but the main events take place the last week before the start of Lent. The celebrations are non-stop and include numerous parades, dancing in the Plaza de Armas, and throwing water balloons and paint at other people among many other traditional activities. Clearly we found the paint throwing quite intriguing...

El Túnel

2009-02-19T17:02:00.004-05:00

By Alisha
With our summer programs coming to an end, we decided to go on a hike with the group of girls that participated in our sports and healthy lifestyle workshop. The girls decided on a place called El Túnel, which is near a town called Campamento. We enjoyed about a two-hour hike on a beautiful sunny day. Everyone brought their lunch and we ate by a river before walking another 30 minutes to check out El Túnel and a nearby trout farm. The lunch the girls brought consisted of rice, noodles, and boiled potatoes mixed together. Nothing like some serious carbo-loading after a good walk...

A part of El Túnel, which was created in order to re-route a water shed that originally went toward the jungle and now can provide water to the coast.

Trout Farm

Three Things: Travel, loss, and uncertainty

2009-02-06T16:33:00.004-05:00

By Alisha

Adventures in travel: Micah and I traveled to our department capital to attend a couple of regional meetings and to see other volunteers that we hadn’t seen since before Christmas. There are three primary ways for us to travel from Chota to our department capital, Cajamarca. There are buses that run during the day, which stop constantly to pick up and drop off people and that stop for a half and hour lunch break. This makes our trip between 7 to 8 hours. There is also a bus that runs at night which makes fewer stops, but arrives at our destination around 4:00 in the morning, which leaves us tired, cold, and a little lost as to what to do at this time in the morning. The final option is to take a pick-up truck to a town about 2 hours from Chota and then transfer to a combi that takes us to Cajamarca. This option cuts our trip down to around 5 hours because the truck and combi have better mobility on the mountain roads and don’t stop very often to pick up passengers. These trucks and combis also run frequently throughout the day making them very convenient. So Micah and I felt like the truck/combi combination was the way to go until our combi smashed into the side of a mountain during our last trip. We were about 30 minutes outside of our destination when a truck coming from the other direction swerved into our lane. Our driver (who was driving far too fast in the rain) swerved to avoid hitting the truck head on and smashed into the side of a mountain. The impact shattered all of the windows on the right side and left us wedged against the rocks at the 45-degree angle. Surprisingly no one was hurt. After the accident our driver hopped out of the combi and we never saw him again. Perhaps he went in pursuit of the driver of the truck. All of the passengers had to climb out the windows on the left side of the car and we then hitched a ride into the city. To say the least, traveling, especially during the rainy season, isn’t so appealing right now.

On the return trip Micah and I returned at different times. During the last leg of Micah’s trip the truck he was riding in ran out of gas. This meant that everyone in the truck had to help push the truck up the hills and then get back in the truck in order to coast down. Since I wasn’t there, this is really funny to me, but not so funny for Micah.

Experiencing loss: I returned to Chota before Micah (because he was feeling really sick) in order to facilitate our summer music program that we have been doing weekly with students who attend a school for youth with special needs. We have four young men in the group who we have really enjoyed working with and getting to know. When only three of the youth showed I asked about Henry, the other member. The members then proceeded to tell me that he had accidentally drowned in a nearby river on January 30th. After I made sure that I understood them correctly and confirmed the news with a teacher from the school, I wasn’t sure what to do or to say to the members of the group. It felt wrong to continue on with the planned project for the day, so I asked the guys how they were feeling. I guess I was expecting to see some emotion or share some stories about Henry, but I didn’t get much response. We continued with our project and no one seemed to know if a wake or burial had been planned.

An anecdote about Henry: After several groups, Henry couldn’t remember our names. We would ask him if he knew our names and he would always say yes. When we pushed him a little to see if he really did remember our names he called Micah "Profesor Gringo Grandote" (Prof. huge white guy) and he called me "Profesora Señorita" (Prof. young lady). Everyone had a good laugh and he continued to call us by our new names.

Drum making with our music group

Uncertainty: It is becoming more and more likely that the children’s orphanage that we have been working with since arriving in site will be closed down soon. The story behind this is long and complicated, but in part boils down to a lack of funding. I don’t want to get into the complex relationship between the municipal government, caregivers, and the Catholic Church that I would have to in order to explain this situation. Hopefully the closure does not take place and will not erase, in my opinion, an essential community resource.

While the experiences I just shared are all pretty negative, I am feeling really positive about our future in Chota. I have realized that this is an evolving experience and that the ups and downs will continue until we complete our service in August 2010. While I am looking forward to the future, I am also trying to remind myself to focus on the present and to take advantage of this amazing experience.

First Visitors!

2009-01-25T10:46:00.001-05:00

by Micah

Alisha and I were fortunate enough to welcome our first visitors last weekend. My first Spanish teacher from Fort Osage Junior High and good friend Linda Drown came to Cajamarca with Rosa, her friend from Lima. Alisha and I went to Cajamarca to meet them at the airport, and we spent the day in the city seeing some of the sights. Then we took the night bus to Chota, where Linda and Rosa stayed for two days. It didn’t take us too long to see most of Chota, so we spent a lot of time with our host family sharing all sorts of stories. Alisha and I showed Linda and Rosa most of the places where we’re currently doing projects, our world map, the daily market, and the livestock market. The night bus between Cajamarca and Chota passes some points that are at a pretty high elevation, which makes the ride quite cold, so Linda decided to buy a poncho in Chota and show it off in the photo below.

It felt really nice to have someone from home visit us. When you’re away from home for a long time, you start to feel like you’re losing a connection with the places that used to be so familiar, and having someone who shares a knowledge of those places visit you helps to reestablish that connection. And I am particularly honored that Linda, who has in large part inspired my love of Spanish and Hispanic culture, was the first person to bring a little piece of home to us and take a little piece of our experience in Peru back to the States.

A South Dakota Shout Out

2009-01-10T17:14:00.004-05:00

By Alisha

It is time for a brief South Dakota shout out. I believe that I mentioned Jason, a volunteer in my group (Peru 11) from Mitchell, South Dakota, in an earlier blog entry. Well, a couple of months ago he came across the best hat ever made and purchased one for himself and one for me. Why this hat was in a market in Ancash, Peru is a mystery as is the meaning of “Westguje Fashions.” I love it!

Last month, Micah and I were on the hunt for Christmas presents for our host family. We thought a puzzle would be a good gift for our host brother and sister since we wanted to give them somthing that we could do with them. We happened to find the perfect puzzle in a grocery store in Chiclayo. I couldn’t imagine passing up the amazing opportunity to buy a Mount Rushmore puzzle! After four days of solid work we now have a Mt. Rushmore puzzle (minus one missing piece). I'm now on the hunt for more South Dakota merchandise in Peru.

Condac

2009-01-07T12:53:00.005-05:00

By Alisha & Micah

Yesterday we took a little time to start discovering some of the areas surrounding Chota. We travelled about 2 hours (read about 30 miles) in a combi (see picture above) to the town of Tacabamba. There we met up with Ryan, the Peace Corps volunteer that just started his service in Tacabamba. Suprisingly, the climate and landscape was quite different from those of Chota. Tacabamba is a sleepy little town with about 7,000 inhabitants and sits at a lower elevation than Chota, making the climate much warmer. We were really impressed with the Plaza de Armas because of how well kept it was along will all of the blooming flowers. From Tacabamba we took another combi about 15 minutes outside of town to begin our hike to a waterfall called Condac. We had two of Ryan's friends from town come with us after they assured us that they knew the route. After an hour and a half hike, which included a 45 minute detour due to our guides not actually knowing the route, we arrived at the waterfall. Parts of the hike were extremley steep, so we were holding on to the trail for dear life. The waterfall was nice, but more impressive were the mountain views along the way. After spending some time taking pictures and enjoying the waterfall, we hiked all the way back to Tacabamba, which took about 2 hours. Upon arriving, we folded ourselves into the last combi out of town. It was a long day, but well worth the blaring cumbia music and severe lack of space in the combis and the killer hike. We plan to continue to visit more of the locally known attractions near Chota in the months to come.

Plaza de Armas - Tacabamba

Overlooking the cityHiking to the waterfall

Condac

Bringing in the new year

2009-01-01T16:06:00.003-05:00

By Alisha

Happy New Year to everyone! In Peru there are a seemingly endless number of New Year's traditions. Some examples include:

• Picking one of three potatoes without looking (one peeled, one partially peeled, and one with the skin on). The peeled potato represents financial troubles in the year to come while the partially peeled potato means it will be a financially normal year. The potato with skin represents riches in the coming year.
• Eating 12 grapes at midnight (one for each of the months to come) for good luck.
• Wearing yellow for good luck especially yellow underwear.
• Walking around the block with a suitcase to signify good luck with travel.
• Making and then burning a doll. Dolls are usually made with old clothing and with fireworks stuffed inside. The idea is to get rid of the old and make room for the new.

I decided to make a doll and got pretty excited about burning it in the street at midnight. Most of our neighbors burned dolls as well. I didn’t stuff mine with any fireworks or douse it with gasoline so it was somewhat uneventful in comparison to the neighbors who had bon fires roaring in the street. All and all it was fun to partake in the tradition. Perhaps a bigger and better doll will be in order for next year.

So this is Christmas

2008-12-31T12:41:00.004-05:00

By Alisha

Our first Christmas in Peru has come and gone without some of the usual fanfare that we are accustomed to in the States. It was my first Christmas without snow, Christmas music and decorations were sparse, and gift giving wasn't a focus. Micah and I traveled to Lima and spent Christmas Eve and part of Christmas Day with our host-family from training. All of the celebrating happens at midnight of the 25th and includes dinner, gift giving, and fireworks. Also very popular is hot chocolate and panetón (a sweet bread with dried fruits) at midnight. Our host brothers and sisters were pretty excited for midnight and probably asked what time it was every fifteen minutes until it was time to celebrate. Once the clock struck midnight we were simultaneously opening gifts, shooting off fire works, and eating a meal of duck, chicken, panetón, and, of course, potatoes. The kids went nuts at this point and stayed up until past 4am playing with their new toys. Micah and I were pretty tired from our bus ride and went to bed "early" at around 2am. Somehow the kids were up again at 6am playing and continuing to go nuts with their toys. We had a great time celebrating with the family. We are now gearing up for the New Year's celebrations in Chota.

Extreme excitment and anticipation!

The three youngest in their new outfits.
The much celebrated panetón
All good things must come to an end/coming down from a sugar high

I had to also include the lyrics to one of my favorite Christmas songs. Happy Holidays!

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over

¡Que vivan los derechos humanos!

2008-12-16T10:13:00.003-05:00

By Alisha & Micah

In commemoration of this month's 60th anniversary of the UN's Human Rights Declaration, we had a parade! There is a NGO in Chota that works to promote human rights and access to the justice system in rural areas. This organization along with other organizations in Chota sponsored the parade.

The slogan on the poster (pictured above) is "I can't wait 60 more years for my rights," so we wanted to share some information about human rights in Peru.

The country as a whole is still coming to terms with the violence of the internal conflict between the Maoist terrorist group Shining Path and government military forces. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found evidence of human rights violations on both sides of the conflict.
Access to quality public education, especially in rural areas, is severely lacking.
15% of children and adolescents don't have any form of identification documents .
Indigenous communities are constantly marginalized and ignored by the government, especially in terms of land rights as mining is taking on more importance in mountainous regions. This is a very controversial issue because while mining creates economic opportunities and stimulation, many rural and indigenous populations argue that the mines are detrimental to the environment and traditional ways of life.

Boys Meet World

2008-12-12T21:59:00.005-05:00

By Alisha

The world map is complete! Micah and I started this project the beginning of October with 12 students and two professors at the largest high school (over 1400 students) in Chota. While the group dwindled down to 5 boys and the professors disappeared, we managed to finish up with a great looking map. Along the way we did presentations on the continents (students here are taught that there are five continents: America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Oceania). The process was tedious at times, but I really feel like the youth that stuck it out learned a lot.

Patron Saint of Chota Day

2008-12-08T15:21:00.004-05:00

By Alisha

For the past week or so Chota has been celebrating its' Patron Saint, Mary the Virgin Mother. The streets are decorated and people set up small shrines outside their homes that are lighted at night by candles and Christmas lights. Today is the day of the Immaculate Conception, which is a national holiday in Perú. Micah and I went to check out the celebrations this morning.

Decorating the streets
The view on our way to the church
We arrived a little bit early
Almost two hours latter and everyone has arrivedGetting ready for the procession following the mass

Reconnect & Thanksgiving

2008-12-05T09:45:00.004-05:00

By Alisha & Micah

Last week we headed down the mountainside to the beach! We spent three days in Pacasmayo, a beach town in the department of La Libertad.
We met up with the volunteers from our training group for Reconnect, which is more or less a conference that occurs three months after swearing in as volunteers. We had workshops in which we talked about our experiences thus far in site and all of us had the opportunity to present about our communities. It was great to see pictures of the other volunteers' sites and see their different work opportunities. We even had a Thanksgiving dinner complete with turkey and pumpkin pie.

After Reconnect we spent a few days in Trujillo (capital of La Libertad) and Huanchaco (a popular beach town close to Trujillo). We spent time with friends, relaxed, and ate to our hearts content.
Ruins at Chan Chan outside of Trujillo

Now we are back in Chota and are gearing up for summer vacation projects. School will be finishing up here in the next couple of weeks, and we are planning to have some youth groups as well as sports and arts workshops.

Beginning to take form

2008-11-20T18:36:00.002-05:00

By Alisha

A quick update on our world map project. Things are beginning to take form and the group is doing a great job. We thought we might be done by now with all of the painting, but there is still some work to be done.

We will be spending next week on the beach so stay turned for pictures!

Update in Photos

2008-11-16T16:49:00.002-05:00

By Alisha

Chota celebrated its 456th anniversary the beginning of this month. I headed out to the parade to take part in the festivities. Since the Plaza is still under construction the parade was held near another park on a street that had almost no room for people to stand and get a glimpse of what was happening. Additionally, the parade "route" was literally only one block long. Luckily I am an almost a foot taller than the average Peruvian and was able to see over the crowd that had gathered to watch the parade. Above is a picture of one of our community partners, Carmen, and her daughter who had just participated in the parade.
Micah and I continue to enjoy our time spent at the children's shelter. We feel like we are getting to know the kids and plan to develop some more formal workshops and activities to do with them during the upcoming summer vacation. One of the younger kids, Ana, loves animals and had me take a picture of her with every dog and chicken she could get her hands on. Yesterday we spent a good portion of the day at the shelter for the baptism of three of the kids. It was a really nice ceremony and the kids were really excited about their big day.
After the ceremony we ate a serious amount of aji de gallina!

In about a week we will head to the coast to our three-month (in site) conference. We will meet up with the other volunteers from our training group to share our experiences thus far and have the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving together. We are really looking forward to seeing everyone, to enjoy some time away from the rain, and to check out the beach.

World Map and Cocina Pictures

2008-11-01T09:08:00.004-05:00

Buying sand is harder than you think...

2008-10-31T09:10:00.000-05:00

by Alisha

A group of health volunteers from Peru 12, who are currently training, were in the Chota area last week observing different projects of current health volunteers. Micah and I tagged along a little bit to meet some of the new volunteers and to learn more about one of the projects they completed at the orphanage that we have been visiting. We all learned about the process of building a cocina mejorada which is basically a wood burning stove that is used for cooking. The idea of using this model is that it efficiently burns the wood and also includes a chimney that takes the smoke out of the house and thus prevents repertory problems. This stove was being built outside, but usually they are put inside the home.

Micah and I helped out by buying some sand that was needed for the project. We were instructed to pick up 17 latas (cans) of sand by the volunteer who was coordinating the project. No problem, right? It took us a little while to find the guy that sells the sand, but after finding him we figured we were home free. When we arrived he asked us where our bags were to take the sand. Not knowing we needed to bring anything with us, we asked if we could purchase the bags from him. He said we would have to walk to the market to get the needed bags. We returned about 20 minutes later with the bags. The price for the sand was negotiated and I asked if they could transport the sand for us to the orphanage. He said no problem and the price for transportation was added. We then went to the sand pile and discovered that one "can" of sand was actually a 5 gallon bucket of sand. I started to get worried about the transportation of all of this sand to the orphanage which is just outside of town. While the guy was bagging up the sand for us he decided that he wasn´t going to transport it for us after all. He gave us our money back and said he would find us a moto-taxi (a motorcycle with a buggy on the back) that would take it to the orphanage for us. After many unsuccessful attempts to find a moto-taxi driver that would take all of the sand, one agreed. It took three trips to get all the sand out to the orphanage and at times the driver got out of the moto-taxi to push it (while running) up some hills. You would think that the guy who sells the sand would also sell the bags to put the sand in as well as the transportation, but you would be wrong. After an hour of trying to buy sand, we determined that buying sand is harder than you think...

We have also started writing narrative of our diagnostic report which is a culmination of the last two months of work. It is going well so far and we are finding that we have a lot to write about our community and the potential projects that we can develop.

Work has also continued on our World Map project; however, the rainy days are slowing our group down a little bit.

A big thanks to everyone who has been sending mail!

This post is dedicated to Yanni

2008-10-24T17:24:00.000-05:00

by Micah

Normalcy has found its way back to Chota now that the 5-day strike that ground virtually all human activity to a hault has finished. Schools, business, and other organizations have re-opened their doors, so Alisha and I are back in action gathering diagnostic information.
We're also making progress on the world map we're painting at a local high school. Yesterday, after concluding a fruitful session of painting and grid-drawing, we ran into the bike gang pictured above. Don't let their sweet faces fool you: this is by far the edgiest, most hardcore bike gang we've come across in the Southern Hemisphere. After exhausting their knowledge of the English language on us (hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening), one of the ringleaders asked us, "So, what are you?" Not knowing how to handle this question, we paused, which allowed one of the girls to quip, "Obviously, they're people!" We all got a good laugh out of that. Then we delved right into a nuanced international economics discussion: the smallest kid in the picture said "The exchange rate for the Euro is 4 soles, and the dollar is 3 soles." Not what you would typically expect from a seven-year-old.

Now, you're probably wondering why there's a magnificent picture of Yanni looming just above the text you're currently reading. Here's why . . .Last night, Alisha and I were invited to a friend's house to watch a documentary about Atlantis as part of a series of documentaries and other films of "high cultural value" that said friend shows on Thurday nights in an attempt to increase high-culture offerings in our small, isolated, rural city. So, Alisha and I were the first to arrive, and when we did, our friend was watching a a DVD of Yanni in concert. As if that weren't enough of a gem in and of itself, a few minutes later, another of the guests comes strolling in, and he bore a striking resemblance to the entertainer on the screen: long, luscious locks and a mustache to boot. Additionally, he possessed an uncanny amount of trivial knowledge about the life of Yanni, such as the fact that Yanni's hometown, Kalamata, Greece, is the site of none other than the ancient city of Sparta. We're still processing the whole experience.

Picture Time

2008-10-20T08:24:00.000-05:00

Students in our world map group.

Preparing the wall at the school for painting.
Cuy. These little guys are pretty tasty.
Happy Bithday to our host mom (far right). Could I be any taller?

Mmmmmm...Cuy!

2008-10-19T17:15:00.000-05:00

by Alisha

Micah and I visited the orphanage outside of Chota yesterday and had a great time teaching the kids Uno, playing soccer, basketball, and volleyball. We are planning to continue our Saturday morning visits so that we can continue get to know the kids better. Already I see a lot of potential in working with the kids and the married couple that runs the orphanage. There are currently 10 children living at the orphanage and like most things here there is a serious lack of funding. Although we can't jump in and provide the needed funding, we have found that the community in general does not know much about the orphanage or the needs of the kids living there. We have also found that a number of the high school students that we have surveyed so far have expressed an interest in doing community service projects. Ideally, we will be able to get the community more informed about the orphanage and form a group of youth interested in volunteering to do programs with the youth living there.

Yesterday we celebrated the birthday of our host mom. We had a lunch of fried cuy (guinea pig) complete with rice and potatoes. Cuy is a traditional dish in the sierra and a favorite of our host family for special occasions. My host family is aware of my dislike for what I consider some of the more exotic cuts of meat (cow tongue, chicken liver, cow stomach, etc.) and they gave me quite a hard time about the cuy. I was a good sport and ate my portion. My host mom had been kind enough to give me a portion that did not include the head. Overall, the cuy was pretty tasty as most fried foods are! Our lunch was followed by a family get together that was laid back and did not involve any dancing. Not the traditional Peruvian party and much more my style.

In other important news a regional strike started yesterday to protest the poor road conditions from here to Chiclayo, an important coast city to Chota, where most consumer goods come from. This basically means that there is no transportation in or out of Chota. People who tried to get into the city today by walking where turned around and told to go home by strike participants. Almost all businesses where closed yesterday and today and the city feels pretty empty especially for a Sunday since today is normally a big market day. Originally, the strike was scheduled to end today, but we have heard it will continue on into next week. The teachers from all of the schools are also participating so that means no schools will be in session until the strike ends. We have also heard that during strikes it is not uncommon for water and electricity services to be cut off. We will likely we taking it pretty easy until things get back to normal. Hopefully the schools will be in session again by mid week so that we can finish up our survey and continue with our map project.

As Promised

2008-10-14T20:50:00.000-05:00

by Alisha

A couple of pictures for those who are clamoring to see the monkey we discovered down the street. Micah and I hung out with him one afternoon and snapped a few photos. It is pretty sad that he is chained up all day. However, we did enjoy it when he threw a plastic spoon at a dog (in rage).

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

2008-10-09T12:28:00.000-05:00

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...

The #1 Threat to Chota's Youth...

2008-09-30T16:11:00.000-05:00

Our demolished Plaza
Our friend Sal's birthday party
Host dad César hard at work
Members of our host family at the birthday party for our host dad and grandmother

by Alisha & Micah

It's been one month in site. Slowly but surely we are finding our niche. We have had a lot of meetings, done some serious Arrested Development viewing, read 15 books between the two of us and Alisha made a trip back to Lima. Sometimes we feel like we are busy and other times it seems like we are doing next to nothing. Overall, we are very content. Here are some highlights from the first month.

Visiting some rural areas surronding Chota. A few weeks ago we (along with our host family) visited our friend Sal's site for his birthday, which coincided with his town's patron saint festival. With kids in tow, thing were pretty tame, and we really enjoyed the expansive beauty of Sal's community. We also had the opportunity to travel to another nearby town with one of our community partners to visit families of child laborers with whom he works. Being able to see this whole valley dotted with dozens of rural communities from an elevated perspective was amazing. (Thanks to Micah for not bringing the camera.)
While Alisha was wining and dining in the upper clase suburbs of Lima, Micah was in Chota participating in the festivities of the "Semana de la Juventud" (youth week). One day there was a workshop with fun activities and informational sessions for local high school kids. However, to begin the event, as is customary with any sort of workshop or training event here in Peru, a figurehead not involved in the actual event gave a speech to inaugurate said event. He started off talking about how important youth are to the future, you know, the usual stuff. Then he he went off on a tangent about hippies and existentialism, the latter of which he identified as the one of the main threats to the moral well-being of all of the youth in our community. We had no idea that Peruvian high-schoolers could be so philosophically savvy.
During a meeting with the director of a local school we spotted a crate of empty beer bottles in his office. This was not at all schocking to us.
When we arrived in Chota, we were impressed by the beautiful plaza in the center of town (see picture from previous post). A couple of weeks after we arrived, the plaza started to be demolished (see above picture). This demolition included the cutting down of enormous trees and a debate as to whether the four palm trees should also be cut down. The verdict is still out on this...we will let you know.

That's all for now, but we will try to update more regularly.

2 Weeks, 2 Days

2008-09-11T09:11:00.000-05:00

Micah speaking at our swearing in ceremony
The Peru 11 Group
Our Chuck Norris look-a-like signing autographs for our host dad
Now in Chota, a picture of our English class
by Alisha

I wanted to update everyone with a few pictures. I realized that we hadn't put any pictures up from our swearing in ceremony, so the anticipated wait is over!

We have now been in site for just over two weeks. We have been meeting with community members and organizations that work with youth here in Chota. The first three months in site will be spent getting to know the community better and working on a community diagnostic that will help us formulate our future projects. We have been having a very warm reception from the community members and have been keeping busy. There are also 6 other volunteers in the general area of Chota who we are looking forward to coordinating projects with in the future. We also will be trying to get our World Map project started with a group of youth in the near future, so we will keep you updated on that!

Finally Peace Corps Volunteers!

2008-08-28T15:44:00.000-05:00

It's Alisha's Birthday!
Our host family put together a really nice party for Alisha.
Our family's home in Chota, Cajamarca.
Micah starts his matador classes soon.

The Plaza de Armas in Chota. Complete with swans, frogs, and a mosaic fountain. What more do you need?

Well, it's been quite some time since our last post, and for that we apologize. Our site visit and the last few weeks of training were full of a lot of activity, but now that we're at site and have more time on our hands, we should be able to post more frequently.

Since our last post, quite a few important events have taken place, so here are the highlights:

Alisha and I have successfully completed 3 years of marriage.
Alisha turned 25, and our training host family threw her a wonderful birthday party.
We recieved our first packages in the mail since we came to Peru (thanks to Kay, Alisha's mom). By far the best item was the Chuck Norris t-shirt (see previous entry about Mike, the guy from our training group who bears an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Norris).
We, along with 35 other people, swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers!

Training was a great experience for both of us. The curious thing is that before coming to Peru, I thought a lot more about the two years of service than the three months of training, so much so that, coming into the whole thing, training seemed like and afterthought. However, that afterthought became our lives for the last three months, and while we're very excited to finally be in Chota serving as Peace Corps Volunteers, the end of training also brought sadness because we've become such good friends with people from our training class, the training staff, and our host family.

But now we're in Chota, and we've begun our community diagnostic process, which will help us figure out what exactly we'll be doing here for the next two years. When we arrived at site, we had a meeting with a committee of people from different agencies that work with youth on some level. It was great to see how happy they were to have us in their community. We'll spend the next few weeks having more meetings, exploring Chota, and getting settled in. If you'd like our new address, feel free to e-mail one of us.

Site placement!

2008-08-07T08:29:00.000-05:00

by Micah

Dust off your world atlases because Alisha and I found out last Friday where we'll be living for the next two years! (Sorry we didn't update the blog sooner; we haven't had much opportunity). We'll be Youth Development Volunteer in the beautiful city of Chota in the department (Peru's version of a state or province) of Cajamarca. Cajamarca is a mountainous department in nothern Peru (it borders Ecuador on the north), and Chota is a rural city with a population of about 30,000 located 160 km (read: 7-hr. bus ride!) from the departmental capital of Cajamarca (where Pizarro first encountered the Incas in the 16th Century). Chota is at an elevation of about 2,200 meters, and we're told that the climate is pretty temperate all year long with heavier rains from January to March.

This week we are actually visiting Chota for a few days to get some first impressions. We we in Cajamarca City earlier in the week to meet our community partner (the person who will help us get connected with entities that work with youth in Chota), and last night (Wednesday), we arrived and met our new host family. We'll spend the next few days exploring and hopefully meeting some people with whom we might be able to develop projects over the next two years. Stay tuned for pictures...

Cajamarca - Field-Based Training

2008-07-23T16:49:00.000-05:00

Steps leading up to a shrine in Cajamarca City
View of Cajamarca City
Group picture after our countryside picnic
A little gossip never hurt anyone!
Our group in San Marcos

Micah and I are back from our week of field-based training that took place over the last week in the department of Cajamarca. We had an amazing time meeting current volunteers and visiting their homes in and around Cajamarca City. First we traveled about an hour and a half to a community of about 7000 people where a current volunteer lives and works. We observed her working with students in the elementary school and then where set on our own to give a charla (a talk) to students about values and self esteem. It was an interesting experience primarily because students in the rural mountain areas of Peru tend to be very shy. This was very true in our class especially with the girls. It is also difficult to get students to be creative in many cases due to the current system of education in Peru. For the most part students are asked to memorize and then repeat information verbatim or it is considered incorrect. We are starting to find out that this method causes students to be very reluctant to put anything on their own words for fear that they will be wrong. We traveled to a smaller neighboring community and met with an established youth group of youth leaders. We also learned about a radio program that a volunteer did with the help of youth and a doctor from the local health post about important health related topics. In the following days we also taught English, participated in a class on employment readiness for students, and learned about the work of a volunteer in Cajamarca City who is working to eradicate child labor in the streets.

The assignment to teach English brought a lot of debate amongst the people in our group. I do not plan on teaching English in my community because I feel that it is not what youth in the community will need to be successful. In addition, it is virtually impossible to actually accomplish much retention of the language even over the course of two years. That being said, many volunteers teach English because first and foremost that is what the community often wants. It can also be a good way to draw participants in and to build relationships. I guess I will what to see what my community wants from me, but I’m hoping it isn’t to learn English!

We where are able to spend quite a bit of time in Cajamarca City. The city has a beautiful view of the mountains and a lot of cultural significance. Along with historic churches, there is El Cuarto del Rescate where Atahualpa (Head of the Incan Empire) was held by Pizarro before his death in 1533. There where also great restaurants and the excellent cheese and ice cream that Cajamarca is know for. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to visit the thermal springs at Baños del Inca. I guess we have a good reason to return if we are not placed in Cajamarca!

Quick trip back to the U.S.

2008-07-10T15:05:00.000-05:00

by Micah

So, I'm back in Missouri for just a couple of days under unfortunate circumstances. My grandmother (paternal) passed away Sunday night, and I came back home for the funeral, which was this morning. She and I were quite close, and I'm very sad that she's gone, so this is a tough trip for me and one I certainly didn't expect to be making so soon. Peace Corps/Peru was kind enough to let me miss a few days of training to attend the memorial service and be with my family, for which I am very grateful.

Grandma (on the left in the photo) was wonderful. She had a vibrant personality and was an adept storyteller. In many ways, she was our family's collective memory, so it's sad to see all of that history pass on. She was a very strong woman with a joie de vivre unmatched by most. Some of the things I'll miss about her will be going out to lunch with her, getting her cards in the mail, and hearing her tell the same stories multiple times. I know she was proud to have me as a grandson (and Alisha as a granddaughter-in-law!), and I am also very proud to have her as a grandma. I love her very much and will miss her dearly.

A Day Off...

2008-07-09T09:02:00.000-05:00

by Alisha

Due to a national strike in Peru today to protest the rising cost of living, I'm enjoying the morning off today. As far as I know the combi's (bus transportation) are not running and all of the trainees are taking it easy in our host communities until we hear if it is safe or possible for us to come in for classes this afternoon.

We are now in week 5 of training! Next week we leave for our field based training. Micah and I will be going with the group headed to Cajamarca in the northern highlands for the week. There we will shadow current volunteers and do some projects with youth in their communities. I'm looking forward to seeing what the living situation of current volunteers looks like and to finding our what they do on a daily basis. There is also a natural hot spring nearby called Baños de Incas which I'm planning to check out.

I have also moved up in my language level. I stated our at novice-mid level and last week found our that I'm not at the intermediate-mid level. The Peace Corps requires all volunteers to be at the intermediate-mid level in order to complete training. I'm excited that I am making improvements and still have a lot more time with my language instructor before leaving for our site.

One Month & Some Pictures

2008-07-07T17:14:00.000-05:00

Our House
View of the church in our community
Street view looking out our front door
Our host family took us to an amazing park with tons of fountains in Lima last weekend.
National Cathedral in Lima

In the swing of things

2008-06-23T18:41:00.000-05:00

by Micah

We are over two weeks in, and I think we´re really starting to get into a rhythm now. Training is good; between language, cultural, and technical sessions, we spend about 40 hours per week in training, so we´re pretty occupied. Our host family is great. We went to a Día del Campesino festival at the local school on Sunday, and our host parents kept buying us different kinds of traditional foods to try. Then they took us out to dinner that night. They´re very giving and really want to make us a part of their family, so we´re quite pleased.

We made our first trip to Lima on Saturday. Saw some touristy stuff, but it´s difficult to get a handle on such a big city in a few hours, so we´ll have to return with more of a plan so we can see the things we´re most interested in.

My 0.5 hr. of internet is almost up, so adiós for now.

One week down....

2008-06-17T10:18:00.000-05:00

By Alisha

We are almost done with our first week of training! Micah and I have been really busy with training and getting to know our host family. Training is pretty much a full time job with a variety of workshops on development, culture and language, heath, safety, and more. From 8:00am to 5:00pm we are usually at the training site, which is about a 25 minute, walk/bus ride from our house. Micah and I feel really lucky to be living with such a great host family. They have already had two previous PC trainees live with them so our presence in the house isn’t new to them and they are very understanding with my lack of Spanish. We have been spending most nights with our host family talking about the day and trying catch up on reading training materials. We are looking forward to this weekend when we have some free time! My host mom is studying cosmetology and (from my understanding) is going to be taking me to a nearby town for a pedicure this weekend because a friend of hers needs practice before an exam. Also, I am extremely excited to attend the quinceañera of a friend of my host sister.

Some highlights thus far:

On the first night with our host family, Micah locked us out of our bedroom and had to wake up our host mother (which in turn woke up the rest of the family) to have her let us back into our room.

Our family has a dog named Rambo.

Dogs bark all night long and the roosters start about 4:00am.

There is another volunteer in our training group from Mitchell, South Dakota. In addition, I met a current volunteer who is from Sioux Falls!

Another on of the trainees in our group looks like Chuck Norris. Exactly like him and it never gets old.

This is your captain speaking...

2008-06-07T18:29:00.000-05:00

By Alisha & Micah

We made it! Micah and I arrived in Lima, Peru late last night and are now at a retreat center for an orientation. Tomorrow we will meet our host family and officially move in.

We boarded the plane in Miami and sat on the tarmac for an hour and before taking off the captain announced that the plane was taking longer to get loaded and situated because it was at maximum weight capacity. As if that were not enough to make us nervous, he then said that he had never seen that before. The flight was great and everyone arrived safely.

Everyone in out training group has been great and the staff in Peru seem very motivated and capable, so we are very excited about the next 11 weeks of training.

Goodbye, hello

2008-06-03T22:20:00.000-05:00

by Micah

Well, the time has finally arrived. Alisha and I will board a plane in KC tomorrow morning and fly to Miami via Raleigh to meet up with our fellow Peace Corps Trainees for a two-day staging. Then it's off to Peru for training.

We've had a fabulous time bouncing back and forth between Missouri and South Dakota (with stops in Nebraska), and we truly enjoyed spending time with so many family members and friends, some of whom we hadn't seen for some time. I think we got a lot accomplished over the last several weeks. We started out with my cousin Josh's wedding, got to celebrate both my sister's and Alisha's brother's high school graduations, met our two new second cousins, and ate a lot of farewell meals. Now, everything is packed and we're hoping our bags fall within the prescribed weight limit. Hopefully we'll get some good sleep because tomorrow our adventure begins.

A Penske Truck, A Malibu, and 573.74 miles later...

2008-04-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

by Alisha

This past Monday, Micah and I started our migration south. We caravaned from Milwaukee to Independence, Missouri, where Micah's dad lives. Thankfully, we are able to store all of our things with Micah's dad for the next 2 years. It was a strange feeling to see all of our possessions loaded into our small rental truck and to say goodbye to Milwaukee and the friends we had made there over the past three years. On the other hand it felt pretty refreshing to be able to simplify things a bit and to sell furniture and one of our cars. It was surprisingly difficult to say goodbye to Luminescence, our pristine '95 Lumina.

The long trip to was very uneventful and both vehicles and all of our stuff survived. Luckily, I have had quite a bit of experience driving "Big Sexy" a certain moving truck at my last job with Lad Lake. We are now looking forward to spending time with friends and family and are in for a busy month of weddings, graduations, and family gatherings.

During the long drive, aside from listening to NPR, I thought of a couple of things that are bringing me some anxiety when thinking about living in Peru.

First and foremost, I have an underlying fear that for some reason, I will be absolutely unable to learn Spanish no matter what. This is most likely selling myself short, but who knows. I hope that I can put my frustrations aside and not compare myself to the language abilities of Micah or other members of our training group. Really the only other thing aside from the possibility that I will not be able to communicate with anyone for the next two years, would be being sick for the entire two years. Since the possibility of both of these things is pretty minimal, I am really getting excited to go!

Plus I figure that if you can survive driving a truck across Wisconsin and Iowa that anything is possible.

Unemployment & Packing

2008-04-22T19:28:00.000-05:00

by Micah

Welcome to our first blog entry. We're still a little over one month away from leaving for Peru, but in the meantime, we're feverishly preparing for our Midwest Mega-tour 2008 with stops in Missouri, Nebraska, and South Dakota.

Alisha and I finished up our jobs last week, so, as this entry's title says, we are unemployed. Personally, unemployment has provided me with much more satisfactory responses to some of life's salient questions than the work world ever could. For instance, now that I'm jobless, the answer to the question, "Should I shave today?" is a resounding "NO!", and when I consider whether or not sweatpants constitute appropriate attire for the day's activities, I can gleefully answer "YES!" Heady stuff, I know.

Alisha's last day of work was Friday, and her co-workers kindly threw her a going-away party, complete with enormous steaks and the appropriately decorated cake seen above. My fellow interpreters are throwing a bash for me (along with another departing co-worker) on Saturday, so that should be nice. In the meantime, we have been and will continue to be packing up our apartment (that's me with the sweatband after a long day of packing) so as to vacate our apartment by next Monday (28 April) and kick off the first Missouri leg of the aforementioned Mega-tour. Between attending farewell festivities and boxing up our astonishing collection of books, we're trying to see as many of the good friends we've made in Milwaukee as possible. Stay tuned for more pre-departure exploits...