La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow)

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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.