Leaving home/Going home

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

"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

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

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

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

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!

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.