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.

Holy Week, Ayacuchano Style

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

by Alisha & Micah

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

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

The nearly complete Cocina Mejorada

Getting ready to plant some seeds

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

Waiting for the play to start

Trash in the river is a common problem

The actors honing their craft

Micah with the frightening Trash Monster

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

Back to Class

By Alisha

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

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

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

Argentina

by Alisha

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

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

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

Even the hot dogs were delicious!

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

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