Artisan fair at the US Embassy to Home Cooking 101

Peace Corps and the US Embassy, located in Lima, once a year put on an artisan fair where each business volunteer can bring a few artisans to sell their products to the US Embassy employees. What a great way for the artisans to see different products from throughout the country and learn more about different business concepts- pricing, sales techniques, tailoring products to the market, etc! This opportunity is obviously pretty fun for both the volunteers and the artisans, many who rarely travel. Lima is a long trek and a completely different world from where we live! Airplane? Nah, I enjoy my two day trip via bus. In fact, Lima is 21 hours of actual travel time from where we live to but takes two full days for the crew from Arequipa to reach with bus changes and waiting time. I remember back when time was valuable…not so much anymore!

Back to the meat of the story…My artisan, Jesus, and his wife have a stand to sell their embroidered products to passing tourists in my town. He also works as a guide and speaks some English so we work together a fair amount on tourism opportunities here, his artisan work and practicing English as well. He’s great to work with and reliable so naturally I invited him to accompany me to this unique opportunity. The first day we attended a conference at the US Embassy with a few guest speakers and then the second day was the actual fair. It’s my understanding that attendance was somewhat down this year so Jesus and I didn’t reach our sales goals but we overall had a great experience. I can’t wait for next year! And, of course, it was also great to spend time with all the other volunteers, enjoy being in a city and just catch up.

On a different note, two days after getting home from the nicest part of Lima and still in the process of readjusting to my little, humble village, I woke up, peaked out my window at the weather and saw my sister and my mom hovered what was clearly a dead carcass. I guessed it was a sheep but turned out to be a pig. My first thought was “How did I sleep through THAT?” followed immediately by “I wonder what I’ll have to eat now…” We fried this little piggy up and it was became chicharrón, fried pork I suppose in English. I’m not a big fried food eater, nor a big meat eater, but it was pretty tasty. But the best part of this story isn’t the killing of the pig…it’s the NEXT day when I came home to find the pig’s head on the kitchen table and my mom going to town on sawing that thing in half. I just thought it was kind of funny so I took a shot of the pig's head next to the saw next to the knife next to the food next to my coffee cup....mmmm.... An artisan fair in Lima doesn’t sound or feel like what you’d picture Peace Corps to be but a pig’s head on the kitchen table just made me feel like a real Peace Corps volunteer again!

Cleanliness debrief

I don’t know why I feel compelled to write about cleanliness and hygiene, except for that today I spent quite a bit of time cleaning. Since that’s apparently on the brain, that’s what I’m going with!

First and foremost, I have a showering routine down finally. This incredibly basic event was a thorn in my side until I figured out what works best (for me) because before I had been showering in ice cold water once a week and going to the hot spring once a week. The hot spring sounds great and all but they do an awful job at water conservation which is a huge issue where I live so I don’t feel super great supporting that business regularly. So my new water conversation friendly routine goes like such: fill up 3 2.5 liter bottles full of glacier water and place them in black bags in the sun. Showering must be done in the mid afternoon for optimal temperature (although a newly purchased tea kettle/water boiler will provide flexibility on showering hours). I shower once every three days and can’t help but laugh because that sounds so gross in American terms but really it’s not that bad. I even kind of like not showering every day, which is ironic because going days without showering was one of my greatest pre-arrival fears. I am finding out that you can get used to most things.

In the US, I hated doing laundry. I didn’t mind starting loads of laundry but the folding the clothes and putting them away was such a drag. I often prolonged it and made it worse though by delaying taking the clothes out of the dryer and then thinking “Oh shoot, I have to fluff the clothes again.” And, of course, I let the laundry pile up massively before I would even get going. Man, those days of luxury are long over! I am now proficient at washing my clothes by hand. It usually takes me about one hour per load and the max I ever do is two loads per week, partly because I don’t have many clothes here and partly because I don’t wash things after one wear unless there is a really compelling reason. When you wash every piece of clothing by hand, your definitions of clean suddenly shift. It’s also impossible to procrastinate on laundry here as you’ll run out of something- usually heavy socks for me. So when you guys over yonder are getting up and going to work and you think of me, I might just be hunched over a tub of cold water, scrubbing away.

On a different note, I have a camera that claims it is “Dust proof”. When I bought it, I was interested in the other promises like “Water resistant” and “Shock proof” but little did I know “Dust proof” was what I should have been concerned with. Dust is everywhere. I sweep my floor all the time and dust my dresser but it is instantly dusty again. Because many of the roads are unpaved and there is often a lot of wind (at least this time of year) in the afternoon, dust is absolutely inescapable. When I first got to site, I thought all the plates were super dirty but now I realize that a lot of them are stained by the dust. Did you know this was possible?! I do now but not before I volunteered myself to wash the dishes and from that I learned that I can get them no cleaner looking. I still wash dishes a lot as I like being in control of the cleanliness of the plates.

I realize this theme may interest me more than you, poor reader. In terms of American standards this stuff all sounds really basic and weird to care about but it’s crazy how you have to unlearn every routine or basic task you have every learned and relearn it in a different way. We really do take little routines for granted until you get stared at a lot because you always do things weirdly. (Why are you washing your clothes in the afternoon? No one washes their clothes in the afternoon! Why did you throw the toilet paper in the toilet? It goes in the waste basket! Why did you put all your garbage in a bag? You have to separate the paper and the other parts!) Thankfully, I am starting to get things down the American in rural, Peru way too.

(PS- the reasons why are the following: The clothes don’t dry in time if you wash them in the afternoon but they will be fully dry by the end of the day if you wash them in the morning. The septic/sewer systems in Peru cannot handle paper. It will clog the pipes. And as for the garbage, my family burns the paper. I still haven’t figured out what they do with the rest. I smuggle my garbage out of my house and throw it away in a garbage can in a different town usually- ridiculous I know.)

The pictures are of my family on the farm! My job was to hoe.

One month in and five random thoughts…

Chacra

Chacra is the word that’s used here for small plots of farm land. It’s what people do for a living- work in their chacras and it’s incredibly hard work. People eat what they grow mostly and they go to the chacras every day. The local town halls own tractors that people can rent but most of the work is done the old-fashioned way with manual labor and extremely rough tools (if you can call a tree branch a tool). I have honestly been dreading working in the chacra because it means long days with no food between breakfast and dinner, and it’s hot, hard and dirty. To some degree it’s not why I’m here but it’s such a big part of the culture, that’s there is really no way of avoiding it if you want to be part of the community. I hiked up to one of our chacras twice with my host sister and watched her milk our cow but I finally bit the bullet and went to the chacra to really work with another volunteer and her family. We irrigated a field. There was water in one corner of a field and we had to manually irrigate the field by taking tree branches and carving out paths for the water to flow to wet the ground (and then later the family will plant). The field was slightly smaller than a soccer field. The first hour in I thought it was surprisingly fun work. By hour two I was getting tired and hot. By hour 5 I was beat but we finished it and it looked like the most beautiful field of mud I’d ever seen. I even came home and told my own family I’d go with them the next weekend to work so guess it wasn’t that bad.

Fortaleza de Chimpa Hike

The hike of all hikes! And it’s right here by me! Okay, so if I haven’t said it enough, I live in an amazing canyon. It’s beautiful and we are frequently doing some awesome hikes. One particular day, I hiked over to another volunteer’s site to visit (not amazing, just long). The next day we worked in the chakra (story above) and the following day we hiked up to a place called the “Fortaleza de Chimpa”. It’s about a 2.5 hour hike up a pretty steep path and has great views of the canyon. On the way, the path goes by some pre-Incan graves. The graves are uncovered so you can see the skeletons and a fair amount of the fabric was still preserved. It’s hard to believe that it’s just hanging out, unprotected and fair game to check out. You basically had to step on bone fragments to walk by. Crazy. Well, after that we continued up, huffing and puffing and ended at about 12,000 feet high in some really cool, reconstructed pre-Incan ruins. We also saw some rock carvings (one was a chair carved out of stone and big enough to sit in and others were models of all the farming terraces), cave paintings, and the ending has the craziest viewpoint of the canyon, which is the first or second deepest canyon in the world so think crazy drop. My knees were shaking. Challenging hike, interesting history, great company- is this my life?! Sweet!

Ghosts

I was in the town hall in a meeting. When we had finished meeting, I walked out of the room and to my surprise, I see my little brother sitting in a chair waiting for me. I asked him what was up and why he was there. He told me that his grandmother (whose is like the equivalent to my mom here) had sent him to tell me to hurry home. A little confused on why I was being told to go home (obviously I was going home), I asked him to clarify. He squirmed a little and then told me not to get scared but that his grandma had heard a “kuko” and that that’s why I had to hurry home. Turns out that kuko is a ghost (maybe in Quechua?). He said that the kukos cry sometimes from time to time and not to be scared but that they were the condemned and that’s why they were crying. It’s funny because at home nothing is ancient and that just seems silly but every aspect of life here sometimes has an ancient feeling and there is so much history. Your mortality really sinks in and if ghosts exist, they would exist in Peru. So as silly as this sounds, I had trouble sleeping the next two nights as I live mainly by myself in a hostel and the family has their own houses. Think I’m back to realizing all those weird noises at night are just donkeys but that is one of the moments I felt most like peoples’ perceptions or realities are totally different here and that I was very, very far from home.

Random accomplishments for the month

Starting to teach English classes, hiking up to the Fortaleza de Chimpa, confirming I do live in the Andes Mountains (just cool!), learning how to do the bridge when I shuffle, washing all my laundry by hand for the first time, irrigating a field for the first time, starting to feel like my life is here and not somewhere else, having a heart to heart with a taxi driver that was seriously depressed and considering committing suicide that ended quite positively and could possibly have talked him off the ladder so to speak, learning the transportation options in the valley, spending some quality big sis time with my little brother (honestly the most rewarding of all for me)

Song lyrics

Roughly translated from an Enanitos Verdes song, Cordillera (which means Mountain Range). Pretty much sums it up!

Who has seen you? Who sees you in the mountain range of the Andes?

You never stop surprising me.

White wind, what else does it give?

And for me, I could pass the hours.

I want to be with you even longer.
And this way, years could pass.

And I could have a thousand addresses.

I know I left the world behind
Always being an idealist
Like a brave hunter in the stars.
Live the freedom.
Feel the freedom.
The magic of the place wraps you up.



 

Adjusting to a new home

How much can someone learn in one week? I can’t believe the things that I’ve done in this past week…I’ve read a book, started a second, helped coordinate a three month training course for local artisans, hiked down to the river, trekked up to the family farm, petted a baby calf and sheep, slept through an earthquake, ate scrumptious, homemade quinoa bread, attended the viewing of our town’s new video promoting tourism here, listened to hours of music, went on my first run at 10,800 feet (and walked over half of it), started PX90 workouts in addition, ate alpaca meat nearly daily, met the mayor and principal, attended mass, sorted potatoes, helped out around the house, drafted syllabi for a business and an English course, celebrated Day of the Elderly, participated in a procession with school kids and their torches or lanterns (further explanation below), watched Avatar (in Spanish so it was studying), attended a display of traditional Peruvian dances and still managed to find a little time to be homesick too. So every day has been really full, even if it’s not rushed or busy in the traditional sense. Right now everything’s still new and exciting and therefore every activity really strikes me as a unique experience.


Out of all of this, the two school activities were particularly interesting. I couldn’t believe how I lucked out at agreeing to go watch my brother dance, I ended up at a performance where each grade performed a different, traditional dance. I think any tourist would have been pumped to see that demonstration (lucky me!) Also, the night before there was a parade and the kids each made their own “torch,” which whatever distinguishable shape that had chosen and made out of wire and paper. Inside they positioned a lit candle to illuminate their torch. While this activity may never fly in the US, it was great. There was also a band which played as we walked through the cobblestone streets of our town. That the kids had made their torches without any help or guidance and with such limited materials was impressive. The torches themselves were so creative and cute as well- birds, corn, helicopters, houses, boats, SpongeBob (my brother’s), bees, ladybugs, etc.

Today I’m in the nearby town of Chivay for the day to enjoy a soak in the hot springs here, debrief and connect with a few other volunteers over our weeks and plan our strategy for the following week. Site is a different experience (just more rural and isolated) but the people are super nice. We pop over to this nearby town for some “modern” conveniences, such as slow internet, international calling, a market and restaurants. I miss you all a lot but am lucky to have such a great family here taking care of me and keeping me in line…and hopefully I’ll master their quinoa bread recipe in time…yum! And write me...I´m homesick!

Home sweet home

So this last week was the big getting to know your new home week! (also known as site visits) My new home is a town of approximately 1300 people in the Colca Canyon of Arequipa. It's at the altitude of about 10,800 feet with beautiful, sunny days and right now the nights are really cold (just like it was for our field based training week). Arequipa in general gets a lot of tourists as its known for being one of the more attractive cities of Peru and is close to Cusco (the typical gringo path is through Cusco and then on to Machu Picchu and they may or may not swing through Arequipa too). Colca Canyon gets a lot of these tourists passing through Arequipa from being the world's first or second largest canyon, its natural beauty, richness in traditional culture, beautiful artesan goods and has some endangered condors that nest there.  The first picture is from an aunt's farm taken overlooking my town. It's dry now since it's winter here but it'll turn green once it gets to rainy season (January through March).

Since it's overall a nice place to see and can offer quite a bit of traditional culture to a traveler, over 150,000 people pass through Chivay (the nearby largest town) and then through the canyon in a given year. In the next coming months I'll have a better idea of specifically how I'll spend my time working but I anticipate working with tourism, the local schools (might be business classes or English classes), artesan groups and a probably also with a group of farmers. That part is going to take awhile to fully determine though so we'll see how it all shakes out. My family speaks Quechua so I'll be learning Quechua in addition to polishing up my Spanish.  The picture to the left is of me chilling in my town's main plaza. You might notice that there is not a single person in the background which is because they are all at the farm. Farming is a critical part of the town's economy and each family has land where they plant wheat, corn and other local crops that I don't know the name for in English as we really don't have them in the US.  During August and September planting for certain crops is completed so there are not very many people around in town during the day. It was almost like a ghost town in the afternoon but I guess school was on break too. We'll see what it's like next week...

This week will be the last hooray for all of our group to be together, we'll officially swear in as volunteers and end our training program and then ship out for good to our new homes. I'm both sad and looking forward to settling in in my new home.

FBT (Field Based Training)

During our first five weeks of training, we basically trained for one big sha-bang in the sixth week which we call FBT (field based training). It's the best example we get to see of what "real" life will look like for two years. FBT was really fun and hands on. There were 9 of us business volunteers that went together to Chivay in the department of Arequipa. The town is at over 12,000 feet in altitude and has about 5,000 inhabitants (big for a town that Peace Corps works in). Chivay was really charming. They are little, old ladies walking with their alpacas through the town square in their traditional dresses. You can see the Incan decendency in people's faces and many people still speak Quechua in addition to Spanish. It was beautifully sunny and close to 70 degrees in the days and as soon as the sun went down, the temperatures would drop down to around 20 and there was no heat. It was what I would have pictured as small town Perú, just beautiful.

We were there to work and work we did! In groups of three volunteers, we worked with groups of between 20-25 kids per class for about 4 hours a day. We taught the kids business classes for three days over marketing, accounting, business planning, pricing, product costing and then on the fourth day the kids took out a loan from the "Banco del Cuerpo de Paz" (Peace Corps Bank) and had 24 hours to complete their own business for a day. The kids had to return the loan after 24 hours with 2% interest but any profits were theirs to keep. We tailored most of the activities to their specific businesses to reinforce the concepts and also keep them motivated. Those kids were enthusiastic and did really well at their businesses! Our class had the winning group which made a profit of over 120% in one day. It was such a cool experience for the kids and for us.

In addition to the work, we were able to meander through the local market, meet nearby volunteers and see their sites, see pre-Incan terrazas, take a hike, see some condors, get in some real team volunteer bonding time and go to some nearby hot springs multiple times. It was a priceless week and I requested to live nearby since there are already two volunteers in that particular town. I find out tomorrow where my assignment is. Either way I am going to have a great time because this country is beautiful and this program is exceeding my expectations.

Better late than never!

In Spanish there is not translation of the English word "procrastination" so really the creation of this blog two months after leaving the US might seem untimely inside the US, it is at the very least not procrastination here (as that doesn't exist here). So with the unneeded excuse done, I now would love to debrief all the outside world who has forgotten about my presence, or at least only briefly until reminded with those pesky update emails that keep getting sent from time to time.

The tales I will spin craftly with my clicky keyboard keys are really only a view into what I've been doing the last two months but won't be applicable too much longer. I live in Chaclacayo, Perú about 45 minutes east of Lima, which is a town that is much sunnier and nicer than Lima as Lima is always gray, enormous, a bit dangerous and to date has nothing to earn my heart's fickle affections. I understand that after being here a year or so Lima will grow on you and you'll look forward to it. Now I somewhat avoid it except to go to Starbucks. I don't buy the coffee though. I might go with that intention but I end up just staring longingly through the windows at the coffee in the hands of people that have real jobs and can afford Starbucks in Lima.

We've been in training for the last 7 weeks. Language classes in the mornings and tech training in the afternoons with occasional other random sessions here and there (like health issues and safety and security sessions).  The language training is surprisingly applicable. Gone are the days of worksheet after worksheet of grammar. The focus is more on survival- how to get yourself around, how to ask questions in professional setting, country history, culture, slang, how to barter, discussions on every type of robbery you have ever possibly conceived and then more that could happen to you, etc. We do work on grammar too because at some point in the day there are no more ways to discuss the ways you could get robbed and so it's time to practice different tenses or something. Then we eat our host family prepared lunches together, comparing, deciphering and trading bites along the way. Then it's tech training time in the afternoon which is really more like half game playing, with bits of our whining on how we don't want to play any more little kid games, then our tech trainers explaining when we'll use these games at site, and us giving in and a few weeks later realizing they were totally right. Lives outside of training are somewhat limited because there isn't currently a whole lot of free time but there are good times had and nights out and all that.

That's a good opening entry, no? I don't want to bore you and you feel like you are reading a novel every entry. But there's going to be a lot of free time to be had here after training so no promises!!!!