Saturday, May 5, 2012

Integrating? Maybe?

I woke up yesterday morning, stiff through my shoulders and hip/butt region.  Had a deliciously cat like stretch, enjoying the tightness in my muscles.  I used to wake up feeling that way every morning and learned to love the feeling.  I downloaded Jillian Michaels 30 day shred because after 7 months of P90X, I can't stand that guy anymore...and the workouts aren't doing it for me.  Really all I want to do is run, but I tried that once and it was a nightmare, felt like I was daring my road to break my ankle or blow my knee.  I'm pretty happy with the 30 day shred videos...although saying the name is, for whatever reason, mortifying, it is what it is.

Mid purr during my cat stretch/wrist roll/toe curl I felt a horrible pain in my lower abdomen and curled up into a ball.  I tried to decide if that could be the awful cramping I've been getting on a daily basis from whatever parasite is growing in my stomach or intestines...I checked the date on my watch.  Nope.  Without coming too far out of the fetal position, I managed to reach a banana and my jar of peanut butter which I downed and quickly followed with my favorite little pills.  I read in my bed for about 45 minutes until I thought I was safe to unfurl.  I heard some voices outside my window and glanced out to see my host mom's mom, Mishel, my host mom's dad (who i recently discovered is not Maximandro, but Anaximandro...that was embarrassing), and Griseria, the crazy lady who stayed in my house with me when I first got to site, the one who used to stand in my doorway and stare at me until I woke up to find her lurking.  Yeah, strange lady. They were all sitting together in the sun with their bright shirts, dark skirts and campo hats shucking corn.  I decided it was too beautiful a day to spend all of it inside, even if I did have a lot of work to do on my laptop.  I grabbed my journal, a towel, a pen, and went to sit outside with them (after I snapped a couple photos :) )



It was a beautiful day, the sun was fierce but there was a slight breeze rustling through the trees that brought a little respite from the heat just when I started to feel too warm.  Everything was so deliciously green in the bright sunshine and it felt nice to just sit out there with them.  With the big rolling mountains, and the valley between me and the next, sometimes I feel like my house is somehow set upon a giant green ocean, the corn stalks and trees a strange form of seaweed.  This big ocean sometimes threatens to drown me, pulling me farther and farther away from the safe shore of my home, and sometimes the floating sensation, being free in a way I've never felt, is so exactly what I need and so exactly where I need to be, that I'm embarrassed by the times I've turned over on my belly and desperately struggled against the current to get home again.  The thing about here, about Peace Corps, is those two extremes are sometimes phases through months, but sometimes switch back and forth multiple times a day.

I sat outside with them until the creases in my elbows started to sweat.  I headed back inside and made a call to Violeta.  I had visited her at the health post two days before and asked if she and the other health post workers could talk to decide on a day for my presentation of my community diagnostic.  Peace Corps asks us to give formal presentations when we finish our diagnostic to leaders in our communities.  I had called her back the next day, and of course she hadn't figured it out yet and told me to call back tomorrow.  It wasn't any more than I had expected.  So I called her back, and she said, "Tuesday at 12".  I was not expecting it to be that soon, and I had not prepared my presentation yet, it was Saturday, I was headed to Chota Sunday, and I was planting my giant vegetable garden with my host mom on Monday...but knowing that if I didn't take their first proposal they would never come up with another one, I accepted.  I immediately got a little stressed out.  I have a lot going on right now.

I spent a couple hours trying to make a little summary sheet of my diagnostic to hand out to each of them during my presentation, and another document to help us make an action plan for the rest of the year based off the results of the diagnostic (all in spanish of course).  I'll maybe summarize my diagnostic in English for all of you a little later.  I also needed to work on my "informe", which is pretty much a report I have to give to the Mayor of Chota (we are kind of like a suburb that he has jurisdiction in), the authorities in my town, the health post workers, and the director of the primary school.  It felt kind of good to be in a time crunch for the first time in a while, not going to lie.

I got called for lunch, and was served chicharón, which is pretty much just pork (mostly pork fat) fried in oil.  I have a really hard time eating this, because although it actually tastes pretty good, I am well aware of how high the fat content is...and I have seen the giant hung of bloody pig hanging outside on our clothes line for a couple days gathering flies.  I try not to notice...but it's right there.  However, I can't not eat it because it is incredibly expensive.  They only serve four pieces each meal to every person to make it last.  I know my host mom bought it to celebrate her mom's visit.

During lunch, my host mom begged me to tutor Mishel in math because she has a test coming up on Monday.  They've been asking me all week if I will eventually tutor her and I always say yes.  This time, she asked if I would do it that day, and Sunday.  I said I wasn't sure about right then because I had a lot of work, but definitely on Sunday evening.  In the past, my host sister has done her homework at the table and Celina, my host mom, tries to help, but she doesn't know how to add double numbers, like for example, 63+24 = .  The problem, is that everyone yells at Mishel when she doesn't get something right (which unfortunately happens a lot).  Really, the only educational ally that she's got is me.  It's a little nice to have everyone listen intently to what I say though, I am not really allowed to be the authority on anything in my life anymore.

The general assumptions, because I'm a gringo, are that I have a lot of money, I don't understand, I'm doing it wrong, and I'm generally completely incompetent. My host mom is always changing things that I have done on purpose, like when I bleached out my water bottles and left them with the caps off so the sun would dry out the bleach and I could use them again.  I went out about an hour later to see if they had dried, and they hadn't, because my host mom had put the caps back on them.  I undid the caps and left them, and when I came back an hour later, the caps were back on.  I'm a stupid gringa, I don't know what I'm doing, obviously.  People exclaim, in the streets, when they see me walking.  SHE CAN WALK? Yes, genius, I can walk.

Anyway, by the end of lunch, I decided I would help Mishel for half an hour now, I could find the time.  So I asked Mishel, "Mishel, do you want to study with me for a little while after lunch?  We can do it outside in the sun if you want." Mishel didn't make any eye contact with me and just stared blankly across the table at Celina.  "Mishel?" I asked her again, and she took a sip of her tea with her eyes wide and staring at her mom.  It didn't take long for all the adults at the table to start yelling at her because she hadn't responded and Celina kept telling her to tell me yes.  Mishel just ignored everyone, until she got up from the table, started crying, and stormed out of the room.  I was completely baffled.  Her mom chased after her, and when she came back, I asked her why Mishel was crying.
"She doesn't want to study." she shrugged.
"Why not?"
"I don't know."
Now I know this is going to sound nerdy, but I don't ever remember not wanting to learn as a kid...or ever (except for maybe organic chemistry).  I don't know how to motivate a kid to learn because I can't empathize at all.  I don't get it.  I get that having people yell at you every time you get something wrong can't be fun, but I've never done that to her when I teach her, so why is she sobbing about me helping her? I felt kind of crappy, honestly.  I could still hear her screaming from her bedroom.

Celina asked me then if I would help her learn how to add and I said sure.  I'm not sure we're ever going to find the time, and she asks me all the time if I'll teach her and I always say yes but we haven't practiced yet.

I finished lunch and Celina asked me to go teach Mishel.  To be honest, I didn't think it was fair to force me to teach Mishel if she was going to sob about it.  I walked to Mishel's room and she was sobbing.  I stood in the doorway and asked Mishel to tell me why she was crying.
"I'm not going to eat you, Mishel." I said to her, hoping I could get her laugh.  Celina did.  "You're not going to die, we're just going to sit outside and practice some Math."
Celina had to force her off her bed and to get her notebooks and as we walked to the front of the house to sit in the sun she just kept sobbing.  Shoot me.

By the time we got to the front of the house, I sat down in the shade and asked Mishel what was wrong.  I told her I couldn't help her if she didn't tell me why she was crying.  She kept sobbing without looking at me or saying anything.  About 5 minutes went by.
"Are you afraid of doing badly on your test?"
I noticed a slight change in her when I asked that so I repeated it, over and over.  I told her she could tell me.  She finally nodded.  I suppose I couldn't really blame her, considering Celina embarrasses her every time she comes home with a bad grade.  The other day she'd come home with an 18/20 and came running to find me to show me how she did and I gave her a high five and told her she'd done great.  Maybe I should have given her more positive reinforcement than I did, considering what usually happens to her.
"Mishel, you did great on that test the other day! You can get a score like that again but only if you study.  So let's study, ok?"I finally said to her and she nodded.

We took a seat in the sun on the grass and started practicing.  The test will be almost exactly what is written in her notebook.  She was given a number, and had to write the number that comes before it.  On the other notebook pages were numbers and she had to write the number that comes after it.  I could not believe how hard it was for her.  She almost 7 and she can't figure out what number comes before or after 4.  I had to explain to her what "before" and "after" mean and then write out the numbers to show her.  When it came to writing the numbers that come before a whole number or after a number with 9 in it, she couldn't do it.  We were stuck on "what number comes after 89?" for about 15 minutes.  I wrote out a number line for her and she couldn't do it.  After about 45 minutes of struggling with her and her making a little progress, except for with whole numbers and numbers with 9s, I could sort of understand why people yell at her.  Terrible, she doesn't deserve it, but it's SO frustrating. I tried like ten different angles and eventually she got distracted by the chickens who were walking around in the collection of random crap she has neatly organized in front of our house.  She has a lot of piles around the property of stuff she's neatly laid out a certain way...sometimes I think she might actually have OCD because she's so particular about things.  She got up and left me with her notebooks to go straighten things up.  I walked over to her and she looked like she might cry, and kept whining "my toysss".  I told her she couldn't cry about it, left her notebooks on the cement and told her that we would practice later.

A bit later I was in my room, and I smelled something that smelled like burnt rubber.  I looked out my window and could see smoke.  I went running out the front of our house only to discover there was a pile of something burning.  I had a bad feeling so I walked back into the room next to mine and noticed that my garbage bag I had put outside my room to carry down the mountain on Sunday was no longer there.  They burned my trash.  I was not happy.  The whole house STANK all day long from my trash that they burned, and all I could think about were all the chemicals in the plastic that they had just released into the air.  I made a note to talk to my host mom about that.

I did my workout, and went outside to take a sink shower (this involves washing off all parts of my body not covered in clothing and then washing my hair in the sink.  The water decided to die today, after almost 3 weeks of water.  Great. Dirty Hayden.  I went back inside and took a baby wipe bath, which made me feel better, though my hair was disgusting.

I went into the kitchen to hang out with Celina while she made humitas.  I discovered the difference between tamales and humitas are that tamales are made with dried out corn that you crush up in a little machine (reallllly exhausting process), and humitas are made with fresh corn.  I like humitas better.  My host mom had made the paste and the greasy cheese stuff to put in the middle and was just folding them up into the corn husks my host family had removed that morning so she could cook them.  We were just chatting when we heard a "news broadcast", which is a giant megaphone someone in the community has that they shout announcements into for about an hour.  I can never understand a word they say, but my host mom went out to find out what it was about.  Turns out the town had a meeting that night at 8pm about a Viviendas Saludables project (Healthy Homes).  I had been planning a similar project with the health post so I called up Violeta to find out if she knew anything about it.  She didn't so I decided to go.

I wrote out a bit of speech beforehand, because at these things, in front of the whole community, I always feel like I'm going to vomit and get so nervous that if I didn't have something to read I would probably just stare at them stupidly.  I was so confused that Don Juan, the president of the RONDA, or chair of the town council for lack of a better explanation of his job, hadn't told me about this.  I was hoping to run into him to chat about why he hadn't filled me in and then make an announcement to the community about how this type of thing was what I do.

The meeting was at 8pm and at 8:30 pm, my host mom still didn't want to leave but I asked her to because I need to make a point of being on time for things.  She seemed reluctant but I was hoping to catch Don Juan early to chat with him about some things because I hadn't seen him since our trip to Peace Corps training in Piura.

Unlike the last RONDA meeting I attended, this time I broke out the giant thick North Face fleece I bought before coming to Peru to keep me warm.  It hasn't been quite cold enough for a while, but this was definitely a good occasion for it.  We got to the school at 8:45 and there were four people there.  The door to the meeting room was still locked and I felt immediately guilty for dragging my host mom out early.  I should have known that the authorities wouldn't show up on time either.  I ended up hanging out with a bunch of women from my community, and wrapped up in blankets, one around their waste, another bundled around their shoulders, just their dark eyes peering out from between their big campo hat and knit blanket.  Around 9:50pm, Don Juan showed up and our group of women all greeted him good evening.  As he was striding past us, I think he caught the sound of my voice and whipped around to shake my hand, ask how I was, and when I'd gotten back from training.  I felt a little guilty that all of these women from the community had greeted him, but I was getting special attention.  It also felt kind of nice.  :)

He unlocked the door to the meeting room (which is in a room that is part of the primary school).  In place of setting up in there, people started pulling chairs out of the room.  Celina told me that when the meetings are big, they hold them outside.  Luckily, the school is lit with streetlights at night that shine down onto their cement version of a soccer field.  Celina got us both chairs and we sat against the wall, right next to the "Mesa" where Don Juan and Don Juan sit (I'm serious).  Don Juan Perez is the president of the RONDA in Iraca Central, and Don Juan Vasquez is the president of all three RONDAS for all three sectors (Tijeras, Sacasacas, and Iraca Central).  The school is built into a hill, and right at the end of their cement soccer field, there is a steep little slope, and then a small walkway, another set of stairs, and then the second part of the school.  The whole primary school is built like an L.  I was sitting along the long part with the Don Juans and Celina and a few other people and tons of people came and sat along the ledge on the short side of the L.  I wish I could explain it better.  Sitting there, with the street lights, I almost felt a little like an arena, or the Peruvian version of a gladiator arena.  I was waiting for two drunk guys to come to the center and start dueling.

As much as I kind of loath the night meetings because they start late and last forever, I sort of love them too.  All the men come in wool ponchos with baseball caps or campo hats.  All the women come wrapped in blankets and I feel like I've been transported into a whole different world.  I also sort of love the night because people can't immediately see how different I am, and I can pretend for just a second like maybe I fit.

I asked Don Juan, before things got started, if the health post knew about Viviendas Saludables.  He said no, that it was something the Municipality was doing.  That seemed strange to me.  I asked him if I could say something during the meeting and he said, "of course!" which was nice.
Being Ridiculous, though maybe I should give him my sunglasses

The weird thing he is holding is a gift the municipality gave him for his work in the community we were working in.
He seemed pleased.  I got a cool hat. :) The Peruvian version of a fedora 

I didn't know Don Juan very well before I left for the training with him.  I ended up taking him as a back up to the person I had originally invited.  I was so worried at the start of the trip because he was so serious and stiff and I was terrified it wouldn't go well.  However, being around the other volunteers gave me a chance to be more myself than I had allowed myself to be in site and he got to know who I really was and liked me for it.  We spent three days sweating our asses off making improved cook stoves, latrines, vegetable gardens, compost, and all sorts of other things. He loosened up a lot during the trip, and by the end of it, he was joking around with me.  We had a great trip together and I had the opportunity to tell him how sincerely dedicated I was to working in the community, and how proud he had made me and his town at our training.  I told him I couldn't imagine anyone who would be a better representation of our community and that I was so grateful he had agreed to come.  He was really gracious about it.  On the last combi ride at the end of the trip, he turned his baseball cap sideways and I copied him, we were both laughing about it when I gave him my sunglasses and we took some ridiculous pictures.  It was a lot of fun.  My biggest fear, was that we would get back to site and everything would be stiff again.  I didn't want to lose the feeling of freedom I had gained by being myself around someone from my town.  I think I've been really confined and burdened by the need to be a positive representation of my country and behave like a professional.  It also didn't help that we were told not to smile a lot because it's considered flirting.  So I spent far too much of my service being serious and stiff and not smiling.  SO not me.  I vowed to do my best to be myself when I got back to site and so far, it's been way better.

Juan receiving his certificate for attending Peace Corps
training - this is maybe the tallest Peruvian in Peru...and I'm still taller
Dinner with all the Cajamarca 18er girls and our community partners - Juan is first on the left

I could feel things were still great between me and Don Juan and that made me relax a little.  I didn't realize how worried I had been about it.  He gave a presentation to all the community members who had come.  Apparently, the mines are giving free gas stoves (do NOT picture gas stoves from the US) to communities if they would sign a sheet and pay 10 cents.  If you're thinking that's too good to be true, it's possible.  There are rumors going around that the mines are going to use the sheets that have everyone's names on them, their license numbers, and their signatures as a list of supporters for their mines.  NOT good.  I'm really hoping that there is no factual basis to that because I can't say anything more than I would be completely ashamed to be from a country where a company would exploit the poor that way (not to say I'm not ignorant of it happening elsewhere, but to be here, while it happens here...)

If you are unfamiliar with what's going on with the mines in Cajamarca, it's a big deal.  I'm not sure I'm even allowed to blog about it because I'm not supposed to talk about it with anyone here, but there is an American company from Colorado that has found gold here in Cajamarca and have been mining it for a while.  Unfortunately, now they want to drain a lake that is the water source for a LOT of communities in the region because they believe there are gold deposits under it.  The President of Peru, Ollanta Humala, during his campaign, promised that he would not allow the mining to continue, but now that he's president and sees how much money that would bring in for the country, he seems to have changed his mind and everyone is really angry about it.  We have strikes all the time that have been going on since I first got to site in December.  It's the reason we had to travel around in a bit semicircle to get to site, because there were road blocks everywhere.  So far, there have only been two times I've been affected, once was when someone threw a half chewed grape at the back of my head near the market in Chota, and the other was a couple weeks ago, when someone in the street yelled at me, "How lovely is your preservation of our lakes."  The assumption, because I'm white, is that I work with the mines.

Around 11pm, Don Juan gave me "the word" (that's what they say in Spanish, Don Juan tells people who would like to speak, "tiene la palabra", which means, "you have the word".)  I stood up and told everyone again what my name was, what I was doing there, where I lived, what I had done so far, the type of work I do, and impressed upon them the fact that I was a part of their community for two years, that I called this place home, that I cared about the people, and that I desperately wanted to help in any way that I could to improve the health of the community.  I didn't want to continue to be left out of projects, I wanted them to think of me when they planned things like this, though at that point it was pretty clear the Viviendas Saludables project was the municipality's idea.  At the end, everyone clapped for me, which doesn't usually happen, and the only man who had anything to say after my attempt at a heartfelt speech, was to ask if I could provide money from the States.  Technically speaking, I can, because I have access to outside grants, but our bosses have made it clear we want to focus on funding from within Peru because they should have the money.  However, in the moment he asked it, I couldn't understand a word he said.  Lucky for me, Don Juan, my savior, responded for me and told him that I also work with the municipality just like they do, that I am a human resource with knowledge and training, but he added that all my work in the community needs the support of the people, and that alone it will be hard for me to be successful.  I really appreciated that and his answer was perfect.

Later, while we were waiting for people to sign up for things, I told him I didn't understand a word that guy had said and that he totally saved me.  He was worried he had answered incorrectly and I assured him it had been perfect.  A couple authorities hung out with us and my host mom.  Turns out Juan is married to Celina's sister, which is perfect.  I was worried for a while that I might have problems after taking him on a trip with me with jealousy or speculation as to my motives.  I'm still going to make an effort to get to know his wife, but it was a huge relief to find out that it might all be fine.  While we all stood around together we joked around about the upcoming town festival and how they could have all Celina's guinea pigs because I didn't want to be forced to eat them.  Everyone thought that was hilarious.  I felt like part of the community though.  I felt special and respected.  It was wonderful.  For the first time ever in site, I felt like I had a friend.  You can't possibly understand how incredibly liberating and amazing that is.  Juan is like the best thing that ever happened to me hahah

On the walk back down the road around midnight, I was walking with Celina and we kept passing people.  A couple of women made surprised comments about how fast I walked because I was walking way faster than them, and it was such a lovely end to a cold but satisfying evening.  I got to Peru almost 8 months ago, and about 6 months ago everyone couldn't believe I could walk, and now they are all surprised that I walk faster than them.  heheh


1 comment:

  1. I love long nugget life-updates...keep these coming :)

    ReplyDelete