Saturday, September 22, 2012

Long Awaited Update - WORK Part 1

I should probably start by saying sorry for how long it has been since I updated.  So much has happened that I can't even begin to cover but I am really grateful to everyone who has cared enough to keep checking for updates.  Sometimes just seeing page views on my blog is a comfort, as strange as that sounds...

I figured this update will be an update on work related things for the most part and hopefully it will jump-start me back into regular blog updates. We'll focus this update on just what I've done as far as trainings in Lima are concerned.

The last time I updated, I was on my way to Lima to meet up with other members of the Peace Corps committee that I'm on, previously known as WID/GAD, or Women in Development/Gender Analysis and Development.  It's a worldwide committee, so every Peace Corps country has the same group.  Unfortunately, Peace Corps Washington, aka The Mother Ship, decided to rename us Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment.  That now makes us, the ever lovely and professional-sounding, GEWE, or "Gooey".  Awesome.   When I was here last, we gave a training to the entire Peace Corps staff on how to better support LGBT volunteers.  We've had some situations that were not particularly well-informed, if you know what I mean, and as a committee we felt like working on those issues within Peace Corps would be a good first step to helping LGBT volunteers feel better supported and more comfortable in already strenuous circumstances.

The staff training went pretty well, and I got to meet the new Peru volunteers who came in June when I went to give a diversity training.  Why is the blond, green-eyed, white girl on diversity panel?  For one thing, it was because I was already in Lima, but I did come up with a good reason.   I came here a significantly larger woman, and I'm super tall, and in the rural places we end up in, that attracts a lot of harassment and attention.  For those of you who have read my blog, you know what I mean by that.  So, I thought warning other larger volunteers what they would be in for was a pretty decent reason to be there.  The LGBT volunteers had their representative, the African American volunteers had theirs, someone they could call when they were being harassed and needed to talk, why shouldn't heavier volunteers have their own?  I'd be more than happy to get a phone call from some volunteer sitting in a cornfield sobbing because they've just been treated horrifically because of their weight.  I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't had someone to call when I was sitting in my corn field because all I could think was "I want to go hoooommeeee." Another reason I rationalized was that I am a woman in a machismo culture and I'm going to be treated differently accordingly.  The last reason I had was that I am white, and for the first time in my life, I'm a minority.  That's a pretty significant deal.

Giving the diversity panel was a lot of fun, and I gave another training with my committee to the new volunteers on what is the GEWE committee and what do we do.  We also talked about gender politics in rural Peru and the kinds of things they could expect.  It was fun meeting them, and I must have done a decent job on the diversity panel because I was asked back to give a diversity training in October to the new group of volunteers that showed up on the 14th of September.  I really like being able to spend time with the new volunteers, to answer their questions and try and make them feel more comfortable.

Literally a week ago, I was in Lima for a medical visit that resulted in nothing worrisome but the doctors wanted to be sure.  I came down here (which involves a 25 minute mototaxi ride down my mountain, a 4 hour combi ride from Chota to Cajamarca, a three hour wait, and then a 16 hour bus ride from Cajamarca to Lima overnight).  The day after I got to Lima, the new health volunteers showed up from the United States.  The way the rotation works is that every September, the new round of health volunteers, environmental volunteers, and water & sanitation volunteers show up to start training, and every June, the business and youth development volunteers come to start their two months of training.  Each new group has a number.  I am a Peru 18 volunteer, the youth development and business volunteers that showed up in June were Peru 19 volunteers, and Peru 20, showed up a week ago.

I got super lucky, and was asked to go help out on their first day.  I drove with the health team staff to the retreat center that I had gone to the first night I showed up, and got to meet all the new volunteers.  It was crazy to be in the same room, the one I had stood in 1 year before, and be a resource and source of support for the new volunteers.  I had been in their place exactly a year before.   It was a strange feeling to see how much has changed, and it made me feel old.  I'm sort of blown away by how much can change in just a year.  In a way, it still feels like yesterday that I said goodbye to my dog for the last time and hugged my mom in the airport, and at the same time, I feel so so different from that girl who said goodbye to her family and her life in the States to start this crazy adventure.  But really, what perfect closure to my first year completed in Peace Corps!

The next day I was invited back to chat with the group of 57 new volunteers to talk about what it was like to live with host families, what to keep in mind, what to avoid talking about, some of the crazy things they could expect.  They were all a bit nervous, understandably so.  They had just come to the training center for the first time from the retreat center, and their new host families were going to pick them up in a few hours.  They had a lot of good questions and concerns, and I tried to keep them laughing to eliminate some of the stress.  After our session with them (I was with one other volunteer from Peru 18 and one from Peru 17), their host families came to pick them up.  While I hung out, I saw my host mom and sister (Mama Rosa and Angela) from my time in training show up.  I hid behind a tree until after they had met their new volunteer, a super sweet girl, and then jumped out and surprised them.  They were so so excited to see me, which made me feel awesome.  I gave them a hug, and my host mom said, "I was just telling Angela how the new girl looks like you."  Their new volunteer does not look like me, she's absolutely beautiful with strawberry blond/red hair and adorable freckles.

"But look at her hair!" I said.
"It's something about the face." She said.
"They think we look alike." I told the new volunteer.  She giggled. "They think white people look the same." I laughed.
"Oh." And she giggled nervously again.

I have often been asked if I am the sister of a past volunteer from our area, and the reason is usually that we both have small noses.  I guess small noses are about as unusual as blond hair around where I live, or white skin, so anyone who shares one of those characteristics, or two, I guess, is my twin.

I helped the new volunteer walk her stuff outside to where my host dad, Cesear, was waiting with the car.  He is truly the most adorable little man.  He saw me through the car windshield, a HUGE smile broke across his face, and put his hands together and started bowing back and forth.  I get confused about why he does that...I feel like if you put him in some robes he could be a monk somewhere.  He got out of the car and gave me a big hug.  They kept asking if I was coming to stay that night but I needed to head back.  I felt really guilty about spoiling that moment for the new volunteer, but I hoped if nothing else, she got a chance to see that although it's awkward at first, it gets way better with time.  She seems like such a doll, I feel like they'll all love each other by the end.

I was helping another volunteer with her stuff and helping her talk to her host mom.  At a break in our conversation, she said with awe, "You're practically fluent..."  I couldn't help laughing, because I'm no where near fluent, but I remember getting in that car and having a hard time saying anything.  I remember listening to Mama Rosa say to Cesear, "Oh, she can't speak Spanish..."  It was a strange moment to think about how far I'd come from the day my first host family came to pick me up.

"I promise that you'll be where I am, if not far far better, in a year. I promise!"
She looked dubious.

So all of that happened.  It was weird and wonderful and a bit mind boggling.  I get to see them two more times, once for the diversity session again, and once for the GEWE training where we introduce them to our committee and to gender politics stuff like the training we did with Peru 19.  I'm excited to see them again :)  Five of them will eventually, in the end of November after they swear in, come up to Cajamarca and join the five Peru 18er Cajamarca ladies (including myself)!!  I'm excited and I think they are such a lovely group, we are going to be lucky with whoever comes!

So what am I doing in Lima right now?  In the same meeting in February when we decided as a committee to put a focus on better supporting LGBT volunteers within Peace Corps, we came up with the idea of doing a Safe Zone training with the Peace Corps staff.  Safe Zone, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is a program often used in US Universities to train staff members to be LGBT allies.  This provides volunteers with a safe space to go among Peace Corps staff when they need to talk about something or need advice.  Being a Peace Corps volunteer is not an easy life in itself, but there is an added complication for LGBT volunteers, especially those put in rural areas, where they are told to recloset themselves for their own safety.  I can't imagine what that process is like in itself, but imagine trying to develop relationships with people in a foreign country, and even with your closest Peruvian friends and family, you are forced to lie about a significant part of who you are?  I have a hard time sometimes with the aspects of my life I find hard to share just because they are so different and therefore difficult for members of my community to understand.  I find it frustrating to feel that kind of wall between me and those I am closest to, and I don't have to hide a piece of my identity.  Not all volunteers have the same experience because it is so dependent on who you are with and who you are, but for those who do struggle, they should have a safe place to go an talk about it.  We felt like training the staff who elected to be allies would be important, because acceptance and understanding of LGBT people has not advanced in Peru as it has in the United States (I'm also not suggesting that things are perfect in the US, only that they are farther along.)

Richard and I have been really excited about this from the beginning and so the two of us have been working on the training for a while.  We got really lucky, and Wendy, our Director of Programming and Training (aka #2 in all of Peace Corps Peru), got really excited about the training and has been so incredibly supportive.  We have gotten a lot of staff involved and we are going to give the training on Monday.  She told me when I met with her a week ago that she was hoping that the Peace Corps staff would understand that this training was not just applicable to a Peace Corps/American thing, but in general to their lives outside of Peace Corps.  One thing most people don't realize is that almost all the Peace Corps Peru staff is Peruvian, with the exception of our Country Director, Wendy, and the 3rd year volunteers who work in positions called "PCVC" or Peace Corps Volunteer Coordinator.  They develop materials to aide volunteers in the field, edit grant proposals, design project frameworks, work part time in an NGO in Lima or for a governmental organization like the Ministry of Health, and serve in general as work and life support for volunteers.

Safe Zone training is coming up on Monday, I'm doing prep work and trying to catch back up on my real life.  But as for trainings in Lima, that's the full update of what I've been up to.  More to come!....

2 comments:

  1. Sounds like you're doing some pretty amazing things helping other volunteers!

    ReplyDelete