Wednesday morning I got up and washed my hair in the sink with bucket water. We hadn’t had water for over a week at this point, but had been collecting rainwater to use for everything. My regional coordinator, on of my bosses, was coming to visit and I badly needed to wash my hair. When I was ready for class, I went to find Mishel to walk to class, and Celina told me she wasn’t coming. I asked why, Mishel mumbled something I couldn’t hear, and Celina just said again, “she’s not going.” I’m not going to lie, I was kind of angry. How does it look if my own host sister doesn’t come to my English class? I was also not particularly impressed that Celina just shrugged at me and didn’t care if she went or not, for my sake or Mishel’s. I keep asking people in the community if there is an issue with attendance at the primary school during the year, and whether or not education is a priority in the community. They always say there isn’t an issue with attendance and that it is definitely a priority, but actions tell me differently. Here, if it is raining, that is a legitimate excuse to not attend my class, and during the school year, to either not go to school, or be one to two hours late. That would be completely inexcusable in the States, but here, it’s perfectly fine. There seems to be a lack of understanding that if you don’t attend school, you’re going to miss learning something important. I guess the usual motivator of not wanting to be behind in class doesn’t really apply here. (I suppose I should specify that these expectations and perspectives don’t apply to everyone in the States…) It makes teaching so much more difficult because kids won’t come to two classes, but they will come the next, and then they don’t know everything they missed. I’m constantly playing review games to try to catch kids back up to speed, which is great review for the kids that were here, but doesn’t really help the kids that weren’t there. It’s really frustrating.
Wednesday was one of those review days. I was going to teach them the days of the week and then we were going to play Jeopardy. I started with a fun review activity for body parts. I described a monster to them, one body part at a time, and they had to draw it exactly as I described it. I used hand gestures with my descriptions and they all drew a picture of a monster with a big head, a tiny mouth, three eyes, five ears, twelve toes, one leg, and four arms. It was fun, and I was happy to have the pictures to put up on the wall. The kids really love to draw. 
Jeopardy was fun, and I was really impressed with how much they remembered, but they also started to get whiny about the points, and they are REALLY good at whining. One whine is like an on switch for the whine factory inside every kid. Doesn’t take long before I’m twitching. I ended up making them tie at the end. One kid had a hissy fit, the oldest kid I have actually, and he threw a pile of answered Jeopardy cards on the floor. I was not impressed.
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| Picture of the classroom while the kids finish up their monster drawings. |
We finished English class, and after a slew of “Goodbye Teacher”s, I locked up the classroom and headed to the health post. I caught up with some of my students walking home and we chatted as we walked down the road. Luckily, we looked up in time to see three boys holding water balloons who clearly had me in mind. Carnival is happening in Cajamarca City this month, though closer to the end of the month, and part of the fun is filling balloons with water or paint, or if you’re really unlucky, pee, and chucking them at people. Being white, we are super targets. I was pretty sure these boys only had water in their balloons, but I watched them and waited to run until the right moment. When I saw them getting ready to take aim, I took off, three of my students barreling down the hill behind me. I heard a balloon splat the road right behind my boots and ran myself right into the health post while my students kept running towards home. I saw the boys fly by on the road a minute or two later and hoped my poor girls were far enough ahead!
At 12 p.m., my regional coordinator, José was showing up. He, up until that point, had sort of shown himself to not carry many things through. Example A. would be the time he told my host mom I would pay 6 months rent in the first month, but never told me, and advanced me no money to do so. When I let him know, he talked to my host mom, told me I had to pay it, and then said I had to send him an email and remind him about it. Regardless of the extra trip I made to Chota to send that email, I never got the money. Given experiences like this, I wasn’t sure what to expect from his visit.
I got to the health post, and the only worker here was Silvia. I was hoping Natalia would be there, because she’s done the most work with me and because Natalia and José are cousins. Unfortunately, just Silvia. I had given them plenty of notice that he was coming to visit though. José showed up a bit late, and brought Barbara, the volunteer I replaced. The three of us ended up sitting in the health post for twenty minutes while Silvia filled out paperwork. When the conversation between Silvia and José started up, Silvia immediately starting talking about how I shouldn’t be doing my surveys in the health post because the whole town was talking about how I never visit their homes, and what does that say about me? She said that all the times she has gone out into the community to do house visits I never want to come and I say that I’m sick. She also started spouting stuff about how the authorities of the community are upset that I don’t respect them enough to go talk to them about my work. I thought there might be steam coming out my ears. I turned to Barbara and said, in English, “I’m absolutely furious.” Her response was, “Say it with a smile, and I wondered how long it would take you to figure her out.”
I sat there for another twenty minutes, while Silvia said the same lies over and over again to my boss. I wanted to kill her, but instead, I sat in my seat and picked at my cuticles, occasionally glancing at José. José stayed neutral and waited for her to stop talking. I finally found a moment to say something, and very calmly, I told Silvia that I totally agreed with her. I would much rather do house visits, but I don’t know the paths in the community, or what time people will be home, or where the mean dogs are. I told her that she was also right, the one day she went into the community to do house visits, I was sick, but that I would take any future opportunity I had to go on house visits. I also told her I had no idea that the authorities were upset with me, and reminded her that I had been asking to be introduced to them for two months, because I don’t know who they are or where they live, or when I can find them. To my relief, José totally backed me up and began talking to Silvia about how the health post could best support me, while also agreeing that house visits were important. Silvia asked me if I wanted to go on house visits with her the next day. I said of course and asked when I should come to the health post. She said she would call me in the afternoon on Thursday. I was excited that José may have been incredibly helpful with the house visit situation.
After this discussion, and with me still fuming that she had lied to my boss to throw me under the bus for absolutely NO reason, the four of us, José, Barbara, Silvia, and I went up the road a bit to meet the teniente gobernador of Iraca, who is the person that represents Iraca to the municipality in Chota. José chatted with him and Barbara just looked pissed. At one point, the Teniente actually started talking about how sad they were when Stacy left Perú and went home. Stacy is a volunteer who worked in a neighboring town but would come to Iraca sometimes. I thought that was so rude of that guy to be talking about how much the town loved Stacy, when she wasn’t even a volunteer here and Barbara was standing right there. When José, Barbara, and I got in the car to drive to my house, Barbara started yelling about how much she hates Iraca, and how every person with any kind of authority in this town absolutely sucks. It was a little disheartening to hear that from someone who had lived here for two years. I took the opportunity to tell José that everything Silvia had told him, she had never told me, and that much, if not all of it, was a lie. I don’t think the authorities or the people in the town are freaking out about me, Natalia has told me that everyone thinks I’m friendly because I always greet them and smile. I have been asked to visit one woman’s house and that’s it. I’ll visit her when I find out where her house is! José sided with me without question, which was an incredible comfort to me.
I was so upset. I felt so betrayed and surprised. Barbara took that opportunity to tell me that when Violeta arrived at the health post about 6 months ago, Silvia did everything she could to get her fired because she was threatened by her. I was starting to think there was really something to “ignorance is bliss”.
We ate some lunch, though José was the only one willing to eat the soup, which included a giant hunk of pig fat I had seen drying out on the clothesline two weeks earlier. I mentioned to José that our latrine was almost full and he started talking to me about some amazing latrine he could help build that wouldn’t ever need to be moved because it would never fill and wouldn’t smell so it could be closer to the house. I felt like he was trying to persuade me, and I told him he had me with “won’t smell”, but that he needed to talk to Celina, it wasn’t my decision. Celina said sure, if he’d pay for it, which won’t happen. I’m not sure where that leaves us. José and Barbara left and I sat at home trying really hard not to be really upset about what had happened.
Not long after, when it looked like it was about to rain, Celina asked me to walk up the hill with her to the cows. The cows are on top of the mountain, and it was about to rain. I didn’t really want to go. As I hesitated giving her a response she said, “I thought you wanted to lose weight?”
“I am losing weight.” I said.
“That’s because you’re not eating.” And she sort of viciously laughed at me.
“I’m eating!” I said exasperatedly.
We have that fight all the time. She thinks I’m not eating because I don’t eat six cups of rice at every meal. Drives me crazy.
I grabbed my rain jacket from my room and put on my boots. We started the hike up the hill, Celina, Mishel, and two of Celina’s friends. We had a tough time making it up the hill because everywhere was flooded with water but we made it to the top of the mountain eventually, carrying a pot full of tamales, a tea pot, and two mugs. When we got to the top, we ran into my host grandfather, Maximandro, who had been working in his fields all day harvesting potatoes, or papa. We waited around for a while, and then we had a pile of potatoes that Celina started wiping clumps of soil off of before tossing them in a bag. I held out my hand for a potato to help her clean, and she said, “but you’ll get your hands dirty.” I couldn’t have been more surprised by that sentence if she’d hit me over the head at the same time. I’m not sure anyone in my life has actually thought I cared about getting my hands dirty. I told her I didn’t care and held my hand out for a potato. She shrugged and gave me one. After that Mishel kept handing me potatoes, but she picked the tiniest ones she could. I did not like being made to feel inept by the six year old, so I playfully started chucking them at her every time she handed me a little one, which made her giggle.
When we finished with the potatoes, Mishel was doing something ridiculous, so I picked her up and flipped her upside down, which made her scream and giggle. We fed Maximandro and his friend who had been working with him in his farm, or Chacra. They ate six or seven tamales each and drank coffee from the teapot. Mishel and I had started to freeze because it was raining and really windy. When the men finished eating, we brought a bag full of potatoes over to an abandoned house nearby. Turns out, Maximandro owns that house, along with three others, and has four different farms around Iraca. I didn’t quite realize how well off my family was in comparison to others, but that definitely pointed it out to me.
We finally started heading down the mountain and we walked on a new path that comes down right to the back of my house. We passed by a couple of blackberry bushes where we plucked a couple from the branch and popped them in our mouths. Even the ripe ones were super sour. We paused at one point to enjoy and absolutely gorgeous view. I think I might go sit up there sometimes because it’s not far and the view is pretty.
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