There are two things that have been on my mind. I’ll write one down here.
I was sitting on a combi the other day thinking about how I
am in a relationship with Peru, a relationship so tumultuous and inconsistent,
slightly abusive, and unpredictable that it is exciting, but one that if my mom
knew the whole truth about, she would sit me down with a glass of wine and tell
me that Peru wasn’t good for me, that I deserved to have a more dependable,
consistently loving relationship.
This isn’t to say that I think Peru isn’t good enough for me, but we
clearly aren’t the right match.
It’s not a “forever” thing.
Peru has a lot of habits that at first I knew I hated, and
then I just sort of got used to out of necessity, but my irritation still
flares up unexpectedly in response to all the little things I hadn’t said
anything about. Like the other
day, crammed into a combi, shoulders crumpled so far in my cleavage line made
it all the way to my neck, huayno music blaring out of the speakers, and the
guy sitting next to me decides he is also going to turn on his personal radio
and blast that…so it becomes this giant mess of clashing notes that doesn’t
seem to phase anyone but me. Makes
me think about all those car trips I took with my brothers, where we would complain
if the sibling next to us was blasting their music on their personal walkman,
complete with headphones, loud enough that we could actually tell they were
listening to music. Or how we
would complain we didn’t have enough space when we had a whole seat plus a
little of the middle room…
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| Ellie and I - currently using a microphone to explain to explain to everyone the Vision of Pasos Adelante |
Or the other day, I, along with my friend Ellie, were
invited to a big meeting of all the health professionals in our entire
department, to give a presentation about a conference the Peace Corps
volunteers put on last year to make one health professional look super awesome
in front of all her peers. So we
went, as a favor to her. We got on
a combi, (sat in the road for an hour and a half waiting to get by construction
that only stopped for lunch break…apparently “detour” is an advanced concept
that has not yet made it here), we road 6 hours down to the capital city, we
paid to stay in a hostel, we prepared a presentation, we got up early to get to
the meeting at 9 am when we were told to get there for our 11 am presentation. We had been calling Hermelinda, the
woman that asked us to come, all morning because we weren’t sure how to get
there, and she hadn’t picked up.
When we got there, everyone was in suits, there was a podium and
microphones, and a screen with a time limit countdown. We were asked to sit in the front row
and all the photographers couldn’t help but snap a billion pictures of the two
white people in the front row.
Ellie and I freaked out a little bit. We sat, waiting to present, listening to presentation after
presentation of hospital efficacy indicators. By 12:30, we weren’t sure what was going on, so Ellie went
to go find a schedule. She came
back, we were on the schedule for 5:30 pm.
Side note: In Peru, this kind of thing happens all the time. Times change, no one tells you. Times don’t change but no one can do
anything on time so you end up presenting about 3 hours later than you planned
(this is why we waited until 12:30 to find a schedule). This is one of those moments where you
role your eyes, say “Welp, got Peru-ed again”, and just wait some more. I, however, had hit some kind of
threshold of Peru tolerance that day, and this incidence, instead of making me
role my eyes, made me absolutely livid.
The assumption, is that I have nothing better to do. If I had known we weren’t presenting
until 5:30, we wouldn’t have come down the day before and paid for a
hostel. Presenting at 5:30 meant
that we would have to stay in Cajamarca again that night, and not get back
until the next day, but I had English class in the morning and had no way of
telling my kids that class was canceled.
It messed up everything. On
top of that, the schedule we had, had yesterday’s schedule also printed on it,
which meant that Herlinda had known the day before what time we were presenting
and didn’t bother to tell us. We
had made the whole trip as a FAVOR to her.
I went outside, out of ear range, and called my friend Kate
who is always supportive when I start thinking seriously about breaking up with
Peru...or at least threatening to.
Talking to Kate helped calm me down a bit, and then I called Alonso, one
of my many bosses. He acknowledged
that what had happened was a lack of respect, which made me feel better. He called my regional coordinator, who
tried to call Herlinda…who didn’t pick up. He called me and asked if I could take Burga Express back to
Chota that night. This is a
freezing, awful bus that leaves at 9pm from Cajamarca City and gets you into
Chota at 3 am. I really really
didn’t want to do that, but resigned myself to it if I didn’t have another
option.
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| Currently explaining what we did in the Conference |
When I walked back inside, a woman came up to me to confirm
our presentation time. I begged
her if we could move it up, at least to right after lunch. Herlinda finally showed up. We moved the presentation to 2:45,
which means 3pm Peru time. Ellie
and I sat through presentations until 1:30, when Herlinda helped us find a
combi that we could buy tickets for and would leave around 5pm and take us straight
to Chota. I was grateful for her
help. We ate lunch, went back, and
gave the presentation in front of all the health bigshots in the entire
department. I only fumbled on the
word “sustainability” in Spanish…which I did with a smile. At the end, people were allowed to ask
questions and make comments. We
had three. Two were
“felicitaciones” or congratulations on our great work and one was a woman
asking for a volunteer where she lives and works.
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| Receiving comments and questions |
I felt great about it. We had gotten Peace Corps’ name out
there, we had talked about the work we did with Pasos Adelante, spreading the
word about that Peace Corps program as a tool for teaching sex ed while
simultaneously spreading the word about volunteer successes, and we talked
about the conference that the RED and DISA (health bigshots) had helped with,
and probably helped assure their participation and financial contribution for
this year. Ellie and I were both
super happy it was over, and we started our super long journey home, starting
with a 2 hour wait in a bus station.
When you ask people about their life as a volunteer, most
will whip out the cliché but completely accurate, “it’s a rollercoaster”. I think it is probably equally accurate
to say it is like a completely unhealthy relationship that you learn a lot
from. One second, everything is
fine, the next second you’re livid, you feel taken advantage of, manipulated,
used, disrespected, and unimportant.
It’s the worst day ever.
Then wait 10 seconds and you feel rewarded, important, appreciated,
proud, respected and like you just accomplished something. It’s the best day ever. Have a big fight, kiss and make
up. When something goes right in
Peru, it’s like having someone who never gives you praise tell you that they
are proud of you, or that weird family member who hates physical affection give
you a hug. Or being a C average
student who just got an A+ on a paper.
It makes you want to keep working at it, it makes you want to put up
with the crap.
It also teaches you to be grateful and happy about tiny
things. I’ve been organizing a
project with moms in my community who have kids under 5 years old. It’s a “Healthy Homes” project, which
consists of a lot of educational sessions to teach about all sorts of different
important health themes, and will end in the construction of latrines and
improved cook stoves. We had our
first meeting to form our committee (it’s a formality here, but Peace Corps
encourages it so that local community members can learn how to design, write,
and manage a project). About half
my moms showed up, and the majority was over an hour late. I started by explaining the nature of
the project. When I got to forming
the committee, Natalia, the health post worker, cut me off, and said everything
I had just said over again, throwing in a lot more condescending comments and
talking to them like misbehaving children. All the moms kept glancing at me, I think because they
didn’t understand why Natalia was repeating what I was saying, a couple moms
even murmured, “yeah, we understood her…”
Then Natalia started talking about all sorts of other stuff we hadn’t
even gotten to yet. She just
completely took over. This is not
the first time this has happened, and not wanting to give her the green light
on the “walk all over me” habit, I interrupted her and asked politely if we
could talk about that subject later and stick to organizing the committee.
I had invited
Don Juan to come because I wanted him to be President of my committee. If anyone is going to do a project like
this in the future, he’s going to be involved. We had talked about it ahead of time and he had said that it
depended on what the moms wanted.
He ended up being the first one nominated as president and he straight
up turned it down. No warning, no
heads up. Just turned it
down. He said that the moms should
be the ones in charge, and on one hand, I do agree. On the other hand, I know my community well enough to know
that no woman would ever initiate, much less lead/organize, a project like
this. I was totally taken
off-guard and really upset. We
then sat around for like 25 minutes while all the women refused to be part of
the committee, saying that they never showed up on time as their excuse. I started to get really
frustrated. Various members of my
community have been nagging me to do a project like this for a long time,
promising their support, but what really happens is they nag me, and when the
time comes for support, they’re no where to be found. What they want, is for me to do all the work. I maintain that the vast majority of my
community has been ruined by NGOs, and they want handouts without having to do
anything in return. This started
to get to me while everyone refused to be part of the committee. I interjected to the peer pressure
disaster that was happening and said something along the lines of, “I’m not
asking you to form a committee for formality’s sake. I have to form a committee so that some members of the
community are involved in the process, and should you ever wish to do a project
like this in the future, you have some people with experience and an
understanding of how it works to make it happen. I’m here until November and then I’m gone, so I can’t do
another project like this, and you all will inevitably need something new for
your homes in the future. As for all
the women turning down nominations because they say that they can’t make it on
time, you all are about to sign a contract that says you will be at every
educational session and you will be there no later than 15 minutes after our
start time or you will be kicked out of the project. I don’t want to have to do that to anyone, but that’s how it
will be.”
I think it was clear I was upset.
Natalia, the health post worker eventually pressured four
women into being on the committee and we moved on to other things. I ended the meeting feeling glad it was
over, glad I had finally done it and had taken a step in a productive direction
on my project, but sort of upset with Natalia, and the moms, and Don Juan.
On the first of February, we had our first educational
session, or “charla”. The subject
was “EDAs”, or “Enfermedades Diarreicas Agudas”, that essentially means acute
diarrhea, which is a big problem here. I planned my charla, feeling really
anxious, hoping the moms actually showed up, and hoping they would somehow
learn from me. I got down there
early, and there were a bunch of moms waiting! They had showed up EARLY. For those who don’t live or work in Peru, you can hardly
understand what an epic victory that was.
These are the same women that had showed up an hour late to the last
meeting. I was ecstatic, because
it showed that at least a handful were taking me and my project seriously. We had to wait a little while for the
key to the “Casa comunal”, or meeting house. I had trouble getting my posters to stick to the wall
because it was so heavily caked in dust nothing would stick. One of the moms helped me out.
The session ended up being a lot of fun. The beginning was
awkward because no one wanted to participate and everyone was sort of stiff. I
fell into my slightly playful teacher role, and the moms had a good time with
it, laughing and joking around with each other. I think I showed them a side none had seen, and also didn’t
expect after knowing Barbara, the last volunteer who I have heard from them was
super serious.
We talked about ways to prevent diarrhea, we talked about
handwashing (how it should be done, and when), we talked about ways to treat
diarrhea, how to make “suero casero” or rehydration fluids, we talked about
signs of dehydration, and they learned how to make a tippy top, which is just
an upsidedown bottle you fill with water and use as a handwashing station. I had saved all the big water bottles I
had bought over the last year and half, and handed them out to moms who could
answer my questions. Their
homework was to put a tippytap in their kitchen and outside of their
latrine. It went really well, and
by the end of it, we went over everything and they, as a group, could answer
all the questions I had. We
finished early, which I think they appreciated, and a couple moms hung around
to help me take everything down.
Natalia had come, as I asked, and instead of take over the whole thing
like she had before and belittle me by repeating everything I said, she came,
sat in the back, and when it was all over, came up to me to tell me how great
it was, how I should save my materials, and that she would be happy to take
pictures for my monthly report next time.
I walked home feeling like a superstar, even though a good chunk of my
moms didn’t show up and I’m sure they didn’t learn as much as I had hoped. I just felt energized in a way I
haven’t for a long time, and it made me wish I had started working with moms
like this earlier.
See what I mean?
Things are either “eh”, “SO GOOOOODDD”, or “this is the worst day of my
life”, but not on a big month-to-month type flow. No. It’s second
by second. Not super healthy, but
seems to be the general experience for most volunteers
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