Privilege

It is amazing the things that are slowly revealing themselves as luxuries to me.  There are the obvious things - like toilets, consistent running water, hot water, showers, sinks inside, dishwashers, microwaves, ovens, stoves, cupboards, rugs, individual chairs instead of benches, wood floors, wood-stoves or furnaces, ceilings that don't leak, raincoats instead of sheets of plastic, windows, lamps, refrigerators, cars, enforced traffic laws, a decent education, a nutritious diet - or enough food to maintain a healthy weight, washing machines, dryers, couches, printers, well maintained roads, decent public transportation, a good mattress, a lack of flees, safe drinking water, a vacuum cleaner, the ability to have a dog for affection and not to guard your house against thieves, and a cat for snuggling and not to eat the rats.

But then there are things that aren't so obvious, or at least weren't to me - but come to me slowly.  For example, I'm freaking out a little right now about what I will do with myself when I finish service.  I don't know where I'm headed from here and don't know what will make me happy.  But that's the thing.  So many of us in the United States agonize over what to chose that will make us happy.  That's a luxury.  It is a luxury to pick a career based on how fulfilled it will make us, how best it matches our interests and strengths, where here, in large part, you take whatever job, whatever opportunity you find that will put some money in your pocket, some tin over your head, and some pancito in your mouth.  People with gifts, bright individuals haven't received an education that stretches their mind, that piques their interest, that inspires them, lose interest in school and find whatever job they can that makes money, unable to hone their skills and contribute something incredible.  It makes me angry.

Here I am, laboring over what I'm going to do with my Yale degree.  I have all the opportunities in the world, although it sometimes feels harder than that, and I am so concerned about finding the career that will fulfill me the most, knowing that overall, money will not be a concern for me.  I will find a job that pays enough to get by.  I don't have to worry about taking the first opportunity or fighting for that one opportunity.  I will work to get where I want to go, but I don't have to worry about tomorrow, about where the money will come from.  I have the luxury of choosing what I think will make me the most happy.  If that's not a sign of privilege, I don't know what is.

Rain & Professional Development

Rainy season has come on full force.  Although it's not as bad as last year, it still does mean that I'm living in a swamp with the daily threat of my feet flying out in front of me and my rump landing hard in a giant squishy mix of animal crap, mud, and water.  My host sister left her tiny little butt print in the side of our hill the other day and I have not been anxious to repeat that artistic endeavor.  What adds insult to injury (there's been a lot of that happening lately), we have been going weeks without water...which doesn't make any sense because there is so much falling from the sky.  We collect the rain water in big dirty buckets (yay!) but we seem to always run out anyway...and then when we're eating things like soup for dinner, I get nervous about where that water came from.  I'm pretty sure it's from a spring we have halfway down the hill from my house, but I have been to that spring, and aside from the fact that they tie their cows up nearby to chew grass and poop everywhere, there are so many things swimming around and growing in that spring, I don't even want to wash my laundry with that water.  Oh Peru.

Aside from being water logged on a daily basis, I'm incredibly busy.  It's a great thing, because I'm busy, I'm getting a lot done, and I can feel good about that.  It's a bad thing now because on days where I wake up and the sky outside is falling...I still have to get out from under my down comforter and go out and hike around in that mess.  Staying dry is an art form.  Seriously.

On the 16th of February, I had a meeting with all of the health post workers in charge of health promotion from my class of health post to teach them how to use Pasos Adelante, the manual and sex ed program that I used last year to train high school kids in Cabracancha to be youth peer promoters. This year, the RED, which is essentially in charge of health promotion in the entire district, has made Pasos Adelante one of its goals, meaning that all the health posts need to try to do it in their sites.  Karen, the OB I've been working with in Cabracancha, helped me give a presentation to all these workers about classroom management, our experiences with the manual and the program, how to use the manual, the first steps for forming a group, working with the municipality & RED/DISA, etc.  Karen, in classic peruvian style, had prepared a powerpoint, but there was no projector...so we sat around for an hour and a half waiting for one.  We had fun with the presentation and I think people learned a lot.  I'm really excited about getting Pasos Adelante out there, because there is no sexual education for these kids, and they need it...especially in a machismo society.  Here are some photos from that day.

Here we're doing a fun activity at the beginning to set the tone for a NOT
super boring charla

I'm reviewing what we'll be talking about
during the session.

 

We played HIV/AIDS Jeopardy at the end, and they were harder to control
than my adolescents. I had to threaten point deduction every 30 seconds.

Here I'm talking about the first steps for forming
the group. 

Explaining how to play Jeopardy.  They can't say that
word at all, which makes me giggle. 

I think someone was trying to get away with a terrible
answer to one of the questions and I wasn't having it...hahah

They really were harder to control than a group of 12 adolescents, which gave me a good opportunity to show them how to manage a class of adolescents - with humor, not with authority or strictness or impatience.  I think they got the drift.  

I was really excited for the opportunity to teach them because I think that it was a really blatant example of professional development that I offered them and I don't always get that opportunity.  I've tried something along the same lines with the teachers at the primary school in Iraca, teaching them how to give educational sessions on health topics to their kids, showing them exactly how to do it, but they don't get into it.  They don't try it themselves.  I'm going to try and come at it from a different angle with them this year, but I'm glad I got to introduce these health post workers to Pasos Adelante, with my own success story so they know it is possible and doable.  

More to come later! 

English Class

I got back from break, and irritated by some of the gossip circulating about me, I decided that I would suck up to my town and teach English Class.  I taught it last year, and although it helped in a lot of ways, I didn't really enjoy it.  However, teaching English is a quick and easy way to get everyone to like you in Peru.  So, I'm teaching English every Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 9-10:30 to any kids who want to come.  I'm averaging about 13 kids every class, which is great, and they've already learned a lot of the basics.  Amazing how much easier it is to teach English when I can speak Spanish with reasonable ability. 

They're an adorable bunch.  I had one of them, Jimena, stay behind in class the other day to hand me a homemade envelope (complete with tinkerbell sticker) with a letter inside.  This adorable little girl doesn't learn very well and doesn't ever speak above the sound of a whisper, but is super sweet. The letter had some drawings on it I couldn't quite make out and some silver clouds she had glued on and drawn faces on.  I could only understand part of what she wrote, which said, "tu profesora es linda y bonita y yo lo quiero mucho. hablas ingles y estas....."  That means, "You, teacher, are wonderful and pretty and I love you a lot, you speak english and you are.." and then I have no idea what it says after that.  That little girl gave me that card, and I read it, and I almost started to cry.  So freaking sweet!  Most of my girl students have started giving me a big kiss on the cheek as they leave too, which I find absolutely adorable.  

Below are some photos of my kids hard at work.

My Borderline Unhealthy Relationship...with Peru

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…

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. 

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.

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

Because you think you know what went wrong

I have been blessed to grow up spending every summer in heaven.  My great grandfather bought a place in Maine long ago, and my grandmother, my mother, and I have all enjoyed beautiful crisp summers on a lake in Maine.  I spent my days covering my fingers in worm poop and for lack of a better term "death juice" as I speared them on the ends of hooks and went fishing off the dock with my cousins.  I spent afternoons roasting under the sun on our clay tennis court, trying to get that damn ball over the net and keep up with my older brothers.  I played house in what used to be the truck storage space in the last century.  Perhaps most memorable, was "dock time", which we spent diving around, playing "rickety rockety" with an inner tube, putting on masks and exploring what was essentially just rocks and gush (but we thought was fascinating), and enjoying all manner of boat/water sport energetically overseen by my crazy Auntie Sare.  We'd going "bicing", which was essentially three or more cousins piled on an old windsurfing board being dragged behind the boat using a waterski rope... all the fun was in falling off.  We went tubing and participated in whatever random water sport my little cousin had created (he really tried being dragged in all manner of strange objects behind the boat).  The classic go-to was waterskiing.  Auntie Sare can waterski like no one you've ever met, and her kids somehow were passed that ability.  My brothers were awesome at it too.  For whatever reason, probably somehow related to the fact that my BMI has not really ever been "normal" or "healthy", I always sucked at waterskiing.  I would go up there every summer, determined that this year would BE THE YEAR! And spend my days face planting, crashing, dragging, and generally ingesting far too much lake water.  Yet, I saw that everyone else could do it, so I figured I could do it too.  So I persevered.  I put on that wet dripping life jacket and shoved my feet into the rubber of the waterski, declared confidently to my aunt that I was, indeed, "ready", and held on for dear life...until I face-planted and had to let go, or my ski popped off, or I leaned too far to the right, or I leaned too far back, all ending it a big watery crash.  Eventually, the day finally came when I got up and I would hold on in utter terror to the rope, frozen in whatever position I had gotten up in, and just wait for it to end, praying I didn't some how end up crashing and not being able to get up again...thus having to be wedgie grabbed and dragged into the boat and shamefully driven back to the dock.   But of course I did fall.  I would usually fall, and it would hurt more than when I was just trying to get up (i was going faster...) and I dreaded the "what happened?" question that all my cousins and siblings would ask when I got back to the dock, cold, dripping, and still spitting up lake water.  What would I do the next day?  Try again.  The next summer? Try again...

Where is this all going? 

I've decided that Peace Corps service is like trying to learn to waterski.  When you first start, you're nervous but you see everyone around you can do it so you figure you've just got to keep trying.  Getting up, or getting going in Peace Corps is so hard.  You stumble and fall, you drown a little bit, you crash, you sort of get dragged along in it, you face plant, your ski pops off, and yet you just keep trying.  Eventually, one day, you'll feel like you finally got up, you finally "are doing it", and you'll just sort of freeze there, trying to figure out how you got to that spot and how to maintain it, terrified it will some how mess up and you'll face plant again.  You do fall, inevitably, and it hurts way more than it did when you were just getting going because you THOUGHT you had it, but you're not sure you can get it again, but you're determined to try.  So you try, and you suck water and get dragged but eventually you get up again, but then you get comfortable, and you lean too far and you fall flat on your back and it hurts like hell, but you try not to cry because you don't want anyone to know how much it hurt.  But you think you know what went wrong, so you try again...

Thus is Peace Corps.  You get smacked in the face, pushed over, knocked over, beaten, and you're tired, so tired, but you get back up because you have to and you think you know how to do it right this time. 

The New Year

I know it has been too long since I last posted, and a lot has happened.  I got to go home to the States and visit my family for the first time in 15 months, enjoying every second I had surrounded by the people I love and desperately miss.  There were a lot of strange "reverse-culture shock" moments that I couldn't quite explain.  I had been dreaming of the COOP, the grocery store my mom and I have always gone to, but when I finally got there, I felt like I was either going to have a panic attack, die of happiness, or start to cry hysterically.  It was totally bizarre.  My mom sweetly saying, "why don't you pick the kind of chai you'd like," completely threw me over the edge and I started hyperventilating.  I didn't want to touch anything, didn't want to pick anything out, I just wanted to leave.  So weird.  I couldn't explain it.

Everything in my town looked smaller.  All the buildings were smaller than I remembered them.  I also didn't feel the same desperate pull to things that I had before.  Ever since I started rowing in high school, I have felt a really deep love and connection to the Connecticut River, where I sweated out many mornings under the moon and rounding one big bend in the river to a beautiful rising sun.  Since graduating, I always felt a deep longing for those exhausting mornings I had in high school, a desire to go back, but it wasn't there like it had been before.

It was weird driving into my town and finding everything pretty much how I had left it.  I started to breathe quickly on the road up to my house, wanting to get there immediately and being afraid to at the same time.  There is one big curve in the road and then the quiet little neighborly cluster of houses that make up Lyme Center line up in front of you.  I burst into tears and by the time I put on my blinker to turn left into our driveway, I was trying to stifle what was no longer a ladylike stream of tears down my face.  It wasn't excitement I felt, it wasn't joy either, I think it was pure and overwhelming relief.  I knew that walking in that door I wouldn't just be dropping the weight of my backpack.  Writing about it right now makes me want to cry again...

I was scared to walk in the door because I knew Summer, my golden retriever, wouldn't be there to greet me, and in her place, Cedar, the 3 year-old golden my mom adopted.  I didn't want my mom to feel sad or guilty or anything but I knew it would probably make me cry.  Summer was always the best part about coming home, her puppy-like excitement, even when she was 14 years old, always put the cherry on top of the "it's wonderful to be home" cake.  I had a feeling the only reason I had gotten myself through her death in April was by convincing myself she hadn't actually died.  I wouldn't be able to hide behind that lie anymore.

I walked in the door and I saw the brown coat of a dog too small to be mine come running to the door.  Mom was right behind me and started talking to her and petting her.  I dropped my bag and had to get away.  I walked myself to the kitchen with my eyes squeezed tight hoping the hand clapped over my mouth would keep it all down.  Wishful thinking.  Mom came into the kitchen and saw me leaning against the counter.  "Summer?" She asked, quietly.  I just nodded and she gave me a big hug.  

It was hard not to have Summer there, but I'm really glad my mom has Cedar.  I needed an outlet for all the love I had saved up for Summer while I was gone, and I know that Cedar is a companion my mom really needs.  She's a wonderful dog.  Although no dog will ever measure up to Summer, she's pretty great.  

I had a great time at home visiting everyone, and naturally, it went by way too fast.  I was a bit of a useless lump the night before I left.  Coming home from Peru in December, I felt so burnt out, so tired.  While home I felt so full of life, so energetic, so healthy.  As I watched my mom pull away from the airport, a forced supportive smile plastered on both our faces, I felt all that weight, all that exhaustion crawl up my back and settle itself comfortably back on my shoulders.  I dragged myself through check-in and security, each step taking me farther from home, knowing I needed to go back, not just because I made a commitment to Peace Corps and my town, but because I know it is where I'm supposed to be right now and I have things I want to accomplish.  It didn't shake that weight and exhaustion though.  I did what anyone would do, I went to a bar and I bought myself a blue moon with an orange slice.  

So skip through everything else and here I am, back in site.  It hasn't been easy.  I keep having insane emotional responses to things and feeling generally miserable.  I got back and hid in my room for a day just excessively cleaning everything, throwing away the bottom layer of clothes that had rotted through in my absence, and bleaching down my little food shelf thing because there was rat poop everywhere.  Unfortunately, we didn't have any water for the first 4 days I was back, so I couldn't wash any clothes or sheets or anything...or me for that matter.  I ended up finally rousing myself to work out one day, and pulled a muscle so badly in my leg I spent two days pretty much unable to walk.  Then, yesterday, I completely messed up the ankle on that same leg.  

It's Carnaval in February, which means for most of January, you have to walk around knowing at any time you could get aggressively water bombed by anyone.  I was walking down the street in my town and a gang of boys on a hill decided to water bomb me.  I was running to get away from them but watching the water come and, given the horrible state of the roads in my town, I stepped a bit wonky on a rock and ended up running on the outside of my foot, which snapped something in my ankle.  It didn't hurt too bad right away, but by the end of the day I literally couldn't put any weight on it.  Lucky for me, the doctors had prescribed me muscle relaxers for my leg, and they helped a lot that night with the bad pain in my ankle.  It's not preferable...

I've gotten a chance to get to know the 20ers who showed up to start service in December.  They are a really awesome group of girls - super laid back, so so sweet, and so easy to be around.  I'm really excited they have joined our Cajamarca family and think they are going to add a lot of fun and love to the next year of service.  

I came back, like I said above, and felt mostly like hiding in my room.  I didn't know where to start, didn't want to start...I think there is a not so secret fear that if I try this viviendas saludables (healthy homes) project, I'm going to fail...and then what do I do.  It's illogical and put me in "overanalysis paralysis", as my mother says, for a few days.  But then I got a nice little motivational present that I wasn't expecting. 

I went to the health post to have a meeting with the health post workers about the health promotional work we should do in the coming year.  I was expecting them to make me feel like an inconvenience.  I ended up finding them super enthused about the year to come and all the health promotional work.  They were promising adamantly that they were going to help with things this year and participate and whatever.  I even told them about a mini project idea I had and Violeta responded with, "if it's health promotion, we're going to do it."  They mentioned a meeting the next day that they wanted me to go to.  It turns out, after the evaluations they went through for the last year of work, my town, Iraca Grande, was ranked #1 of all the health posts in our class in the district of Chota for their health promotional work.  AWESOME.  That was a giant pat on the back I had not been expecting, and a really awesome way of acknowledging all the work I did last year.  As a result of this, all the other health posts were saying the only reason Iraca was first is because they have a Peace Corps volunteer, so they called a meeting to persuade me to go work in all their health posts.  Flattering, for sure.  

I called my boss, who told me I can't work in all their health posts, as I already knew.  So I went to a meeting, and each health post representative was telling me their own individual stories about how they can't do X because the director of the high school is difficult to work with, or X hasn't happened because this person won't help, or they have this problem.  It was so weird to sit there, and have them ask me for help with these things...because they are all problems I've had and have probably been harder to cope with because I'm NOT peruvian.  I had to tell them all repeatedly that I can't come work in all their health posts and do all their promotional work for them...but I did say I'd always be willing to meet with them in Chota to talk about a project or plan something or exchange resources.  I also promised them all that I'd teach them how to use the Pasos Adelante manual, which is the sex-ed manual/program that I've been using the last year.  So, in February, we're all getting together and I'm training them how to use it.  A couple of the 20ers want to come too and bring their community partners.  I'm excited about this, because it is more what I expected Peace Corps to be, capacity building.  It's so much more efficient this way because they will learn from  me and then go into their communities to use those resources.  I'm a little nervous but I am confidant at the same time.  It just makes me feel more like the professional that I am.  I don't have the same wide-eyed lost feeling this year, which is exciting.  I feel like I'm actually prepared to get the work done that I need to.  

Other good thing that happened, was that I got an email from the Country Director of Peace Corps Peru, congratulating me on a presentation I did about Peace Corps while I was home for the holidays.  It meant a lot for someone in the Peace Corps office to recognize something I did well and take the time to let me know what he thought.  He said it sent on the report I wrote about my presentation to the Peace Corps office in Washington.  :)  

I am slowly getting settled back in and feeling better about where I stand for this new year.  It is going to be hard, and interesting, and exciting, and frustrating, and exhausting...it's going to be another year of Peace Corps. 

Bring on the personal and professional growth! 

Love you all,

H

LATRINES GALORE!

Work has recently taken off and I am a super busy bee.  This is wonderful because it keeps me from twiddling my thumbs, I get to feel productive instead of castigating myself constantly for my lack of productivity (that was in part my fault, but also the fault of the work culture and disinterest in health promotion), and it helps the time fly by, getting me closer and closer to my visit home.  Having a kind of deadline has been helpful in getting me out there and pushing forward with everything.  I think I'm just going to to need to make up firm deadlines for the future.  It's hard when you get lost sometimes in the "oh my god I have more than another year of this" kind of thinking...

So what exactly am I up to right now?

Healthy Schools - I am working on a healthy schools project as a secondary activity for quite awhile.  I originally was just teaching the teachers at the school once a month with the hope that they would replicate my "charlas" or "lessons" and do them in the classroom with their own kids.  I suppose I was being a little too optimistic with that approach, so I started teaching them about the common health issues the kids had from the year before that I got of a statistics sheet from our health post, and started teaching charlas to the kids at the school.  I've taught two at this point with the students from the 3rd-6th grade.  One was about self-esteem and values, and the most recent one that I gave was about waste management, the difference between organic and inorganic trash, and the importance of taking care of the environment.  Coming up, I have a charla on oral hygiene, and I just bought 81 toothbrushes this morning for all the students in the school.  Peace Corps doesn't really encourage volunteers to use their money like that, and it was originally going to be part of a bigger project where I was going to ask for money from the municipality, but the other things we planned on buying kind of fell through due to the fact that the Director and I can't agree on how we should provide safe drinking water to the kids, and the only land they have for a vegetable garden is over their septic system.  So.  After teaching this kids and seeing rotting teeth in most of their smiles, I decided that putting 10% of my monthly stipend into toothbrushes was a good use of my money.  The school is going to make it obligatory that each kid brushes their teeth at school at least once during the day.  We haven't figured out the timing, but I suppose each class could have their own.  At the very least, that means that each kid will be brushing their teeth once a day, even if they don't at home.

Pasos Adelante - The sexual health class I've been teaching at the high school in Cabracancha has finally finished.  I've been teaching since MAY, and it was only supposed to take 24 weeks.  With all the strikes we had with no school, it has taken much longer than originally planned.  However, they've finally finished and I have been working on planning their graduation ceremony for them.  The DISA, or head of health care and health posts in the entire district of Chota has offered to give us money to buy them tshirts, which I'm really excited about.  Karen, the obstetriz I've been working with, who is also a good friend of mine, has helped a lot in pulling together the planning for the graduation.  We wrote "oficios" to representatives of a bunch of different health related organizations in Chota as well as the Alcalde to invite them to come to our graduation.  All of my students are currently planning their own sexual health sessions to teach in the school to their peers the morning of their graduation.  They are in groups of two or three and will be teaching each of the five grades about either self-esteem, teen pregnancy, STIs, HIV/AIDS, or how to use a condom.  I'm super proud of them and can't wait to watch them teach their first charlas.

Last Wednesday I had them all take the post-test, which was identical to their pre-test.  The pre-tests were horrific.  I remember thinking, "Good lord I have my work cut out for me."  I just finished grading their post-tests and half my kids got 100%, and the other half missed just one part of one question.  SO proud of them and so pleased to see that they did learn something.

Step two to the Pasos Adelante project is for them to start teaching what they learned to their peers in school. I know a bunch of them are really excited about it.  Two of them that I brought to the Pasos Adelante Conference a month or two ago actually dragged me into the Director's office in an attempt to organize their classes.  I was so impressed with their eagerness.  I'm hoping they will help me to train a new group of youth health promoters as well.  I think they will.  Other than that, we're just going to put on health promotional events and I'll have more people to work with!  I'm really really excited with how this has all worked out.

Healthy Homes Project - I have finally started moving forward on my first BIG project.  When I first arrived in site, the volunteer I was replacing told me that everyone had latrines and cook stoves and I didn't have many options for work other than that.  For most of my service I've been sort of stumped on what to do.  My boss came to visit all of us in August and she suggested that I do a "maintenance" project, so instead of constructing new latrines or cook stoves, I see what has fallen apart and replace that, for example if the chimney for the stove broke, I could replace it...that sort of thing.  As a program, we are all supposed to focus on mothers with children under 3 and pregnant women.  I got a list of about 30 moms who have kids under 3 who are high risk for chronic malnutrition and a list of pregnant women.  I've spent the last month and some change walking ALL OVER my mountain visiting the houses of these moms, and doing an initial survey with them to see what their knowledge base is, and what their stoves or latrines are lacking.  Turns out, the majority don't have latrines, or if they do, they are in desperate need of some help.  Most of the stoves are ok, but many need new chimneys.  I'm now doing a project that is a little bit bigger than I would like because I started under the impression that everyone had latrines.  Ah well.

The way it works: I have about 30 moms.  They are going to come to meetings once or twice a month to learn about a new topic.  I'm also going to give them homework to improve things in their home, like to have a place where all their toothbrushes and toothpaste are in the same place, or to prepare their land to plant a vegetable garden, that kind of thing.  Twice a month, they are each going to receive a house visit (one from me, one from a health post worker...god willing).  In each visit, we will check for the changes I asked for in their "homework", and check their learning from the educative session that I gave.  If they all attend the sessions without fail and complete their house visits, at the end of the project, I will construct (hopefully with help from a local NGO), their new latrines and do the maintenance that their cook stoves need.  I'm also going to be giving them seeds for a vegetable garden and a kind of bucket to keep their boiled water in.

It feels good to get going on something big in my town because most people don't know about my work in Cabracancha and think I'm just hanging out in Chota.  It's been weird with some moms, I'll go to visit, I know they are home, and they just pretend not to be home.  A couple moms have flat out said that they aren't interested, which doesn't make any sense to me...but I've got a good list of moms at this point.  It's a lot of work and I'm really worried about getting funding for it.  I'm going to ask the municipality but if that doesn't work out, I'm going to have to apply for an outside grant, which is always way messier and makes most people crazy.

I thought I would share with you some of my favorite latrine pictures from my house visits.  These are the moms who DO have latrines and will be getting new ones...there are plenty of moms who do not have latrines who will also be getting new ones..

This one took the calamina (green tin) off the ceiling and door to make a shelter for their pigs....

This is recently constructed, but doesn't qualify as a legitimate latrine and the mom is pregnant.

This photo and the next are of the Leaning Tower of Poop

...aka a straight up death trap

Anyone else feel a breeze? 

"Look Mom!  I built a fort!"

This is hard to understand...but is just a shallow hole in the ground...above their farmland...so when it rains everyday....(you piece it together)

This looks like some sort of trap for unsuspecting gringos...it's only a matter of time before someone falls through that trap door.