So I started out this week thinking it would be a lot less busy than the last, but this was not the case. Which is great. Because not only do I feel more productive and hence successful, but also it leaves me less time to do what we call “anxiety eating”, which leads to a slight weight loss. All around – awesome.
Last saturday, I went to San Fransisco with the dental intern to give a charla on dental health and hand out the toothbrushes and toothpaste and floss that MamaCepela so graciously sent over. We ended up giving one toothbrush per child and one tube of toothpaste and floss per family. The dental intern did most of the talking, which is really for the best, since she is the professional, and everyone thanked us profusely as we left. It was amazing to see the difference in living standards between the part of Santo Domingo where I live and a caserio only a 40 minute walk away. To keep a record of who received dental supplies, we went around the room asking for names and ages and numbers of children and it was incredible. There were 19 year old girls with two kids who looked like they were well into their late 30s. There was not a single person present with a full set of teeth, and even some of the children were hard to look at, with their front teeth brown and half there, rotting out. Just another reminder that poverty is relative.
Sunday I went to San Miguel for a continuation of my micro landfill presentation. We were able to bring the projector this time, so I got to show off my nifty powerpoint presentation. By the end of the meeting, I had 17 families signed up who were interested in building micro-landfills. So we made an “environmental committee”. There is a president and two secretaries and they are in charge of all future environmental projects in San Miguel. Every family that ends up building a micro-landfill will get free seeds to reforest their land. We will start construction in April, when the rainy season passes, so they don’t fill up with water while in the process of construction. Now I have to put together informational packets on how to compost, the technical aspect of building a micro-landfill, worm horticulture, reforestation, and trash separation for the families that have shown interest. Frankly, this is a lot more progress than I thought we would have achieved at this meeting, and I’m pretty excited about it.
At some point that night, my power went out. Just mine. Nobody else’s. Since my host family is still on vacation, I had to ask the neighbors for help before it got too dark out. This somehow ended with a drinking circle outside my house and 7 neighbors pooling their efforts so that the “gringita doesn’t get left in the dark, alone… someone might steal her”. Cute. I love living in a town where half a dozen families will stop what they are doing to help you. Well, unfortunately, nobody could figure out how to fix it, so we wired my house up with the neighbors, and voila! I’m using the neighbor’s electricity! I keep trying to pay them, but they’re so adamant in their refusal.. I’m going to have to buy them something. I would have gotten a technician to fix it the next day, but I’m pretty sure my host dad knows how to fix it and I don’t want to pay a technician to do what he can for free.
Monday was the second set of presentations about trash separation. Maybe half the people showed up this time, and we didn’t spend too much time talking about trash – however, I did learn that there is a project in the works to poison all of the street dogs. Well, as you can imagine, I flipped out. It wasn’t elegant, it wasn’t pretty. I started yelling about right to life and how inhumane it was and blah blah blah and the end result was a group of Peruvians silently staring at me like I was insane. However, I heard that there is some neighboring town where an NGO operates a shelter. I’m going to have to look into that. It might end up being my 2 year project. Cuz hell no, you can’t just go around poisoning dogs because you don’t like them. Man, I’m all riled up ten ways to sunday.
I have also been working with Nilda, the secretary of one of the high schools on the slogan competition. We went around yesterday to find “strategic locations” to put the winning slogans up. We found 26 spots – sides of buildings, walls, etc. throughout ALL of the urban zone of Santo Domingo. I’m almost surprised we were able to find that many! We also finished writing up our project proposals and solicituds for financial support today, so now we’re just waiting on an answer from the department of education in the municipality to see if they will help us with paint and 3-ply and other materials for the actual final product. If that’s approved, we just have to propose it to the other high school and we’re in business. The due date for submissions happens to be on Earth Day, which was a complete accident, and makes me smile.
I’ve been going around with the trash men every morning, as well. Generally, this goes well. Sometimes I get an eye roll when I tell people that plastic is not, in fact, organic, but for the most part, people are really nice about it. Today was a different story however. It is one of the rules of the trash program: we do not collect materials used for construction. It’s too heavy for the men to carry and it’s the responsibility of the owner. Everything was going fine, until we got to one of the highschools. We hold institutions to higher standards because they are supposed to set an example for the rest of the town – so the health post, the schools, and the municipality should all be perfect in their separation. Well, the school didn’t have ANYTHING separated. We called out everyone who works there during summer hours and showed them what was what. We found some pieces of a wall in the bin and told them that we don’t collect that. Suddenly, one of the teachers starts arguing with me, telling us that if we don’t take it, some kid will throw it into the street and that’s not constructive. I didn’t like his tone, so I told him it wasn’t really our problem. We collect the rest of the trash and start walking away. Then, this man, this grown ass adult, who ran for mayor three times, who is an educated teacher at a local institution, picks up the pieces and throws them into the middle of the street. Awesome. Great example you’re setting, buddy. I’m glad you’re responsible for molding the minds of the children of this town. Sometimes I just feel like I’m babysitting.
So that’s basically it. I’m going into Piura tomorrow. Lately it’s been weird watching life back home move on without me. People getting married, engaged, having kids, moving, people not keeping in touch, etc. It’s just weird. It’s this completely narcissistic feeling, but sometimes it feels almost as if I’m getting left behind. I guess when the alternative is being there and having a stupid 9-5 job that I would hate, it’s really not so bad, but it is really weird.
On an unrelated note: the fleas and bedbugs and mosquitos are gone…. well, not exactly gone, just not biting me anymore. I haven’t been itchy in 2 weeks now. But I do still feel things crawling up my pants all the time. Also, the rats ate all of my guaba seeds, so I guess I’m not going to reforest any of that in the near future. At least I still have my lovely pomarosas.
Yours truly, with besitos (that’s little kisses),
Sasha
is she a sphinx or merely stupid? February 26, 2009
bathing in the glory of my liberated soul February 20, 2009
So many things.
This has been, by far, one of the most productive, successful weeks I’ve had here so far. To start with, I finished my taxes, which is a nice feeling. Then, Jenna came up from Ñoma and we recorded a radio spot to celebrate Peace Corps Week, which is the last week of February – Peace Corps’ anniversary. We started off by starting a band. It’s just me and her. We call ourselves grupo gringo (the most popular band in Peru is called grupo cinco). We found the instrumental version of one of their songs and changed the words and recorded our voices over it. It’s pretty awful (my voice), but I like to think it’s the thought that counts. Then, we wrote a story about the history of the Peace Corps, especially in Peru. We wrote it in the form of a fairy tale and had one of the interns at the health post read it. Then we set it to some music off the Harry Potter (Sorcerer’s Stone) soundtrack to make it sound more like a fairy tale. After this, we introduce ourselves and have 2 community members interview us about anything they want to know about us or the Peace Corps. Lastly, we had Pasion, the leader of the womens weavers association talk about her experiences with Lillian and Rachel, the small business volunteers that helped put the organization together. It turned out to be nearly 12 minutes. We bought spots at the 2 radio stations for it to play every day over Peace Corps week. Turns out the radio stations reach nearly all parts of Piura. I’m pretty stoked to see if any other volunteers end up hearing it while eating dinner with their families one day. ha! I have it in mp3 form. It’s in Spanish, but if you want to hear it, let me know and I’ll send it to you. It’s good for a laugh.
Moving on – I also started working on a project with Nilda, the secretary at one of the secondary schools. With the environmental books I bought in Piura, we put together a plan of attack for this project. We are going to start a competition between the students of the two secondary schools. Those students that want to participate will come up with a slogan to encourage people to protect the environment, and draw something to go along with it. A panel of judges will pick some of the best ones and those will be painted on buildings and walls throughout town – propaganda, if you will. The winners will also get something like a notebook and some pens as a prize for extra incentive. We still have to work out the funding for the paints and get permission from the other school, but the wheels are definitely in motion.
I went around with the trashmen a few times this week as well. Both to check up on how the health post is doing with medical waste and to see how people are improving with separation of organics and inorganics, and what I found was basically just amazing. I am already starting to see significant behavior change, just through my monitoring project. Basically all parts of the health post are now separating everything correctly. On tuesday, we found some bloody cottonballs in with the normal trash, so the guy didn’t pick it up. Today, however, everything was perfect. For the first time since I’ve been here. Perfect separation of medical waste!!!!!! SUCCESS!!! And when I was going house to house, I only ended up having to talk to 4 houses about what exactly organics are vs. inorganics. Last time, I had to talk to something like 15 houses. That’s a pretty significant improvement. That makes me smile. I also had my first presentation yesterday about the competition we are starting. We are going to give something small, like a broom and dustpan, as a prize to the houses that separate their trash well in the zone that separates their trash the best. The garbage men will judge. Prizes will be given out every 2 months. Next week, I’ll be giving every house handouts to help them distinguish between organics and inorganics. I have the next presentation on monday, and then the competition starts on March 1. The meeting got a little off topic when people started talking about creating a place to put horses and donkeys for when people come in from the caserios. Apparently, they don’t like walking past horses and donkeys tied up next to sidewalks. I’ll agree, the streets are always covered in poop, but I like having the animals around. Apparently, I’m in the minority.
I had another run in with Lucho, the man who thinks my parents should be ashamed of my fat ass… you remember the one. It started with me shaking his hand and saying “hola, gordito (fatty)”. He looked surprised and said “me? no!! you!!!”… this turned into another conversation about our weights which ended with him telling me that I should start giving my lunches to Ryan. I don’t need them, and he does. Besides, it looks like I eat 3 kilos of rice a day. (I swear I’m not that fat. haha). So since there’s absolutely nothing I can do about this situation but find it unbelievably hilarious, I have decided to turn this into a running joke between us instead of turning him into an enemy. I photoshopped a picture of his face onto the body of a morbidly obese man. I wrote “I eat 3 kilos of rice a day” in a word bubble next to his face. I put it in a sealed envelope on his desk and he will get it when he gets back from Piura on monday. Immature? Perhaps. Hilarious? Definitely. I have to keep myself entertained somehow. 
So now that I’ve had a taste of pulling pranks, I remember how fun it is. I’m starting a “pranks from peru” business. Pro bono. Have an asshole neighbor? Give me the address, I’ll send them a postcard from Peru telling them to watch their back. It’s confusing and effective. Tell your friends. I spent this morning helping the dental intern prepare a charla. Tomorrow, we are going to San Fransisco to give the charla and hand out the toothbrushes and toothpaste MamaCepela sent. I’ll be sure to take pictures
So there you have it. I’ve been BUSY. Not once this whole time was I at home, reading, thinking… hmmm… I should be doing something else. I am tired, I wake up early and I work late, and it feels good. People keep asking me what I do every day, what’s my routine, and I always get to answer with “I’m busy all day every day, but every day is different” and that’s awesome.
Moreover, the more I look around my site, the more I hang out with people in my community, the more I’m convinced that I hit the Peace Corps jackpot. People don’t try to hit me up for money, they are respectful, open, hospitable, and they come to ME with ideas. My site is gorgous. Just straight up beautiful. And everyone and everything is just damn adorable. The people are cute, the kids yelling about energetic donkeys, running around, giggling, dogs with limes tied around their neck, everything. In fact, I can’t imagine NOT being happy here. It’s just so unfathomable to me. How can you be sad when everything’s so freaking cute? My soul is flying, almost touching the ceiling, experiencing a sense of profound peace.
Guess what? Chicken butt. It’s what’s for dinner.
Sending you all my lovin,
Sasha
all of us, one way or another, are insane February 15, 2009
Today, a fat old man told me I was fat. And not in an endearing way. It went a little something like this:
Him: “Wow, you got fat”
Me: “well, yeah, I put on some weight… that’ll happen”
Him: “No, I mean, seriously – look at you. You looked so much better when you got here. What happened? Seriously.. what happened? Do your parents know? I would be ashamed to show them. Yep… you’re definitely a fatty. Ryan’s not fat. It doesn’t make sense.”
Me: *resisting the urge to stab him
This was Ryan’s counterpart as well as the director of one of the secondary schools, so I couldn’t even tell him off. Also, for the record – it’s not like I’m morbidly obese or anything, I still fit into all of my clothes. I put on 5, 10 lbs.. it’s like the freshman 15 thing – just need a few more months to get used to the diet, I think. I’m putting down the cake and picking up a salad… Just… damn.
Ok. Moving on from being insulted for like 10 straight minutes. I have a rat problem. This started when my host mom left town with a sink full of dirty dishes, which I came home to two days later. Also, there was an open bag of rice on the ground in the kitchen. Rats are gross. I have been contemplating setting traps, but then there’s the nasty cleanup… and poison sounds good in theory, but what if they crawl off somewhere and die in a wall somewhere. Then I would have to find it and deal with the smell… It’s just a hassle. So I keep a clean kitchen and the rats and I have this understanding. After it gets pretty dark and I’m done with the kitchen, I just kind of retreat to my room and close the door and they don’t bother me. And this worked for us for a while. But now, the bastards have started to eat my seed collection. This aggression will not stand, man. I’m gonna have to do something about them now. It’s on.
In the “weird things about Peru” file: I saw a dog the other day with a bunch of limes tied around its neck so it could deliver them to a neighbor. A lime delivery system? A trained dog in Peru? I’m so confused.
On the work front, I had a meeting in San Miguel with the authorities of the town to see if there was interest in the micro landfill idea. They seemed really excited, but also really distrustful because on a number of occasions, NGOs have come in and made promises and never come back to follow through. I guess there’s only one way to prove that’s not going to happen. This meeting was also an opportunity to see how a small town meeting in a caserio is conducted. All of the women sit separately from the men, even though there are more women in the group. And then, it’s just a matter of who can talk the loudest. That person gets heard. It’s actually rather amusing to observe.
Later that week, I went by the heath post to see if they were doing any better at separating their medical waste, only to discover that yes, although improvements have been made, the newest complaint is that they throw placentas in with the regular trash. This resulted in an uncomfortable conversation with the head doctor about why this is a bad idea.
I also got to talk to one of the school secretaries for the secondary school. She is adorable, busting with ideas that never get heard because she’s not a teacher. So we’re going to put together a competition/project for the kids where they have to make huge posters relating to why it’s important to protect the environment and the best ones will be hung up around town. We wanted to start with finding some simple basic books on environmental protection in Spanish for the kids. So I went into Piura this past weekend, and found hardly anything. It’s amazing how little there is in the way of children’s books about the environment in Spanish. I’m gonna have to see at the next monthly meeting if anyone else has had better luck in that regard…
Speaking of going to Piura – I was supposed to go down on Thursday with my counterpart in a camionetta. But he got drunk really really early in the day, forgot to confirm our seats in the car, and then passed out and didn’t wake up until midday the next day. Way to go, Jorge. So I got up at 5am and sat outside the municipality building in the rain waiting for either Jorge or the car to show up.. and neither did. It’s actually kinda funny in hindsight.
I finally did get into Piura on Friday and ran errands all day. Saturday, for Valentine’s day, I hung out with the few volunteers that were in town and went out later that night to hang out with the volunteer expats. The French guy was having a goodbye party at his house for one of the Spanish girls. And these people were freaking AMAZING. They all work on environmental/agricultural themes as well, or they work with children. There were people from France, Spain, Holland, Norway, Peru, and the US. And we were all hanging out, eating delicious couscous with vegetables, drinking (in moderation, like adults, instead of like Peruvians usually drink – to get drunk), speaking Spanish (My spanish is GREAT when I drink), listening/dancing to Reggae, talking about the spirit of volunteerism, doing language and music comparisons, you get the picture…. They had dreds and piercings and tattoos and free spirits and holy crap!!!! I found foreign educated hippies my age!!!!! And they are all fabulous beautiful people. I am beside myself with excitement about that situation. Clearly.
Also, since my last post, I read American Taboo, which was a lot drier than I expected. Wasn’t really the attention-grabbing page turner I expected, but it’s a good story nonetheless. And I read V for Vendetta, which is actually a novel based off of the screenplay, instead of the the other way around, which was weird. It’s a fun mindless read. I prefer it when it’s a book first, and then a movie, though, for sure.
So that’s that. Hopefully my fat ass doesn’t shame my parents.
Miss you all and love you!
Paz,
Sasha
i want to paint visions of paradise February 7, 2009
I have recently finished reading “Veronika Decides to Die” by Paulo Coelho. It was incredible, as I have come to expect from Coehlo’s works. It touches on the subjects of perceived insanity, social conformity, and the consequences of free thinking. Downright delightful. There was one phrase that stuck out to me more than the rest, though…
“Insanity is the inability to communicate your ideas. It’s as if you were in a foreign country, able to see and understand everything that’s going on around you but incapable of explaining what you need to know or of being helped, because you don’t understand the language they speak there.”
It’s probably rather obvious why this in particular stuck out to me. What gets me is just how accurate it is. You lose a part of yourself when trying to express yourself in a language you do not have a complete grasp of. You have to settle for close-enough substitutions in words to describe what it is you are feeling or asking, with slightly different connotations than intended, so that no matter how hard you try, nobody here really understands you completely. They may understand the the things that you are saying, but they have no way of really understanding you. At first, this feeling can be frustrating, followed by somewhat romantic – being somewhere foreign, it’s just part of the territory… but after living somewhere for months and months and being incapable of forming anything other than surface relationships with your neighbors, with the people you interact with daily, it gets to start feeling a little lonely. And the problem isn’t just a language barrier, but a matter of having true understanding – What is the other person’s life really like? How can they possibly imagine your life in the US? How can you break past the stereotypes and assumptions people hold about you? What topics are completely taboo to discuss? At least I felt some sort of connection when there were people my age in town – people off to university, curious, thirsty for education… but now that it’s rainy season, nearly everyone has escaped the mountains until the rain passes, and that means certainly everybody near my age. Perhaps things will change when people start coming back.
Well, moving right along, being in Piura was a lot of fun, as usual. It took us eight hours to get there this time instead of the usual four. Not only were the roads atrocious, but the bus broke down about halfway there. By 7am, we found ourselves exploring the mountainside, climbing trees to gather fruit for breakfast. I even had to do a little real mountain climbing to find a spot to pee far enough away from any creepers who might be able to see. When we got into Piura, we were dirty, tired, and still hungry, but at least we had a good story.
February 1st, nearly everyone came into town to watch the Superbowl. Volunteers and Peruvian/European friends of volunteers overtook the entire hostel for hours. I found refuge on the roof a few times, until people decided to move the party up there. There were just way too many people there. I was sure we were going to get kicked out. But it’s Peru. So we didn’t.
While in town, I got a package from Nick – thank you! It’s great! So so so much chocolate. I get full just looking at it all..
Monday, we had another regional meeting. It was incredibly helpful, as usual. We learned about our new tri-annual report system and then worked more individually. We broke up into groups, so I got to meet with other environment volunteers from Piura and the third year environment volunteer, our coordinator. We got to bounce ideas off of each other, pool resources, and I think I got a few people riled up about the medical waste situations at our sites. There was talk of coordinating with the health program to come up with a national Peace Corps Peru policy on how to work on problems of medical waste. It also helped to put things into perspective – my health post might not always throw bloody cotton balls into the correct place, but other health-posts burn all of their medical waste mere yards away from volunteers’ homes. This means, syringes, placentas, glass, everything. I also asked about where I would be able to obtain the kind of plastic trash bins we’re looking for for the public trash can program I’m working on. I went around to a few stores recommended by the regional coordinator and found that they not only don’t really have what we’re looking for, but the prices are way out of our range. So I’m going to have to do a little more looking before we can get this off the ground.
Tomorrow I have a presentation in San Miguel about micro landfills, assuming everything goes off without a hitch. There’s usually a hitch.
Teo presented a brilliant idea to get people to separate their trash better, which as of right now is making great progress. The idea is to give people an incentive to care. Make it a competition. Every two or three months, the garbagemen will choose one family that separates their garbage better than all the rest, and they will get a small gift from the municipality – something for the house, like a broom, for example. It’s inexpensive for the municipality and people don’t really care what the incentive is – it’s about competition. If people want to be better at separating their trash, I will be holding two training sessions on how to properly separate trash which anyone is welcome to attend. I have also made posters. I will be going into Piura at the end of this week to print up the posters with my counterpart and we have meetings scheduled to announce the program and do the training sessions. It will be announced on the loudspeaker in town and on the radio. Way to go Teo with the idea! And way to go Jorge with pushing it through… this is exactly what facilitating is all about. It was an idea brought about by a community member, which will be implemented – it’s just a matter of putting the idea into practice. I’m pretty excited about it.
I came back from Piura on tuesday, with Jorge (the Peace Corps doctor) and Josh (Ryan’s third year volunteer coordinator) in tow. I had a really great time while they were in town. It’s always refreshing to see Santo Domingo through someone else’s eyes. It helps remind me how lucky we are to be here. It’s just so damn beautiful.
I am expecting a package of seeds in the mail from the Peace Corps office, which should help add native species to the reforestation projects in the works. I also found out that one of the projects I’m working with is much larger than I originally anticipated. In fact, the plan is to plant 80,000 falso roble trees starting in March, using the man-power of all of the environmental groups. That’s amazing.
In less important news: since it’s always raining and humid (although I think humid is an understatement – it’s more like… wet), random things have started to mold. And by random things I mean anything that doesn’t get touched for a few days. For example, hemp necklaces, clothes, backpacks… everything. I have a feeling I’m going to come out of this rainy season with half of the things I came in with. We’ll see how this continues to pan out.
Also, I noticed a little while ago that when I help Teo cook, she uses the same cutting board for raw meat and vegetables. And since we usually don’t have water, I was thinking this can’t be helping keep me healthy. So I bought her a new cutting board and made sure to explain that one is to be used to meats and the other for vegetables. She seemed pretty excited about it, and I haven’t been sick since I gave it to her, so there’s a step in the right direction!
Speaking of helping people cook… I have discovered the most incredibly boring job in the entire world. Not that cooking is boring in general, but sorting through rice is. When you have to sit there and sort through individual grains of rice and pick out the garbage (dirt, bad pieces of rice) before cooking it. Every time I get stuck with this job and it is starting to discourage me from wanting to learn how to cook. At first it was soothing, relaxing, even… but now it’s just so incredibly boring. I don’t recommend it.
In the spirit of Peru being completely random: when I came home from Piura this time around, I found that the neighbors had put a machete through the wall. The walls aren’t very thick – you can hear everything… and they’re made of adobe brick.. so the neighbors just went ahead and stuck a machete through one of the holes between the bricks. It makes me smile every time I see it.
Well, I’m going to post this before the internet goes out again. Miss everyone tremendously.
xoxo,
Sasha
