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
Золушка