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