we already possess what we seek most fervently May 20, 2010

I’ve been busy lately. Really busy and happy and traveling a lot.

Last week I had an incredibly successful HIV Prevention activity with the kids in addition to my normal classes. The idea was that since there is only 1 television channel, no internet or cell phone and no radio, their main form of media was traditional huayno songs. And lately the songs have been getting off-message with lyrics like “Un choque fuga no mas, no quiero verte jamas, porque problemas seras” – basically translated to something like “Just a one night stand, I never want to see you again, because you will cause problems for me”. Not quite the message I wanted these kids to be taking as an example. So I decided to have them compete, by grade, in writing their own hyano song about HIV prevention. And it was incredible. They were all on message, they were excited, and they did a great job. I’m currently in coordination with a professional singer who has agreed to record the songs on her next album. Success.

I’ve also made great progress with the museum project. I’ve gotten in touch with an archeologist. She’s a professor at one of the Universities in Lima and is willing to come help us out. The municipality will pay for her expenses while she is working here, but she is going to come teach us proper care of the mummies, maybe do a study on the cultures of the mummies (I’m not holding my breath for a carbon-14 dating since it’s so expensive), and she’s going to help us establish tourist routes to archeological sites in the area, which there are plenty of. We’re also going to try to go around again an collect more relics – I have a feeling people will trust us more if there’s an archeologist along for the work. This should all start happening within the next few weeks.

Other than those two awesome major steps forward, I’ve been continuing the almuerzos saludables classes with the mothers and I’ve been meeting tourists in my site and traveling.

Oddly enough, my site has received an influx of foreign tourists, a Swiss Family Robinson, a german couch surfur, and an Australian kangaroo, all in one week! This is probably a sign that things are about to explode here. And I need to start working more with the families that own hostels to make sure they’re ready for it. It’s also refreshing to speak to foreigners. Conversations over wine about how littering and enjoyment of the view are fundamentally incompatible, about standards of living worldwide, and life in general – levels of conversation impossible to have with people who know nothing outside of our little town.

After meeting the tourists, I went with some people from SERNANP on a hike to one of the archeological sites, called Wakis. It is basically a ghost town. It was hard to get water up to their location, so in 1914, they moved the whole town closer to the river. It’s only about an hour of quick hiking and I think it’ll be a great tourist attraction once we get the archeologist to convince the mayor to put a little money into fixing up the path.

From there we went to a celebration of one of the other town’s anniversary’s. There was a lot of loud music and drunk people and my host uncle serenaded us throughout the night. It was probably the most fun I’ve had at a Peruvian party in a long time.

From there, on Monday I had to travel down to the coast for the first in our series of meetings on PEPFAR, which has just been expanded to the Lima/Ica region. It was an interesting experience. A lot of press was there, but not many representatives from our municipalities were able to make it to sign a contract agreeing to put an emphasis on projects of HIV prevention. We’re probably going to try again somewhere closer to site, to make it more feasible. And then there will be a 2-3 day workshop in Lima in July. I think my site is pretty ahead of the curve on the topic as it currently stands, so I’m not too worried about it.

12 hours of travel in each direction just to get to the meeting. Less than a full day on the coast and then back to site for just one day. Forget being productive at that point. I slept all day. I didn’t even do yoga. I read. I was pure and simple EXHAUSTED. And it feels good. Finally! Being busy.

After a day of recuperation it’s back on the combi and off to the capital city where I will be participating in a two day congreso on environmental education, taking a day to run errands in the city and then back to site for a week of work.

At the end of the month, I’m headed to Lima to coordinate with the huayno singer about recording the songs before heading up to Ancash for a 5 day tech-exchange with the volunteers that live there. I’m excited to see their sites – I haven’t been to Ancash yet and it’s definitely on the list. More on that later.

Hope all is well.

Sending home lots of love,

Alex.

A visionary who is too often blind… February 11, 2010

So to update:
A bad day in the Peace Corps can apparently never be left at just that. I wrote my APCD and the head of security about the spy incident. I just figured they should be informed. It was without emotion – just laying out the facts. A few days later, the security officer shows up in my site. Turns out he wants to have some words with the President of my community. Oh, and for reference, the security officer is ex-military – during the years of terrorism. Adorable like your grandpa, but deadly like a ninja. So we go looking for the president. We sit down and begin to discuss the role of Peace Corps in the community, the fact that I am an educated adult, capable of sage advice, that I am not to be treated any differently than they treat the women in their community (read: asking me how much I cost is not appropriate behavior). He berates him for the better part of a half hour and when all is done, the president is apologizing to me on his behalf and on the behalf of the community. Attitude and behavior changes are promised and it is left at that.
I am then told to consider the possibility of a site change to somewhere where I can affect some real change and not waste my time so much. *sigh.
What to do. The possibility of a site change is daunting. It is so so very hard to start all over. But he’s not wrong. I am wasting my time. And in addition to people thinking I’m a spy and distrusting me, it is also because I’m not entirely qualified to do environmental work here. I am from the suburbs of Detroit with a BA in Social relations and Policy. To assume that I can come here and teach these people that have lived off the land their whole lives anything they don’t already know about planting trees or taking care of cows is naïve at best, imperialistic and unreasonable at worst. When it comes to building this landfill and teaching them how to take care of it – separation of organics and inorganics, the building of compost – sure… I can help there. But other than that, I’m not really affecting any real sustainable change. But what am I passionate and informed about? What do they really need real help with? With an infant mortality rate of 50%, I can help with basic human health. In addition to the HIV prevention: hand washing, nutrition, dental health, teaching first aid to the teachers, medical waste disposal, etc. Improving quality of life. A healthy reserve is a beautiful reserve. This is my new focus for the next 9 months, if approved by administration. I’ve been taking a really narrow view of the goals of the environment program and I can’t even believe it has taken me this long to figure out that by expanding my focus I can actually be doing real good.
So there’s my update. The times they are a changin’.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish September 8, 2009

After being sick in Lima for so long, I finally made it back to site just in time for Fiestas Patrias. Jenna came with me. It’s always interesting seeing your site through someone else’s eyes. Plus, tourist season was in full swing, so nothing was quite normal. Someone stole my phone out of my purse on the bus on the way up to site and so I have decided that I quit phones. I’m in the Peace Corps, in a site with no reception and it’s really just not worth having one at this point. After Jenna left a few days later, I was left to my own devices. Schools nationwide were closed due to a swine-flu scare, so there was no work to be done there. Plus, I had been gone for so long that I was continuously mistaken for a tourist. My days were frustratingly relaxing. I read. A lot. I did yoga. A lot. I went to the municipality building literally 4 times a day to see if I could get a hold of the mayor or his secretary to start working on some sort of project, to no avail. The mayor was enjoying his month of “fiestas”. In fact, it was commonly accepted that he was drunk for the month and sometimes they even had to lock him out of the municipality building so that he couldn’t do any work while drunk. The days were punishing – the hot intense mountain sun… and the nights were hard – the wind and the cold just makes you want to hole up and hibernate. I would cook just to make my room warmer. I would walk by people on the street and they wouldn’t even greet me in return. Things were looking rough. Then the shower broke and my host sister broke my bike. I was dirty and frustrated and bored and unproductive.
Luckily, it soon came time to go down to the city for our regional meeting. The usual festivities were quickly followed by a trip back to the north of the country in Lambayeque for In-Service Training (IST). All of the environment volunteers from my training group were reunited… and it felt so good? It was an awesome week. I learned more than I did in all of our months in training when we first got here. We learned how to properly prepare and plant tara seeds in a nursery, we visited Peru’s first privately owned natural reserve, where we were taught about artisanry, reserve management, reforestation… I saw innumerable indigenous (and often endangered) bird species, I fed the endangered “oso de anteojos”, the only bear native to South America (also endangered), I saw a fox that wasn’t afraid of people… it was out of control sweetness. It got me thinking and motivated and I basically ran back to site full of ideas and ready to work.
After IST, coming back to site was like fast-forwarding a few months integration-wise right away. Suddenly, everyone knew my name and greeted me when I passed then on the street. I started teaching at the school right away, I helped birth a cow, I made my own cheese, I judged a poetry contest and started a project expanding the museum.
The current museum houses 6 Incan mummies and some artifacts found nearby the burial site. In  1929, a group of elementary school children were playing by one of the waterfalls in my town and happened upon an Incan burial ground. They dug up the mummies (in the process damaging a few of the skulls) and stored them in the school. One of the mummies was a person of importance and the rest were buried alive along with him (including some holding small children). Their faces frozen in a permanent grimace, they are haunting. Only recently, a few years ago, were they taken from their storage place in the school and put in a museum. Some of them have been painted by children over the years, adding what I think is an interesting layer to their history. What one of the professors and I are trying to do is add a second floor to the museum. We plan on showcasing more recent history of my town. Photographs, centuries old horse saddles, any kind of relics people will be willing to donate. The tentative plan is to be able to inaugurate it by November, but getting proper lighting and setting up the room might actually take a little longer. At any rate, I’m excited to see how that turns out.
I also went to a park-guard meeting, which turned out to be a complete waste of my time, since they spend the whole day reading out loud from the reserve manual, explaining the big words, like socio-cultural. I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. And since they don’t seem eager to work with me, I think I might be closing the book on them – there is plenty to do with the school and community.
I have already given a talk to the older kids about HIV prevention, which ended up being really awkward. We were talking about myths and realities of HIV and one of the cards I made up said “I can’t get HIV because I only have oral sex”. Obviously, this is a myth. But a room full of 16 year olds about to graduate high school in a town with no internet or radio ended up asking me what, exactly, oral sex was. Cue incredibly awkward moment. And once they realized I would answer their questions, they just started pouring right out of them. Things I (wrongly) assumed 16 year olds would know by now. Hi. I’m American. I’ll talk to you about sex. And I thought that would be the end of it. Awkward moments pass. The next day, however, I’m cornered by 4 female teachers at the school. They have questions of their own. These women, with children, in their 30s, are asking me what a female orgasm is. They didn’t know such a thing existed. *headdesk*. I am for sure going to end up with a reputation here. Also, I’ve been struggling a little with the futility of teaching safe sex in my site. Even if they wanted to use a condom, the stores don’t sell them for like a 60km radius and the health post doesn’t offer them either. It is a catholic country. So what is the point in teaching about protected sex, about adequate condom use, if abstinence and pregnancy are really their only 2 options? I’m at a loss.
On a completely different note, Sarah and Valerie, 2 other volunteers came to visit me recently as well. We went out to an annex of my site to see their waterfalls and lagoons. It’s a 5 hour walk, 1 hr car ride. It was really nice to go with volunteers instead of with people from my town the first time around. We’ll see how different it is after the rains come and fill out the waterfalls a bit. We also went horseback riding, which I have been meaning to do for a while now.
So that is the brief coverage of my time since being sick. Frustratingly relaxing to comfortably contentedly busy.