Tuesday, February 28, 2012

My Bellybutton Is So Interesting!

I’m sorry that this blog has been a lot of navel gazing recently and light on adventure.  I’m technically not allowed to go adventuring yet and I’m still going through a lot of changes.  Not to mention that there’s time to think.  I hope this hasn’t been too boring for you to read.
But! changes are brewing.  The rainy season is only another month and school and work are starting back up for the year soon.  With any luck, I’ll have more projects and be able to be outside more.  I’m also going on a major trip in a month which should result in lots of awesome adventures and pictures. 
I’ll always be reflecting, but hopefully it’ll be cut with more fun and action in the future.  Thanks for sticking with me! 
Here are some photos of animals decorated for Carnival and traditional dances.  They have parades and parties on the coast and in the cities.  In the campo, we paint some sheep and make sacrifices of cigarettes, liquor, and veggies to the Pachamama (Inca earth goddess) for a good year.  It’s interesting how the celebration reflects what’s important to the place.  




Visiting

Look who showed up at our house the other day!



It turns out that this image of Jesus travels around to different houses from now until Easter, when they parade around town with him.  My family was really excited to have him.  At night, we lit candles, had neighbors over, said a rosary of Our Fathers and Hail Marys, read Bible verses, and sang hymns.
All of this was almost as foreign to me as any traditional dance or ceremony I’ve seen in Peru.  Pass an egg over someone’s body to diagnose illness?  Ok.  Repeat a prayer in front of a plastic statue in a beanie?  Sure.  I’m supposed to come from a Christian tradition, but that night didn’t have any deeper meaning for me.  My family was intense about it and even asked if the image could swing by again before Easter.  I didn’t find a connection.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on something important.  Religion was largely nonexistent in my childhood.  I’ve done some casual investigations into different faiths as I’ve grown up, but nothing has hooked me.  I was really into my religion classes at Villanova and wish I could have taken more, but nothing called me to believe. 
I don’t reject the idea of God, I just don’t know what it means.  I understand the appeal of prayer and chanting.  I get into that repetitive zone sometimes while running or backpacking.  The most I’ve felt God has been when I’ve been in awe of nature or unexpected kindness.  I remember thinking that there must me a God when I was studying biology and was floored by the complexity of life. 
When my family was praying, I felt disconnected and pretty bored after a while.  There are a lot of beads on a rosary and the hymns seemed tuneless.  Part of me wishes that wasn’t the case, though it seems likely that it just wasn’t my style.  I wish I had a clearer idea of the path to a religion or spirituality that would work for me.  I suppose I’ll just have to be open and I’ll find it if it’s for me.  

The Night Man Cometh

I’m rarely out and about after dark.  There isn’t much to do in Carhuamayo at night.  While it’s a safe town, that’s likely when something bad would happen to a gringa walking around alone.  There are some drug abuse problems here and alcoholism.  Though, I’ve seen just as many drunks on Sunday morning and noon on Wednesday.  My house is out of town a bit, without streetlights (no streets), and Peruvians don’t illuminate their properties like Americans, so it’s a special quality of dark.  I can be seventy feet from my house, but feel like I might as well be camping. 
The other day, I was leaving the city of Junin after dallying too long picking up birthday packages and chatting with gringos in a patch of grass.  I went to find a collectivo and was the only one in the car for over an hour.  Collectivo catching is tricky business.  Sometimes you’re the only one for quite some time, and it can be tempting to get out of the car and wander down the road hoping for a bus to go by.  Peruvians only seem to come in swarms.  There have been several times that I’ve jumped out of a collectivo to flag down a bus that didn’t stop, only to turn around to find the car I was alone in suddenly full of Peruvians and pulling away. 
Anyway, I was reading a book in the car, a little anxious about the falling dusk, for quite some time.  Then a pack of Peruvians appeared with bags of potatoes and oatmeal shoots and piled in.  There was no seatbelt, but I think the sheer pressure of our clown car organization molding me against the door would have kept me in place.  We finally took off into the twilight.
Places look different at night.  The spaces between towns are pretty empty, but they seemed even more so.  The darkness blurred out the potato fields in the hills and the small earth-colored houses, even after I wiped the condensation of a dozen breathing bodies in a station wagon off the window with my mitten.  It was beautiful and let me imagine a wild open landscape.  I suppose it still is in some ways, even though the hand of people has been on it for thousands of years. 
It was fully dark by the time we got home to Carhuamayo with a 20 minute walk out of town facing me before reaching my house.  I wasn’t worried, but I was conscious that I had my camera and cell phone and was obviously carrying packages.  I got home without incident.  It turns out not many other folks are out after dark, either. 
On a clear night, the stars in Carhuamayo are incredible.  It’s so cold on cloudless nights and the stars are like thousands of ice crystals coming out of an abyss.  Somehow the cold makes them sharper.  My house is out in a field and up a hill from the highway where I was walking.  It’s a tricky hill because it used to be raised beds of potato fields, so there are waves in it like the ocean far from the shore.  They are awkwardly spaced and I stumble up and down even in daylight.  It’s well into the rainy season, so the paths my family has walked into the waves are canals of muddy water.  Because of all the obstacles between me and arriving to my house without a muddy ass, I walked with my headlamp.  Halfway up the hill, I took a break to turn off the lamp and look around.  There were open patches in the clouds where the stars and moon peeked through and it was incredible to let the darkness fall around me like a curtain.  I didn’t stay long, but it was lovely to experience my town in a new lack of light.  I was happy to get to the top of the hill to dry clothes and barley soup.  

Monday, February 27, 2012

Staring Contest

Being stared at is a reality of Peace Corps life.  I can´t imagine there´s a volunteer in the world who escapes it.  Maybe some of the folks in eastern Europe until they open their mouths.  I´m really happy that I´m not strikingly beautiful or famous or deformed and don´t have to deal with this in the States.  Though sometimes here I feel like an awkward combination of the three.  There are several flavors of stare that I encounter in Carhuamayo. 

1. The Abuelita Stare
-This one is only bothersome if I´m in a bad mood, because how irritated can you be at an old lady in her pile of sweaters spinning yarn?  It´s usually accompanied by an, "adonde va?" or, "has acostumbrado?"  If they´re feisty, the stare may be accompanied by a kiss or yank on the cheek.

2. The "You´re My First White Person" Stare
-My very favorite.  It´s usually just little kids.  Their eyes go dragonfly-wide and you´d think they saw a neon fire-breathing unicorn rather than a gringa.  They´re incapable of looking away and if they´re walking in front of me, sometimes they´ll be staring so hard they trip over things and fall down.  I like to pull out funny faces for these kids because it just heightens their look of disbelief.  Peace Corps, blowing minds.  

3. The Gringa Jogging Through Potato Fields in Tights Stare
-Equal parts amusement and confusion.   

4. The Need A Shower Stare
-This is the worst by far and comes exclusively from men.  It´s palpable, yucky, sadly ubiquitous, and makes me walk faster.  It´s not hard to imagine what´s running through their minds since my foreignness makes me attractive and Americans have a reputation of being easy (the other day, I learned the phrase Estados Ho-nidos).  I have never been so thoroughly objectified so regularly and I range between ignoring and loathing it.
4.a.  This stare is especially confusing because I almost go out of my way to be homely here.  I wear my PC vest every day which gives no hints to my figure along with baggy hiking pants and usually several bundles over top with either a knit cap or sun hat.  I wash my hair twice a week and wear no makeup.  Earrings are the extent of my extra effort.  Until the other day, I had an armpit hair situation that would make even a campo man think twice.  Why on earth would anybody still think about hitting that?

Speaking of which, my relationship with men is complicated here.  I´ve met lots of wonderful fellows.  My brothers are incredible, I work with nice men at the muni, and the male nurses at the posta are my favorites.  But at the same time there´s the stare and the catcalls and the general ickyness.  I have to approach new male relationships with caution because I don´t know if they´re talking to me because I´m gringa or because they´re intersted in me as a person.  I´ve had a few fleeting suitors that I´ve had to verbally smack down a bit because it was painfully obvious they were only talking to me because I´m white. 

Peruvian campo dating is something that I haven´t been interested in even poking with a stick yet.  Here´s why in another list form.

1. Machismo
- Cheating is the norm.  They come on way too strong, proclaiming love and praising your incredible beauty.  Herpes is rampant and Peruvians usually don´t show symptoms.  Getting tested for STIs is unmanly.  Being seen as a gringa and not a person.

2.  Lack of Campo Goggles
- Looks are pretty negligible to me once I start to really like someone, but the Peruvian campo look is not doing it for me.  I´m looking for 2/3 a set of teeth or higher.  No more than 5 inches shorter than me.  As much as I love beards, few things put me off more than bad facial hair.  Here, every man is sporting the pre-adolescent wisps or five or six carefully cultivated wiry black hairs.  Take me back to Mantana. 

3. Potential Drama
- Chisme (gossip) is a virulent national pasttime.  No thanks. 

I´m making more friends with respectful professional men that act like humans toward me, and it gives me hope for my comfort level moving forward.  Tomorrow I´m going to go tell jokes with the gay male nurses.  What a relief they are. 

Thursday, February 23, 2012

That’ll Do

The Peace Corps has been a great exercise in learning to give myself a break.  I’ve always had high expectations for myself and I’ve found that time and again, for one reason or another, I can’t live up to them here. 
I often compare myself to the Stasia that worked on the farm in Montana over the summer.  I’d wake up at 5am, go for a 45 minute run, then work in the fields all day.  And I felt awesome.  I was really peaceful and content and tuckered out in the evening, but ready to do it again by the time I woke up at dawn the next day.
I don’t have that kind of energy in me right now.  Last week augmented the situation because I didn’t eat a good meal or sleep a full night the whole time and was emotionally wrung-out.  I’m still recovering from that.  But I find I have the energy to do one productive activity well.  Yesterday, I slept until 7:30, taught healthy cooking class, then came home at lunch and took a nap.  I put my fuzzy fleece pants on at 5pm.  I haven’t had the energy to exercise much at all recently.  I went to make myself a salad for dinner last night, but my stomach looked at the spinach and declared that it wasn’t up to that digestive work, so I had a piece of bread with avocado instead.  I don’t feel depressed, just a lack of energy.
Even though I’m not doing very much, it’s the best I can do at the moment.  Summer Stasia would be very disappointed, but I’m trying to be gentler to myself and am in a completely different situation.  At the farm, I was in lovely sunshine, had a ton of good friends not far away, and was being fed the most nutritious diet I’ve ever had.  I don’t have any of that going on here.  It’s the rainy season and often unpleasant to go outside.  Before I came here, I thought the loneliness was exaggerated.  I figured that people are people and I could make friends with Peruvians just as easily as Americans.  For some reason, that’s just not the case.  And I’ve said enough about my diet for you to know that it can’t compare to local organic vegetables and elk steak. 
I think it’ll get better with time.  It just takes longer here than it would elsewhere.  Once I get caught up on sleep and vitamins, I’ll want to run again.  The weather and my relationships will only get better from here.  I feel that I still have the lightness and energy inside me.  I don’t think Peruvian Stasia will be as vibrant as farm Stasia, but that’s ok.  Learning to be easier on myself feels like an important step in growing up.  Soon enough I’ll be ready to push hard on new projects and talk to everyone and climb mountains.  Until then, I’ll try not to begrudge myself some good naps.    
I watched these videos today and they made me really happy.  In May, there was an elaborate surprise baby shower for my cousin and my Unlce Jim flew me to Philly from Montana to surprise my family.  I`m pretty sure I have the coolest family ever and feel so lucky to be a part of it.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgsglapVtDg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT3A6n_6cBY&feature=related

Anna Was a Fully-Grown Independent Woman With a Car and a House on the Hill

My Spanish is improving, so it’s not as exhausting to speak it all the time.  It’s actually the toughest when I’m with gringos and Peruvians and have to go back and forth.  I’m even forgetting some English words.  I was talking to my mom the other day about how she went hiking in Pennypack during a warm February day.  I wanted to say that she was taking advantage of the nice day, but all I could think of was “aprovechar.” 
The barrier can be frustrating because my self-expression suffers a lack of eloquence, but there’s a freedom to being the best English speaker within miles.  I can get away with a good deal.
Unfortunately, my family knows the word, “shit” and all attention turns to me whenever I say it on the phone or yell at the chickens. 
I was in my office the other day and was feeling pooped.  The clear remedy was filthy hip-hop.  It was so fun to play and sing along to “Coochie” and “Make Her Say” in my office within earshot of any official that walked by and be totally safe.  It’s nice to find small pleasures in things that are otherwise daunting challenges. 

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Huckleberry Died

He died in the night on Friday.  I had one of my paranoid wake-ups around 1 am and reached over to feel his belly for breathing.  I couldn´t feel anything, so I jiggled him a little.  He didn´t lift his head or squeak so I unwrapped him from the sweatshirt I had him in and put my ear to his chest.  There wasn´t any sound or movement.  I wrapped him up in a sweater and called my mom.

My family helped me bury him in the garden the next morning.  They´ve been very nice to me, though they find me strange for being so sad and for all the effort I put into Huckleberry this week.  That´s just not how things are done here. 

This was the first time they´d seen me cry.  I haven´t been too leaky since I´ve been at site.  I cried once when I was too sick to move, another time while watching WALL-E (at the end when the robots hold hands and WALL-E comes back), and a few other times, but never in front of my family.  I started to cry this morning while brushing my teeth, and I´ve found that they are mutually exclusive activites.  My family gave me lots of hugs and pats and sympathetic looks.  It was nice of them to support me even though they might not get it. 

It´s so strange that I only had Huckleberry for a week.  I was already used to fixing two breakfasts and sharing the pillow.  I keep expecting to see him wagging in the yard or curled up on my sleeping bag.  It´s odd to be alone in my room again. 

As sad as I am that he died, there´s relief in it as well.  I was grinding myself into the ground trying to take care of him.  I´m a bit thinner, much more tired, and have more forehead wrinkles than previously.  I´m glad he´s not suffering anymore.

I started to think that he would go on Friday.  It was a hard thought to accept.  But he could barely walk anymore, he was getting progressively colder and weaker, and he´d do a strange head-shake.  Before I went to sleep that night, I watched Huckleberry´s jerky breathing for a while by my headlamp light and waited for it to stop. 

My family is on a campaign to get me a new puppy so I won´t be sad anymore.  It´s taken a lot of doing to convince them that I´m not ready and it won´t make me feel all better.  I´ll try again eventually, but it´s time for a break.

It´s funny that I wanted a dog so badly, then my family found Huckleberry, then he went so quickly.  I´m going to suss out the deeper meaning of that for myself when I´m not so exhausted. 

I was really excited for Huckleberry to be my dog.  He was a good boy.  It´s a shame he couldn´t have stayed longer.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Worry

I´m afraid that Huckleberry is dying.  I´ve been taking care of him for a week and it´s been a sequence of one step forward and two steps back.  His diahrrea got better for a while and he was eating, but now he´s inexplicably worse.  Not eating, vomiting what little he manages to eat, shaking and sleeping. 

I had held onto my optimism until this morning.  This week has worn me down and made me sicker as well.  He sleeps with me because it´s too cold for him outside, so that means waking up several times a night to let him out or clean up puke.  I jump awake whenever he twitches in his sleep and feel his belly to make sure he´s still breathing.  I haven´t been able to eat much and haven´t found much pleasure in my activites.  I call my poor veterinarian mom twice a day and pepper her with questions and search for encouragement.  My well-being is wrapped up in his at this point.  This morning I was forcing him to drink electrolyte solution with a syringe and I started bawling. 

It was a few days before I could really give him a name.  I saw that he was sick and was worried about getting too attached.  I called him Puppy or Stinky or Squirt.  But then we spent time together and I cared for him and he started to be Huckleberry.  My family said I can take him back to the states.  He´s my dog.

I feel so tired and powerless.  I´m not giving up.  I´m going to the vet again today.  I just haven´t been able to help him get better.  I hope he gets better. 

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Love Is All You Need

I have been a bit worried about the state of my heart and what will happen to it after these two years in Peru.  It´s been through a lot in the brief time I´ve been here.  I had enormous feelings of loss for the people I left at home and the realtionships that have been lost or diminished or put on pause.  Here there is a tricky balance between being guarded to strangers and keeping my heart open to opportunity and good people.  Animals drop left and right and it seems foolish to get attached.  There have been times when I´ve had to steel myself inside to get over things and to the next day intact.  I was worried how this practice would leave me at the end.  Being a cold person with a closed heart is one of the most terrifying things I can imagine. 

But I have hope because I´ve fallen wrecklessly, stupidly in love again.  With this guy. 


This is the puppy my family found.  I decided it was too cold for him to be sleeping outside and now he sleeps with me in my sleeping bag.  It´s only been two nights, but I´m taken with him.  I´ve bought him dog food and toys.  He follows me around tail wagging and sits in my lap while I read.  I think our relationship is based mostly on body heat exchange at this point, but it´ll evolve. 

I knew my heart was ok after talking with my host mom this morning.  The puppy has been getting skinnier this week and she said that he´ll likely die soon.  My heart immediately plummeted beneath my stomach and I knew I loved him already despite my better judgement.  I´m out on a mission in town right now to get him medicine and more food.  I think my host mom was exaggerating and it´s likely that they just don´t feed him enough.  I´ve just started feeding him extra since he´s been sleeping with me.  I´m going to do my best and hopefully he´ll be ok. 

But I know my heart will be ok.  I think it was just hiding for a while in self-defense.  Living my life with love and believing that loving somebody is worth any negative consequences that could come from it have been things I consider important to my character.  I don´t think I´ll lose them.  Even if the puppy dies, I´ll love him now and love other things later.  It´s a horrible cliche, but it´s true that it´s better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  I´m really glad I feel that way again now.


My family named him Rex, which isn´t working for me.  If I get to keeep him, it´ll change to Huckleberry.  I´m hoping for the best. 

Friday, February 10, 2012

Sometimes it Hurts to Ask

Disclaimer: This story is gross.  Gross in the kind of way that’s hilarious to 12 year olds.  You can look elsewhere in this blog for cute animal pictures or my attempts at insight.  Or you can just check out the photos of a nice family hike. 

Have I told you about the poo pool?  During training, we all put a sol into a betting pool and the last one to poop their pants wins the money.  I’m out.  This is how that happened.
Sunday a week ago, my family killed a sheep for pachamanca.  There’s a photo of us enjoying it earlier in the blog.  As the week went on, we ate different parts of the sheep.  We started with the meat and moved on to viscera.  I was conveniently full on the fried intestines day.  We kept eating parts of the sheep, but its head remained on a shelf by the window.  It watched over us and became increasingly leathery, eyeballs sinking in and lips curling over teeth. 
Then the next Sunday, we were served a very busy soup for lunch.  First there was chuno (potatoes left out in frost, then fermented in a well for 6 months.  A staple of sierra cooking that smells worse than it tastes).  Then there was an odd bit of meat sandwiched between a large chunk of bone and dark skin, latticed with fat and willing to fall apart at a vigorous spoon poke.  I looked over at the eyeball in my host father’s soup and gathered that the head was having its hour.  I picked around the skin and skull and ate a few bits of meat.  There were also chickpeas and some token bits of celery.  But there were little white chunks that I couldn’t place.  I ate a few and decided that they weren’t the fat globules that sometimes tread around in our soups, and it wasn’t meat or gristle.  It was tasteless and mushy.  So I made the mistake of asking, “What are the white parts?” 
“Es el cranio del pacho.”  Sheep brains.
Now, I thought that I was becoming a good carnivore.  And I deeply appreciate that my family uses every bit of the animal they killed.  But fermented potato, week-old face, and brain soup was too much for me.  I ate just enough to be polite and filled out my lunch with a luna bar and apple from my supplies. 
If only this was the end, but the pacho took its vengeance on me for my lack of appreciation. 
Before lunch, I had proposed a family Sunday hike up a big hill by our house that I’ve been eyeballing since site visit.  I was really excited to feel fit enough and have an afternoon without sideways rain to go climb it with David, Stephanie, and Elena.   



We set out a bit after lunch.  It’s a steep ascent and we took lots of breaks to look at the scenery and flip over rocks.  About halfway up, I started to have gurgles.  I thought, screw it, I’ve been wanting to do this hike forever and I’m not turning back.
I can’t tell you if it was a mistake or not.  I don’t regret it and it was beautiful and fun, but I left my mark up and down the mountain.  Do you know where you can hide if you have diarrhea in hills of the high pampa? Nowhere.  Do you know what makes good natural TP?  Nothing.  All the plant life is films of moss clinging to rocks and bushy plants determined to resist predation.  Here are photos from the hike.  You can tell I’m a bit pale. 

Carhuamayo looks like a bird from above.


Rumbling and clenching on the way down.




The revenge of the pacho continued for three more days.  Everything I put into my body attempted a violent escape from one portal or the other a little while later.  I spent a good time in bed and have read the Road, most of the Hobbit, watched the King’s Speech, and a season and a half of the Wire.  I also lost the poo pool bet.  To be fair, it was more of a shart than a full deposit, but the underwear went into the trash and I think it was enough to count.  I didn’t follow the sacred Peace Corps saying, “Don’t trust your farts.”
The silver lining of all this is that I think I can use this illness to avoid the dish in the future. 
Sometimes revenge is served hot and with a side of noodles. 

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Diagnosis: Cranial Collapse Induced by Acute Frustration at Value Differences

So remember how I was talking about how badly I wanted a dog?  This is a decision I’ve thought over for years, scrutinizing the angles and the long and short term benefits and consequences.  Then my family got a new puppy.
My host brother Eber unzipped it from his jacket when he came home one evening and the family went nuts.  Now, he found it in alone in a park and what else could he do?  But everyone jumped out and started grabbing and shaking it and making it cry in their excitement and my head nearly exploded. 
All I could see was where it would go.  They have four dogs already, untrained and skinny.  They are not cruel to them by any means, but there is not a lot of extra love for them.  I give the dogs the most affection.  I even buy all the cat food and am the only reason all their kittens didn’t die.  I saw all this enthusiasm and how quickly it will diminish and there will be another skinny Peruvian dog that bites passerby.  This immediately following my inner anguish over a pet and loneliness was too much at that moment.  I yelled at my family and told them to stop shaking the poor thing. 
I’m starting to accept that Peruvians and I just have different values when it comes to animals.  I’m pretty far on the empathy and affection side from having a mother as a veterinarian and just being a softy in general.  And I’ll admit that I may be excessive on that side at times.  But there are some things Peruvians do that I don’t understand.  For instance, my brother David is a good, sweet kid.  But he’ll flick the puppy in the nose so it yelps and he’ll laugh.  And he doesn’t understand why I scold him for it.  It doesn’t compute that it’s an unkind thing to do.  It’s just how you treat animals. 
Cynicism seems like a real danger in some facets of Peace Corps work.  Hopefully being aware of the danger of it will help keep me from going down that road too far.
I’ve calmed down a lot about it and accepted that this will be another animal that I’ll be the chief source of affection for.  I’m trying to find a middle ground between my and my family’s values.  I scold them if they mistreat their animals.  Hopefully if they see how the dogs and cat respond to me, they’ll want to start being gentler.  I think this is something I’ll have to accept to an extent.  But sometimes I want to shake them like they shook the puppy and ask, “what the hell?”

Doggie

I want a dog so bad.  I’d name it Paz or Huckleberry and we’d go walking everywhere and I’d train it well and we’d snuggle and play and run through the hills together. 
I know what I really want is companionship.  There’s a lack of intimacy in my life right now.  Last year, I built the best relationships possible with only a year.  Then, I went home and was with people who have known me since forever.  Then the Peace Corps hit and I started over in a new world.  Admittedly, I did a bad job during training.  I was overwhelmed by being around 30 new people all day and my inherent awkwardness and slowness made me not my best self.  I came out of training with a lot of people I like, but nobody that knows my insides. 
I’ve been working on it.  I love my family, but their sheer quantity and cultural differences make closeness a different sort of animal.  I’m getting closer to the volunteers in my region, but I only see them every two weeks or so.  I like to talk to farther away volunteers on the phone and I think we’ll bond on the trips we take, but all of this is in future tense.  It helps to write letters to friends and talk to my family on the phone, but they’re still not with me. 
I know I have to work with the humans around me. 
I’m not miserable or even sad much of the time.  It’s a feeling of lack.  There’s something missing.  It’s live-with-able, but there’s an empty quality to it.  I don’t have anyone special to love near me.  I don’t have a companion. 
I’ve been taking care of the kitten, but she’s not mine and only has a slight preference for me, if any at all.  I was a hair away from buying a rabbit at the feria today, but I don’t think that would be a very reciprocal relationship. 
I’m going away for a few weeks at the end of March, and that keeps me from making an impulsive decision.  I don’t know where to find an available dog, anyway.  Even the most raggedy ones in the street usually have an owner.  I know my human relationships will strengthen.  But I’m going to come back to the dog idea if I still really want one in April.  I appreciate the price and responsibility that comes with a dog, but it might be worth it to have a friend around. 

Exito!

 Sometimes things go better than you hoped they would.
Feb 2nd was Dia de los Humedales (Wetlands Day) and the muni and I put together a big celebration with all the vacaciones utiles kids.  It was supposed to start at 10, and I was a little nervous at 10:20 when the plaza had a lack of children and heavy rainclouds were peeking over the hills.  But soon enough, the teachers brought the students over from the school.  There were almost 200 of them!  I can’t pretend this was a voluntary activity, but I’m happy about the numbers nonetheless.
We started with a drawing contest about wetlands.  At first some of the older kids were complaining, and nobody brought a piece of paper despite being reminded by all sorts of adults, but they got invested in the activity once they started.  I was walking around the group and everybody wanted to show me their picture and ask me if it was good.  We gave them 45 minutes and a bunch wanted to keep going.

After the contest, I gave a little charla on the importance of wetlands and Lago Chinchaycocha.  Look how many little guys!

Those are all the kids I interact with every week and seeing them all together was incredible.  I got to use a microphone rather than yell over them all.  Powerpoint is a novelty here and they were really into the pictures.  They even answered the questions I asked them and remembered some of the things I said about ecosystems. 
Somebody said that they should all take their chairs downstairs.  Thankfully nobody died.
The secundaria students put on a great little bit of teatro about taking care of trees.  Not exactly about wetlands, but close enough to get environment points.
A few kids from every grade won school supplies and everybody went home with a pine tree. 
The muni was incredible.  They left me hanging until the last moment, but then really stepped up.  Lots of people came to help with chairs, supervision, and AV things.  At first they said they couldn’t give me anything.  Then there were 5 prizes.  Then 18 and everyone got a tree.  The mayor even came down to give a speech and hand out prizes. 
I think that Mayor Callupe was a big part in making this a bigger deal than it would have originally been.  He’s normally either inscrutable or grumpy looking, but he seems to be interested in what I want to do.  He said he wanted this celebration to have a presence, and everybody worked to make it so. 
Immediately after all of that, I went on the radio to talk about Wetlands Day and we wound around other environmental topics as well. 
I can’t hope that every event I plan will go this well, but today makes me very optimistic about the future.  It seems like the muni has my back. 
I’ve been working on the health post connection as well.  They want to continue with the healthy cooking classes and are also interested in micro-rellenos (family-sized landfills) and cocinas mejoradas (stoves that use less fuel and prevent respiratory disease).  They’ve delivered on their promises so far and I have high hopes. 
I don’t think the majority of Peace Corps experiences are like this.  I’ve talked to people whose communities don’t seem to want to speak with them or who have had disappearing socios.  Everyone here at the least finds me interesting and many seem excited about what I want to do.  I feel very grateful every day for that.  Though I’m still keeping contingency plans in the back of my mind in case things change. 
Hooray for a successful day! 

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Old

Last night, I was sitting by the stove knitting with a kitten in my lap.  I dug my cell phone out of my fuzzy fleece pants and thought to myself, “8:30!  I’d better get ready for bed!” 
In my defense, it takes my room a while to warm up from my body heat.  I also like to read or watch an episode of The Wire and drink some tea or cocoa before bed.  I’ve always had grandma-ish tendencies, but still. 
The Peace Corps lifestyle is one of contrasts.  I’ve been out at the discoteca until 2am, have explored a huge cave in the middle of the night, and have beach and backpacking adventures in the works.  But home life in the campo is quiet.  Working, reading, cooking, walks, and caring for animals.  Long hours of conversation and card games in an occasionally smoky dirt floor kitchen. 
I really like adventure and challenges, but I think a quiet home life suits me.  I’ve been lucky to have found a good balance of both in Missoula, on the farm, and now here.  I wonder if that’s something that I can keep up in real life after Peace Corps?  Can I have an awesome job or live in an adventurous place and then come home and cook and chat with a husband? 
It’s been a relatively recent phenomenon that I’ve been considering what I really want my life to look like in the future.  What kind of work and home life would be fulfilling for me.  I think it started in Montana where I found a place and people I felt like I could be with for a good while.  I’ve felt more than ready to move on after every other phase in my life.  That was the first one where I really wanted to stay longer.  (That isn’t to say that I always was ready to leave people behind, just stages of life.  My college friends are stuck with me forever, even when I’m a continent away.) 
The Peace Corps certainly leaves space for reflection and time with yourself.  If I’ve learned anything it’s that I’m changing and discovering all the time.  I wonder what I’ll want when the two years are over. 
I’ll be 25 in a little over a month.  I must be getting old to be thinking this way.