Friday, November 30, 2012

Feliz Dia de Accion de Gracias!

Happy belated Thanksgiving!  I made a little American holiday style lunch for my host family.  Volunteers Leslie and Grant came over to share the love as well.  Here´s but a small portion of my family happily munching away.





I made cole slaw, mashed turnips, chicken, green beans, and an apple dessert.  I was cooking all morning, but it turned out delicious and I´m pretty pleased with myself.





I wish I had made more because it was a big success.  It turns out my little host brother David loves coleslaw.  I guess kids will eat just about any vegetable if you put some mayo on it.  Happy Thanksgiving!


The Meat We Eat



I complain a lot about Peruvian food and my resulting stomach aches and more ample thighs, but there are redeeming characteristics about my campo diet.  There are some delicious dishes (mmm alpaca) and other wider systemic benefits.

Peru recently passed country-wide ban on all GMO foods.  This is incredible.  Most modern agriculture development is based on GMOs and a lot of the produce and food-products coming out of the United States are GMO.  The U.S. failed to pass a law that would make labeling of GMO foods mandatory in grocery stores.  And here´s Peru, which is often ridiculous and backward, taking a very brave step in agricultural policy.

The way Peru raises animals has made my transition to carnivory much easier.  Sadly, the country has largely industrialized chicken and egg production, with soccer-field sized sheds lining up in the deserts outside Lima.  But in the campo, meat and milk production is largely un-industrialized.  In Junin, cows, sheep, and alpacas wander the pampa all day tended by shepherds and live what largely seem to be happy bovine, ovine, and camelid lives.  They eat grass and never encounter corn or a feedlot.  They are slaughtered by owners and then sold to butchers down the street who, in turn, sell to the señoras.

There´s also a much more transparent relationship with the meat we eat in Peru.  There are no boneless skinless chicken breasts shrink wrapped and ready to go.  When I wanted chicken breast for Thanksgiving, I went to the butcher and watched her graphically dismember a chicken with a cleaver and lots of bicep strength.  When I got the meat home, I had to separate it from ribs, organ bits, ans sinew.  I had chicken juice up to my unskilled forearms before I was done.

Meat at the market looks like the animal it came from.  Featherless chickens, still in possession of heads and feet, lie on blocks of wood.




Sheep and alpacas are skinned and headless, but otherwise intact.  And the heads are usually in a pile a few feet away.



There is very little waste.  Señoras are constantly knitting socks from the wool of their deceased sheep and alpacas.  I can attest from personal experience that we eat all the parts.  I´ve gnawed on gristly clumps of meat hanging off of spinal columns and gratefully transferred testicles and eyeballs to someone else´s soup bowl.  The parts that are unappetizing to humans go to some underfed dog.

I feel much better about eating meat in the Peruvian campo that I would going to Guenardi´s in Pennsylvania and picking up a rotisserie chicken.  I´ve often met the animal or one of it´s friends and have seen it´s peaceful daily lifestyle.  I haven´t worked up the guts to kill anything myself, but I feel much closer to the animals I eat.  The campo life lends a transparency and responsibility to animal eating that would greatly beneifit human and animal health and well-being if we had more of it in the States.

OMG That´s So Gay!

I go to a man named Oscar for my infrequent haircuts.  He´s really nice, engages me in conversation about things other than the weather, and is good at cutting hair.  He also happens to be gay.  And older host brother was visiting and mentioned that he needed a haircut, so I recommended Oscar.  He scrunched up his face, shook his head, and said, "Es un maricon."  He´s a fag.

I immediately felt my face flush and lots of angry firecrackers went off in my brain, but all I managed to say was, "¿y?"  It would be useless to open a discussion with this particular host brother about homophobia.  We´ve had extended, heated arguments about whether everything on the internet is true and whether or not sharks are fish.

One of the most frustrating things about my PCV existence is constantly backing off of issues like these in deference to "cultural sensetivity."  You´re constantly late, mean to your wife and dog, and homophobic?  That´s cool!  It´s your culture!

That´s a frustrated oversimplification, but there are lots of things I´m not really allowed to express, such as:

"You´re two hours late for a meeting you arranged and are going off on a 40 minute soliloquy about how long the meeting is.  That shit is unprofessional and thoughtless.  Fuck you!"

"You didn´t try in high school, got pregnant at 16, and spend most of the day feeling sorry for yourself when other women applied themselves and are doctors and politicians.  Fuck you and your inertia!"

"You bought that dog, it protects your house, and is heartbreakingly loyal to you.  You can at least feed it once a day and stop kicking it.  Fuck you!"

Any subverting of these ideas needs to be gentle and guerilla style, but I often am tempted to shake people.

But let´s direct this tangent back to homophobia.  It´s a really widespread and disappointing characteristic of Peru.  One of my best volunteer friends is gay.  He´s one of the sweetest humans I´ve ever met, a dedicated volunteer, and a devastatingly good dancer.  But he´d likely be rejected by his community if they found out his sexual orientation, so he has to keep this fundamental aspect of himself a secret.  It seems a terrible shame that he can´t be accepted for everything he is.

I reflected on this some more and reminded myself that millions and millions in my own, supposedly advanced, country feel the same way about homosexual people.  In my life, I´ve interacted with a select minorty of Americans.  My veterinarian and professor parents mostly have friends with letters after their names.  I grew up in a reasonably diverse Philadelphia suburb and most recently spent my America time with socially and environmentally concerned grad students.  I´ve never spent time with people who picket funerals, commit hate crimes, or even vote against gay rights.  It´s a mindset that I feel very distant from and mystified by.

For now, I´m going to feel grateful that I wasn´t sent to one of the African countries where being gay brings the death penatly.  I´m not sure how to effectively work toward equality in the Peruvian campo.  I´ll keep going to Oscar for haircuts, hanging out with him, and try not to choke anybody.

Friday, November 9, 2012

A La Lauu!*

*"Holy shit, it´s cold" in Quechua.


The rainy (and cold) season is coming to Junin.  Thankfully, we´re still at the beginning.  It´s more of a flirtation.  The rain and cold comes for a few days, goes for a few.  There won´t be a serious commitment for another month.  That´ll drag on for 6 until the rain and Junin figure that they weren´t right for each other and break up just to do it all again this time next year. 

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Cutting Room Floor

Here are some photos that I like, but don't really fit in a coherent post.  Most are from my time in and around Lima with Peru 20.

Here I am in Lima with some inspired graffiti.  I'm in my bus clothes, but happily have a cappuccino in hand.




A boat nap.


A pretty pelican and more fishing boats.



Inka Cola to go.


Cormorants!




Kids asking the 20ers for their autographs after teaching a class at their school.


I got a bad sunburn on my arms during a hike the week before and my skin was peeling.  She got shy when the camera came out, but this little girls was helping me peel the skin off.  Here I'm encouraging her by getting a nice big piece ready.


Here's the Pacific!



We went to a really sophisticated museum.


With excellent taxidermy.


Back in Junin, here are the future terrors of Carhuamayo. 



The puppies get food all over their heads when they eat.  Elka pins them between her legs so she can lick them.


The end!

PC Cinema

Despite being hard a work doing community development, we have a lot of free time in the Peace Corps.  We are far away from friends, get tired of speaking Spanish, and there is a lack of nighttime activities, so we watch a lot of movies and TV shows stored on vast harddrives.  But not all programs are suitable for Peace Corps volunteers, there are rules to be followed to maintain the highest possible levels of happiness and entertainment value.

1. No scary movies:  I was scared to go to the latrine at night and dismayed at my house's chances in the zombie apocalypse.

2. No touching romances: Peace Corps is lonely.

3. Comedy is good.  Extra points if it's quotable: Parks and Rec, Portlandia, and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia are some of the most popular among volunteers.  Put a bird on it!

4. The more explosions the better: Day-to-day campo life is pretty boring.

5.  The more seasons/episodes the better: We've got two years here.  

6.  Disney is great, Pixar is better.

7. Spanish is ok, English is better.

8. If the 2 sol pirated movie you bought at the market has people standing up and walking in front of the screen, it goes back.  

Siembra de Papa y Tanta Wawa


It’s been a cultural sort of week up here.  This Sunday, we all woke up early to plant potatoes.  We shouldered our tools and sacks of seed papas and hiked up the hill to the chakra.  My mamita sorted out the good potatoes while my brothers Carlos and Eber and my host dad and I planted.  





Carlos and I were a team and we rotated between using the takia to make a hole and popping the potato in.  The soil was incredibly hard and the takia turn was grueling.  I had to kick it with all my strength to get the blade to enter the soil.  



Sometimes, I’d kick too hard and lose control, and the long handle would slip off my shoulder and whack me in the neck or head.  It's good that Elka was there for moral support.



Carlos did 2 rows with the takia for every one I did, but I was still wiped by the end.  Putting the potatoes in the hole was a way easier job, but it still required lugging a heavy bag of papas up and down the hill.  We worked from 8:30 to 2, with rain, wind, and thunder rolling in at the end.  It felt good to work outside, but I’m glad I’m not a professional papa farmer.




To regain strength, everyone in town is making tanta wawas for All Saint’s Day.  Tanta means bread in Quechua and wawa is son.  Folks make breads in shapes of people, llamas, and doves.  They’re about challa sweetness and have sprinkles on top.  My family rents a panaderia oven and makes hundreds.  I remember eating stale ones last year in December when I arrived.  For Dia de los Muertos, they make up a table with lots of the breads and other foods that ancestors enjoyed as offerings.  Ours had masamorras (jellied anything: corn, potato, you name it) and meat as well.  The offerings are left out and then eaten by the family the next day.

My folks brought their haul back from the bakery and it fills up an entire delicious-smelling room.


These are some of the wawas.

Here is David and Stefie with some pan de maiz.  It's cornbread, but not America style.



We'll be eating these for the forseeable future.  They're really good and hopefully we'll finish before they turn into rocks.