Surveying

Conducting a survey to gather data on and assess the needs of the youth of Cajabamba is no easy task - I already have five papercuts to show for it, and I haven't even been to any of the high schools yet! As part of my community diagnostic, I decided to write and administer a survey for youth (broadly defined between ages ten and thirty) to get some information on education levels, work experience, and current knowledge of things that I could potentially give classes on, such as creating a business, saving money, preparing for a job interview, using a computer, etc. Some really interesting responses also come from the survey's more open-ended questions: 1) what are three goals you have for the future? and 2) what do you feel are the two biggest problems facing the youth of Cajabamba?

I've collected about 110 responses so far, and plan to continue until I have a sample across all the different schools and age groups. Luckily our community diagnostics aren't due until we've been at site for three months, because surveying is a bit of a process. For each school, I first go to introduce myself to the Director, and eventually explain that I'd like to get some responses from the students there. While no Director has yet refused to help me, from the initial approval point it remains a challenge to then coordinate the actual practicalities of how/which students/during what time I will actually administer the survey. Then comes the slightly awkward phase of getting someone at the school to make me 100+ copies of the survey - Peace Corps volunteers' living allowances do not include a budget for work materials, copies, etc., so to survive you've got to get your partner organizations to foot the bills. Once I've asked the secretary, who waited for the Director to get out of a meeting to ask his approval, who said okay and then went to find the maintenance guy who actually knows how to work the copy machine, and then all three of us stood around waiting for the stone-age copy machine to slooowly churn out all my surveys... 1.5 hours have passed and my "win" for the afternoon is a nice stack of identical papers.

I'm learning to enjoy the process though. It's a nice change of tempo to operate in a place where the pace of life and work makes an hour-and-a-half-long copying extravaganza perfectly normal and okay. I had some great chats with the secretary, director, and copy machine man while we were waiting, and in the end I achieved my goal of free copies. While efficiency and Peru don't really (ever) go together, things still get done, and I'm having an interesting time learning and navigating through this new culture of time. Just making copies would be way less fun :)

Here's a photo of some computation majors at one of the technical colleges busily filling out my surveys:

And here's another survey site: the three-room alternative education center for anyone who wants to learn some practical sewing or carpentry skills - I think I'm going to start offering a weekly English class here soon.