My over-zealous alarm clock

BOOM!!! You wake up, disoriented, and look at your watch: it's 6:00am. BOOM!!! Another one - you sigh, attempt to bury your head under the blankets, and try to go back to sleep. BOOM! BOOM! The cohetes, on the other hand, are already up and at 'em, and you know in your heart that your plan to sleep in 'til 7:30 has once again been ruined.

This is a typical morning in Cajabamba. Cohetes (pronounced "co-ett-ehs"), the source of the early-morning sonic booms, are rocket-type fireworks that people here love to shoot off on any and all relevant occasions. Yes, it is totally legal for anyone anywhere to shoot off rockets at any hour of the day. And no, nobody thinks it's weird or complaint-worthy when two dozen such rockets are shot off at 6am, or at midnight, when, logically, the majority of the town might be trying to sleep. People are celebrating - gotta let them have their fun, right?

These cohetes irk me to no end, primarily because, as previously mentioned, they are shot off while I'm trying to snooze. But also because they are all about the noise - other kinds of fireworks produce pretty lights when they go off, with their popping and cracking noises endured as necessary pyrotechnical side effects. The cohetes, on the other hand, do not shoot off a single spark! And they are six times as loud and ear-ringing as normal fireworks. So deep down, my real issue with the cohetes is their irrationality: why in the world are these particular rockets the firework of choice in my town? Any logical person would select something with more lights and less explosive sound. But for some reason, the cohetes have secured first place in pyrotechnics here, so my mornings will continue to be interrupted for every holiday, religious festival, child's birthday, school anniversary, saint's day, random parade, etc. At least I'll never miss an important day!

Coca complexities

According to a UN report, "Peru overtakes Colombia as world's top coca leaf grower." More due to Colombia's recent reductions in coca production than to any major increase in Peru, this first-place distinction is considered international news because of the plant's direct link to the global drug market.

But here in Peru, coca's claim to fame has nothing to do with cocaine. The leaf is a staple of Andean culture, particularly among rural campesinos. Men and women alike chew coca leaves almost constantly, partially for their caffeine-like effects and partially because that's what everyone has done for hundreds of years - the tradition has deep roots. The leaves are sold in the markets by the bagful, and you'll often see campesinos walking along chewing on leaves and tapping the small gourds that hold the complementary lime powder.

The local and global views of these little green leaves make for an interesting contrast: time-honored tradition versus should-be-eradicated drug ingredient. This difference in perspective also makes coca-related policy making a thorny task, as many believe that it wouldn't be fair to stamp out such an important cultural custom in the name of controlling the drug trade.

Teen queens

Here in Peru, girls grow up dreaming of becoming reinas (queens). No, Peru is not a monarchy, but it nevertheless has a strong tradition of reinas: teen beauty pageant winners. Americans are no stranger to beauty pageants, especially after "Little Miss Sunshine," but there's a key difference in our two countries' interpretations of these competitions. In the U.S., the beauty pageant world represents a kind of sub-culture - something that certain people participate in, and that the rest of the population pretty much ignores. In contrast, Peruvian beauty pageants are sponsored annually by every municipality and every high school, and pretty much the whole town attends each event - the tradition holds a strong place in mainstream Peruvian culture. 

The basic idea is the same: girls are chosen to represent their grade level or neighborhood, and they compete by modeling various outfits down the catwalk and answering generic questions.  I've never been to a pageant in the States, and wasn't really interested in attending one here - the whole premise seems to me at best silly and at worst highly sexist. But when the local all-girls school where my sitemates and I have all taught invited us, we figured it was time to see for ourselves what these reinas were all about. The result was 100% as silly as I had expected, and 300% more sexist - I felt extremely uncomfortable the entire time, and left early. Girls as young as 12 wore clothes and make-up that would be provocative on women twice their age, the questions celebrated rote memorization rather than the girls' individuality, and each contestant brought on hundreds of whistles and catcalls from the largely male audience who'd come to see the show. 

From where I sit, the reinas competitions simultaneously reinforce and are fed by Peru's overwhelming machista culture in an ugly cycle - not something I'll be attending ever again. The only redeeming aspect was seeing all the different classes cheering for their representatives - these competitions are an important school-spirit event for the girls, and they went all out to support their friends with confetti, balloons, and t-shirts. That, at least, brought a smile to my face.

Let's talk about grades

In any high school, it's not too difficult to discern who the better and worse students are - you can tell from the way they engage (or don't) in the classroom. However, in the States, each student's grades are considered a private matter, and one that's slightly taboo to ask about. In Peru, the opposite is true: everybody knows exactly who's the best, second-best, etc. in the class, because grade rankings are publicly announced. They even take it a step further, inviting/requiring the top student in each section to wear a special armband on their school uniform every day (see the below photo for an example).

Parents will openly comment on which "place" their child occupies in school, and, naturally, a first-place student receives a certain amount of prestige. Students also freely discuss each other's respective grade rankings - there is no taboo, and no feeling that the second-place student might not want everyone to talk about the fact that he got 2nd instead of 1st place. To me, this feels a bit uncomfortable - raised in a culture where one's grades are a private affair, I get squeamish anytime someone publicly talks about who did or didn't do well on the test. It's also a strange concept for me as a teacher, since when I walk into a new classroom I know immediately which student gets the best grades.

While we're on the topic of grades in Peru, here's another random factoid: grades here are on a scale of 1-20; letter grades are nonexistent. I suppose having only five letters to choose from would make it more difficult to tie-break and decide who should be the #1 student.

Lost in translation

Today on the interwebs, I came across a graphic that asked, "what if soy milk is just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish?" ('soy' translates as 'I am' in Spanish) So clever :)

Later, working on my eventually-to-be-thesis for grad school, I realized I'd written "Annex" at the top of all the appendices - whoops! In Spanish, 'anexo' means 'appendix,' so it was a classic case of cognates gone wrong... except this time in my native language. Writing in formal, grad-school-level English is seriously difficult when you're living life en español, and to boot haven't seen phrases like "policy objectives" in 15+ months - thankfully there's spell-check!

"Acá soy un señor"

Sr. Flores is a friend of my host mom's, and he belongs to the cadre of old-time cajabambinos who have a lifetime of town history and stories to share. The other day, he was talking about why he loves Cajabamba, and why he continues to live here after 70+ years:

(translated) "Do you know why I like Cajabamba? In Cajabamba I'm a "señor" - everywhere I go people say, "good morning, Sr. Flores," or, "how are you, Sr. Flores?" When I go to Lima, everybody pushes and bumps into me, and not a single person greets me."

This is the essence of the joy that comes from living in a small town: not only are people more traditional and more tranquilo, but they really know one another. People greet each other, and not just with the passing wave of acquaintances, but with the cross-the-street-and-chat-for-a-minute handshake of those who are truly a part of each other's lives. It's been a privilege for me to have been woven into such a close-knit community, and to have felt so many times the warmth of one of those street-corner greetings.

Knock knock

In the States, if you ring someone's doorbell once or twice and no-one answers, you assume they are not home and, naturally, leave. In Peru, if you knock on someone's door once or twice and no-one answers, you knock at least 15 more times - ensuring maximum possible volume for each knock by using a coin on metal or your fist to bang on wood - before you even consider the idea that they might not be home. And not uncommonly, you get to the 14th or 15th knock, and all of a sudden someone answers the door - they'd been home all along!

The logic behind this cultural norm? (I know, it's hard to imagine.) If somebody only knocks once or twice and then gives up, they didn't really need to see you anyway. So why bother stopping whatever you're doing to go and answer the door if they've only knocked a couple of times? This happens in my own house here: someone will ring our doorbell, and my instinct will be to get up and answer it. But, since my friends tend to call before they come over, I'm pretty sure whoever's at the door isn't looking for me, so I sit tight. No-one else in the house makes any move towards the door. The bell rings again... silence. Maybe when the bell rings a third time, my host mom starts shuffling in the direction of the streetside window, so that she can stick her head out and yell "who's there?" Then, only if necessary, will she go down and actually open the door.

The Peruvian hairless biker dog

This is an example of a Peruvian hairless dog - possibly the ugliest dog species on the planet. Although you can't fully appreciate the hairlessness due to this particular canine's biking sweater, you get the idea. Also please note the horrid length of the biker dog's toenails - yikes! This picture was taken in Lima last month, when walking through Miraflores we came upon this unique owner-dog mode of transportation and obviously couldn't resist taking a photo.

Fútbol

This past Friday night, Peruvians young and old clustered around their TVs to watch the big game: Peru vs. Uruguay in a World Cup-qualifier match. I was told by multiple people that "this was it:" if Peru didn't win tonight, we were pretty much out of the running for the 2014 Copa Mundial. Peruvians have been telling me this since I arrived here 15 months ago, and despite the fact that we've lost at least 50% of those "must-win" games, they're still keeping the hope alive, clinging to the 0-point-something percent chance that Peru could still make it.

Soccer is a big deal here, as in every other country in Latin America (and most of the world) - far and away the #1 national sport. If you walk around my town (or any other town for that matter) during a national team game, the streets are empty and strangely quiet - that is, until something of consequence happens in the game. Then you'll hear shouts, whistles, swearing, cheers, and/or "gooooooool" coming from every window. More so than any sports fans I've seen in the States, Peruvians act like they're in the actual stadium even when they're watching on a 10-inch blurry-screened TV from miles away: they get seriously into it.

I recently acquired my very own Peru soccer jersey, and was pumped to finally get to wear it when we went to watch Friday's game at a local bar. Although the shirt didn't seem to bring Peru any luck (we lost 1-2), it did have its benefits: about halfway through the game, the bartender came over and gave me a free pitcher of pisco sour! He said, "this is for wearing our team's jersey - thank you!" Sometimes it pays to be a gringa :)

#makesmoresenseinspanish

Quirky yet brilliant translation of the day: 

chandelier = araña (literally 'spider')

Peruvian "dollars"

Maybe America isn't so far away after all...
http://news.yahoo.com/peru-global-leader-dollar-counterfeiting-072833886.html

It's the little things

Some fun moments from the last few days:

1. Played some sunset soccer (a.k.a. passed the ball around) with the sitemates - maybe if we hang out around the field enough the hombres will invite us to play actual games with them.
2. On our way home from said soccer excursion, we spotted three little girls on the edge of the road a ways ahead of us, who appeared to be watching us approach. This in itself is par for the course, as small children are always staring at us gringas. However, when we got within a few steps, these girls scampered ahead of us and walked along, stealing glances back at us every few seconds. Side note: Peruvians walking together are a precious sight, because they almost always lock arms/hold hands (girls/women), or throw their arm around the other's shoulder (boys) - these three niñas were no exception. Anyway, for a bit Linnea, Jess and I weren't totally sure whether the girls were purposefully walking with us, or if it was just a funny coincidence. Then, in some traffic confusion, we three gringas ended up in front of our accompaniers, and within seconds they had run up to be ahead of us once again. The rest of our walk was spent with each threesome discussing the other in English (us) or in whispered undertones with investigative glances backwards (them). I wish I'd had a camera, because I'm sure we made quite the amusing walking party :)
3. Today an entire class of my high school boys were in awe over the existence of the post-it note: "paper that sticks?!" They didn't really believe me when I passed them out, but when it came time to stick their ideas on the board, they were all abuzz with the miracle of sticky paper. They sell post-its in several of Cajabamba's office supply shops, but apparently they're not a common purchase!
4. Walking down the street, I was greeted with a smiling and waving "Profesora Meghan!!" from one of our elementary students from the past summer's (Jan-Feb) world map project. I can't even remember her name, but that big smile made my day.
5. At lunch, my host mom told the story of the time she brought our family dog to the local dog show (held every year during the town fiesta, alongside the pig show, cow show, sheep show, etc.). For those of you who need a refresher on Vlady, see below - this is no best-in-show canine, even when he's had a bath. Apparently the competition judges agreed, since Vlady was promptly disallowed from participating due to his utter lack of purebred-ness - despite Lourdes having sheared off his normal long hair to try and pass him off as a schnauzer! Only Lourdes would even think of bringing such a scruffy critter to a dog show :) But she said that they ended up using him as an example of a what-not-to-do dog, and he was awarded the same treat as the purebreds for his helpful participation, ha!

M&E, Peace Corps style

Peace Corps is one of the most independent and self-directed jobs out there: you sign up, your program director sticks you in a rural town three hours from the nearest city, and you're expected to find some work to do. With such a modus operandi, you might be wondering, "So how does Peace Corps know you're actually working?" The truth is, they really don't, but since most volunteers have characteristics like altruism, work ethic, and passion for our jobs, this lack of accountability doesn't get taken advantage of too often. But there are a couple of hard checks in place to monitor what we PCVs are up to: yearly site visits by program directors, and tri-annual written reports.

As today is September 1st, it's that dreaded time of year: the VRF. VRF stands for Volunteer Reporting Form, and it is a tri-annual ritual generally abhorred by PCVs around the globe for its unwieldy and time-consuming nature. Every four months we each spend some serious hours filling in information about what we've been up to the last trimester: project descriptions, program goals met, and number of participants reached. The more numerical data gets aggregated for Congress/taxpayers through Peace Corps headquarters, and at least one member of the Lima office staff gets to read our narratives of challenges, success stories, and plans for the future. We do not report number of hours worked - in a job where 2/3 of your official goals focus on promoting intercultural understanding a timecard would be a bit beside the point. 

As much as we volunteers belly-ache every time we have to fill out a VRF, in reality Peace Corps' monitoring and evaluation framework is far from demanding (you can't complain too much about one report every four months). However, pulled by the increasing focus on metrics in the international development arena, with each passing year Peace Corps continues to move in the direction of more concrete M&E.