Best mom award

Kitty has officially been awarded the Best Peace Corps Mom award. I am currently sitting in my room, drinking decaf tea that is not chamomile (which is the only kind of decaf tea that exists here) and eating milano cookies, both of which emerged from the HUGE food-filled care package I received in the mail today. Needless to say I am happy as a clam, and this is due to the over-the-top effort and generosity of my dearest mother. If any of you Seattleite blog readers happen to see her in the coming days, she deserves a very big hug :)

Non-formal education

A very large part of my work as a Peace Corps volunteer takes the form of me giving training sessions to groups of adults or youth on any and all topics related to economic development. No matter the theme of the day, what all the trainings have in common is the method of teaching: non-formal education. Powerpoint, the staple of almost all presentations stateside, is a tool I will hardly, if ever, use here. This is due to a few factors: 1) the frequent lack of electricity in meeting environments - the farmhouse backyard of one of my socias who makes cows' milk is not exactly computer-equipped; 2) unlike the expectations of presentation audiences in the U.S., Powerpoint is not known or desirable among the general population of Cajabamba - it is not the automatic go-to teaching tool; 3) many of my trainees cannot read and/or have little experience with any formal education system (i.e. only attended a couple years of elementary school), so it's important to think outside the box for ways to really get them to connect with the information presented; 4) trainings where the presenter is the main talker are, at least in this context, not the most effective way to make the material stick with the trainees.

Consequently, Peace Corps is all about the dinámicas (interactive activities) that get people participating actively in learning, contributing their own knowledge and ideas, and making the material much more accessible and memorable than just me talking could ever possibly do. Our pre-service training helped expose us to non-formal methodology and give us an idea of the type of work we'd be doing, but it's still a bit of a figure-it-out-as-I-go process. For each of my trainings, I use the slightly overwhelming and very unwieldy bank of Peace Corps materials and examples available to us to prepare a session plan, draw up my papelotes (posterboards), stuff all my markers and tape and props into my backpack, and trek out to whichever backyard classroom is scheduled for that day's adventure.

As an example, here's some photos from a training I led on Tuesday to help a milk-producers' association learn about and create their organization's mission and vision statements. We started off with a "river of fire" dinámica, where the team has to work together to cross the river - this introduces the theme of planning in advance and communication:

Then, after I talked briefly about the concept of a mission statement, two participants acted out a miniature play that helped them identify what they already knew about the work, clients, and purpose of their association:

Once we had drafted a mission statement as a group, it was time to move to the vision. To give each participant the chance to think about their hopes for the future of the association, they each drew a picture representing what they'd want the association to be like in five years:

As a result, we got some beautiful pictures of healthy cows, prospering alfalfa pastures, cars delivering milk to new markets, and improved irrigation systems. Everyone was so proud of their drawings that when we took them down, one participant wrote the name of each artist on their paper and said they should save the drawings :)

Based on the ideas from the art project, we wrote out a vision statement as a group, and talked about the importance of thinking ahead to future goals so that we can start the planning needed to achieve them. Training complete!

#peacecorpsvolunteerheaven

It's a little crazy how good peanut butter tastes when you haven't eaten any for four months. Especially when you eat it with chocolate :)

Leading ladies

Thursday was the first meeting of a women's leadership committee my socio Juan Carlos and I are trying to form, and it was awesome. Starting with the women who already hold leadership positions on the boards of their local water-users associations (an institution that every farming community has to regulate water-sharing practices), we are bringing these women leaders together to further promote women's empowerment, gender equality, and train them in management skills. Needless to say I am extremely excited for this project, and am hoping that we'll be able to successfully continue to expand it to other communities. 

For this first meeting with the ladies of Condebamba (the district next to Cajabamba), I planned a session that involved a couple of ice-breaker games and then a discussion of leadership. The señoras were big fans of the get-to-know-you activity that involved eating three little candies each - Peruvians love their sweets! And I was pleasantly surprised by their eager participation in the leadership training. Even among a group of ladies where none had completed high school (and some much less), they had no trouble coming up with a great topic-poem about what leadership entails:

The second main activity was a discussion of the characteristics of good versus bad leaders. Everyone contributed, and towards the end a few of the ladies got us into a spirited discussion of machismo and how women need to take a stronger part in leading their communities. Hopefully this bodes well for more good sessions in the future!

Vienen las lluvias

While the mountain sunsets here are pretty much always beautiful, today's was something special. Rainy season here usually starts around October, but this afternoon we got an early taste. The rain clouds coming through the valley made for a gorgeous sunset of oranges, pinks, and purples, with the horizontal light showing the mist on the hills to the west. Too pretty not to share.

Peace Corps goal #3

Peace Corps as an organization has three goals that each volunteer is supposed to work towards:

1) Working on projects in our communities, which in my case means promoting economic development;

2) Helping Peruvians better understand the U.S. and its culture; and

3) Helping Americans back home better understand Peru and its culture.

The goal that gets the most attention is of course #1. Goal #2 is something I also do a lot of just by living my day-to-day life here - when people meet me, they tend to ask questions about the U.S., and there are many opportunities for me to share about my home. Thus if any goal tends to get left behind, it is goal #3, largely due to the fact that we volunteers are a bit far from home to be able to spend much time or energy teaching Americans about Peru. Hopefully this blog helps a bit with that, but I am pleased to say that I'm about to start another project under goal 3: the World Wise Schools program. With the help of my very awesome cousins, Hanna and Haden, I get to become pen pals with a classroom of elementary school students in Florida, and share with them about my experiences as a volunteer in Peru.

Internationally-minded education is something that I think U.S. schools could always stand to see much more of, so the WWS program was something I really wanted to participate in as a volunteer. And being able to connect with the classroom of two great cousins is a big plus!

Laundry?

One of these things is not like the others...

One of these things is in fact a fox skin... this fox was causing trouble among my host dad's farm animals (i.e. eating them), so Javi took it upon himself to solve the problem. Aaaand now we have a very interesting piece of laundry hanging up to dry.

Tarantulas and truchas

First things first: the tarantula got rid of its entire exoskeleton yesterday, so it looked like there were TWO tarantulas in the cage (as if one weren't enough!)

Now for the truchas (trout). This morning I got to go on a hike with my friend Ruby, her husband Jesús, and their 6-year-old daughter Miriam up to a place in one of the outlying towns where people raise trout. It was a beautiful day to be outside, and Miriam and I passed the majority of the hour-and-a-half-long journey to the truchas playing an endless game of adivinanzas (riddles) - the girl is seriously an unending fountain of riddles. I did best in the fruit category (e.g., what's green on the outside and yellow on the inside?) - mostly because the abundance of color clues made those the easiest to guess.

It was cool to see the pond system the trout family had going - since the river runs right through their backyard, setting up a fish farm was a simple but very effective idea.

When Jesús decided to buy some trout to take home for lunch, the señora was quick to oblige, and five unlucky swimmers were pulled from their pool - delicious fresh fish for a total of approximately $5 USD.

The great alpaca adventure

This morning I - quite by accident - visited one of Cajabamba's biggest tourist attractions: Laguna Quengococha. The lake is enormous, even now at the end of the dry season, and situated at around 3800 meters (12,500 feet) above sea level amidst mountains on all sides.

What is interesting about this lake being a "main tourist attraction" is that it lies at the end of an hour-and-a-half-long car ride along a miserably bumpy dirt road. Horseback or on foot might be more pleasant ways of arriving at Quengococha, but it'd be a pretty long day excursion - the community economic development volunteer part of me couldn't help but think about opportunities for improvement here. However, the journey is totally worth the effort, as even the entrance road offers nonstop views of mountains and farmlands.

When I left my house this morning, I did not know I'd be checking Quengococha off my secret tourist to-do list. Rather, my socio Carlos had invited me to accompany him to visit a community whose alpacas were sick and in need of some advice. He told me it was at high altitude, and that it'd be pretty, so I thought, why not? I hadn't seen any alpacas in Cajabamba yet, and I figured it'd be a fun excursion.  

It turned out that the precise location of these ailing alpacas was not exactly certain. Along the drive up, we stopped at three different farmhouses to ask if the owners knew where to find "the alpacas of Micma." Then we hit the lake, the road ended, and we got out to start the real adventure. Based on the directions of a passing horseman, we followed a trail along the lake's edge, hiking on in hunt of the elusive alpacas.

While we ran into all sorts of farm animals along the way, the coolest were the high-altitude pigs - they have fur! This fuzzy fellow was obviously way too busy having lunch to greet us.

For over an hour, we continued onward in our search, putting the lake far in the valley behind us.

Eventually, we side-tracked from the trail when we found this pampa, encircled by hills on all sides.

This seemingly oddly-placed flat area was in fact part of the same water system as the lake, but during the dry season the water reduces to flowing through small channels like this one:

We jumped across channel after channel as we crossed the pampa, and had to skirt around some areas where the ground was still totally saturated with water. But, on the far side of the plain, we at last spotted the alpacas! I was slightly amazed that we actually found them, but I guess I should have a little more faith in campo directions :)

Used to a life of freedom and grazing where they wish, the herd promptly started to move out when we three humans intruded on their party. None of them looked too sickly to me, but I think we all know how much of an expert I am when it comes to alpacas. The morning proved to be a wonderful adventure - one of those times that reminds me why I joined Peace Corps and why a volunteer's "work" can be just plain awesome.

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.

Mi casa es tu casa

I thought it'd be fun to give all you blog readers a photo-tour of my casa in Cajabamba, so here we go! This is my street, and my house is the big brown one on the right. I've had multiple people here, after telling them where I live, say "Ohhh, your house is the one with the giant plant in front right?" Indeed. Now that it's been pointed out to me, I've realized that we really are the only house in town with a plant, not to mention a giant one, out front - guess the palm tree can double as environmentally friendly and directionally useful.

Upon entering the house, you see the central patio/garden. To the right is the washing machine (very uncommon here!) and laundry sink. The window across the way is the kitchen.

My host mom was happy to show off our very bustling kitchen :)

Across the patio from the kitchen is the living room:

Walk through the living room and you also find the dining room, where we also keep 8 million books and paintings, done by artists ranging from my host siblings to Cajabamba's finest painters.

If you return to the patio, then head towards the back of the house, you find my host dad's tool collection and our awesome wood-burning oven. I have yet to experience it in practice, but I'm looking forward to eventually making some delicious bread.

The back "yard" houses the bunny cages and another garden - home to "the one-and-only magnolia tree in all of Cajabamba" (or so claims my host dad).

Now for the upstairs. This is a view of the second story from the top of the stairs. The window across the way is my room, and the window on the far right side of the picture is my host parents' room. Laundry is hung to dry in all parts of the upstairs.

To get to my room, I walk down this covered but open-air hallway, usually next to some more laundry. The door in the foreground is to my host brother's room, and the door further along on the left is my host sister's.

This is the view out the little window that's right next to my door - some Cajabamba rooftops and some mountains - an excellent sunset-viewing perch, which our cats particularly like to frequent.

Here's my room - pretty sure this picture is already on the blog somewhere, but for the sake of a complete tour it's here again.

And lastly, here's a view of the rest of the upstairs, from my doorstep. Directly across is the main laundry-drying area/patio, and just to the right of that you can see the window and door that belong to my host grandparents' room - through there is also the bathroom.

And that's a wrap!

Systems failure

This weekend can accurately be described as a systems failure, on multiple accounts. It all started on Friday morning, when I got up extra early to make a (supposedly) 8am meeting out in the campo. When at 6:30am I groggily opened the door to my host grandparents' room, which connects to the bathroom, I was greeted by the panic-inducing sight of 2.5 inches of water covering the entire floor, and more gushing out every second from the wide-open sink faucet. I flipped out, woke my host mom up, then ran back and waded through our newly made lake to shut off the water.

Apparently, this was not the first time this had happened. As water service in my town usually shuts off around 8pm every night, it seems that someone had accidentally left the faucet open the night before. Thus the resulting flood once the water came back on in the wee hours of the morning. My host mom, however, was unfazed, and cheerily began sweeping out all the water with a broom - our indoor patio plants got a nice watering.

I, preoccupied with being on time for my meeting, proceeded to go downstairs to the other bathroom to brush my teeth. It didn't seem like much water had leaked down from upstairs, as there were only a few drops on the floor, and honestly at 6:30am I didn't really stop to think about the situation. So imagine my surprise when, midway through brushing my teeth, the lightbulb above me explodes into a hundred pieces! Luckily I wasn't hurt at all, but it was a heart-racing start to the day to say the least.

Unfortunately, the water and electric systems were not the only ones that failed on Friday. Late that night, my immune system also failed when I came down with yet another food-induced stomach illness - my third in three weeks, hooray. I'm pretty sure the culprit this time was a bowl of chicken broth/soup that I was forced to eat while waiting for my meeting to begin that morning. "Forced" may sound like a strong word, but in Peruvian culture it is unthinkably rude to refuse when someone offers you food they've cooked, so you literally must finish whatever is put in front of you. Even if you are a gringa who has already eaten one breakfast that morning and who knows there's a pretty good chance that that food is going to make you wish you were dead twelve hours later.

So, due to said chicken broth, I am writing this from my bed in Cajabamba, instead of from the regional meeting in Cajamarca that I was supposed to attend this weekend with all the other volunteers from our department. It's definitely a bummer to have to miss out on spending time with the group, but when systems fail there's just not much you can do.

"They call me Mr. Pig"

If you have ever seen The Lion King, you know that Pumba demands the respect he deserves by insisting that others call him Mister Pig - just his name simply will not suffice. Peruvians have a similar affinity for titles, and place high value on according each person the respect their educational and professional status deserves. If someone is a Doctor, they will always be addressed as Doctor, never just Señor. The same is true for Profesor (even if it is a profesor of first grade), Ingeniero (engineer), and several other categories.

As I am a gringa (a.k.a. instantly significant person in a town where there are exactly two of us) who works with town officials, profesores, ingenieros, and other such important folk, the titles of those around me are often (though wrongly) applied to me as well. Thus, for example, if I go out to the fields to talk with some farmers alongside my socio the ingeniero, my new friend the farmer will automatically address me as Ingeniera, instead of merely Señorita. When I'm in the schools, I am all of a sudden Profesora Meghan.

As it would be inappropriate to correct the Peruvians in these misnomers, I just let the titles slide and try to fill the shoes of whichever profession is accorded to me in that moment. I think I can manage profesora alright, but I am reminded daily of how much agricultural knowledge I lack before I could even come close to calling myself an ingeniera. But I'm making progress - today I learned lots of vocab around corn, corn leaves, and corn cobs, and googled the use of lime in improving soil quality. Poco a poco :)

Sitting in the front, ingeniera style, at a meeting of a local agricultural association last week

This weekend: the ABCs

A: Amigos! Brad, Jackie, Chris and I met in Cajamarca for a Peru 19 reunion (and some essential mattress pad shopping). It was great to reconnect, spend time together, and swap stories from site.

B: Bees. Upon arriving home today, I had my first official meeting with the Cajabamba beekeepers' association that I plan to work with. Among other results, one key outcome of the meeting was my realization that my bee-related Spanish vocabulary is severely lacking. In fact, my bee-related English wordbank is rather limited as well. With the post-facto help of google translator, I have since added such obscure words as "carob tree," "jelly" (not the kind you eat), and "protective beehive resin" to my repertoire.

Aside from these minor communication obstacles, the meeting went very well, and I'm excited to work with a group that is so dedicated and enthusiastic about improving their business capabilities. In addition to my meeting, bees also entered my weekend by the coincidental arrival to my house today of an entire bucket full of all-natural honey - a gift from a family friend. I think we should be set on honey for a good while now...

C: Cajabamba festivities. Cajabamba's annual town fiesta is in early October, but apparently the festivities begin well before then. Today marked the kick-off of the month leading up to the big party, so of course there was a party! The townspeople were out in full force, making the plaza a day-long scene of music, revelry, and drinking circles. Somehow they also managed to raise a precariously tall wooden flagpole in front of the church, so that an enormous Peruvian flag can shine down on us in all its glory for the next month.