Cajabamba love

Today I made my final presentation to my community - mostly the people I've worked with and some friends - about all the projects I've done during my service. It was your typical meeting, with the addition of my PC program director, and things were going well. Then, once my presentation was over, we opened up the floor to questions or comments from the attendees, and the meeting took a very special turn. One after the other, representatives from each of the groups, schools, and organizations I've worked with got up and gave some palabras (a short speech) thanking me. I was thanked for my work, for my support, for being a nice person, for helping the community, for sharing these years of my life - you name it, I was thanked for it. The most special words came from my host mom, the ladies of my community banks (who've become my honorary grandmothers), and the teachers I've worked most closely with: "you're leaving your mark on Cajabamba;" "we will always remember you;" "you have made such a difference here;" "this is your home, you can always come back;" "we care about you so much, and we will miss you." My semi-boring meeting had all of a sudden become a tear-jerking time for sharing the love! It was a bit overwhelming, but in a good way of course, and certainly a high note to officially wrap up my two years of work.

Sporting the typical Cajabamba farmer's hat, with Lourdes and Javi

A glass case of emotion

Getting ready to leave Peru is hard, complicated, and full of contradictory feelings.

I'm ready to be done with Peace Corps and move on to new adventures, but I'm incredibly sad to leave my host family, my town, and my PCV friends. 

I'm proud of the work I've accomplished here, but while doing site development for my replacement volunteer I see so many options for projects I woulda-coulda-shoulda done. 

I'm looking forward to a change of pace in a job with a little more structure, but I'm worried I'll never love another job as much as I've loved this one, and I'm not sure I'll be able to work a standard 9-5 office day without feeling exhaustion, cabin fever, or both.

The comforts of home beckon from a distance, but once I'm there the travel bug will start itching to pull me abroad again.

I can't wait to be back home and be close to family and friends, but I know I'll miss what has become my second home and my second family. 

I've summarized my Peace Corps service into ten lines on a résumé, and I'll be the only one who will ever truly understand how much more than that it was.

Marshmallow challenge

This semester, I've been teaching critical/creative thinking classes to one of my groups of 8th graders. School in Peru typically involves a lot of teacher-teaching, students-copying down and memorizing. Consequently, brain-teaser exercises that their American peers might find routine represent a serious challenge for my Peruvian students. Activities like scattergories, identifying what three grouped items have in common, identifying which item in a group is an outlier, and distinguishing between facts and opinions have enabled our class to practice how to think in a context where there is no one right answer. 

This week's activity was no different, but made for some good photo-ops: the marshmallow challenge. Here's how it works - each team of 4-5 receives an identical set of materials: 20 dry spaghetti noodles, 1m of string, 1m of masking tape, and one marshmallow. The challenge is to build the tallest free-standing tower possible using only the given materials and 18 minutes of time, with the caveat that the marshmallow must be the tower's highest point (its weight is what makes things tricky). Being boys, my kiddos got super into the challenge! Although competition was fierce, the winning tower ended up measuring around 50cm. First prize? The rest of the bag of marshmallows :)

COS video

Fellow PCV Mike made this COS (close-of-service) video in honor of Peru 19's wrapping up our two years as volunteers, using photos and videos shared by all of us from throughout our service.

Yunza

A tradition across the Peruvian sierra, most commonly done during carnavales or town fiesta, is the yunza. A yunza usually takes the form of a tree, which the sponsoring family cuts down, ties a whole lot of small gifts/items onto, and then re-plants in the middle of a street or plaza. On the day of the final yunza celebration, participants take turns hacking at the tree with a machete until it falls and the gifts are shared among everyone. The person whose machete chop finally fells the tree is then the sponsor for the next year's yunza. 

Traveling back from the farm last week, I got to see a slightly different kind of yunza. One of the small towns along our route was having its annual fiesta, and we were passing through just as the yunza parade went by. Each yunza was attached to a pair of bulls, with additional parts being carried along on sticks by children:

One of the decorated bull yunzas

The gifts on these yunzas were sodas, fruits, empanadas, and other random food items

In more developed communities, yunzas often have gifts like tupperware, pots, children's toys, and other store-bought goods. It was interesting to see the stark difference in this small rural community, where the yunzas were composed entirely of simple food items. But people give what they have, and still have an excellent time celebrating. That day, there were four separate yunzas (each from a different neighborhood or group), each with its pair of bulls, decorations, and supporters dancing along behind.

And then there was this final yunza, where the group couldn't find a pair of bulls but improvised anyway

Apt plant names

On the ride down to Hualango, I had a too-close brush with a very unpleasant plant. Nicknamed "hormiga" (ant) by the locals, this plant has the most accurate name possible - wherever it touches you, your skin becomes blotchy and inflamed, and feels like there are a thousand tiny red ants crawling all over and biting you for the next ~8 hours. Fun name, but not so fun of an experience.

Beekeeping

I decided to give the Hualango honey harvest a post of its own - the whole thing was so cool so I took lots of pictures :)

Javi next to one of the beehives

Smoker and bee hat ready to go inspect the hives

Javi back from the hives with three shelves of honey

Can't get any fresher than that!

Javi and Edgar cutting the wax/honey off the shelves

With each piece you squeeze the honey out, then discard the wax. The honey filters into the bucket through mesh to further separate the wax.

Almost done

The final result: about six kilos of delicious honey from only three shelves (each hive has ten shelves)