8:36 a.m. May 16, 2012

It’s time. Right now. This morning. To do another blog post. I’m tired of disappointing myself and others by continuing to fail at this blog thing. Also, about a month ago my camera broke so if I don’t start writing things down again I really won’t have anything to remind myself of all my experiences here as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru!

 

So, I guess I’ll just start this blog off in the same form I do as all the other ones – disorganized and well, I can’t think of another adjective that means disorganized.

 

Maybe I’ll start off with a reason why I haven’t been updating this thing. Other than the fact that I’m just bad at keeping up with these things, I’ve been spending most of my free time while not working on music. I’ve been working a lot on my personal singer-songwriter music. I’ve wrote dozens of songs and have been researching and practicing and working on the craft in terms of guitar, voice, lyrics and song form in general…as well as all the other many factors that go along with writing good music. So there’s that in a nutshell, and I’m working on somehow getting this stuff recorded for those interested. I really would love your feedback. I’ve also been playing electric guitar in a musical “orquesta” here in Zaña. Our group is called “Orquesta Etnika.” This type of musical group plays mainly cumbia followed by salsa as well as merengue and in the case of our group some rock as well. The lineup consists (at least) of keyboards, bongos, cowbell, congas, timbales, electric drum kit, trumpet, trombone, sometimes guitars, and at least like 5 singers. I’ve been seriously practicing with the group for a couple months now and we’ve played at two dances. I guess I should say I’ve played at one and a half. The first dance I showed up after midnight and ended up playing for just a couple hours because I was the “special guy” at a quinciñera. That is, I was the one that accompanied this girl, Blanca, who is actually a really nice young lady and helps out a lot in my youth groups, at her 15^th birthday celebration, which in Latino culture is like a rite of passage into becoming a woman. So it was an honor to be a part of this celebration but conflicted with playing at the dance with the Orquesta. It all worked out though and was actually good because at that point I really only knew how to play on like 10 songs out of like the 60 in the repertoire. The songs have anywhere from no guitar (like salsa and some cumbia), to a few little parts, to basically nonstop guitar in many cumbias. So a lot of times I just dance around or sing back up vocals if there aren’t any guitar parts in the song. It’s been a pretty sweet experience and is kinda cool to think that I play lead guitar in a cumbia group in Peru…you never know where the heck life will bring you. I’ve also been doing some folkloric music with a young man here in Zaña and we’ve also presented. We play folklore music from the sierra. This is really my favorite type of music from Peru and hope to form the group into more members.

 

So more importantly I should give you an update about my work here. Although some days can be discouraging and frustrating (not going to lie) the good always outweighs the bad. Especially with the kids. I sometimes lose faith in the adults, that is, the professors, community leaders and other authority figures who many times seem more focused on simply finishing their obligations and planning celebrations and anniversaries. I see more hope in the youth. Especially my group of smaller children every Saturday morning. We now have a space to meet in the part of Zaña called Miraflores. It’s a library and community center. It still has like half a floor, no windows and nothing inside…but it’s nice to have an official space for the group. The Sunday afternoon group of adolescent youth meets there too. But these little Saturday morning kids are pretty adorable, for the most part. I show up and there are like 5 or 10 there. By the time we are a half-hour in there are at least 20 and sometimes up to 25…so as you can imagine it can get pretty crazy. We always have a topic of the day. This can range from anything from children’s rights to self-esteem to taking care of the environment to personal hygiene. We go through the topic playing games and working together. Afterwards we play, which is really these kids’ specialty. I’ve been really happy to have recently found out that they LOVE hangman. I don’t think they had ever played it. But many times they like the crazy running around and potentially hurting each other games. So to find these calm and at least somewhat intellectual games is gold. The also love playing “papa caliente” or hot potato, which is another one I introduced to them. We meet for anywhere between 3 to 4 hours so I’m pretty much always due for a nap Saturday afternoons.

            In April I reentered the classrooms to teach in the tutor hours. It’s been somewhat difficult since the students have been using this hour to coordinate all the gifts and things they had to bring for mothers day and now all the coordination for the 50^th anniversary of the high school. But soon the tutor hour will free up again. They need a lot of help with orientation and personal development, as well as sexual education. These are things they don’t learn otherwise in high school and their parents usually don’t talk with them about these topics either. I’ve also been continuing with my NATs youth group. They are smart kids but also about the most hyperactive I’ve ever met.

            Zaña has been in celebration of their two town patron Saints, Toribio and Isidro. So there have been a slew of events and fireworks at any hour. As a matter of fact, yesterday my alarm was set for 6:30 and about 5 minutes to 6 I think about 25 fireworks went off to start the day for the patron saint Isidro’s celebration. Last night there were firework explosions until about 11:30, which is pretty early so that wasn’t too late.

            Lately I’ve been going a little crazy to be honest. I’ve been having trouble finding peace. I know…ironic, right? But it’s been a mixture of many things. It has also been a lack of alone time…even once I get back to my room to sleep at night there are these big mutant crickets and mosquitoes that infiltrate. Luckily the heat has been going away little by little in the evenings and mornings. Yesterday helped a lot with this going-craziness though. My host mom and I did a Ginkana, which is basically a series of competitive games such as bobbing for apples, tug-of-war, sack race, eating contest, egg in the spoon race, popping balloons with your butt…stuff like that. So that’s always fun. Then I just kind of took a personal afternoon and took a couple-hour bike ride through the countryside and then wrote music afterwards. I’ve also been sick last week with a fever, stomach and headache problem that had me in bed for like two days and now have a phlegmy, sore throat, hacking cough thing. On top of that my best Peruvian friend, Relsy’s aunt died a couple days ago. So that was hard for her and being on mother’s day also had me thinking a lot about my mom and sisters and grandmas and family. It was a lot of things at once that made things tough and my patience were running on some things. I think I almost stopped responding to “HEY GRINGO!!” …Other volunteers would understand this one. Speaking of my friend Relsy, the sweetheart always defends me, “His name is Zack, not gringo!” Some of my kids defend me on that one too. Sometimes the little things like that get to you a lot more when there are a bunch of other stressors affecting your life.

 

But I’m feeling good today, so sorry about that venting session you just had to read through, I should have put a warning to skip that section. I’m still kinda crappy on the phlegmy throat problem so I’m gonna just stick with biking today but do need to get back to the running/training for the half marathon I’m running on the 4^th of July in Pacasmayo! It’s a marathon that was created by Peace Corps volunteers some years ago. So to this point I’ve found that training really does wonders in this running thing. And you lose it about as fast as you build it up. A couple months ago I ran 2 hours without stopping. I wasn’t ready…I could barely walk for the next few days afterwards…but it was one of those situations where I kept hitting that “runner’s high” point where you feel like you could run forever. I think the first wave comes after about 30 to 45 minutes (at least for me). So I got to that point and thought, “Okay, I’m gonna run an hour, I’ve done that before.” I got to an hour and was still trucking. “Okay, gonna set a new personal record…how about an hour and a half.” This would have been perfect because upon getting to this point I got that crazy ‘can’t stop my now!’ feeling which pushed me to 2 hours. But the last 15 minutes I was basically limp-running. But being the stubborn idiot I am wouldn’t settle for less than 2 hours. So there’s an overly-detailed story about that. My friend Amanda says we’re going to run 13 miles after this camp we have coming up in a few weeks. So within the next couple days once I kick this cold I gotta get my butt back in gear! That reminds me during the summer we had been biking to the beach on Fridays. It was really nice to just spend a day biking and enjoying the beach. It also ended up being a pretty decent bike ride. Like 25 miles round trip of something. So I’m really lucky to have a lot of things like my guitar, bike, friends, good Peruvian family and friends… still there are times where I get super U.S. nostalgia…it’s always for the people. I could probably live here forever if my friends and family was all here. I miss the hell out of all of you! Anyways, I’m starting to ramble and frankly starting to get tired of writing.

 

Hmmm, what else, oh my favorite dog recently disappeared. She was my little buddy…Lulu. She must have died because nobody knows where she went. The owners asked me if I knew before I had a chance to ask them. She seemed to have a doggy cold with a bad cough so I think she moved on to a better place where she can live without fear of being accosted by male street dogs and having her tail yanked by little kids.

 

I guess I haven’t had a blog update since way before I went to Ancash for training and a vacation. Jeez, this could be another three-page blog update in and of itself. Well we had training for a week first, which was mostly pretty good. Then we went hiking and camping in the glacial mount Huascaran. We camped right next to the glacier. It was cold and it even snowed a little bit, which was awesome! We were all pretty cold and wet the whole time because, well, it was cold and rainy. But it was an awesome time. My buddy Chris and I even climbed up into the glacier and we were chilling on the big snow chunks. It was awesome because you could see and hear the glacial chunks falling off from time to time. It sounded like thunder. I probably should mention that directly after talking about how we were climbing up in the glacier, but we were far from the falling parts ;). We also did some naked glacial lake jumps. It was cold to say the least. We also wrote a pretty awesome song…a couple to be exact. Our Peace Corps group is an awesomely creative and musical group of people. We are thinking about pooling a little cash and renting out a studio for an afternoon and recording all of our hits such as, “Kidney Apple Pie, Brice, Double Team, and Animales.” Or maybe we could just record them onto a computer seeing as our budget is minimal. Either way…I’m sure you will someday hear the hits of Big Bean and the Belly Button Band. So that trip was pretty amazing. That’s how we spent our Easter. Ancash is in the sierra part of Peru, hence the colder climate. It’s like a different country from the coast. Peruvians and gringos alike have told me that the jungle of Peru is like a different world. Someday I will see.

 

Recently I lost my phone so I have this temporary number for now until I get my number back. 949690376. So I think in total for you guys it’s 051949690376. Something like that. If you want to text me I’ll text you back but don’t call unless it’s an emergency because I’m sure it’ll cost you like a buck a minute or something.

 

So as you can see there has been some back luck lately, but overall the projects have been going well seeing the difference in the children and youth definitely make it all worth it. The music projects and other adventures help too =). Miss you all and hope you are all doing well.

2:34 p.m. 23 de Diciembre 2011

here’s an old post that never found it’s way to the blog…

 

Well here we are…sitting on my bed in the heat typing this blog post. All’s well here in Zaña. Had fish with rice and some type of yummy green pea things along with a killer juice that my host bro made this morning. Got my two-dollar haircut this morning from the old dudes in Cayaltí. They always comb and gel my hair like a guy from the 50’s after cutting it. Sometimes I kind of consider wearing it that way…

Today has been pretty relaxed. I had my last “Chocolatada” last night and just have a Christmas Dinner tonight with one of my youth groups as my last “work” thing to do before taking a break for Christmas. You are probably wondering what a “Chocolatada” is (unless you are another volunteer reading this in which case you definitely know). It’s a Christmas party/event usually held for children that don’t receive much or anything for Christmas. The children receive their hot chocolate and paneton (a preserved bread that has chunks of dried fruit…basically fruit cake) and receive a gift. Of course there are generally many games played in a “Christmasly” decorated venue. This probably sounds like a great thing to you readers out there, and in many ways it is. And in many ways it’s not. Ya always gotta make a list before these things with the child’s name, age and sex. Then you go shopping for the gifts that coincide with these criteria. In addition you have to buy the ingredients for the hot chocolate and get the panetones and all the decorations and other stuff. I had a lot of help from my host mom, Nicole and a local business man in the process. So this stuff isn’t the bad part. The bad part is the (sometimes formidably sized group of) people that run up begging for gifts for their kids, or even worst, the kids themselves come up and start begging. It can be kind of a mess and a lot of stress. But overall I’d say that I’m glad that we did them and especially some of them were super fun and awesome to see the little kids happy for Christmas. Overall I did (with help) 5 of these things and helped with a handful of other ones. It’s really kind of hard to explain how these things really go down over a blog post but I must say it’s a little strange to drink hot chocolate with the sun beating down in 85 degree (or hotter) weather. So for the first time I had sons and daughters for Chrismas…like 350 of them.

I must say this is the first Christmas Eve Eve (double eve) I’ve ever spent in the heat of another country listening to salsa music and sweating off a couple of the pounds I’ve been packing on. Peruvians put up little “nacimiento” – birth of Jesus scenarios for Christmas. Some put up trees as well but much more common is the little Jesus scene. Most of them include animals, some include dinosaurs and other interesting things. It’s pretty sweet. Sounds like tomorrow for Christmas Even we’ll be eating dinner at midnight per the tradition and dancing all night long, or something along those lines. It seems like Christmas Eve is the central day more so than Christmas Day. I’ll update you all about Peruvian Christmas once I know all about it.

Well, what else has been going on? One of my youth groups and I decorated one of the trees in the park for a tree-decorating competition. We didn’t win but we definitely spent like a day and a half straight decorating the thing. Everyone brought random decorations and some of the group members bought lights for the tree. So it looks like Santa Claus puked up Christmas all over the tree. In other words, it looks awesome. Some of the other group members and I were up in every part of the tree putting up lights and decorations. The ladder was made of pieces of branches of trees with nails pounded in. Needless to say I’m glad I’m going to see another Christmas, especially because some of the steps on the bottom were breaking. Around these days a couple of volunteers from a different program came from Canada as well as a representative from ING came from the U.S. We went on a couple trips which were great. One was to a place called “La Florida” to a company called “Café Femenino.” The place is basically run by Peruvian women which is really progressive and a ground-breaking for where Peru still stands on this gender dynamic. It was beautiful in this town. We explored, danced and tested the local sugar-cane alcohol (which I think helped my host mom dance a little more). It was really nice to meet other North Americans in Peru dedicating time to the development of the country.

So before the Christmas-event/Chocolatada phase started in early December I has “early in service training” in late November. The timeframe coincided with the anniversary of Zaña and I needed to finish my community diagnostic before this training. This means I missed all the events of the anniversary. This was a bummer but I’m glad I put a lot of work into the diagnostic. It’s going to be useful for me, the community and for both together as we work on projects. The training was in a town called Olmos, located in Lambayeque, the same department I’m in. Everyone from my training group was in the training. In other words, volunteers traveled from all over Peru to go to the training, as I only had to travel a few hours. It was a pretty good deal. The training was well, really hot. But it was fun to explore a new town and especially great to spend time with the other volunteers that I hadn’t seen since training. They are all doing great work forming groups and projects utilizing their strengths and talents. The training was pretty intense. It was the good old 8-5 with preparation in the evening. But there was, of course, time for some shinanigans. I brought my guitar so we had some late-night jam sessions including the formulation of top-of-the-chart singles such as “Adrian!! The @#$%@#% is a secret spy!” and “The ABCs of sex education” as well as a revisitation of old favorites such as “Double Team” and “Animales.” The highlight of the trip may have come from the most barbaric of (or just stupid) games invented. After attempting to open a coconut with rocks for a good 15 minutes in an abandonded field, the guys and I discovered glass bottles. The abundance of glass bottles, rocks, and nothingness quickly evolved into some type of pitching practice with a point system and rules. I think just doing something inherently immature and kind of ridiculous helped channel some of the frustration of having to be that perfect exemplary adult 24 hours a day at our sites. It was fun. This trip also brought the joy of the condom-playing guitar (me) in a practicum event for World Aids Day. The volunteers broke into groups and had to create skits or some type of performances to teach the community about HIV/AIDS. My group did a musical/play type dealio. I wrote a song and performed it in a condom suit. That condom suit was hot. There was great energy working with all the volunteers and seeing what we could all throw together in a night of planning. It really was fun. The training was useful as well as it helped brush up on some of the topics from pre-training as well as touch on new topics.

The last part of the training included the volunteers breaking into three groups. One of the groups came to Zaña. We broke into groups and presented HIV/AIDS education to different classrooms in the high school. It was a great time and fun to show this group of volunteers around my site a little bit, although it was very brief. We also ate a couple meals at my house, which my host mom prepared. It was yummy as always and the volunteers were content with their experience in Zaña.

That probably brings us back to about the day of my birthday. This was an especially stressful time for me because I was finishing up teaching at the high school for the year as well as other events and not to mention, working my butt off on the community diagnostic. All three of the youth groups I have threw a party for me. They prepared food and bevies and shared their words of thanks with me. It was really nice to have their support. I also had some other mini-parties thrown for me. It was a lot of mini-parties but because of the work I had to do there really weren’t any bigger-than-mini parties. The day of my birthday I woke up to the noise of some type of bird flapping it’s wings and chirping. This happens every once in a while. I stumbled out of my room to see my mom holding a duck in the kitchen sink. I asked her if I could help. I held the feet while she held the neck and slowly cut into the vital arteries. As the blood poured into the sink she reminded me not to feel bad for it because if I do it’ll die slower. Later that day we ate duck. It was yummy. The day wasn’t much different than any other since I needed to get work done. My family bought me a cake and pushed my face into it a little. It’s a custom here to do that. It was fun to share the day with the family here but thoughts of friends and family from back home also lingered in my mind throughout the day.

Overall it’s been kind of hard at times lately spending time away from my family though the passing of our great grandma Mabel and the holidays and everything. I know they want me to keep moving forward with what I’m doing and that fuels me to keep going along with the children and adolescents here that have stolen my heart (and sometimes sanity).

Well that’s really a brief update of the past month or so, especially since every day is a new adventure this is pretty vague. I hope you are all having a great holiday season close to the ones you love. I’ll be heading to Lima for a few days after Christmas to celebrate with my training host family and a couple volunteers from the old neighborhood and then to the beach for New Years. So even though I’ve been stressing the hell out of myself lately I’m going to reward myself. I’ll keep you updated. Update me as well…even if it’s nothing out of the ordinary, I still like to hear from you all. Much love, be safe… -Z

 

Nov. 20, 2011

Sunday, Nov 20, 2011 6:25 p.m.

 

Uh oh, it’s been like 20 days since I’ve updated this bad boy. I often think about doing it but I’ve just been so busy with either being in class, with youth groups, planning, or working on my community diagnostic. The community diagnostic is due in about a week as we will be in early in service Peace Corps training. My levels of stress and madness will surely taper off at least a little bit as I finish my community diagnostic, then finish all the events around Christmas as the school year also wraps up in mid December. As you can see I’ve been keeping really busy. I’m excited because I now have a space where my musical youth group that I’m planning will be able to meet. I can’t remember if I previously explained this but I’m planning on doing a Peruvian/USA musical exchange where we write our own music, perform it and hopefully record it too. I will also be mixing positive values, healthy lifestyles and future orientation into the plan so it’s productive for the youth not only in a musical sense but also personally. I’m the most psyched about this project but haven’t had time to really start it. I have three youth groups right now. Two are usually well-behaved, respectful and productive while one (the NATs) can be a nightmare. But I’m working on a plan for them. I’ve also been teaching in the high school. Mostly trying to drill into the kids’ brains that they are going to graduate soon and need to get their sh*t together so have a plan once they graduate. It’s been going overall pretty well though. Some of them have been asking for personal help on planning their futures. Small successes! My birthday is coming up and all my youth groups want me to visit them…and one of them told me to bring a change of clothes…you really never know what you are going to get here but I’m hoping I only get drenched in water and not some sort of food stuffs. So that’s kind of a little summary on what’s going on and coming up.

Today in the morning I showed up at 6:30 at the house of the Señora where we prepared the food for the “papa la huancaina” we had today. This is basically mashed potatoes formed into balls with lettuce, olive slice, egg slice and a super yummy cream. Let’s just say I’ll be snaggin’ the recipe or that special sauce before heading back to the states. So we made like 100 of these yummy (taught them the words yummy vs. yucky today) potato things and sold them. The kids in the group did a great job selling their tickets this week and organizing it. I’m really happy with them and how the event turned out. We made almost 100 soles on the event and some people still owe money. Afterwards we all had lunch together (a yummy soup) at the house where we prepared the potatoes. It was nice to share with a responsible, respectful group of youngsters. This afternoon I’ve been resting and working on paperwork and planning stuff. Well, since about an hour ago when the power came back on. Still no water though so I feel dirty and smell like the wood fire we used to boil the potatoes and eggs this morning.

This experience is really a rollercoaster. Yesterday I had the youth group of kids under 13 years old. It went really well. Especially considering last week we had our meeting in the park and some of the not-so-good kids that were visiting the group decided to do their art on the park instead of in the park on their paper like the rest of the kids. Yesterday we reviewed and set new rules for the group. We also played hot potato (which we actually played this morning with boiling-hot potatoes) and made our personal pamphlets of positivity. So that went really well and the from both groups are excited because they are building a library in their community that we’ll be able to meet in. Right now the place we are meeting in only has a dirt floor and adobe brick walls so it makes it harder to do art and post it on the wall. By the way, this group loves art and have gifted me multiple pieces of art, three of which are on my wall here in my room. They are pretty dang good at art I should add. So anyway, that youth group went well. In the afternoon I visited the dance academy to see how the kids are doing there. After rehearsing we got to playing a little bit. I had a broom and was showing them how to play hockey and explained to them that there is also a sport called broomball, which none of them had heard of. So we were playing a mixture of broom ball and soccer when I accidentally committed a penalty by jabbing the jaggedy broom between this kids legs. This kid, Pacheco, by the way is like the super exaggerative class clown kid. So it was kind of a slow motion thing. The broom caught his knee at just the right angle to slice a decently deep gash (deep enough to flow the dark red blood) out of his knee. We had to wrap it up and go to the health post. I felt super bad about it but was trying to joke and stay positive. Pacheco was joking and still running around all the while and said he was going to take a piece of my skin to replace the gash in his knee. For those of you who know me well, you know that apparently I’m accident prone to giving kids scars. It’s the worst feeling even though it’s an accident.

So even though I was decently down and crabby about the situation the group that I was with still convinced me to go to the crowning of “Miss Zaña” last night. It ended up being pretty interesting including the girls walking the runway in their swimsuits, elegant dress and cultural dress of Peru, which is usually pretty cool since it at least represents the culture rather than only having them only prance around in their swim suits. They also had to answer questions which were mainly based around their culture and the development of Zaña and Peru. It was encouraging at least to see that they mostly had intelligent answers and were all either studying in institutes, universities or still finishing high school and planning on studying. I couldn’t tell ya if they wrote the answers to the questions though or just memorized answers that someone prepared…we’ll just hope they thought of the answers… 😉 So that was pretty interesting and jolly. The priorities of celebration versus necessities still bothers me though. I won’t go into detail but I always think of the kids that don’t have sufficient food or education in the same district that is dumping cash into celebrations, anniversaries and events.

What else happened this week? I’ve been starting to help the different classrooms with their Christmas carol competition. This has been both fun and an extra stress added just because of everything else I have to do. On Thursday I had to have a “gringo night” with fellow volunteer Amanda. We went to Chiclayo, ate burgers, watched Zoolander and ate junkfood. It was fun but left my stomach double destroyed because of the fermented corn liquor and ceviche I had for a surprise lunch that day. This mixture of food and drink left me the closest I’ve been to pooping my pants. This was Friday afternoon after I had left. I was talking with a group of boys at the high school and pretty much mid sentence was like, “well guys, good talking to you, ummm, we’ll continue with this next week, gotta go!” I left them there with confused looks on their faces as I scurried back to the house with my buns clenched and fingers crossed.

Wednesday was quite rough. I had a workshop/think tank type event. I invited around 45 authorities and community members to the event and ended up with 11 present. It was too bad especially that not a one representative from any of the schools in Zaña showed up to the event entitled what would translate to something as “the betterment of the youth in the district of Zaña.” I realize later that week that some had forgotten and I should have reminded them all on the day before and day of. I didn’t let myself get too down about this but it was later that evening when my youth group was just wild and couldn’t focus on the task at hand. (That’s really kind of a nice way of putting things).

As you are starting to see, the rollercoaster analogy is really a nice way of describing a Peace Corps volunteers experience. But I focus on the positive and also how I can fix the problems and obviously the good far outweighs the bad. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing it. But I tell ya, there are just some days…

Hmm, what else has been going on? The other Sunday (the 13^th) a group of parents and their sons and daughters went to the museum of Sipan. It was the reward for the parents that had the best test scores and attendance during the school for parents that Nicole did at the high school. It was neat to see the museum and the Archeological part of the museum. It was a stress that paid off since we had been planning the logistics the week before the event.

What else has been happening in November. My boss from Lima visited my site and seemed to be pretty pleased with the connections I’ve made and the work I’ve been doing and planning. We visited the health post, municipality, schools, and had lunch at my house. We also visited the club of organized women in Zaña. This is like my group of other mothers in Zaña. They are always at whatever event I invite them too and very supportive. They have their meetings a few times a week and I visit when I can. They work on their knitting, sewing and painting while chatting and being chatty mc chit chattersons. It’s always a good time.

The time has been passing by so fast I can’t believe my birthday is in a few days. I literally just thought of for the first time for serious that I’m about to be 25. I don’t know why but that sounds way older than 24. I feel like the 22 to 23 to 24 transitions weren’t that big but 24 to 25 feels different. I have a week to finish this community diagnostic. No problem…but it’ll be nice to have done. In about a week I’ll be seeing all my fellow youth development volunteer family members in training. Very excited!

I really miss my family and friends from the far north. Even though I’m not doing the best at staying in touch right now I promise it’ll get better when I have more time around Christmas time and in January. But for now I’ll try to get better about it too. I hope you are all healthy and happy up there! Love, Zack.

November 20, 2011

Sunday, Nov 20, 2011 6:25 p.m.

Uh oh, it’s been like 20 days since I’ve updated this bad boy. I often think about doing it but I’ve just been so busy with either being in class, with youth groups, planning, or working on my community diagnostic. The community diagnostic is due in about a week as we will be in early in service Peace Corps training. My levels of stress and madness will surely taper off at least a little bit as I finish my community diagnostic, then finish all the events around Christmas as the school year also wraps up in mid December. As you can see I’ve been keeping really busy. I’m excited because I now have a space where my musical youth group that I’m planning will be able to meet. I can’t remember if I previously explained this but I’m planning on doing a Peruvian/USA musical exchange where we write our own music, perform it and hopefully record it too. I will also be mixing positive values, healthy lifestyles and future orientation into the plan so it’s productive for the youth not only in a musical sense but also personally. I’m the most psyched about this project but haven’t had time to really start it. I have three youth groups right now. Two are usually well-behaved, respectful and productive while one (the NATs) can be a nightmare. But I’m working on a plan for them. I’ve also been teaching in the high school. Mostly trying to drill into the kids’ brains that they are going to graduate soon and need to get their sh*t together so have a plan once they graduate. It’s been going overall pretty well though. Some of them have been asking for personal help on planning their futures. Small successes! My birthday is coming up and all my youth groups want me to visit them…and one of them told me to bring a change of clothes…you really never know what you are going to get here but I’m hoping I only get drenched in water and not some sort of food stuffs. So that’s kind of a little summary on what’s going on and coming up.
Today in the morning I showed up at 6:30 at the house of the Señora where we prepared the food for the “papa la huancaina” we had today. This is basically mashed potatoes formed into balls with lettuce, olive slice, egg slice and a super yummy cream. Let’s just say I’ll be snaggin’ the recipe or that special sauce before heading back to the states. So we made like 100 of these yummy (taught them the words yummy vs. yucky today) potato things and sold them. The kids in the group did a great job selling their tickets this week and organizing it. I’m really happy with them and how the event turned out. We made almost 100 soles on the event and some people still owe money. Afterwards we all had lunch together (a yummy soup) at the house where we prepared the potatoes. It was nice to share with a responsible, respectful group of youngsters. This afternoon I’ve been resting and working on paperwork and planning stuff. Well, since about an hour ago when the power came back on. Still no water though so I feel dirty and smell like the wood fire we used to boil the potatoes and eggs this morning.
This experience is really a rollercoaster. Yesterday I had the youth group of kids under 13 years old. It went really well. Especially considering last week we had our meeting in the park and some of the not-so-good kids that were visiting the group decided to do their art on the park instead of in the park on their paper like the rest of the kids. Yesterday we reviewed and set new rules for the group. We also played hot potato (which we actually played this morning with boiling-hot potatoes) and made our personal pamphlets of positivity. So that went really well and the from both groups are excited because they are building a library in their community that we’ll be able to meet in. Right now the place we are meeting in only has a dirt floor and adobe brick walls so it makes it harder to do art and post it on the wall. By the way, this group loves art and have gifted me multiple pieces of art, three of which are on my wall here in my room. They are pretty dang good at art I should add. So anyway, that youth group went well. In the afternoon I visited the dance academy to see how the kids are doing there. After rehearsing we got to playing a little bit. I had a broom and was showing them how to play hockey and explained to them that there is also a sport called broomball, which none of them had heard of. So we were playing a mixture of broom ball and soccer when I accidentally committed a penalty by jabbing the jaggedy broom between this kids legs. This kid, Pacheco, by the way is like the super exaggerative class clown kid. So it was kind of a slow motion thing. The broom caught his knee at just the right angle to slice a decently deep gash (deep enough to flow the dark red blood) out of his knee. We had to wrap it up and go to the health post. I felt super bad about it but was trying to joke and stay positive. Pacheco was joking and still running around all the while and said he was going to take a piece of my skin to replace the gash in his knee. For those of you who know me well, you know that apparently I’m accident prone to giving kids scars. It’s the worst feeling even though it’s an accident.
So even though I was decently down and crabby about the situation the group that I was with still convinced me to go to the crowning of “Miss Zaña” last night. It ended up being pretty interesting including the girls walking the runway in their swimsuits, elegant dress and cultural dress of Peru, which is usually pretty cool since it at least represents the culture rather than only having them only prance around in their swim suits. They also had to answer questions which were mainly based around their culture and the development of Zaña and Peru. It was encouraging at least to see that they mostly had intelligent answers and were all either studying in institutes, universities or still finishing high school and planning on studying. I couldn’t tell ya if they wrote the answers to the questions though or just memorized answers that someone prepared…we’ll just hope they thought of the answers… 😉 So that was pretty interesting and jolly. The priorities of celebration versus necessities still bothers me though. I won’t go into detail but I always think of the kids that don’t have sufficient food or education in the same district that is dumping cash into celebrations, anniversaries and events.
What else happened this week? I’ve been starting to help the different classrooms with their Christmas carol competition. This has been both fun and an extra stress added just because of everything else I have to do. On Thursday I had to have a “gringo night” with fellow volunteer Amanda. We went to Chiclayo, ate burgers, watched Zoolander and ate junkfood. It was fun but left my stomach double destroyed because of the fermented corn liquor and ceviche I had for a surprise lunch that day. This mixture of food and drink left me the closest I’ve been to pooping my pants. This was Friday afternoon after I had left. I was talking with a group of boys at the high school and pretty much mid sentence was like, “well guys, good talking to you, ummm, we’ll continue with this next week, gotta go!” I left them there with confused looks on their faces as I scurried back to the house with my buns clenched and fingers crossed.
Wednesday was quite rough. I had a workshop/think tank type event. I invited around 45 authorities and community members to the event and ended up with 11 present. It was too bad especially that not a one representative from any of the schools in Zaña showed up to the event entitled what would translate to something as “the betterment of the youth in the district of Zaña.” I realize later that week that some had forgotten and I should have reminded them all on the day before and day of. I didn’t let myself get too down about this but it was later that evening when my youth group was just wild and couldn’t focus on the task at hand. (That’s really kind of a nice way of putting things).
As you are starting to see, the rollercoaster analogy is really a nice way of describing a Peace Corps volunteers experience. But I focus on the positive and also how I can fix the problems and obviously the good far outweighs the bad. Otherwise I wouldn’t still be doing it. But I tell ya, there are just some days…
Hmm, what else has been going on? The other Sunday (the 13th) a group of parents and their sons and daughters went to the museum of Sipan. It was the reward for the parents that had the best test scores and attendance during the school for parents that Nicole did at the high school. It was neat to see the museum and the Archeological part of the museum. It was a stress that paid off since we had been planning the logistics the week before the event.
What else has been happening in November. My boss from Lima visited my site and seemed to be pretty pleased with the connections I’ve made and the work I’ve been doing and planning. We visited the health post, municipality, schools, and had lunch at my house. We also visited the club of organized women in Zaña. This is like my group of other mothers in Zaña. They are always at whatever event I invite them too and very supportive. They have their meetings a few times a week and I visit when I can. They work on their knitting, sewing and painting while chatting and being chatty mc chit chattersons. It’s always a good time.
The time has been passing by so fast I can’t believe my birthday is in a few days. I literally just thought of for the first time for serious that I’m about to be 25. I don’t know why but that sounds way older than 24. I feel like the 22 to 23 to 24 transitions weren’t that big but 24 to 25 feels different. I have a week to finish this community diagnostic. No problem…but it’ll be nice to have done. In about a week I’ll be seeing all my fellow youth development volunteer family members in training. Very excited!
I really miss my family and friends from the far north. Even though I’m not doing the best at staying in touch right now I promise it’ll get better when I have more time around Christmas time and in January. But for now I’ll try to get better about it too. I hope you are all healthy and happy up there! Love, Zack.

massive update 31 octubre.

Oct. 18, 2011 2:09 p.m.

 

Welp, here we are again…over two weeks since I’ve updated you all. I’m busier between every blog post. I just got done eating lunch and have a few minutes before a presentation at 3 and then to teach a section at the high school. (this is how far I got on this post)…

 

Oct. 20, 2011 12:56 p.m.

 

Above was my attempt the other day to update you all. I got about 3 sentences in…let’s see how far I get this time. I just got done eating lunch. I had Tallarin which is about as close as you get to spaghetti without being spaghetti. It’s generally eaten with chicken and tastes as good as spaghetti in a different way. My host mom also made arroz con leche, which literally translates to rice with milk. It’s about as close as you get to rice pudding without being rice pudding except probably better. So I basically had the Peruvian version of spaghetti and rice pudding for lunch. It was scrumptious. This morning I had my first edition of “Mejorando Tu Vida” radio show that I am organizing. It translates as Bettering Your Life. We talked about pregnancy in adolescents today with one of the obstetricians from the health post as a guest. Afterwards I taught a section of tutor hour. Two more sections of tutor hour today and then to Chiclayo to get my teeth cleaned. In tutor hour this week I’m teaching them about effective styles of communication since many of them (especially the boys) struggle with effective communication. Lately I’ve been really busy with tutor hour, my youth groups, planning events, going to events (inaugurations, birthdays, anniversaries, competitions, meetings, …(this is how far I got on this post, then I had to go do something.)

 

 

 

Monday Oct 31 10:55 am (happy halloween and musica criolla day in Peru!)

 

Ok, this is seriously getting bad. I really need to update this thing. So here we go. Today and tomorrow are days off in Peru. So they’ll be days off as far as school goes but I’ll still be busy coordinating and planning and cleaning. I’ve been taking advantage of today by relaxing this morning. The past couple days have been really strange and have lead me to believe that I’m going crazy. But today I’m more relaxed so maybe I’m not a lunatic. Just a strange day yesterday…

Saturday night I traveled to Chiclayo but barely found a car to get there after waiting for about an hour at the bus stop I had to travel to a different nearby town to get a bus to Chiclayo. At this point I had been wound tight after another super busy Saturday that I’ll explain later. I got to Chiclayo and took a warm shower and accidentally fell asleep. I was awoken by my cell phone. It was fellow youth development volunteer Amanda calling me. “Where the hell are you?!” They were all at the restaurant celebrating the goodbye party for the Peru 14 group that will be going back to the U.S. soon. I made my way over to the restaurant and eventually we went to a club to dance. It was a jolly and fun evening that ended up with Amanda and I eating American junkfood in the hostel that we bought at the gas station. The next day (yesterday) I woke up and went to breakfast. From there we had our regional meeting with the other volunteers in the region of Lambayeque. At this point I wasn’t feeling too well mainly because of lack of sleep, food, and water. I had been to busy the previous couple days to sit down and eat much and hadn’t been drinking much water. It was really hot in the room and I lacked water and was jumpy and swear I was starting to hallucinate or something. At one point a volunteer dropped his pen and it fell along his leg and I thought it was one of those little lizard dealios that are hanging around sometimes. I kinda jumped in my seat, which is weird because those things don’t even scare me in my own room anymore but for whatever reason this pen that seemed to be a little lizards startled me. I was sweating bullets in this meeting and when it finally ended I found my way out to the street to walk back to the hostel. I decided to walk around a bit to catch some air. I was walking fast and everyone seemed to be looking at me weird. Or that’s how it seemed. Maybe I was as red as a cherry or just felt like their eyes were all upon me. Eventually I found myself walking briskly along a sidewalk and accidentally met eyes with probably the most diabolical and at least half-blind dog I’d ever seen. He was black and raggedy, with cloudy eyes. He snarled and jumped up rapidly toward me. I probably should have just ignored him and kept walking like I always do but this one seemed a little different and I didn’t feel like having to go get rabies shots, or getting bitten for that matter. I started kicking and lunging at him expecting him to get scared off and run away like they usually do. But this crazy bastard was lunging at me, trying to get a bite of gringo leg. I continued to kick and swing at him for what felt at least a long minute, all the while yelling profanities in Spanglish. Finally I made a decision that I’m glad ended up successful; not killing myself or the dog. I saw a taxi coming and right before it was going to cross in front of me I ran across the street effectively separating the dog from myself. I’m glad the dog didn’t cross because as much as the thing was pretty much a depiction of the devil himself on earth I still didn’t want to kill it. All the while a lady was yelling at me in Spanish something to the effect of, “No!!! Don’t kick him, just leave him! He’s just scared!” I didn’t want to risk it…I then walked off the situation for a few minutes and out of stress and shock of the situation realized I had found myself somewhat lost. Usually this wouldn’t be a problem. I get lost all the time but just ask people where to go and they usually point me in the right direction, or not and then I just get more lost and ask someone else…but this is a different story. Anyway…I realized I was somewhat lost and the thought crossed my mind…What if on my way back to the hostel I run into this dog again. So I decided to take a taxi back to the hostel. I gathered my stuff, checked out and grabbed a taxi to the bus station. I got to the bus station and was told I had to wait a while for a bus to come. In the meantime as the amount of people ready to go back to Zaña mounted up a big coaster came and being the great supply and demand economists they are said they would bring us to Zaña at an extra price. (It was like 5 soles ($1.50) instead of 4 soles ($1.25). So we all fought to pile onto this bus. 2 minutes later as we are literally heading out of the terminal one of the normal buses for Zaña shows up and people are all jumping off this bus while it’s still moving until it finally stops. I follow the mob of people to the other bus and kind of shove my way on as well because at this point I was on a time crunch to get back in time for a youth group in the afternoon. I find my way to the back corner of this combi-style bus. I was crunched in the back of this bus which measures much shorter than me in height and there is definitely not even enough leg room for what would be the shortest Peruvian man, let alone a big gringo. So here I am crunched in the back corner of this combi and I start to feel quite claustrophobicy. Luckily I had a window next to me so I had that bad boy wide open and closed my eyes and put my head down. Otherwise I think I may have barfed. I finally back to Zaña and my house with a half hour to quickly eat something and head to this youth group. I had to settle myself down and hydrate and eat. By the time I was heading to the youth group I think I was pretty much okay again. I think it was a mixture of stress, heat and dehydration (or I’m just crazy). The youth group went well. We planned our first event in the community to sell Papa la Huancaina (a yummy potato plate) to raise money for prizes for a sports championship they want to do. We are a pretty new group so it’ll be the first events in the community they have done. After hanging out for a few hours playing, planning and teaching the kids I headed back to my house around 6:30 thinking, “oh finally my bed and guitar or a book or anything to distress.” Instead, my host mom got back at the same time and asked me to accompany her to the mass and post-mass event. I agreed since the woman is sweet and does everything for me (no matter how many times I offer to wash my clothes). It was a mass and party in honor of the birthday of someone who had passed away a couple of months earlier in the community. It’s somewhat popular here to have birthday parties for people who have passed away and also parties for a year after the death of the person called “Bota lutos” which basically means letting the grief go since many people grieve deaths for a full year here by wearing all black, not dancing..etc. So I went to the mass with my mom and afterwards we went to this other place to eat dinner and do a lot of talking. This country is comprised of professional talkers. I ended up staying until about midnight but couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I came back to my room and watched an episode of Beavis and Butthead before falling asleep. Sometimes I like to watch a little gringo T.V. from time to time…maybe an episode or two a week. Y’all know I’m not much of a T.V. person. Sometimes it’s necessary to do some gringo things though. I’m listening to the new Red Hot Chili Peppers album right now speaking of gringo stuff. It lacks John Frusciante but it’s still a pretty good album and I like it. The new guy is good too and fun to hear a change but Frusciante is a god of guitar and backing vocals. Anyway…(I’m such an A.D.D. writer).

That brings us up to today but let me see what else I haven’t updated you guys on in literally the last month that I’ve neglected this.

Saturday before heading to Chiclayo I had a trip to the river with a group of 14 kids from one of my youth groups. They behaved pretty well and had their buddy system and everything but I still must have done the head count a good 50 times in the 4 hours we were at the river. It was pretty fun. I taught the kids about the use of sunscreen, which they thought was fun. I’m out now because they liked to cake it on like little ghosts and used it all. I also made them pick up all the garbage before we left and that confused some of them as well. “Zack, why are we picking up all the garbage?” They are good kids. The only time they didn’t listen is when we needed to leave. It always takes them at least a half hour between “LET’S GO!” and the time they are all changed and ready to head back. Not to mention the walking speed in this country in general is about fast enough to arrive tomorrow. We also found a bird on the way back which they picked up to save, I guess. They fed it water out of the cap of the water bottle. I guess they are going to save it. They have good hearts, those kids…I just hope that bird doesn’t have parasites. After arriving home from the river trip I didn’t have time to shower or eat. It was time to had to one of the little towns (or groups of houses) to plan a chocolatada (which is pretty much a huge vat of hot chocolate and fruit bread and toys for Christmas). The place we visited was called San Rafael, a little grouping of houses all made out of bamboo and adobe with dirt floors, no electricity or water (they use wells). As you can imagine these kids are probably not going to get much for Christmas. The meeting went well. The town leaders as well as most of the moms in the town were there to help us plan as well as register their kids for the toys. After the meeting we grabbed the moto-taxi back to Zaña and I got ready (still without showering) to head to Chiclayo. I left my house at a descent time to catch the bus but with a mixture of last minute chores in the community and everyone talking to me and introducing me to their cousins from Lima I ended up getting to the bus stop corner to realize it was pretty empty. For this reason I had to take a taxi to another town to get a bus to Chiclayo. That brings you up to the beginning of the blog post. It’s been a hectic weekend, but mission completed.

Thursday and Friday of this week was the closure of the school for parents at the school so that was nice. Nicole came from Chiclayo to close it up with a test for the parents. I helped out with this when I wasn’t in the classrooms teaching. We had to help some of the parents that couldn’t read or write. This week I’ve also been traveling to other little towns nearby to coordinate for the Christmas events. I’ve also been, as mentioned before, teaching during the tutoring hours in one of the high schools. So far the topics have been effective communication methods, values and leadership with more to come. I also had my second edition of a health-based radio program I’ve been organizing with the health post and my radio friend Paul in Cayaltí. Last weekend, on the 22^nd my NATS group had a mini movie night that we organized. The place was packed but most of the kids talked pretty much the whole time. I guess that should have been expected. They really like it though. We had the drink and popcorn included so for many of them it was probably the closest thing to a movie theater they’ve experienced. Recently a T.V. station from the U.S. was in Zaña to film. It’s always fun when T.V. stations come to record because it’s like a free show of the music and dance of Zaña with cool lighting and sometimes in the ruins and whatnot. Hmm, what else has been going on. Parades, birthday parties, soccer…I’ve also been visiting the group of ladies that work on sewing and knitting and whatnot. They are like my group of several moms here in Peru. I also met a young lady in the group who is pretty nice. She’s studying dental work and going to clean my teeth for me one of these days at her school. Hopefully she doesn’t break any of my teeth in the meantime like they did in Mankato. They fixed it though. Obviously. Look at me. My teeth are perfect.

What else has been going on? Lot’s of parades and anniversaries. There’s really a party for everything here. I’ve been getting better at figuring out ways to pick what events to go to. If not I’d never get anything done. Usually there are fireworks going off here as early as six in the morning to signify the start of an event and as late as five in the morning to signify that the event is still going. Generally it’s just the loud ones that go up in the air and go “boom” and make the little white light. Don’t get me wrong though, there is work that gets done here too.

It’s getting hotter and the sun is getting stronger every day here. I’m sweating in my room writing this right now. I have to drink a ton of water here or I get a headache. Despite the load of events here I have been moving forward with my projects and am currently working on a music exchange type program where myself and a group of youth here write songs to the style of Gringo-Peruano. I also plan on incorporating future planning and other lessons. It’s still kind of a dream right now but I’m working with the mayor and think I should be able to get it started soon. In addition I’ve been teaching in the high school and taking care of my three youth groups. Otherwise it’s been a lot of planning for the events of Christmas and the anniversary that’s coming up in November. I’ve also been working on interviews and surveys for my community diagnostic that will be completed before the training that we have at the end of November. So my work here in Zaña has been keeping me really busy, sometimes crazy and usually happy! J I’m busy every almost every day and always have something scheduled every day of the week now.

I often miss my people back in the lovely United States and think about you guys all the time. Well, I’m tired of writing and as you can tell, the quality of this blog at this point has dropped so I will say my goodbyes for now. I hope my next post is sooner than a month away. Much love and best wishes. –Zack

September 25, 2011

Sunday Sept. 25 7:00 p.m.

 

It has been way too long but the power just went out and I have an hour of battery on my computer so I should probably update this while I can! I don’t even really know where to start. I just got back from a paseo (little trip) with my youth group to a fun park area thing…I can’t really even remember what it’s called in English. There are areas to play soccer, volleyball nets, pools, slides, four wheelers, horses to ride, a zoo…a bunch of fun stuff in one place. The place is called the Mirador (which means a vantage point or overlook). It’s located in the site of another volunteer, Hallie, so I invited her and Nicole, the previous volunteer was able to come to and grace the chicos with her presence. So it was pretty cool to have a couple gringas there as well. I can feel in my face right now that I’m a little burnt even though the sun wasn’t strong today…I need to be more careful with that. There was a group of 12 youth that went. We played and had fun all day and even won in Volleyball at the end in which we put in 2 soles a person, thusly winning 10 soles from the other team.

This weekend is also the festival of the neighboring town, so yesterday I went to the church service in the morning with my community partner, Molly, and also partook in the official parade and the lunch. Peru is really big on events with authority figures. Every week there is a parade, lunch, fireworks and dance for some type of event. It’s usually an anniversary, inauguration or birthday of some type. So yesterday there was a lunch with the board members of the government as well as members of the municipalities of cities in the area. It ended up turning into a dance and beer fest of types. That is, after the project plans and all the serious talk had been had. I was out of gas yesterday and could barely make it to 8 at night. My family brought me back to the house and I apparently passed out with all my clothes on in my bed with all the lights on. My host mom, Elvira turned off the lights and closed my door for me when she got back.

Friday was another busy day where I was torn between events. Friday was youth day. In the morning I went to Amanda’s site in Mocupe that’s about a half hour away from my site. She and I sang and I played guitar in the festivities. It was also her official presentation to the community. They received her really warmly, which was nice to see. It was a fun event including some typical dances and skits put on by the students and professors of the high school. I got to Mocupe on bumpy dirt trails in a moto-taxi from Zaña in the morning. I think the trip did a number on the moto-taxista’s front tire because the tube broke. So when I was ready to go back to Zaña around noon we had to run to his house to change the tube. About one minute out from leaving his house the other tube broke. I had to take another moto-taxi to the bus stop to return to Zaña in a minibus. Luckily I got back just in time to eat lunch and run to the birthday event of the town mayor from like 10 minutes before going on a paseo with a different youth group. We went to Cayaltí, which is about 10 minutes away from Zaña. By the time I arrived to meet the kids half had already left in a mototaxi. I told them originally that I was going to arrive at 2 but called one of the group members to tell her to wait and tell everyone I was going to be there at 2:30. She forgot…so I frantically collected the rest of the kids and we went in another moto-taxi. Luckily the first group that went without me had an 18-year old group leader with them. I was still a bit worried. Once we all arrived we had a pretty good time. We took loads of photos like everyone with a camera does at these events. The kids all had to jump on a poor horse for pictures until he got pissed and about ran some of them over. The other thing that made me nervous was that the kids, being high-schoolers all had to pose up on the edge of big rocks for photos. But in the end nobody died and they behaved pretty well as well. In the evening my other group, The NATS, (the group that went on the trip today) visited my house to organize some stuff and I played them some songs on the guitar. They guilted me into it, being youth day and all. They enjoyed the music so it was pretty fun. I forgot to mention in there that before meeting again with the NATS group I also went back to the mayor’s birthday party and danced for a while. Due to my lack of words in any language with authority figures I usually tend to build trust and friendship with them by making an ass of myself dancing. They love the white boy dance moves. There’s a lot of embarrassment and fear of standing out in Peru, especially in smaller communities so they like it when I act goofy. It usually opens them up a bit too. Everyone wants to dance with the white boy.

That explains the weekend…now to retro to Thursday…I did a lot of writing and planning on Thursday as well as a trip to Cayaltí with my community partner, Molly. I accompanied her to the market and the hospital to pick up some prescriptions for her family. In the evening I went to the dance rehearsal for the dance group “Nicoll Dance.” The kids are learning a new type of dance called “Sayas” and also practicing music to “On the Floor” by Jlo. It’s cool to watch them progress and work on the moves. They always drag me out to dance in the rehearsals and the events as well. The leader of the group is named Deyci. I was going to live with her family but some details fell through so they were really sad to not have me in the house so I usually visit at least a few times a week. It’s cool, I basically have a few families and lots of friends here which really helps, but it’s also hard sometimes to think of my family and friends back home and how much I miss them (/you guys!) Even if it may not seem like it because I’m not on the internet much and not able to call much, I miss the hell out of you all!!! Anyways…back on track…

Wednesday…I’m not going to lie, I was pretty tired in the morning and early afternoon because of an event the night before. But in the afternoon I started to be productive with a the youth group that is going to helping form the library we will build (the group that went on the paseo on Friday). We planned out the paseo and also worked on maps of their communities and how they think we can improve them. The kids are sweet and never want to go home but I usually try to send these ones home before dark because there’s not a lot of light where they live and I’ve only met some of their parents. Later I met with the NATS youth group. This group is a bit rowdier so basically all we accomplished was planning the paseo. Now that the fun and games are out of the way for a while we gotta start mixing the work back in again with the groups.

Tuesday was also a writing and planning type of day until the evening. I got back from a trip to Chiclayo around noon for lunch. The music group played at an event for the political party that opposes the current mayor. I went and shared beverages and danced the night away. The fact that I went to this event made it doubly important that I at least made it to parts of the current mayor’s party before and after the paseo with the group on Friday. It would look pretty bad if I only partied with the political group that opposes the current mayor, especially since he has already donated 80 lunches for an event we had and is willing to help. My excuse for the political event this evening though was to support the music group.

On Monday I went to Chiclayo, the capital city, for the night to hang out with Suzy, my community partner Molly’s sister. I also had a bunch of shopping to do and now have the correct bulbs in my lamp, which makes things much nicer in my room. It’s a huge upgrade from the prison light. Suzy and I went to this yummy Chinese-Peruvian fusion place, which made sense being that she is half Chinese and half Peruvian ;).

Sunday was another scramble of a day (nothing like Saturday but we’ll get to that). In the morning I went to the flag raising and right after to Chiclayo for the regional meeting with the other Peace Corps volunteers. Our supervisor was at the meeting. I showed up 15 minutes late because I got stuck in Molly’s house the flag raising to have a second breakfast. (I just smashed a nasty cricket that jumped onto my keyboard…hahah) I tend to get stuck at houses eating multiple meals. I’m plumping up again for sure. Anyways…after the regional meeting I got home to eat lunch quick before going to a meeting with the library youth group. It was my first day running this youth group. The daughter of the lady that arranged the youth group dropped the notebook off at my house in the morning and said I would be running the group. Obviously that gave me no time to plan the group since I also had the regional meeting in Chiclayo but I’m getting pretty good at winging it and planning on the fly. We ended up having about a four-hour meeting mostly playing games but also focusing on the importance of children’s rights. It’s important that they know because a lot of youth are verbally and physically abused in Peru and don’t know their rights.

On to Saturday…this was a hell of a day. A group of about 50 people from Ferreñafe, a town nearby, visited Zaña and we showed them a good time. The group is called viviendo en positivo. They are all either carries or family members of carriers of HIV. I had been working hard planning out the day for the visitors. We went on a tour of Zaña in the morning and everything went well up until about lunchtime. Lunch came (no exaggeration) two hours late. This of course threw off the whole schedule. The other thing that happened is once everyone had eaten the leader of the group that came decided to do her workshops and games with her group. She and I had planned that she would do them before lunch. But she thought it was more important that the group rested for two hours. So the band, the ambulance, Nicoll Dance group, a women’s group and some other groups were waiting in the park for over two hours for the parade to start which was the next scheduled event. Everyone except the band stuck around for the about 2 and a half hours they had to wait and we did the parade. We had our little signs and banners and everything…it turned out to be pretty cool. Afterwards Nicoll Dance and her group put on a children’s show that included the crazy dancing of “la hora loca” which you guys should be familiar with if you have read the past posts. Everything got pushed so far back that we ended up not being able to do the presentation on HIV/AIDS…at least I have it planned out for when we reschedule it. I also want to give the presentation in as many schools and communities that I can in my district. There are so many misconceptions on how HIV is transmitted and such a lack of knowledge on prevention. People think you can pass HIV by shaking hands or swimming in the same pool and the condom tends to not be a very well used implement around these parts. What happens with the machismo (basically male-power and ability to do whatever they want and get away with it) many men have multiple partners and it then spreads to their wives and so on…Obviously it’s HIV/AIDS and sexual education is important here…and everywhere for that matter.

Saturday evening was the inauguration of Nicoll Dance, the dance academy of Deyci, one of my good friends here. Due to the illness of the godfather of the group I helped break the champagne. I had never done it before and didn’t know how, which was a little embarrassing but no shame is the name of the game. We grabbed the hammer together and smashed the bottle. The event was fun and obviously included dancing. I helped clean up after the even and when it was all said and done I was passing out in my bed around 2 in the morning, which is pretty early for an evening of an event.

Friday. I was on the radio in Cayaltí with the obstetrician in the morning. We talked about the event on Saturday and the importance of education on HIV/AIDS. Afterwards I scrambled to a celebration at the main high school in Zaña. I played guitar and sang at the event. This was only after a little dude performed his music and gave his message about planning the future and not getting preggers. He’s sponsored by a young pregnancy prevention company. So it was good to have him spreading the message and I tried to enforce his message with my stellar Spanish skills when I performed. The event was great in all. The students and professors performed dances, skits and poetry. In the afternoon I went to an event with Deyci for her five-year-old daughter at her little kindergarten.

In the evening of Thursday I went to the tourism meeting for a little bit before being one of the judges for the high school queens event. It’s kind of awkward judging 15-year-old girls sexily walking in various (and often times revealing) outfits. I guess that it can’t top the awkwardness scale of another male volunteer from my group who judged a breast-feeding competition at his site. I can’t even imagine the awkwardness he felt on that one. Anywho…I think on that note I’ll leave you…your eyes and/or brains probably hurt after reading this long post. I have some more planning and writing to do for the evening. I’ll try to keep you more updated (I know I always say that). Bybye.

September 10, 2011

Saturday Sept. 10 3:39

 

I can’t believe it’s been almost a week since I’ve written in here. This week has definitely been a busy one here in Zaña. I think I lack-of-sleeped myself into a cold. Today has been quite a bit calmer since it’s Saturday but I do have some work to do after writing this blog post. Today I’ve been organizing all my information and contacts and cleaning up around. I’ve been planning an event that’s coming up on the 17^th. A group of youth and young adults from a nearby town are coming to visit Zaña. The group consists of people positive with HIV or that have positive family members. In the morning for the event we’ll be giving a tour of Zaña followed by lunch and some workshops and educational game. In the afternoon we’re gonna have a parade and children’s show. Afterwards we’ll have an informative presentation of HIV/AIDS and offer the quick-test.

The topic will be prevention and anti-discrimination against people with HIV/AIDS. Many people in Peru and any other country for that matter fear and discriminate against people living with HIV/AIDS because they think it can be spread from a simple handshake and that only gay people have it. I think the event will be a nice mixture of fun in the morning and education in the afternoon along with a parade…which always kicks butt and should also be a good way to spread info. September 23 youth day so we will also be celebrating this on the 17^th. So this week I’ve been running around a lot making connections and writing up proposals and soliciting the heck out of everywhere for stuff for the event.

I also have been spending a lot of time with my “sister” Deyci (Daisy) who is the director of a dance club. Her group is going to help out in the event and she has been helping me out a lot organizing the event. Deyci and her family is where I was going to live in Zaña but it ended up working out better to live in the same house that Nicole, the previous volunteer lived. I’ve been spending a lot of time this week at Deyci’s house and going to events with her dance group. It’s a pretty fun and respectful group of youth. I’ve also been spending a pretty good amount of time with the music groups this week too…although they’ve been having some problems getting along so I’ve been trying to help and been planning some ways to fix the group up. I’m planning on starting to give gringo guitar lessons. I’m thinking it can be a cultural exchange where I’ll teach them folk guitar from the north and they can teach me Latino-style guitar. All the while I’ll be mixing in as much educational material as possible. I’ve got many ideas brewing up in the old brainbox but I’ve gotta rock this first big event that’s coming up in a week first.

My youth group had a pretty decently productive meeting this week, which was nice. They are playing a big part in the event coming up too…they have a ton of energy and sometimes a lack of respect but I think we can keep working with them and little by little fix them up. The committee is pretty focused usually and in those meetings we usually make the most progress.

I’m pretty tired right now and think I’m about to fall into a little siesta before being productive again. My schedule is up early for meetings and activities and up late for musical/dance/cultural events at night so the siesta is sometimes utilized. Thursday morning this week I was running really low on gas to the point where I was running low on patients, which is something you need a lot of in a country such as Peru where even official events start at least a half hour late, if not over an hour late. I was siesta-less up until Thursday, which reenergized me just to be sick the next day. That’s how it goes I guess. I’m going to a 50-year old party tonight with my host mom so I probably won’t be in bed until late again so I better do the siesta thing. I miss you all mucho mucho mucho. I’ll keep you updated the best I can. Much love, take care!! -Z

September 4, 2011

Sunday, September 4, 2011

 

Hello all, it’s been a couple days. Today has been an interesting one…but a good one! I woke up around 8 and stumbled out into the kitchen that’s open-air style to the sound of buzzing. I looked up in a tired stupor to see a pretty decent amount of bees taking over the kitchen area (I don’t want to say swarm because that might be a little dramatic but there were definitely dozens). I realized I must have been in Peru long enough or something had changed but it didn’t faze me nor did it scare me. I hopped into the shower because I knew they wouldn’t want to mess with me in there. While I was in the shower my host mom started a smoke-screen fire out of newspaper to deter them. Around 8:45 during breakfast I heard the Peruvian National Anthem blasting…this meant for whatever reason they were doing the flag-raising event that I was about to go to early. I went anyway to find nobody in the plaza at five minutes to nine when it usual starts…In my nice dress close I walked over to the little shop with a few turtle-speed computers in it. This place has a daughter and her almost deaf dad. She’s always yelling at him at the top of her lungs so he can hear but he’s always still confused.

After missing the flag raising and updating the interwebs a little bit I returned home welcomed by the collection of bees again when I walked in. I guess they were hanging out during the morning because the candy-making place down the street attracted them. My host mom, Elvira, said it was weird because that hadn’t happened before.

For the rest of the morning I worked on some writing and researching until eating for lunch and going to this birthday party in the afternoon. Apparently without knowing I was supposed to bring my guitar (I bought a new guitar yesterday in Chiclayo by the way). I ended up partaking (with little choice) in the drinking circle of beer and Pisco shots. Pisco is grape fermented liquor that basically tastes like some kind of mixture between vodka and tequila. It was a pretty interesting and fun time. A couple of drunk guys were basically yelling jokes at each other all the while begging me to go get my guitar. At this point it was too close to the youth group/library planning committee meeting to go get the guitar.

After the party my host mom and I went to the youth group. It was great and the kids were a bit rowdy which to be expected but also good kids. We played probably a couple more games than we should have but also got some ideas down for the layout, resources and interests for the library. I’m working with a group of people that Nicole had been working with that have the funding and whatnot to build the library. It’s pretty exciting! I forgot to mention at the party I was also served a second lunch which I had to at least force part of down. Food=love here so you have to at least eat part of it or they assume you don’t like it. After this we returned to eat dinner after a little while of writing more. My host brother and mom had chicken feet in their soup like usual and I said they looked like alien hands and they thought that was funny. Then we joked about the reactions we would get in the U.S. if instead of bringing chicken wings we brought out chicken feet. Haha…deep-fried chicken feet…My brother and I just got back in recently from playing street soccer but he kicked the ball over the roof into our neighbors house and they didn’t answer when we knocked. A little bit of guitar playing and that brings us up to about now.

Yesterday was a much earlier morning than intended. I arrived in Chiclayo, the capital city of Lambayeque, on Friday. So another volunteer yesterday (Sat.) woke me up at about 7:30 to go shopping. Well this isn’t too early considering tomorrow I’ll be up at 7, but for a Saturday morning at a hostal it’s pretty early. Lots of shopping was done, including the purchase of a new guitar for the next two years. The brand is Morris…never heard of it but it’s a solid guitar. It feels at least as good as Sandy (main acoustic from U.S.) if not better. I also got a lamp but the lady helping me at the store picked out the wrong bulbs for me so I won’t be able to use it until I return to Chiclayo in two weeks. I’m not a huge fan of the bright white prison lighting I’m rocking in my room right now. I love my room as is but once I get this lamp rocking with the nice warm yellow lighting I’ll feel right at home. I’ve always been a huge soft lighting lamp kinda guy. So that’s probably the saddest thing that’s really happened to me since being at site. Other than missing all of you!! Other than shopping yesterday I got some nifty business cards printed out and walked around for about an hour trying to find a place to print them before hand. The market is HUGE and disorganized and crazy. I’m definitely always the spectacle too. My second name is gringo by now.

I returned to my house in Zaña around 8 last night for dinner. It was pretty chill. We played my new guitar for a while and cleaned it up. I really am happy with the new addition. I’m thinking it’ll probably be hard to not bring it back to the U.S…I just might have to.

Friday was a decently busy day before heading to Chiclayo. I passed around to different institutions in the morning with my community partner, Molly. I also helped her bring some sacks of rice, sugar and oil to a nearby town. Afterwards I designed my business cards and worked on some stuff in the afternoon after lunch. I must admit a siesta did take place this day in the afternoon. The nature of my schedule has me up early and late with a lull in the middle of the day so don’t look at me like I’m lazy. J

Thursday night I went to the orchestra music practice. It started off kinda rough. It supposedly starts at 8, which definitely means no earlier than 8:30 that people show up. The keyboardist and mastermind of the group showed up at about 9:30 and between moody ups and downs we ended up being there until past midnight. At one point I started dancing with random girls standing in the doorway to lift the morale of the group. Apparently it’s pretty funny when this white boy dances. Overall it went well but there were times where I was kinda worried…namely when the double keyboard setup crashed down off the stand. The director of the group is getting his brother in Japan to send an electric guitar so I can play in the band. They are taking a trip to Ecuador in February that I’ll hopefully be able to join in on. I think it’ll be feasible because apparently between December and March Zaña is pretty much a ghost town because of school breaks. Whelp, my eyes are falling shut so I’m gonna say goodnight and good luck. Chau!!

September 1, 2011

Thursday September 1 6:32 p.m.

 

Welcome to a new month everybody! I’ve been in Peru for over three months and today was the first day that it has rained. It was a couple series’ of light sprinkles. I definitely haven’t been poured on and it’s been sunny probably at least 80 percent of the time due to my location during training and now in Zaña and the seasons. We’ll be entering spring when y’all northern hemisphere people will be entering winter. The hot and rainy season here in Zaña is January – March (basically when you guys are freezing your patoots off up there in MN). But I will miss my dear bitter Minnesota winter too as I’m missing my Minnesota summer. At the same time I’m definitely not complaining here 😉

I just got back from a parade put on by the private school here in town for its anniversary. It was pretty cool. The typical dances performed by the students here along with the music and poetry that they do is very impressive. Plus it’s always cool to see donkeys pulling floats in parades.

Early today I passed around to different institutions with my community partner including the tourism office, police station, church and health post. I also met with the mayor again today. Luckily the local government is really cooperative and willing to work with me so that’s been good. We’ll see exactly if they can provide about 75 lunches and snacks for an event my youth group has coming up in a couple weeks. Hoping yes!! If not me and my host momma gonna be cookin’! It’s been a pretty busy day but I did squeeze a half hour siesta in so that’s always nice. Yesterday I went to the coronation event and crowned one of the queens as well as handed out prizes and whatnot. It was pretty awesome other than the fact that I was like 10 feet in front of one of the enormous speakers that was filling the whole coliseum with sound. It has been amazing to see the talents and energy of these kids. The event (per the norm) ended with an hora loca (If you’ve been reading the blog I’m sure you know what this is, otherwise reference previous post). The hora loca was accompanied by an awesome tower of intricately programmed fireworks, which is also very popular here in Peru. In fact, there are fireworks blowing almost all the time for some reason or other…or no reason at all. Often times they are blowing off at 6 or 7 in the morning to end the fiesta or at 7 or 8 in the morning to start the fiesta. This method is pretty cool…it’s like an alarm clock for the whole pueblo.

During the day yesterday I judged another series of presentations by classrooms at the school celebrating its anniversary. Afterwards we passed around through different places in town. The coolest place was the AfroPeruvian Museum. This place is packed with many original, one-of-a-kind artifacts, photos and instruments. There are many percussive instruments as well as marimbas but the main thing I found interesting is the checo. This is a hand drum with a square cut in it made from ripened pumpkin-type things. It originated in Zaña to accompany the baile tierra (earth dance) that is rooted in slavery times. Other popular dances here include festejo, another type of Negroid dance including rapid movements and super quick hand drumming on cajons and bongos. Additionally, Marinera is another popular dance in the northern regions of Peru including neatly dressed dancers (in white and red colors of Peru) doing many movements with their hats and handkerchiefs while “flirtily” dancing all the while with intricate movements.

On Tuesday evening I ended up going to an event at the Evangical church that was pretty interesting. It had that yelling-pastor kind of thing going on but it was positive and energetic so it wasn’t too bad. Plus there was cake!! J The band was pretty interesting. It was kind of polka style…or something or other. Beforehand I met with the committee of my youth group. It took us about two hours but we made some pretty good ground. We have a lot planned already but the most important event is to get this event planned that’s coming up in a couple weeks. A group of kids from the area that are positive with HIV are coming to visit Zaña and we have the honor of showing them a good time Zaña-style with also being informative. I’m excited about it but there are many loose ends we have to get tied up. That’s my cue…back to work! (or to eat) J I think that’s about all for now. Tonight I’m off to hang out/watch the music rehearsal the cultural group and tomorrow off to Chiclayo (capital city) for the night and Saturday to do some shopping.

Take care and saludos de Zaña!

August 30, 2011

August 30, 2011 1:59 p.m.

 

I’ve been failing to keep up well on this blog because all my spare time has gone to sleeping or napping. Otherwise I’ve been pretty well occupied here between trying to be productive and being offered numerous meals and beers by different groups of people throughout the day. In fact, I’m supposed to be at a house right now celebrating a birthday but I’m gonna head over later. It’s a holiday today so there isn’t much going on as far as me being productive. I’m super full of meat and beer…be jealous 😉

As usually I’ll start present and write backwards throughout the days I missed just to confuse you a little more. (sidenote: my host mom is running around like a crazy woman talking to herself trying to get lunch ready right now but never lets me help out…haha. I think this is my last opportunity today to write this today before bouncing around between families and groups of people)

This morning my host mom, host uncle whose visiting from Lima and my host grandpa and host dad went to the market in the nearest city Cayalti. I do a great job at not acting appalled by how the animals are treated here in general but this is how it’s always been. Nevertheless, it was really interesting to see all the animals, food, clothing, random stuff, and hoards of people. My family was negotiating for a while on various animals. The donkeys were going for around 400 soles (under $200) but that was high. The price of 18 soles (not much more than $5) was high for a duck and around 100 soles (under $50) was high for a couple little pigs. We did end up buying 4 guinea pigs for around 50 soles (around $20). The cute little buggers are eating the shells of the peas we had for lunch today. Like I was saying to my family “Pet for now, food for later.”

Yesterday was pretty fun. I didn’t accomplish too much but I’ve been building relationships with family, friends, neighbors, community leaders and youth, which I suppose is what these first couple weeks are really for. Last night I taught my family how to play Yahtzee. It was pretty exciting. We each even put a Sol in the pot and I won. I attributed it to the fact that I’ve been playing the game my whole life…which is true. We had some brewskies and chatted about different drinking games and tricks and joked about life in general. One of the things I’ve learned by living here is that they really value just passing time talking. A lot of things here remind me of my dear Grandparents in the U.S. They never stop talking here just like Grandma Virginia and they are still very involved in farming and agriculture like Grandma Mabel was. Not to mention they eat meat off the bone and suck and chew every last bit off (which I do now too as to not be wasteful) just like Mabel does with chicken bones. Sorry this post is really randomly assembled. Last night I also went over to a neighbors house for some beer and cake to celebrate the birthday of the father of the family. This only went until around midnight so it was an early night last night. Other than that I just passed time with family and not much else. It was a pretty relaxed day.

Sunday was a much busier day. I woke up and dressed up to get over to the park for the flag raising that happens every Sunday. It was cool to be a part of and made me look more official/respectful, which is always good. The Peruvian Army band was at the flag raising and performed throughout the day. They had a full band with congos and the full nine yards. The cultural event for the weekend wrapped up with a dance and live music in the afternoon after typical dances and another enormous pig roast in the morning. The evening of Sunday I went to the cock fight at our neighbors’ place who has a cock fighting ring. They are friends of the family and really nice, but I’m again not too sure about the cock fighting itself. I had a couple hours after the actual cock fights ended where I was sitting in another drinking circle chatting so I asked some questions about it.

It’s always one-on-one cock fighting where the owners/trainers of the roosters bet anywhere between 50 and 1000 soles. During the fights they wrap little spikes around the ankles of the roosters to stab the other one. This is how they actually do damage/kill the other one. I always had thought it was the beak, but no. The actual fight is somewhat like boxing. They kind of stare each other down and peck and jump around at each other until one falls down for more than a couple seconds without getting up. There is a referee of sorts that kind of facilitates the fight. Before each fight the roosters are weighed to make sure they are close in weight. The birds are also trained by the owners that kind of simulate-peck at the birds and also inject them with vitamins and chemicals of sorts to strengthen them. Usually after the fights they don’t eat the birds but we ate a couple Sunday night. I guess the idea is to grab them right after they die and pluck them and cook them right away before their poor little limp dead bodies get toxic or something along those lines. I ate some on Sunday night and here we are on Tuesday afternoon so we’re good! The social aspect of the event was fun but as you could imagine I wasn’t a huge fan of the actual cock fighting part and the treatment of the birds. It’s a really interesting experience to eat something that you saw alive and well an hour prior. It’s interesting how our culture in the U.S. is so disconnected from the process. We buy the meat packed airtight and sterile from the store. The exception for me I guess would be fish since I’ve done my fair share of eating fish pretty much right after catching them. We’ve been eating some pretty rockin’ ceviches here by the way too…so be double jealous 😉 ;). My gringa sister and previous volunteer in Zaña, Nicole left on Sunday after arriving on Thursday to help out with “Parent’s School” on Thursday and Friday and also check out the cultural event this weekend.

On to Saturday…This day was filled with lots of sun, 5 meals that all included pig which Zaña is famous for, lot’s of dancing done by cultural groups and also yours truly, and awesomeness in general. We spent the majority of the day at the cultural event hanging out with various groups. There’s a really great rock sculptor name Kieke (sp?) here in Zaña and along with him and my new buddy Jota and the group of friends we had a fun afternoon of tomfooleries. I also made sure to watch (and of course partake) in the youth show in the afternoon. This largely consisted of me jumping around “dancing” like a big gringo like usual. The kids are so sweet and all super curious. All in all it was a super fun day that ended with us going to the dance. I invited my community partner and her family. So it was her family plus my family. (my host mom is cooking dinner as I’m typing this and I am not even close to hungry…I really have to start playing soccer probably every day with the kids here again). Anyway…about the dance. It was super fun and I busted a move. I always have to bust out my twirly moves with the ladies. We danced until about 3:30 in the morning…which is pretty early for a dance/party here. The band was great…as most bands here it consisted of probably about 12 or more musicians.

Friday was the introduction of the cultural event. It was also the second session of the Parent’s School session that Nicole was in town to help with. I was also busy this day judging various events throughout the day for the private school in town. It was pretty damn cute to see the little kids presenting poetry and doing presentations of what they had learned. Tomorrow I’ll be crowning all the little school Queens so that should be pretty cute too.

On Thursday Nicole came to help out with the Parent’s School. There are about a hundred parents (mostly moms) at each session. The topic this month was vocational orientation. My host mom, Elvira and I also watched the little fair/fun competition thing that the school was holding down the street in the morning. This consisted of bobbing for apples, sack races, pie-in-the-face-if-you-get-the-question-wrong trivia, musical chairs and much more.

Wednesday night the youth group NATS Amigos Por Siempre met. Basic translation of NATS acronym is children for the rights of children and fight against injustices and amigos por siempre as you can probably guess means friends forever. The group is crazy. They have a lot of good ideas but even more energy and much less focus. There is much work to be done but I did officially submit to continue as their “adult collaborator.”

Welp…I have written far too much. I’ll try to keep you updated on more of a day-to-day basis from now on. Everything is going great overall here and I’m super excited to be assimilating into the community and starting to formulate visions for the two years I’ll be working, living and playing here!! Oh, random side note, ever since I gave a copy of Zack and Hope – Hold On album to my host brother he’s been playing it on repeat. Who knows…maybe we’ll become famous here! 😉 I’ll let you know the progress! Thanks for reading. Bye for now!