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!
Zack In Peru 