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 22nd 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
Zack In Peru 