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.
Zack In Peru 