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
Zack In Peru 