PC – 4:

Site Placement

They say while in the Peace Corps you will experience the highest highs and the lowest lows. Moments of absolute ecstasy, to times when you wonder why the hell you decided to join this organization, and give up two years of your life to live in a developing country. Right now I am riding one of the higher highs.

On Tuesday, we went down to the Peace Corps office in Lima, met with the staff that will be supporting us during the next two years, and had our meetings with Jorge the APCD of WatSan and Frieda the Volunteer Coordinator.   I was the last person to have my meeting so I had a pretty good idea as to where I would be heading. I walked into the meeting and Jorge said, something to the effect of you probably know where you are going so let’s make a game, you have five yes or no questions to figure out where your site is go! First question I asked was does it start with an A? – He responded yes. Well that pretty much narrows it down to the Amazonas! As my yes/no questions continued I  found out more about my placement. I will be living in/around Chachapoyas, a city of roughly 25,000 so internet, cell phone and electricity shouldn’t be a problem. My group of 6 is the first from Peace Corps to work in this region. Because we are the first people to be placed there our presence and amount of success we have will lay the groundwork for future volunteers. We are the guinea pigs as Jorge says. It’s a pretty exciting yet daunting task, and most likely a hell of a lot of hard yet hopefully rewarding work. They (municipality & towns people) apparently had heard of the Peace Corps and requested that volunteers come so the fact that they are requesting our presence definitely helps.

A few quick stats, rumors, chisme (gossip) on Chachapoyas:

• The women are apparently “muy calliente”. I have heard this from several reliable sources, and this could mean several things; either they are very friendly, or they are very good looking) I will have to find out which.
• It’s absolutely gorgeous
• I am a coffee addict there’s no hiding it. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it some of the best coffee in the world comes from this region. Jackpot!
• It’s in the middle of nowhere! 24-30 hours north of Lima.
• The climate is incredible, average temperature of 64ºF and avg humidity of 75%.
• To get there you have to cross over the Andes mountains.
• The economy is based upon agriculture, rice, orchid, sugar cane, and coffee!
• There is a airport, and regional jets fly in frequently.
• Kuelap –  ancient Inca ruins, apparently similar to Machu Picchu
• The 3rd highest waterfall in the world very close

For the next two weeks I will be traveling to Field Based Training in Otuzcothen off to Chachapoyas to visit my site for a week. Then I will return to Chosica for two more weeks then swear in and head off to my site on Thanksgiving Day.

Oh I have uploaded many photos here is the link to my Picasa web album.

Well, it’s getting to be that time of day where I eat so much rice and potatoes that I can barely walk; meanwhile I continue to lose weight. I am perplexed???

Until next time…

PC – 3

Five weeks in! Here are a few of the highlights of the past two weeks. Some photos are finally up so take a look. Picasa photo album links are below for the highlights.

• Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima (Renewable Energy Seminar)
• Biosand Water Filters
• Museo de la Nación – The Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso)
• Puking my guts out with another Peruvian death sickness (sorry no photos)

Last week I visited the Museo de la Nación which is Peru’s national history museum. It’s a huge concrete building that reminds me of the Karmann Library at UWP; and appears to be completely indestructible. The first part was pretty bad, because many of the artifacts were not originals. However, the second part of the tour was pretty interesting, as it was about the Shining Path, the terrorist regime in power from the 1980s, and still exists today.  I had learned about the Sendero Luminoso in college and was pretty taken back by their actions. After seeing the photos in the museum I was at a loss of words. I didn’t feel comfortable with taking several of the more graphic pictures. It is important to note the effect that the Sendero Luminoso has had on Peru, and how it still effects people today. As they have a deep rooted fear of trusting people. It’s because the Sendero Luminoso would come into villages and demand people be on their side, then the military would enter and demand they be on their side. The villagers wouldn’t know who to trust. Either party would return and murder the entire village.

Training is actually quite fun. And when I was thinking about my entire Peace Corps experience, having this sweet summer camp with a bunch of gringos and an awesome host family didn’t even cross my mind. Anyways, I am havin’ a blast. It’s like being back in school again, but better because we learn all day, but really aren’t graded. Kinda a mix of the real world and university.

On the other hand at times training can be quite tiring and they are constantly asking us about how we feel, this seems to always happen on Fridays. We are given activities like, act out in a skit how you feel about the cultural differences between the United States and Peru. PLEASE!!! Luckily for me I missed out on the feeling sharing this past Friday as I was home puking and shitting my guts out. If you think you’ve really been sick in the states, think again. Peruvian sicknesses literally rip the flesh and blood out of your body. I came down with something either from working with some kids in a pretty poor neighborhood in Lima, (disclaimer: Poorer children do not have nasty diseases, it’s more the fact that they are children and they carry different viruses than I am normally accustomed to)  or the Pizza I made with friends on Thursday evening. Either way I was not obliged to share my feelings, instead I shared my guts this past Friday.

I was able to re-cooperate relatively quickly and I went to Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Peru in Lima bright and early on Saturday morning (at 7:30 a.m.). That’s the thing sickness hits hard here, and then it’s gone! Photos can be found here. I am really glad I was able to get into the Wat/San (Water and Sanitation) program, it really suites me well. The chance that I got placed into a Spanish speaking country and in the field that interests me is pretty rare and awesome! Needless to say, we learned about several different Energias Renovables (Renewable Energies)  which I already had a background in from my renewable courses at UWP. Having it explained in Spanish really helps to pick up on the vocabulary they use to explain how a windmill, solar oven, solar water heater, and improved cook stove works. But it reinforced this knowledge and I learned quite a few more key social facts about people.

For quite some time development experts had been designing and building cook stoves like the ones to the left. And sure they were “Engineered” to consume the least amount of wood and boil the water in the least amount of time. Problem was that they failed to take into account the social side, the user’s preferences. 1. For thousands of years people had been cooking with their traditional fires in the corner of their one room houses. Why? Convenience, custom, space? 2. They made the new stoves to run on wood that was chopped up into really small pieces. What ended up happening is the people didn’t end up using the cook stoves because it went against their existing social customs. I am learning that it is extremely important to never overlook the human element in projects.

The other really interesting technology that we learned about was this plastic ram pump. Which is really useful in rural areas where expensive and high tech pumps and valves are simply difficult to make due to resources available and their cost, yet still have a need to pump water to a higher elevation. The device uses the water hammer effect to develop pressure that allows the water to be lifted to a higher point. And best of all it requires no outside source of power other than the kinetic energy of water.

Up next:  Canete, for Field Based Training (Tuesday – Saturday)

PC2 – Week 2 of Training

Two weeks down, 104 to go! Today marks the second week of living with my host family and courses at the training center. Life is good! I don’t think that I have mentioned where I am living. I live in Chosica, Peru about a hour north east of Lima, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains. My neighborhood is called Vista Alegre (Happy View). And it is quite the view. Photo from my penthouse suite below. Living conditions are comfortable and by Peace Corps standards quite plush I have wireless internet in my house. A heated shower, but access to consistent water is limited, more on this later.

View from my penthouse suite.

 

I have a pretty great group of people, the activities we are doing are exciting. My host family is pretty great! Sometimes I can’t comprehend how lucky I am. I feel like I am back in school once again, yet this time I have 9 hours of class a day, 6 days a week. I have 4 hours of Spanish in the morning (best time to learn a language when your brain is fresh) and then Technical Training in the afternoon.

Spanish Training is pretty cool, we have an excellent group of people. Brian, Johna, Greg, and our teacher Yessica. Quite frankly our teacher is an angel for putting up with us 4 guys. On Saturday she took us to Lima for our language class, which was good but the truth is that no matter how many hours of Spanish class you have there is no substitute for simply speaking Spanish. It’s remarkable how much my fluency has improved over the last two weeks. I can’t wait to see what 2 years will do.

The language crew in front of the Presidential Palace, Lima, Peru.

 

Technical training is quite interesting as well. Thus far I have realized that being in Wat/San really isn’t all that much about building. It’s more about organizing people and motivating them towards one common goal. Peace Corps doesn’t really care if you have a lot of building experience sure it helps, but what they really want and the people who are social scientists. The type of people who are really good at simply working with people, understanding them, and figuring out how to help them meet their basic living needs. We have so many other people within our communities to lean on for technical support, they really don’t spend all that much time teaching us the technical side of being a Peace Corps volunteer, and the type of work I will end up doing is all based on my community’s needs. If my community needs an aqueduct then that’s what I will help construct, if they need latrines, or a bio digester, or more education on why it’s important to treat your water then that’s what I’ll do. They are more concerned with giving us skills to work with people and figure out what they really need than actually do it, because in the end it’s not really Peace Corps volunteers who are the ones doing the work, we are more or less facilitators. If I did the work I would be simply a worker. If I teach my fellow Peruvians how and why they should have access to good water sources then this is something they can replicate for many years after I leave.

This past week we worked on our mock community diagnostic, which is actually an incredibly useful tool when it comes to determining your community’s needs. I think that this is something I will really excel in. And it is what I will be doing for the first 3-4 months while in my site. I have been quite frankly blown away by the complexity of some of these water situations here in Peru. And the more I learn, the more I see out in the streets of Peru. On Wednesday we had the opportunity to go out into the streets of our neighborhood and interview people about their water. After visiting the School and Health Post I began to understand how people are educated on water. The School does absolutely no safe water education. The Health Post treats individuals when they come into the post with water related illnesses.  I learned that Peruvians are more frequently sick during the summer months, because they don’t boil their water as opposed to the winter months when they boil tea and coffee to warm up. Boiling water is the number one way to protect yourself from water borne illnesses. In talking to a few women in the streets I learned that much of the education is spread through word of mouth or (pasa la voz) mothers tell mothers about the importance of boiling water, about not storing large buckets of water etc.

Another element is how people get water many rely on water trucks, because of a lack of infrastructure. It is truly remarkable the poor quality of water that people consume. What truly amazes me is how the community I live with has wireless internet, Cable T.V. all of the modern conveniences yet still does not have access to clean drinking water. I understand the reason why; it’s because while the internet may cost quite a lot S/. 100 per month ($36.00), yet it’s a day to day personal convenience something that really makes their lives more pleasurable. I digress.

We learned to classify water based on six characteristics :

• Calidad (Quality) How safe to drink is the water, do they add chlorine consistently or in one large dump? Many of the municipalities treat the water but the consistency of treatment is questionable. Many times they dump large amounts of chlorine which is dangerous, but it is better to have too much chlorine now than malnutrition because of parasites and virus in the water.
• Cantidad (Quantity) How much water is available? Do people simply have enough to carryout their daily tasks or are they coming short?
• Cobertura (Coverage) Is there a connection to your house or do you have to get water from a truck (quality always terrible), or fetch from a long distance? The majority here have a connection to their house.
• Costo (Cost) How much do people pay? Here the norm seems to be S./ 4 ($1.25) every month, and a series of local candidates are promising to deliver free water. People believe that because water is from the earth it should be free.
• Cultura hidrica (Water Culture) What do people think about water here? I don’t have a really good understanding of this yet, as it is extremely complex.
• Continuidad (Consistency) How frequent is the water system functional? In my house I have water from 5 A.M. – 7 A.M. and then if we are lucky in the evening. This presents many problems because when the pipes don’t have pressure bacteria can enter and be transported through the system. Having good consistent pressure and service is essential to a good water system.

Up on deck for the coming week is a visit to a local Pueblo Jovene (Young Town) where we will help them on some of the water testing and aqueduct maintenance. Time is flying by. People ask ?estas acustombrado? Are you accustomed to living here in Peru? After two weeks, I can say not a whole lot shocks me. Dudes carrying mattresses on top of mototaxis, 12 gringos packed into one cab….  Luckily I think that I caught the majority of the weird bugs that people catch while I was here last time… so fingers crossed no parasites!