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.

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)

Published by Chris Sweeney

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