'tis the season

      Christmas eve started out as a normal day: woke up at 7:00am and debated running to the bathroom. I could hear my host mom already awake outside in the kitchen and I knew if she saw me she would assume I was awake and ready for breakfast; then just as I was falling back to sleep after my bathroom run she would call out my name exclaiming breakfast was ready and I wouldn’t get that hour of beauty sleep I love. On the other hand my bladder was about to explode because I have a full cup of tea right before bed every night, so I can never make it through the night, and my last hour of beauty sleep would be tainted by the constant thought of needing to pee. My bladder got the best of me and I made myself decent and ran to the bathroom greeting my host mom on my way. Returning to my room, I crawled back into my warm bed and sure enough just as I was drifting off the call for breakfast came. It was the classic bread rolls with cheese and some drinkable oatmeal, which I have grown to enjoy.  Afterwards I made my bed and got ready for the day, thinking about what I would be doing if I were home, and how packed the stores must be as commercialism lived on in the States.

Patoralitas practicing

I was just sitting outside on a rock catching some sun and reading when my host mom asked me if I wanted to join her to go see the pastoralitas. The tradition here is to have children ages 7-12 dress in traditional skirts and sombreros and they dance and sing in front of nativity scenes. The children dancing during Christmas eve were practicing for that night when they parade down the street with a band and go to the houses with nativity scenes to dance, the eventual destination of the parade is the old church we have in town. So there I was sitting and watching, taking a few pictures, and getting a little bored, as the dance was kind of the same with every song. My host mom had disappeared into another house so I decided to go find out where she was. I walked next door and into a scene of high-energy woman cooking up a feast, children running around wild, and some form of almost recognizable Christmas music blaring from radio. Soon my host mom pops out from the back and beckons me to come look at the guinea pig. I walk around the back of the house and there two women are working on chopping into the neck of a live rooster, while others watch and comment about the best technique to use to kill the rooster. They finally get deep enough into the neck and allow the blood to flow out into the outdoor drainage, then dump the rooster into the washing basin where four other seemingly dead chickens and roosters lay. They have one more to kill, and while they are just getting the dull knife past the skin layer one of the seaming dead roosters convulses up and flops out of the basin spraying the watching crowd including me with blood. The crowd yelps and laughs a little, as they throw the chicken back into the basin and we move onto the next step. This involves dunking the dead chickens/roosters into a large boiling cauldron of water, which is on top of a grate, on an open fire. They dunk the chicken in, then into a cold bucket of water and then begin tearing off the feathers. Well I have never de-feathered a chicken and this was my chance, so I rolled me sleeves, and dove in. They handed me my very own rooster to go after, and my first thought was that it was easier than I thought to pull this feathers off, then I thought about how gross it was that the wet feathers were sticking to my hands, and then I got a little said for the rooster. It was a rush of emotion all the while my stomach was turning a bit as I touched the still warm skin. While I am wrist deep in feathers they bring out the guinea pigs to which there are seven in total all squeaking around in a large plastic bag, the type they package coffee beans or flour in. One by one they take out the guinea pig swing them around by their head, again the technique is debated and it was usually some combination of flinging and stabbing in the neck that eventually killed them off, although as one was being dunked into the boiling water it was still putting up a convulsion fight. Turns out living things don’t really want to die. Well the pulling off of guinea pig hairs was a bit too much for me, so I grabbed a pinch of hair to say that I had done it, and then backed away.  They then put the hairless grey guinea pigs straight on the flame for a few minutes so that they became rigid and turned slightly brown. At that point thankfully my phone rang and I excused myself and went outside to talk to my sister, a much-needed reason to get out of the smoky deathly scene.

I was not sure who we were preparing the feast for, but more than ten mothers were there working hard to prepare these guinea pigs, roosters, chickens, and potatoes. They served us all lunch where I was awkwardly served first and then had to eat with the kids, because they were also served first, but the food was not what I had just witnessed the death of, it was made by another crew of women, so the fate of the meat was still to be determined. After lunch my host mom and I walk home for a restful afternoon of knitting and reading. That night around 9:00pm we hear the parade coming through and we followed the parade into the church. The pastoralitas danced and there is a bit of a service but mostly the people just talked through the service about how cold it was. We don’t make it to midnight and the putting the baby into the nativity scene, and instead go back to the house. I gratefully crawl into bed tired from the day, and thinking about home.

            The next morning after a good run, breakfast is the traditional Italian Pannetone with very sweet hot chocolate; I basked in the semi-familiar flavors of Christmas, and planned to spend most of the day talking to people from home, and other volunteers in Peru. I treated myself to a freezing cold shower, but the feeling of being clean, and the realization that a black head I had had on my upper lip for several years had finally swelled up so I could pick it off, and it was gone were the greatest Christmas presents I could receive. After several hours of phone conversation I emerged from my room and find my host dad and several friends were sitting around our outdoor patio sharing in a drinking circle of chicha, or fermented sugar cane juice. The tradition here is to pass around one cup and all share from the same jar in a communal drinking circle. I join in and we reminisce about the previous volunteer a bit, and compare his information about America to my information about America.

I made cookies!!!

            The cup makes its rounds through lunch and into the afternoon as my host dad proceeds to get more and more drunk. In his hazy state the idea of inviting the boto to our house comes to him and the whole group gets excited about the prospect. I am at this point pretty confused what a boto is, but it seems like the right idea to be excited about. Then we hear the band strike up and the pastoralitas are back at the dance walking all through town (Which I can see all of from my window). We ran down to the street and beckoned for the band to come to our house.  This time as the band passed the houses people were bring out boxes of food, papayas, mangoes, guinea pig, large laundry baskets of bread, chickens, everything you could imagine in a feast. Apparently it is the tradition to donate food to the boto, or what can be described as a band of marching people proud with food and dancing on their way to the church. They did not seem keen to stop at our house and turned the corner heading to the main plaza. I headed in for my afternoon nap thinking that was the end of that, but my host dad was still determined and stumbled off arm in arm with his three friends to go follow the procession.

            I was deep in a phone conversation with my brother peering out the window when I see the procession on the move again. They seemed to have grown in numbers, as they came from the church up the road. Leading the pack is a young man carrying three large stocks of sugar cane and he is making a v-line for our house. Very quickly I realize that most of the town is headed for our house. I tell my brother that it seems I must go entertain the entire town, hang up the phone and help my host mom arrange benches outside to accommodate everyone. They march their way in and set up all the food on the table, cover my host mom with rose petals and the band, set up in our garden, strikes up some tunes. The food is enough to feed the whole town for a week, and it dawned on my that the guinea pig and chicken that I had helped slaughter the day before were now the center piece of the table delicately stabbed with skewers and formed into a wheel of sorts placed on a mantel (see picture). Apparently my host dad had convinced them to come to our house, delivering all the food. The significance of this I am still trying to figure out, but what is for certain is that next year we are expected to host the party, and contribute a large amount of food to the boto. I think my host mom was less than pleased with this responsibility, as she prepared soup for everybody, and tried to keep the guests happy, but my host dad was very proud of himself. Crates of beer were brought in and the drinking circles continued as the band packed up we changed the music to CDs and danced the afternoon away.

The crafty meat and egg display

            Today for lunch I was served half of a guinea pig on top of rice, my stomach gave a turn remembering the pinch of hair I had just yesterday pulled off. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, but I couldn’t get over the fact that it was once a rodent! There are still three live guinea pigs now running around on our kitchen floor, and mountains of food tucked away in my host moms room. The tradition to me is still a little unclear, but there are guaranteed many parties at my house in the future!

A knitting adventure

Just a cow with no knitted hat

            On my third day here I was sitting down for dinner with my host dad and mom. I don’t remember exactly what we were eating but I’m sure it involved rice and potatoes. My host dad, in particularly good spirits, was recounting the days of the previous volunteer that I replaced, and what a great guy the volunteer was. Then he turned to me and said, ‘you know I really liked having a guy to hang out with but you will be a good companion to my wife so I think it will be ok.’ I wasn’t quite sure to take this as a compliment or just a fact but I laughed it off in a nervous sort of way.  The well-defined gender roles here make it hard for me to figure out where I fit in. I am served first for meals even if my host dad is not home yet my mom will serve me, but she will not eat until my host dad has been served food. This leads to many meals of me eating while she makes herself busy until my host dad comes home from the farm. I have mastered eating as slowly as possible on these days, wanting to be able to eat at the same time as everybody else. I am also not very good at volleyball and much better at soccer, but have not yet crossed that gender role line yet, and I’m incredibly slow and shelling green peas another mark against me fitting in as a female volunteer.

So in order to attempt to better understand gender roles here I figured I would try to dive in and become for female-esque in their eyes, and thus I decided to learn how to knit.  It is a common practice here, the women knit or crochet whenever they have a bit of free time or need to gossip.  We have a women’s artisan group here in town that knits from hand-spun wool, using natural plants to dye the wool. A very local, eco friendly concept, but unfortunately many of the things they are making are reported to be scratchy and still have bits of wood, or plants from whatever they were dying with. In other words the gringa is here to do a bit of quality control. The other problem is while the eco-tienda in town is selling their stuff; it is not selling very well. The eco-tienda has a focus on selling local natural products from around Amazonas and they move jams, honeys, and coffee through pretty fast, but it turns out the locals all knit and they don’t really need more sweaters. So the market isn’t great, and the products are scratchy, and the women all believe any day now there is going to be a boom in tourism, but I’m not as convinced that is going to happen. Twice the meetings have been canceled for some unknown reason, and the meetings I have made it to have seemed very unproductive, mainly just another excuse to get together and knit and gossip, but they do record what projects they are working on and there are all very talented.

            My host mom confessed that she used to be a part of the group, but then there was an important meeting in the regional capital city, and she was the only one of the group to go. She didn’t even have a title in the group, the president had no excuse for not showing up, and it became obvious that the organization of this group was far inferior to the organization of other similar groups from around the area. Then a month later there was a local cooking competition in town, and my host mom lent all of her vegetables, chickens, and food to the president of the group so that the president could enter the competition. Not as affiliated with the group just as a neighbor wanting to enter the competition. Well the president goes on and wins the whole thing with the prize being around 800 soles (275 dollars or so). This president gives nothing of the winnings to my host mom who donated all her food. Needless to say my host mom was not impressed and that was the end of her participation in ALTA (the artisan group). Its too bad because I see my host mom as a strong leader, and one that does show up for meetings and is pretty committed. Now I feel slightly awkward telling my host mom that I am off to help out ALTA, but they clearly need a little sorting out. They have also run campaigns to build awareness about a local conservation area that is under deep debate of being mined, and it is the water source for the regional capital city, so the area is pretty important.

My Host mom in floral shirt

            The point being that I was determined to learn how to knit so I could fit in with a women stereotype which I feel like at this stage will win me points, seeing as I was told my running style looked like a boys. The women told me that the next time I go to the regional capital I should buy some yarn of my favorite color and some knitting needles. And so that is exactly what I did, the woman at the store was excited for my color and picked out a very nice long metal pair of knitting needles for me that she told me would be perfect! The next meeting was cancelled as it was pouring rain, and all I could do was look out the window, tears rolling down my face, holding my untouched yarn still in its bag. Finally the next week rolled around and I get ready to leave for the meeting. As I’m walking out the door fashionable late my host mom stops me and asks if I’m going to the ALTA meeting to learn how to knit. I admit that its where I am off to, and then she questions if I’ve rolled my yarn into a ball yet, as if that was an obvious step I had to do. Well clearly I hadn’t so I go into my host mom’s room and watch a telenovela as she proceeds to wind my yarn for me at a ridiculous speeds. Once finished she wishes me luck and sends me out the door.

The teaching style here I’m not quite adapted for. Mostly they showed me what to do up close but not slowed down and then after what they feel like was a sufficient amount of time of observation they hand me the knitting needles and told me to get started. I grabbed them shakily and waved them around in what I thought was the right pattern, but by the looks on the women’s faces was clearly not, so I handed back the knitting needles to the woman helping me and she once again showed me at full speed what I should be doing. Full speed for these women is faster than a sewing machine, and to me looked like a blur of colors. Well after about three tries of this the first woman gave up teaching me and handed my hopeless cause over to another woman who is more my age. We laughed at my inabilities and she showed me over and over again what it was that she was doing. I would take back the knitting needles and determiningly will myself to be able to do it.  When I couldn’t I would proceed to stomp my feet and whine throwing a small tantrum in the middle of the room, then laugh it off, and we would go back to square one.

Rainbow at my site!

            I left the meeting more confused than when I entered and feeling like an unsuccessful woman, hoping my host mom could help me out. Upon getting back to the house my host mom first comments that I’m home early, and that the group shouldn’t end so early as she chuckles to herself. Then she inquires about my progress. I show her what I’ve got and explain that in two years it will be a small winter hat. I show her the first step of the stitch that I can do and encouragingly she says that it’s pretty good. We go back and forth for a while just as I had been doing with the other woman, but by virtue of time and effort I am starting to get the hang of it. Slowly but surely I started to get into the rhythm, and after some practice I proudly show my host mom my progress. While she did tell me I had a smart head she also looked at it and said oh ‘malo grado’ in other words not quite right. A week later I had very little progress, so my host mom decided she would take my knitting project to bed with her. I believe she realized that the next day was the meeting and I was going to return with only a messier ball of yarn. The next morning she proudly comes out and shows the beautiful rows of stitching she has done. She said she couldn’t do much because she got tired, but to me it looked like motherly love of a new female daughter!

            I have gotten the hang of it for the most part, in fact yesterday we were sitting outside on the grass doing our knitting thing and I kept showing my host mom my lines and asking if there were any malo grados. Her response was no your glasses aren’t working, you need new eyes, you’ve got the hang of it and its perfect. We knitted together through the sunset listening to the tap of our knitting needles, and the cough of a near by pig. It is an interesting feeling doing a work of what truly feels like a solely female activity and it is what you are expected to do. The men passing by when I’m knitting always comment that I am doing a good job getting used to life here. I suppose fitting in to some stereotypes is helpful, but I am still determined to break into the men’s soccer games!

Counting the Strikes

            As I type this I am listening to Christmas music trying to get into the holiday spirit, but none of the normal external clues are present so it’s a bit of a stretch. I am now my third week of adjustment and it’s going quite smoothly, although last weekend I do feel as though I might of hit a bit of a bump in the road. On Friday the small annex of a town next to mine had a celebration for a Saint, not quite sure who. As part of this celebration they had a cow show. The women at the cheese factory where I put cheese in to molds once in a while invited me to go with them. I was honored by the invite and we agreed to meet up after lunch. As is pretty usual this time of year during lunchtime it started to down pour, so I was trapped in the house waiting for the rain to pass. Every time I thought there was a break, by the time I got ready to leave it started up again. My host mom brought out her big umbrella and insisted that I take it along with me. I reluctantly agreed knowing that me caring an umbrella would bring more attention to my gringo self, and I already got plenty of stares on the street.  Not matter, finally after three hours of rain it seemed to lighten up and I made my break for it, hoping that my cheese making friends didn’t leave without me. I walk down to one of their houses, which I was given the instructions of ‘look for the house with the red roof, it’s the only one of its kind’, and sure enough it is pretty easy to spot. They are still hanging around and invite me in to sit on their couch, the first couch I’ve seen for at least three weeks; it was a pleasure to sit down on! They get themselves ready, commenting about the rain every other sentence, and we head out the door. I receive many comments on the umbrella, but I tell them they will all be pretty jealous when it starts raining again.

            The cow show was amusing if not a bit humorous. There were about 15 cows in total, so pretty small. Most of the men formed circles of friends where they passed around a beer and chatted, probably about the rain, while the women sat on the side gossiping and watching after the children. In groups the cattle owners would bring out their cows, walk them around in circles, but mostly struggle to get them to stand all in a line. The judge inspected them and pronounced a winner for each group, to which a spattering of applause followed. Mid way through this excitement it started to rain again and I pulled out the umbrella, which was then a sought after item, and we huddled under it, unable to see the action, but sticking through it as committed fans. Just as they are judging the last group of cows it really starts to downpour, we decide it is time to run for cover, and head out of the open arena, to the side of a house with covering. Huddled in we wait out the end of the judging and then start the journey home. Before I know it a car pulls up beside us and I am told to get in for a ride. We pile in all except two moms who have their babies on their back. They call to me to lend them my umbrella, which I quickly do, desperate to make any friends that I can here. Later I realized I have no clue who the women are or how to get back the umbrella. I arrive back at the house wet and tired, and I explain in broken Spanish what happened to my host mom’s umbrella, she does not seem to pleased about the whole fact that I don’t exactly know who has the umbrella. Strike one.

            The next day the same annex is having a sports day as part of their celebrations. I am invited to go with my host mom’s sister, because my host mom has to go to the farm to harvest potatoes. They come by my house right as I am getting out of our freezing cold shower. I ask them to wait five minutes while I get dressed to which they agree. Finally ready we head off to the games. We find a seat in the grass and watch the men play soccer (the municipality taking on the near by university), and we watch the women play volleyball. It is all pretty exciting, especially when balls come flying towards us, and I had a two-year-old girl to also keep me company. About two hours into this my host mom and dad show up to join us. All is going well when suddenly my two-year-old companion finds money on the ground around me, and proceeds to question whose it is. I deny it at first thinking I didn’t have any money in my pockets, but then I realize it can’t be anyone else’s so I embarrassingly say, oh yeah it must be mine. My mom demands that I stand up and they proceed to find seven more Soles in the grass where I had been sitting, which amounts to a little more than two dollars, but here is quite a bit. I am pretty embarrassed as they exclaim that I can’t be walking around with that much money, and I need to keep my jacket zippers closed. The next day my host mom proceeds to tell the shocking story to everyone she meets on the street, heightening my shame each time. Strike two.

            While sitting watching the sports on that same cloudy day we stayed passed sunset as the volleyball game got more heated. Every volleyball game you have to pay a small amount to get in, and then the winning team takes all, so the games are pretty serious. Anyways when the sun sets in the mountains here the temperature drops about 20 degrees, a pretty significant change. I hadn’t quite come prepared for this, and apparently the air in the annex is much colder according to my host mom, so I quickly start to feel my toes and hands freezing off. In desperation I look over to my host mom, who is snuggled under her poncho talking to the person on the other side of her. I figure that I will cozy up and prove that I am a loving daughter, so I borrow a bit of her poncho and cover my legs with it. I am pretty proud of my bold daughterly move, and I feel slightly warmer. Little do I realize that I may have crossed the line a bit, for ponchos are a point of pride to people here. When my host mom notices she is a bit taken aback and exclaims to my host dad that I have taken some of her poncho in disbelief. I sit there a little awkwardly, and yet for whatever reason still leave the bit of poncho covering my legs. We watch through the end of the game and finally head home, at which point I am so cold that I can barely speak or think straight. On the walk home my host mom exasperatedly explains what happened with the poncho, and then exclaims that she never shares her poncho with anybody. Too cold to do anything, I sort of try to laugh it off, and pretend that I don’t understand. Strike three.

            Well with all these strikes against me by Sunday I was feeling pretty unconfident. After a long afternoon nap my mom invites me to go play volleyball with them so we walk together to our court in town and I sit down to watch. The whole town is out so there are plenty of young kids to play with and the time passes smoothly. On our way home we walk with a neighbor that I’m not sure I’ve met before, just as we get to her house, she remembers that she is the one that has my umbrella, and tells us to wait while she runs in to get it. The relief seems to run down my shoulders, and I can tell my host mom is pretty pleased to get back her umbrella. Things since have gone very smoothly, and this week for the first time my host mom shared her gossip and feelings about certain people in town with me. I felt like I was actually on the inside for a brief moment. Patience in transitions is always hard to find, but I try to run with the little successes, and pick myself up after the cultural misunderstandings. I will always be over grateful for my host mom’s love of vegetables!

Thanksgiving

My town from the look out

              Ten weeks building anticipation for what site will be like.  Ten weeks of exchanging TV shows, music, and Engilsh soaking up as much American culture as possible. Ten weeks trying to determine why exactly I’m here, and what it will look like when ‘working’. Ten weeks convincing myself I can jump into a community and feel a part of it…no problem. And here I am now, in my room, not sure quite what to do with myself.  I feel like a middle-schooler after growth spurts, who doesn’t quite know how to handle her new body.  I suppose I am living on faith that I will grow into this new body, and my skin will become tougher with confidence its just a matter of patience. In all reality my first week has been better than what I ever should have expected, I'm just still spinning from such a drastic change of pace in my life.

            Yesterday was Thanksgiving, which was hardly recognizable as Thanksgiving in all traditional sense of the holiday. I woke up to my mom calling my name outside my door at 7:00am. Unbeknownst to me it was time to go to the tree nursery. I rolled out of bed, my hair sticking up in all sorts of direction due to not having taken a shower in four days and the natural greases were working great as hair gel. I frantically smoothed down the grease, put on a hat to cover it up, and threw on some semi-clean clothes. Breakfast was already served on the table as I stumbled in hoping for coffee, but instead the drinkable Quaker oats were in a mug and a tamale on the plate, all in all no too bad of a breakfast, just could have used some caffeinated energy. One day I will get up the nerve to ask for coffee every morning, but for now I am cowardly keeping my desires inside.

Yup those are all Pines

My host mom has had a pretty nasty cold since I got here, which she attributes to being outside in the heat, but it seems most of the town has a similar cough so I’m thinking its just going around. However her sickness has not slowed her down one bit, and she is ready with me to go work in the tree nursery. We arrive at the slow leisurely walking pace and are shown how to poke holes into every pine tree startling, in order to put little ball fertilizers into each plastic black bag that they are growing in. Looking around I see that there are thousands upon thousands of baby pine trees waiting for their hole to be made and filled with fertilizer, the task seems daunting. I am handed a wooden tool that has been widdled to a point at one end, and has a handle on the other and I stake out my endless bed. There are five of us there all women with two kids running around. They are incredibly hard workers and I pick up on snippets of conversation about water conservation, and issues with the water in the area. I want to chime in and ask clarifying questions, but I feel timid with my Spanish so I take the day listen, knowing that there will be many days in the future to ask questions. We work for five hours straight in the blazing sun, poking hole after hole, prepping the starters for their dose of fertilizers. Every so often one of the woman brings around Chicha, a local drink that is most similar to Kumbucha, made from fermented sugar cane, and is delicious but apparently does have some alcohol content. I gulp it down as if I haven't drank in months, not minding that every woman with the cold has drank from the same cup. At noon one of the little girls can no longer wait for her mom in the hot sun and starts to break down crying, I look at her and try to communicate with my eyes that I feel exactly the same way. But there is no way I could stop before my host mom who is sniffling and sneezing at my side, but still going faster than I am. We push through the blazing sun another hour until it is time for lunch. Before going we compare the skin of each others hands to see who has been most effected by the work, I receive sympathy for my red hands but nod of affirmation that I am a hard worker, and we pack up and walk back stopping to by some okra on the way home. It wasn't until the next morning that my real wound appeared on my back, I was unaware of the ever so slight gap between my shirt and my pants exposing just enough skin to the sun's fierce beams.

            Upon arriving home my body feels beaten and exhausted as I slump down on our bench in the kitchen. My host mom shows no sign of slowing down as she jumps into preparing lunch. Our neighbor, Leidy, who is the secretary for the municipality comes over and they prepare a classic Peruvian dish of boiled potatoes on a bed of lettuce, a boiled egg, and a sauce poured over the top. The sauce is made from milk, old bread or crackers, hot peppers, salt, and other spices, blended to cream, which is actually pretty good.  Midway through lunch I realized it was Thanksgiving to which Leidy nods knowingly and we begin to make plans of how we could make a Thanksgiving dinner. There is no turkey so a chicken will have to do, and we will stuff the chicken with bread, carrots, peas, and whatever other veggies we can find. Mashed potatoes make it onto the list, and bead rolls, but I draw a blank as to what more should come for Thanksgiving dinner. I’ m a little intimidated by the responsibility of having to make a dinner here, but excited to share some of my culture.

            I take a good nap after lunch awoken to our neighbors playing with a new toy where you can talk into it, and it repeats back what you said except sped up to chipmunk speed.  Their best capture was of the mom yelling at her son to put down the toy and help prepare lunch.  I decide to venture out to see the rain clouds rolling in. Wanting to make some contact with the outside world on this day I grab my cell phone and head out for walk up the hill to try and find reception. While I am unlucky in find reception I do stumble upon perhaps the most beautiful double rainbow leaping through the Andean mountains that I have ever seen. While this Thanksgiving does not feel traditional it seems to feel a bit magical. I turn around seeing more rain coming and head back home.

            My host mom and our neighbor are just getting back with the news that they were unable to chicken so they have beef slabs instead, and no potatoes only okra. With these ingredients it seems the cooking is out of my hands, but I do get to witness the creation of another typical food here called cecina. My host mom marinates the beef, and then proceeds to hammer it out. I am not sure what the desired outcome is here but she goes at those slabs like no other. Once they are satisfactorily beaten they throw them into a frying pan over the wood-burning stove and fry them up. Once partially cooked they take them out again and beat them a little bit more before frying them for the last time and serving them on top of rice, okra, and some well chopped veggie mixture of cooked carrots, beets, and peas. All in all it is actually quite a delicious meal that I share with my host mom, dad, and our neighbor who is essentially the host mom’s daughter. We share what we are thankful for, laugh at my lack of Spanish, and have a good meal. It seems like the essential parts of Thanksgiving are still with me no matter where I go.

Pounding the meat

Thanksgiving dinner

Making my mark

            This past week we had site visits to scope out our future families and communities. As Amazonas is the furthest site from Lima this entailed a 24-hour bus ride that included two stops and 3 meals served. There are nine of us aspiring volunteers who are going to the Amazonas region, and we were all a bit anxious about surviving a 24-hour bus ride. I went for the medicate option and right after our meal of rice and chicken was served I popped two Benedryl and a Dramamine and spent the next 20 hours either sound asleep or hazily conscious, making the bus ride go by incredible smoothly! Our regional capital is the smallest for the regional capitals making it calm but touristy enough to have some good restaurants. It was quite exciting to meet the fellow volunteers who are serving in the Amazonas and the greenness of the mountains was a much-needed relief from the dry bare mountains of Lima. During our first day there we hiked out to the third tallest waterfall in the world to take a swim beneath its forceful drop, we treated ourselves to delicious American food, and we enjoyed the best showers in Peru at our hostel.

Tuesday came all too quickly when we met our host families and community partners in a Peace Corps orientation meeting. My host mother, much to her disgruntle, was the only one the showed up for the orientation from my town, but she was a champion as we acted out cultural stereotypes and discussed the roles of host families. Before I knew it I found myself following my host mom through the town market looking for the best price of rice, apples, onions, and what ever else was on her mental grocery list. I tried to keep up as we weaved through the streets of town somehow popping out on the main street right as the mayor of our town drove up in his truck, which apparently was our ride. Once we had gathered everyone that was using the mayor’s car service, and loaded the truck full of food supplies for the town we squished into the back and headed out. My town is located 25 km outside of the regional capital, straight up a one-lane dirt road into the mountains.

The second stop in town my mom pushes me out the door to signify that we had made it to our house. She leads me down the overgrown road to the last house on the ‘block’. There is a beautiful garden that stretches up the hill and the house is tucked into the hillside. My room and my host parents room is on the second level, and there is a kitchen in its own building opposite our rooms. It is minimal and perfect! After setting my bags down I ask my mom for a tour of her garden, where a ridiculous amount of cabbage has been planted. We weave through the cabbage and she shows me some of the hidden gems of carrots, peppers, chives, and chamomile. In the back there is a peculiar fruit tree with fruit that looks like tomatoes. I ask if I can try one that I find on the ground and that looks ripe. She enthusiastically nods her head encouragingly. I bravely sink my teeth deeply into the fruit and am met by a mealy slightly sweet but mostly bitter taste. Trying to not show my disgust I ask why it doesn’t taste very good, to which my host mom informs me that I must take of the skin. Oh right…so I go through the work of peeling the fruit and again try it out, this time also offering my mom a taste, which she promptly declines. Well the second skinless attempt is no better, and when my mother’s back is turned I toss the fruit into the bushes. I could tell that my fruit tasting adventure was maybe not the best of ideas.

We go back inside and I gratefully accept the offer of tea. My host mom starts up the wood stove and soon my host dad comes home from the farm and we eat a meal of rice and garbanzo beans together. After dinner I feel exhausted and decide to head to my room to move in a bit. I lay down on my bed and let the rush of emotions at the reality that I will be living here for the next two years sweep over me. The pad on my wooden homemade bed frame seems to melt into the wood as I settle in for the night. I feel my stomach in my daily body check in and realize that my stomach has grown to about three times the size is bubbles are periodically finding their way through the masses of rice and other starches. I decide to ignore this and fall right asleep.

Three hours later I am awaken to a horrible sense of nausea and spend a minute trying to figure out if I need to poop or vomit. Realizing it doesn’t matter which one is coming they both require me to be in the bathroom I rummage through my room in search of shoes and toilet paper. Sensing there is not much time I run out the door across the patio down the steps, across the dirt open space, to the bathroom where I make spur of the moment decision and decide to sit on the toilet. There is no light on in the bathroom so I somehow think it is a good idea to leave the door open to let some of the moonlight in. What proceeds is perhaps the most largest, loudest, and fairly satisfying diarrhea episode in my life. I am pretty proud of myself that I made it to the bathroom, and relieved that I am feeling a bit better, and with this sense of relief I go back to bed.

Three hours later I am awoken again with what feels like a tense mass in my stomach that wants to come out immediately. This time I go straight for my phone with a flashlight on it then rummage for my shoes to which I can only find two different ones, and grab the last of my toilet paper. Unfortunately as I lunge out the door I am just too late. The mass decides it needs to come out at the moment and I find myself running to the bathroom while leave a stream of poop behind me. I am mortified at the fact that I am actually pooping my pants, and when I finally reach the bathroom my lack of control leads to me sitting on the toilet merely for ritual than anything else. My mind tries to shut down the emotional panic that sets in due to the fact that I am sitting on a toilet with poop surrounding me and the poignant smell of dead fish is seeping its way into the mud walls, and I become action oriented. For what its worth I wipe up what I can with the small amount of toilet paper that I have left and toss the TP into the trash can as all good Peruvians do. Then I walk outside in my soiled nightgown and balance my cell phone on a ledge to shine some light. It fortunately has begun to rain diluting my trail to the bathroom, but what is more of a concern is how to clean myself up. I find a bucket and dip it into the water filled basin that is by our house, there seems to be only one option for me now. I strip naked in the middle of the open area and dump as much water as I can all over me and the floor of the bathroom. I work in a haphazardly, my hands shaking, my heart thumping, praying that no one comes out of the house. I quickly clean my underwear and hang up to dry, put back on my wet nightgown, and run back to my room. I dry myself off a bit, put on fresh clothes, and feel clean enough to get back into bed. I feel my stomach over and am relieved that the bloating has gone down, although my hands still seem to be shaking as I fall back asleep.

Three hours later I am woken up again to that all too familiar feeling in my stomach. I jump out of bed trying to lose no time. I forget the shoes all together as I sense that time is running out, and grab for my phone and whatever other paper I can find on the table as a toilet paper substitute. My stomach can’t take all this action, and before I can even get out the door it is exploding out behind me. My heart sinks and I run through the rain while my bottom feels like it is puking out my innards. Again I reach the toilet with only my dignity left to poop out, but I sit and try to breathe for a bit.  I rest my phone and my key on the sink while trying to collect myself, I then try to slide the paper packet that I had grabbed out from under my phone, and it is in this move that I watch my key start to fall behind the crack in the sink. My heart beat jumps back up into panic mode and I jam my fingers into the crack to try and stop it. I am able to wedge it out, and it seems to be a small success. I then look down to see what papers I had grabbed, and realize that the fancy packet about how to form successful relationships with host families and community partners from the orientation will be used to clean up my own mess. I tear it up a bit, assuming that a torn edge is more absorbent, and I again begin the process of cleaning myself up. I try to be quiet and swift, but despite my best attempts I am just shaky and clumsy. Water is dumped in all darkest corners of the bathroom and myself, and the waft of dead fish seems to be settling into the house for the long run. I clean up my underwear and hang it on the line next to the previous pair, and then waddle back up the stairs and to my room where I am reminded that I didn’t make it out the door. I find a discarded cloth that was used to finish my wood floors and decide the toxic finish will be strong enough to clean up my bodily discharge. I discard the rag outside my door along with my wet shoes, dry myself and find a new sleeping outfit. I calculate that the next three hour mark is at 7:00am when I know my family would be awake, and as I crawl back into bed the fearful image of my running two the bathroom while having an accident as my mom watches runs through my head.

Miraculously I don’t wake up for another four hours, and in the morning my stomach feels back to normal. I walk out of my room to find my host mom crocheting at her door, so I casually stroll over to chat. The faint smell of poop is still there but I chose to ignore it and avoid addressing the issue all together. Much to my relief the closest my host mom gets to asking is when she inquires about the two missed matched shoes outside my door, to which I respond in mumbled inarticulate Spanish. On my last day of the site visit I am all packed up and I go to retrieve my underwear from the line. I look up to see a swarm of flies excitedly buzzing around, disgusted I shove them into a plastic bag tie the knot tight, and stuff them into my bag.

I did just fine the rest of the week without my guide to meeting the community packet; in fact I believe the emotional rollercoaster of having survived pooping my pants on the first night in site built up my confidence. I can hold my head up high, knowing that even though I pooped my pants I can still be a classy, brave, respected woman, that is determined to teach a community about the environment!

     This past week all 12 environmental volunteers, our language teachers, our volunteer representative, our tech trainer, and our program director all piled into a slightly more than 15 person passenger van and headed into the mountains. 

Our driver, Justo, did an incredible job navigating around the slow trucks and gracefully avoiding moments where death seemed to flash before our eyes. We climbed the highest pass in the world at 15,800 feet and then descended only slightly to stay near the highest volunteer in the world’s site. The transition from desert to steep green mountain scenery was a much-needed change and almost provided enough adrenaline to overlook the freezing cold aspect. The trip had two purposes: one to do some field based training, and the other to drill our program director with questions about our future sites to see if we could get any information out of him. Officially we find out our sites on Tuesday but after a lunch of much gossip I found out that I’m going to the AMAZONAS!!!!! This means I’ll be in a cloud forest in the mountains, and apparently living in a town of 400 people, which seams like a dream!

            Anyways aside from the gossip we also taught in schools about different cultures and ecosystems around the world. A group of three of us taught 5^th graders about Africa including performing an engaging story that took way too long to translate into Spanish, and too many characters to take on with just three people. Upon arriving at the school I realized that I had forgotten my copy of the script at home thus adding to the overwhelmed frantic feeling that all of us were having about this skit. However we dove into it passing back and forth scripts and cardboard eye glasses to represent the narrator, and grabbing for our handmade masks that enabled us to leap into the characters we were trying to portray. My rendition of a crocodile that tries to eat the hunter brought laughter throughout the classroom, which the teacher for some unknown reason tried to hush up quickly. We made it through the skit somehow or another, and I was even able to create a Sub-Saharan ecosystem food web in Spanish with the students. 

            Throughout our week we drove on some of the windiest steepest one-lane roads that I have ever been on, as we descended into valleys where people are truly surviving off of the land. We ate traditional food from the area called Pachamanka, which is meat and potatoes cooked under ground with delicious flavoring. We even built stoves for families who had been relying on open fire to cook in their houses. These stoves felt like quite a feat using paper to measure out the brick spacing and a delicious combination of mud and rocks to seal them together. Our stove was the last to finish because when it came time to put on the chimney it became apparent that there was no hole in the roof for the chimney to go through. We were a team of 5 girls and the lack of hole in the ceiling seemed like too big of an issue for us. The father of the house came in to assess the problem and before I realized what was going on he was on top of this mud made cabinet with a dull knife in his hand stabbing holes into the metal roofing. We got a semi large enough hole and then had to tackle the problem of getting the chimney down the hole, which was on a very steep incline. My job was to hold the rickety ladder as the Jaime, the father of the household climbed up the side of the house. As soon as we began to hand him the chimney the physics of him reaching over to the hole and then trying to get the chimney upright was just not going to work. So we recalled the chimney and Jaime climbed down the ladder. We then went to the other side of the house and someone came running down the road with a rope in hand. This time Justo our driver got involved and we successfully tied two ropes around the chimney, hoisted it up into the air and somehow landed it right down into the hole. Inside we quickly slapped what was left of the rock/mud mixture on the chimney to stabilize it, and danced our way back to the van happy to have completed the project!

            It was an incredible opportunity to see some of Peru’s remote landscapes, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be able to live here for the next two years! Book your tickets to the Amazonas!!!!!

Stories from my Abuela

       It is a late afternoon tradition to greet my host grandmother when I get home from class. I enter at the bottom floor of the house to exchange hellos, attempt to understand what is going on in the television, but mostly we just smile at each other. One afternoon she had prepared soup for us so we were sitting at the table eating soup with large pieces of potato in it. We had run through all of our conversation topics so we were simply enjoying each others presence in silence. I focused in on eating my soup very slowly so that I wouldn't finish before her which would lead me to have sit there with nothing to distract myself with. So I started cutting my potatoes into small pieces. After about two minutes of this I looked up to see my grandmother laughing uncontrollable. Confused I gave her a look that begged for explanation. She then proceeded to mimic the clanging noise I am making with my spoon as I cut through the potatoes, which she finds this hilarious. We both laugh together at my musical meal and I spend the rest of the time focused on eating as silently as possible thus making any proceeding clang directly followed by bits of laughter.

            Later on that week I sign up for a cross fit class that is run by a fellow aspiring volunteer here. It is a partner cross fit session and the work out is written on the board, consisting of things like 100 push ups, 200 squats, 400 meters of carrying your partner back and forth in front of the training center. Needless to say it was way more intense than what I was prepared for, and we looked ridiculous to any passer by! But my partner and I took on the challenge and pushed ourselves further then probably what was healthy. Afterwards we took public transportation home instead of walking and I stumbled into the downstairs where my grandma is waiting. I fell into a chair and exhausted explained that I have just done way too much exercise and I can no longer walk. She finds this quite absurd and hilarious, and thus spends the next five minutes silently laughing to herself and sharing that fact that I can’t walk to everyone that comes into the house. Then she proceeds to offer me some juice but holds it out just far enough away from me that I have to get up to reach it. This is a struggle and I look like an old lady as I wobble over to get the cup of juice. Meanwhile my grandmother is dying of laughter on the couch as she watches the crazy gringa stumble around her house. It took three days for my body to recover from the workout!

        Today in the market she told all the vendors that I had been in Peru since I was a baby and that I was her niece making me feel pretty proud!

Increasing Language Skills

The View From My Roof (Where the dogs live)

I seem to have a reputation in my Spanish class to be the one that whenever called upon makes some sort of immediate reaction noise to the question, and then goes silent and stares at the teacher as if this is sufficient. While the reenactments of these moments are quite humorous they are also pretty accurate of what happens daily to me in Spanish. Perhaps the biggest example of this was during our hands on training activity where all twelve environment volunteers made a compost pile in the back of the training center. We were given proper instructions of how to layer the brown, greens, and poops in Spanish and then our Environmental Technical Trainer asked if anyone of us would like to facilitate the process. I jumped at the volunteer opportunity before realizing what it fully entailed, and even surprised myself by how enthusiastic I was to volunteer. Monica, the tech trainer, handed me the scale to weigh the bags and says ok Maddy I want this compost piles to be great. It is one thing to facilitate a bunch of kids to do what you want them to in a nurturing environment, but the prospect of facilitating a group of people my age, whom I am just getting to know and should probably make a good impression with was a bit daunting. I took a deep breath and declared ‘alright we need three groups of…’ Monica quickly interrupts me and with a giggle shakes her finger and says ‘no no no Maddy in Spanish!’ My stomach does a summersault, and I all too quickly realize I'm in way over my head. I proceed to make some sort of bawk and then just stare for a good few seconds. The next thirty minutes mostly consisted of sounds of distress and confusion pouring out of my mouth.  No matter how hard I tried every time I said ‘browns’ in Spanish it came out differently. I had to resort to smiles,  mis-conjugated verbs, a lot of pointing and jumping up and down to try to promote excitement for working.  We got the compost piles made, and people seemed to be in good spirits, but I was slightly embarrassed by the exposure of my language abilities.

Me and My Spanish Teacher

Why is it that every time I go to talk I come up with a total blank? For the most part I can understand what is being asked of me, but when I go for the answer I literally have no words, and I don’t think it is due to a lack of vocabulary. I thought about this for a while when my frustration overwhelmed me later after the compost struggles. I started to realize that when speaking in English I am the classic case of talking before thinking, and usually I can talk through my thoughts to form a sentence. However even in English I find myself creating the most unique and strange compilations of words,that I can often pass off as humor. Unfortunately this lack of forethought becomes extremely apparent when in another language. I am excited to respond to a question and prove that I understand, but my meandering streams of words just become fragmented sound effects in Spanish. I am having to teach myself to slow down and think, to form a sentence, conjugate the verbs in my head, and then say the sentence. This whole process seems very time consuming and forces me to be way more organized then my brain was designed for.  No longer is my language class a lesson on vocabulary and how to say the three goals of Peace Corps in Spanish, but its more about having patience with myself, taking deep breaths and trying to express myself clearly. My teacher very bluntly described my Spanish skills as having a lot of creativity but not advancing much, to which I responded with a short back of the throat cough/laugh and then a quiet stare of understanding. I can only hope that when my Spanish decides to advance it will not only be language skills that increases, but also a better awareness of how to clearly express myself to others. For now however, I still find great enjoyment with communicating in sound effects.

Our Water Storage Tank

Here are a few highlights of Pictures:

My Three Year Old Sister Ariana

Hard at Work Building a Tree Nusery

Our Tree Nusery

Our Environmental Sector Team

      We are two weeks deep in to training and I finally realized it was about time to tackle my laundry. During one of my daily talks with my host grandmother, who I always say hello to before going up to my room which is on the third floor. Most of the time the conversation consists of the greetings, one story from the day in which I prove that I can't really talk in past tense, and then a lot of staring at the table. But today I had an agenda, I was going to get her to teach me how to wash clothes by hand. She laughs with a her full toothless smile and leads me upstairs to the sink. With the bar of soap she shows me how to individually scrub each piece of clothing, easy enough. I smile an nod at our successful charades conversation and she goes back to cooking her classic chicken noodle soup downstairs. 

     Alright I can do this, just a bit of scrubbing here and there. I get all my clothes all soaped up when I realize the conversation did not cover the rinsing part of the directions. None the less my vocab is not adequate to go down and ask her so I improve this part, it later becomes apparent that my improving was weak as the following week I fell as though I am constantly wearing a good layer of soap, but thats besides the point!

    After they are semi-rinsed I walk up the stairs to the roofs. Roofs in Peru have several purposes:

1) To dry clothes

2) To keep you dogs

3) To keep extra building supplies

4) To keep your open fire cooking set up just in case. 

I have two small dogs on my roof who love to put up a good whine when I go up there as well as jump on my legs. At this time I found them good company and kind of cute. However two days later when I return to take down my laundry in the dark they are simply a tripping hazard, and then as I am grabbing my last smartwool sock off the line it drops to the ground. One of the dogs is hot to trot on it, snaps it up and runs off to a very dark corner, and I yap after it. All I hear is some moving of word, some digging, and then the dogs back with no sock in sight. I promptly take my laundry down to my room and come back equipped with a headlight. I walk back to the dark corner and find that this is not only where the dog hides its treasures but also where it poops and pees. I have no interest in digging through that pile of wood to find the sock, it was just going to be 1 point for the dog none for me.

     It is not until several days later that I go to put on my favorite pair of Yala leggings that I look down and see holes all around the ankles of the leggings, clearly the dog had had a grand old time playing with the hanging leggings. 2 points for the dog 0 for me. Fortunately two years back when I was a corps member at City Year Comcast gave us all travel sewing kits made just for situations like this! I wip it up and stitch up the leggings all the while thinking of ways to get revenge on those dogs as well as how to ask my grandma about the proper way of rinsing clothes!

    Dogs here are interrupting many parts of my life including my confident stride down streets, my ability to run or exercise, and my genuine like of dogs.  However they also provide some good entertainment particularly the infamous peruvian hairless dog, which are a thing, and yes are hairless. Today we walked behind a whole family who had just gotten new leashes for their dogs, and they were attempting to take their 5 small dogs out for a walk, the dogs were going crazy, needless to say it was a lot of dragging the dog on the leash than walking!

        On September 10^th 2013 I gave a tearful good bye to my family, and boarded the plane to Peru with a slight detour to Washington DC for what Peace Corps calls ‘staging’. Unfortunately the tears were not simply due to the departure from loved ones but also from the intense burning sensation that seemed to be lighting up what I shall refer as my wahoo area.  I quickly realized that a yeast infection was going to be the cherry on top of what was sure to be a tumultuous day. Much to the dismay of my aisle seatmate I got to become very familiar with the claustrophobic airplane bathrooms and the startling suction of the flush that may have taken away my pee but certainly did nothing to help the fiery pain in the wahoo. For the duration of the plane ride when I wasn’t crying I was peeing, which just lead to more tears of pain, needless to say it wasn't pleasant.

            Finally I landed in DC nearing midnight, grumpily lugged my stuff to a taxi, and made my way to the hotel. I opened up my room door to be greeted by a hug and a huge smile from my roommate. On a scale of one to excitement she was off the charts and my wahoo was not. I peed, wiped, held back screams, and went to bed dreading having to put on a show of meeting 55 people the next day when most of my mind was stuck up my wahoo.

            Staging consisted of listening to people talk about expectations and for me many painful trips to the bathroom while still smiling the whole time, knowing that these people were my future best friends, I had to make a good impression!  About half way through the staging event it became too much and I realized I should be a bit more proactive. We were going to get done after the pharmacies closed, and did I have any way of getting around so I started researching natural remedies on my phone. I was particularly intrigued by the three top picks (as I’m sure many of you know) garlic, plain yogurt, and tea tree oil.  It wasn’t until the diagrams on the wikihow page that I realized one did not simply eat copious amounts of these things but rather shoved them up the wahoo. It was in the depths of these diagrams that one of my future friends walked up behind me to presumably ask where I was from but upon glancing at my phone decided maybe he should go talk to someone else.

            That night Peace Corps was kind enough to a to arrange a shuttle to a nice part of town where we could treat ourselves to one last meal in DC. I walked as normally as possible onto that bus hoping it dropped us somewhere where I could find some sort of remedy. My dreams were answered by the natural foods store just one block down. I ducked out of the Peace Corps crowd murmuring something about snacks for the plane and headed straight for the yogurt shelf. The full of fat and delicious cultures plain yogurt trembled in my hand as I pulled it down from the refrigerator and through the checkout aisle. I placed it in my bag and met up with my future friends for a delicious last state side meal.

            It wasn’t until a couple hours later that I got back to the hotel to find my roommate chilling there. I made some small talk but mostly focused on hitting up the fancy toilet with my plain yogurt. I hadn’t even started my service and I found myself in an uncomfortable bathroom situation with lukewarm plain yogurt, and a burning wahoo. After much struggle in which most of the yogurt ended up being flushed down the toilet I clean the bathroom up a bit and emerged from the bathroom smelling of yogurt but with faith that this remedy would work!

            Two days later, after we arrived in Peru I had a one on one conversation with one of the Peace Corps doctors. I of course get placed with the one male doctor who I promptly inform that there is burning in my wahoo. Unfazed he tells me to buck up, for this is the Peace Corps and only the beginning!