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!