Pictures!!

Thought I would share some photos from the recycled art projects we did this last week

Development Dynamics

          Back in February I attended a meeting with an NGO that has been building improved cookstoves in Peru for the last 10 years. Improved cookstoves are considered the best replacement for open fire cooking which is the traditional cooking method. They use less fuel, they have chimneys so the kitchen doesn’t fill with smoke, and they reduce the amount of respiration diseases significantly. This NGO was set up by an American and is based out of Lima. They provide the engineer to build the cookstove, as long as the family provides the bricks, ash, mud, and half a bag of cement. The idea being that if the family that is receiving the cookstove puts in work and a little money to build it, they will more likely take better care if and actually use the cookstove more. Along with the stove they also provide a hand washing station, a bucket to hold boiled water, and vegetable seeds to plant in a house garden. They came to Levanto 8 years ago and built a handful of cookstoves, which are now falling apart and so they are back, in full force promising a cookstove to just about everyone that wants one. The meeting in February was an initial interest meeting with the officials in town (me included!). This was back when I was desperate to go to any and every meeting that I was invited to, and show my face to as many people I could. I sat through the meeting smiling, and thinking how great an organization is here to build cookstoves, because everything I’ve heard from volunteers, is that while they are incredibly important and help families out tremendously, it is a beast of a project to take on. Getting materials to site, and funding to do them, often leads to one disaster after another, and its better to leave it to NGOs or governmental organizations with money and cars to come in and get it done.

Well four months flew by and before I knew it I was again being invited to another cookstove meeting with the NGO, which was this time open to the community.  The town nurse promised to go with me, and I left my host dad to make his own way to the meeting as I banged on the nurse’s door proud that I had a friend to go with. Embarrassingly as I was pounding away she was already at the meeting talking away with my host dad who had already made it ahead of me. About 20 women from the community showed up, along with some town officials, such as the president of the local security force, the town governor, and the vice mayor (who I thought was the actual mayor for the first four months of my service, but that’s besides the point).  The NGO’s representative talked through the program, the benefits, and the plan of action. They have the town elect 9 local representatives to visit the houses that are receiving that cookstoves to make sure that they are buying the bricks, and are ready for when the engineer comes to actually install it. The engineer stated that they prefer the representatives to be women, as they seem more committed to getting a cookstove into their houses, but anyone in the community will do. This is when he handed the floor over to the governor who has been the main representative for the project. The governor gave a few words of appreciation and then the important people at the meeting also gave some words of thanks. It took a while to go through everyone and conveniently my host dad slipped out of the room right, as it was his time to speak. I unfortunately was not so smooth and as the nurse finished up her statement fear rushed through me as I realized what this might entail. Much to my relief the governor cut in for me, and gave a very unexpected but flattering speech about how I have become part of the community, and this led him right into volunteering me to be the first representative of the cookstoves. I had no words so I nodded and smiled instead, and there it was I had some how gotten myself into a cookstove project. The other representatives were chosen in a very mysterious form, which included my host dad also becoming a representative, and me and the nurse ended up being the only two of three women volunteered for the position, but so it goes. That night at dinner my host dad went over his plans for the new cookstove. It was decided that we would put white plaster on the kitchen walls, and maybe go as far as designing our cookstove. I suggested that maybe a large painting of my face would look nice, but they seem to be going a different direction with the design. The NGO was also offering up prizes for the best painted cookstove and with some good effort we might potentially win.

            Up until now in my story all seems to be going smoothly. I’m impressed by the organization, and the fact that they make people contribute to their own cookstoves. This also happens to be the Peace Corps model of how to do cookstoves, perhaps an American way of development. However the very next day after the NGO meeting, a man and woman came cursing into town on their motorcycle. They are dressed in official vests, which in Peru means business. I forgot to mention as part of being a representative for the NGO we all received a fancy black shoulder bag, a professional vest with the NGOs name all over it, and a hat which also promotes the NGO. Not gonna lie it was one of the main attractions to being a representative. Anyways in come these two young professionals (a rare site in my town) with ‘Cocinas Peru’ advertised on their fancy work vests. Turns out Cocinas Peru is a national government program that comes into rural towns and builds cookstoves. They sign up as many people as they have money for, go in the very next day providing all the materials, build them right then and there, shake the hands of town officials and get out of there. They are smooth, quick, and well funded. The other main difference was that the national government was providing clay bricks, which were more expensive and durable than mud bricks, which were the type of bricks most families would buy if they had to provide the bricks for the project

            News spread quickly of the two competing programs in town. The NGO tried to make it clear that they were not competing with any program; their goal was to get as many people as possible a cookstove with the only rule being no one family could have two cookstoves. Town gossip was on fire! Sitting one day in the municipality working on the computer I witnessed three women come in huffing and puffing about who was getting what cookstove, and how the government program was providing everything for free, where as the NGO you had to buy your own bricks. They complained that the people getting the free cookstoves did not deserve them, and it was the secretary’s fault for all of this. The governor was also to blame for the injustice, and they proclaimed that he should not have allowed two programs to enter at once.  This became focus of everyone’s conversations as some tried to defend the NGO pointing out it provided seeds, hand washing stations, and prizes where as the national government just provided a cookstove and one cooking pot.

The next evening my host dad was running his hands over our old falling apart cookstove in a pensive manner as my host mom prepared dinner, and I sat on the small bank trying to warm myself by the heat of the stove. Interrupting the silence he proclaimed that the next day he was going to enroll in the national government program. He said that another town over did not want the national government’s cookstoves, and thus they had more to give out then they originally thought, and they provided everything for free you can’t argue with that. Forgetting about any excitement in design it became clear that he could get his cookstove quicker with the national government. I pointed out that he still had to represent the NGO. He recognized this, he would just have to sell the NGOs cookstoves, while he was rocking the government cookstove in his own house. I’m not sure how I am going to handle a situation where a family is complaining about having to lay down their hard owned bricks, while the neighbors next door got their whole cookstove plus a cooking pot provided for free and installed in one morning. Perhaps the governor shouldn’t have allowed two organizations in at once, but at the end of the day anyone that wants an improved cookstove is going to get one, they just may never speak to their neighbor or governor again. A competition a do gooders, is certainly mixing up the pot and making enemies in towns across Peru. 

A Theatre Performance of Sorts

            When the school director handed me a list of names of 16 students from grades 3^rd-6^th with an official stamp of approval at the bottom I felt on top of the world. I had successfully navigated the system and figured out how to get my own recognized group of students to start an environmental club.  I danced around the kitchen table showing off my list to my host mom, and for the next few weeks I was no longer the gringa in her room with no work to do.  However it was one thing to successfully get an official list; it was a whole other issue to figure out what to do with the kids. The first two classes we played games that semi related to the environment, and we made a leaf tree of our strengths, but I was itching to do something bigger. As I skimmed through our environment education related resources I came across a play that one of the volunteers had done four years ago. I had assisted in the production of a play two years ago when I was working in Moab, and I grew up in Ashland, so I figured that I was equipped with all the skills one would ever need to get 16 students to memorize lines, create costumes, and direct how to put passion into lines.

            That week I handed out scripts and assigned roles feeling that theatre director power coming over me, making executive decisions on the spot, and surprised by my own confidence behind how to put on a successful play.  We went outside and formed a circle that quickly melted under the sun, and we attempted to do a first read through. The students seemed to be engaged and excited, but the concept of following along and listening to what their classmate was reading was far beyond them. We made it about halfway through the play before their attention span had transformed into picking fights with the people beside them or sitting on the ground searching for snails. Executive decision made I herded them back into the classroom and made them draw pictures of what they thought their character looked like, and ideas for how we could make their costume out of recycled materials. This activity was met with very mixed reviews, many being too intimidated to draw something from their imagination that they just shut down. I was receiving the first rebellion to my hierarchy and I was not quite sure how to handle it.  Desperately I looked for pictures of the jungle animals they were supposed to portray, and allowed them to write out a description rather than draw it. We also faced the issue of not knowing what some of the animals in the play were, as they were not found in this area. So I allowed those students to pick whatever animal they wanted to be. It turned out later after some research those that we did not know were actually a name of an indigenous group, but the students were set on being animals so there was no going back.

            The plot of the play was essentially a farmer arrives in the jungle and asks some tribes people who the owner of the land is. The tribe’s people proclaim that nobody is the owner of the jungle and they all take care of the jungle together. This does not please the farmer so he kills the tribe’s people and proclaims that he is now the owner. With his new land he builds a factory of some sort and contaminates the water, which kills the fish. He then skins the crocodile for profit, and cuts down all the trees to build a farm. He does all this with the help of an engineer who gets fatter and fatter throughout the play as the farmer pays him for his work.  Finally the farmer destroys the natural landscape and becomes sad that he cannot repair what he’s done, so he kills himself.  The engineer is upset by this because there is no longer anyone left to pay him except, as the trash assures him, he will always have the trash for company. It ends with all the plants and animals that had been killed by the farmer’s actions coming back on stage and saying why it is important to protect our environment. It may not be the happiest play but it did have an environmental message so I went with it.

            The next week I attended a community-planning meeting for the town festival. This meeting went well past midnight, and was extremely painful to sit through, as most meetings are.  What did come out of it for me was 1) there were going to be shirts for a participants who ran in the mini-marathon during the fiesta, and 2) there was an arts performance part of the program that I could potentially present my play at. This meant I had three weeks to get my students in gear, rehearsed, and ready. Not to mention that one of those weeks I would be out of town picking up my mom and family friend from the airport.  Nonetheless the next day I once again received an official document. This time it was an invitation to participate in the art performance program at 7:00pm on Thursday night in the outdoor cement sports camp. I felt I was finally really being accepted as part of the community.  

Before I knew it I was overcome by the stress and pressure of being a director, and decided that I would make my group meet just about everyday for the next two weeks. I would gather as many of them that showed up on the town’s plaza and we practiced their lines in divided chunks. It turned out getting them to learn the lines was the easiest part. They proudly took their scripts home and memorized them all on their own that is all except for the lead character. I had decided to put the most disobedient student of mine as the lead role hoping that the responsibility would make him step up and preform. Turns out he resisted this attention the whole time, but never wanted to say that he didn’t want to be the part. So I continued to push him to do it, and he continued to resist by being too cool to memorize his lines.

            We went door-to-door collecting cardboard boxes, which we cut apart to lay flat. We then bought packaging tape and aggressively taped the cardboard into large panels to which we could paint the scenery. The idea of theatre was so foreign to these kids that the vocabulary of set design, script, props was lost on them as much as the words in Spanish were lost on me. My inability to express exactly what I wanted turned me into even more of a tyrant but once they saw the products of my ideas the respect grew.  They were even more excited to make their own costumes. We cut wings, tails, ears, and more out of cardboard, and went through many paint sets to bring the dull cardboard to life. Kids brought in potato sacks to decorate with trash and cut arm and head holes out of in order to represent the talking trash. Once the ideas were out there the creativity kept on rolling and soon we were so engulfed in the creating of costumes and sets that we forgot to actually practice the play. I rarely had all 16 students together practicing so we rehearsed in choppy parts but I had faith that when it was the actually event the pressure of performance would be enough for them to pull it off.

            After frivolously working all Sunday with a handful of students I came home with two large scenery pieces, and a tall cardboard tree. The cardboard was flimsy and heavy. I explained to my host mom that yes while they were very pretty they were quickly falling apart at the spots that they cardboard was taped together and I had no clue how we were going to get them to be free standing.  My host mom dove full force into the task and came up with a most brilliant solution. She pulled down three bamboo poles from our roof storage and for the rest of the afternoon we measured, sawed, and sewed on support poles that would reinforce the cardboard, as well as provide places that my backstage crew could hold up throughout the play. At that time I did not have a back stage crew, but I could picture them, all dressed in black, running around with walkie-talkies.

            All too quickly I had to leave to pick up my mom and family friend from the airport, leaving the project on pause until I came back. To the students that still didn’t have costumes I gave them direct instructions to make their costume at home in the time that I was gone. That afternoon as I was waiting for the car to take me to town the mom of one of the my students hollered for me out my window. She was holding up a gold fabric and asked if this would do for a lion’s outfit. Amazed that in such a short amount of time she had found fabric and was asking for my approval. I quickly assured her that that was beyond what I had expected and I was very impressed. We talked for a while out my window, involving the other neighbors about how she could sew this lion’s costume, and I realized I should have given this task to the mother’s a long time ago.

            The car arrived and that was that; I assured everyone I would be back at least a day before the performance and hopefully it would all work out. Keeping in mind that by this point we had still not fully run through the whole play once, as this was too much to ask for the attention span of my students. Picking up my mom and family friend from the airport and traveling around the jungle was amazing but slightly tainted by the taste of a play director’s stress, as I worried if I could really pull off a play. On Wednesday we made it back to my regional capital and I left my visitors on their own for that day as I went back up to my town to frantically try and organize a play rehearsal with everyone for the next day. I left a pile of announcements on the school maintenance woman’s desk as she assured me she would deliver it to ever student on my list. It was in her hands, as I rushed back down to town to enjoy a delicious steak dinner with my guests.

            Our taxi the next day did not quite make it up the hill fast enough, as I arrived late to my own dress rehearsal. Unbelievably all of my students were there, except for the lead. I pushed through with a smile, demanding one student to go and find him, as we went down to the cement court to practice. The students showed me the costumes they had come up with which were very impressive, and we once again choppily practiced with my reading the main leads part. Finally our hero showed up with a look on his face that proclaimed there was no way he was going to do this play that night.  As he hid behind a pole I pulled out my final speech that said I know we can do it. We either do it now, or in a month, but we will perform this play together the decision is in your hands. My students rallied to get it done this night, and I got a half agreement from the lead role to go ahead. By then the kids were spent and didn’t want to practice anymore. So we left once again with the reality that we had still not yet practiced the play through. It was walking away from the dress rehearsal that it dawned on me that the logistics of doing a play at an outdoor arena were very tricky, and we needed microphones. In all honesty with this reality I didn’t believe we could really pull this off.

            I rushed back home and put my mom and family friend to work completing the last few costumes that were left. We painted wings red, and cut out spikes for a crocodiles tail, and before I knew it the day turned to night. The knot at the pit of my stomach was ever growing and I just wanted the night to be over. At 7:00 I walked down to the arena to see what the actually start time would be. It was clear that it was no time soon so I hung around trying to confirm that I would get microphones for the performance. Finally one of the teachers showed me two mics and promised a cordless one as well, calming my nerves slightly. I gathered a few kids to help me bring down the scenery sets from my room and we paraded them down with many eyes following us. It wasn’t until 15 minutes before the show was supposed to start that my lead performers teacher called me over and asked if I really thought the student would do the play, seeing as all afternoon he had been telling the teacher that he wouldn’t. I gave him a hopeless look and said I sure hope so! I kicked myself for trying to give this student more responsibility, and should have gone with the handful of other children that really wanted to be in the play, but it was too late now.

            At 8:00pm the set up crew went off to have dinner and I realized we wouldn’t start for another hour so I followed suit and went back home to eat as well. At 9:00pm I headed back down and ran into my lead role in the street. To my surprise he clearly had farmer’s clothes on at which I aggressively embraced him overly excited that it appeared he was actually going to pull through. I encouraged him and showed him the pistol we had made out of cardboard, this seemed to please him, but he still proclaimed that he was not going to do it, and he didn’t know any of his lines. This I told him I knew wasn’t true, and it would be over before he knew it.  Despite my official invitation our number was not on the list, so I begged to be put up towards the front so we could get it over with quickly. Squeezing our way into eighth I went to sit down with my family waiting for the program to start.

There were many parts I was anxious about, not knowing how they were going to play out. I knew it would take us a while to change into our costumes before our number and thankfully they announced that we would be next a little early. I jumped out of my seat, walked determinedly for our set designs and started to get students dressed. Every other line I spoke was WHERE IS THE TAPE as we had to tape many of them into their costumes. The number before came to an end and we were still not ready. I did not have my backstage workers in black so I begged two kids on the sideline to help us out. Ears were falling off of heads, and wings were becoming unstuck. The nurse came over to offer help, and I gratefully put her to work, but it was not my pretty moment, of flustered stressed Spanish to try and explain a job to do. Just as we were as ready as we were every going to be I look around to find the lead role, walking away giving up on the event. I grabbed his arm, gave him his bag of props, and told him he could do it. We walked out on the court to the news that there was no cordless microphone, and we needed to go way up to be right in front of the audience.  At this news I realized there was no way the audience was going to hear any of what was being said. The whole town was out to watch, and they were not going to be able to hear a word of my message.

So it went down, we were all there in beautiful outfits, and sceneries of the jungle. I pushed, screamed, and encouraged the students as we tried to make it through our first every full run through of the play. They were lost as to when to come out, but I screamed to them their lines, and they did what they could. Our lead role disappeared midway through the play, but at my demand he came back and finished it out. It was chaos, and went unheard but they looked lovely doing it! Finally we struggled to the end in which we shouted out a big thank you. Slightly embarrassed at the failure I herded the kids off, and congratulated them on all the effort they put into it.  For lacking a microphone and never having practiced the whole thing through they did an incredible job. It was my first official project on display in front of the community and I was glad to have at least shown that I had been working on something. I’m definitely not cut out for a director role; I like to hand that off to others. Through this it became very clear that if I had had more community members helping me out, most of the challenges could have been overcome a lot more easily. I walked away that night feeling a mix of emotions, disappointed at the lack microphone but proud that my students had gotten up there and done a theatre piece, something they had never been exposed to before in their lives.  This week I am baking them a cake, we will have a celebratory party and go back to playing environmentally themed games.

Chickens

Monthly photo theme is back!

A Competitive Edge Follow Up

         Please excuse the silence since my last post, but it turns out June is a popping month for my small town. My mother and good family friend came to visit for our town festival as per everyone’s request. Turns out the municipality knows how to fund a good celebration for our Saint Pedro. The most exciting part for me was when our town mayor came rolling up beside me on his motorcycle and requested that I play soccer with the other women on Wednesday night. I over enthusiastically agreed, and he said he would find me a jersey. Thrilled I shared my good news with host mom that I had gotten a special request from the town mayor to play soccer which seemed was much more exciting to me than to her. 

            It turned out that Wednesday was chocked full of sports game, with the high school team playing a town over, and the adult team playing the hospital from Chachapoyas. We, the three gringos in town, cheered the teams on while sipping on locally made yogurt and trying to make ourselves blend in as much as possible. As the sun went down we decide to head back up for more warm clothes, just about sportsed out from the day. It seemed unclear what time the women would get to take the field as night time was quickly approaching, so I tried to play it cool concluding that there was not enough organization for a women’s game after all. Half way back to my house we looked back to see that in fact there was a team of women playing on a side field all dressed in traditional skirts and sandals made out of old car tires. We were all too cold to go back and see if I could get in on the action, so slightly dejected we headed the rest of the way to my house.  I still had a little hope that the women’s game would still go on, seeing as the mayor did say he would get me a jersey and the women were clearly not playing in official soccer jerseys.

After piling on sufficient layers to be outside for the night we headed back down to the fields, where we were fighting foot traffic the whole way. It was clear that the sports had finished up on the main field and people were heading back up. Not wanting to look like the white people who lost their way we pushed on through the crowd until we ran into my neighbors, and they confronted us as to where we could be going seeing as all the action was long gone from the soccer field. Not leaving time for my to awkwardly respond, my neighbor insisted that we must come with them up to the cement fields with lights to watch the women play soccer, which they assured was sure to be entertaining. Rejuvenated with hope that I still might play we stopped fighting the current, and joined the crowd walking up to the upper courts.  We took our seats on the cement stairs and it quickly became apparent that the women were still dressed in their tradition pink skirts, with white tops, and tire sandals. This was not the attire I had come in, nor did I own anything like it. Once again disheartened, I complained to the ref that I wanted to play to, but he looked at me and said ‘you can’t play in what you are wearing’. The mayor had not given me clear instructions for this soccer match, and I sat back and watched, yearning to be able to show off my soccer skills to the town.

As the match came to an end I vowed to find the correct attire for next year, and reassured myself that there was always next year. We went back up to the house to eat soup with my host family and make plans for the next day in which all of the town’s baptisms and weddings would take place in the church. My host aunt was getting married, and their baby son was getting baptized so it was sure to be a day filled with church and food. After dinner my host mom asked if I was going to go back out to watch more sports. Surprised that there was more planned for that night, I pushed the thought of bed out of mine and decided to head back out. Maybe after all the women would still play that night. My mom and our family friend decided they had had enough for the day headed to bed and I went out with my host family to see the action. We strolled back down to the cement courts where the lights were a glow but only a few kids were playing. It didn’t seem like much more was going to happen so we headed up to the church to listen in on the night’s mass. The church was packed full and the electric piano was putting out some lively music. However it was not loud enough to cover up the ring of my host mom’s cell phone twenty minutes into the service. Turned out that they were looking for me to play soccer. We jumped up from the pews in a moment of hallelujah and ran down to the courts, as it appeared they were waiting for me.

The adrenaline rushed threw my body, for it seemed I was actually going to get to play soccer. The municipality secretary called me over, and it became clear that I would be playing for the municipality team. Each neighborhood in town, as well as the municipality (with women I had never seen before) all had their own teams. Our rush to get there turned out to be a classic hurry up and wait moment in Peru as they were still trying to locate our jerseys. But after only twenty minutes of anticipation I found myself in an official Levanto Municipality dark blue jersey ready to take on a neighborhood team.  The whistle blew and we took off as the crowd grew and the school director announced the whole game. Well it took a short few minutes to prove my skills to the women as I put the ball into the back of the net. The school director only boosted my confidence as he announced my every move to the crowd and told the other team that I should be better marked. It was quite thrilling to finally be playing soccer, a sport that I had confidence in, and love. The two twenty minute halves went by in a blur, as we won 4-1 and I felt on top of the world. At the end of the match as we were walking off the court, one of the women on my team came up to me and pointed out that while I did get 4 goals I also missed 4 opportunities, and that shouldn’t happen in the next game. I laughed thinking she must be slightly joking, but it was clear from the look in her eyes that she meant business and we better win the tournament.

Two other neighborhoods took the court as we sat down and watched to see which team we would play for the championship game. By then it was 10:30pm and it was clear we would be playing at least until midnight, much later than my normal bedtime.  The Amazonas neighborhood came out ahead in the second match (which is the neighborhood that I live in) and soon enough we were taking the court again. The town mayor gave us a pep talk essentially telling me that whenever I had the ball to just shoot for the goal. Well this team had figured out our strength and put three girls out just to mark me; shutting me down enough to only allow me to have one goal in the first half.  I politely asked the three girls guarding me if they would mind just leaving me be so I could play, to which they laughed and gave me a hug, thus stepping even closer to me. In the second half we got two handballs within our box, giving them two penalty kicks, and thus winning the game. While disappointed I could finally see the perspective of my host mom, even though we lost, the game was incredibly fun, I proved myself to the town, and I was elated with energy that made it impossible to fall asleep that night. So yes I suppose it is quite possible to lose, be very competitive, and still proclaim that it was great game of soccer.