Longest run without technology...almost a month. This blog entry is a culmination of what I've been dealing with trying to get work done in site. Enjoy!
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Sometime end of August:
I always try to keep it positive, but sometimes there is
only so much patience a person can have before feeling angry, frustrated,
unwanted, unneeded, and utterly useless.
Scenario 1:
I’m sitting on a combi heading back to site after an amazing
trip to the Amazon. I am reminiscing
about the beauty of the jungle while contemplating the immensity of the
white-capped mountains that stand before me.
This country is amazing in its geographic diversity. I think to myself, “What a gem Peru is.” But the people don’t know it.
I watch the woman in the seat in front of me trying to open
her window. When she can’t, she flags
down the cobrador (the person in
charge of collecting the fare). He takes
from her a plastic bag filled with the remnants of her lunch on a styrofoam
tray. I watch in horror as he chucks it
out the window. There is no reaction
from any passengers. This is normal for
them. As the mountain gods loom down
from above, I can only wonder if they are just as appalled as I am about the
disrespect the people have for the environment.
Scenario 2:
Ahh, back in my community at last, where I feel I can make a
real difference. Here, I feel I have
some sort of authority to teach people not to litter, unlike the random combi passenger
who would have looked at me like I had six heads if I had scolded her about
throwing trash out the window.
I have returned from the jungle with a heinous flu, but I
drag myself out of bed to look for a community member to bring to a Peace Corps
workshop on Eco-Tourism and Reforestation.
This is an all-inclusive trip to another department in Peru. Most people cannot afford to travel and have
never left their region, so any opportunity to attend a paid-for event is
jumped on in a heartbeat. I start off by
seeking out the president of the tourist association that I work with. My town hosts thousands of tourists that come
through every year to trek through the Cordillera Blanca region of the Andes Mountains. They hire the services of the association
members as cooks, guides, and donkey drivers to carry their gear. The president of this association is also my
community counterpart, the person that is supposed to show me around the
community, tell me when important meetings are, and help coordinate meetings of
my own. I find out that he has been
fired as president for allowing an employee to work even though said employee
was prohibited from working due to his stealing a donkey. Ahh yes, of course. One should never permit a donkey-stealer to
work.
I am directed to the vice-president who is now acting as
president. I track him down in his house
after asking 15 people where he lives, then invite him to the conference. He says he cannot attend but will spread the
word and find someone to go with me.
Great! I give him a day then
track him down again. He tells me he has
found an associate, let’s call him Carlos, and I am happy because I know him to
be a leader in the community and active in both the tourist association and the
tree nursery. I begin my search for him,
asking another 15 people where his house is.
Carlos isn’t home, but his wife is.
She knows nothing about the conference.
Weird. Wouldn’t a husband tell
his wife that he is leaving for a week?
So I leave a note expressing the importance of finding me as soon as
possible so I can purchase the bus tickets.
At this point, the meeting is 4 days away. I walk away feeling relieved I have found a
responsible community member to accompany me to the conference. As I approach my house, who do I bump into
but Carlos himself? I tell him that I’m
happy he will be attending the conference.
He quickly tells me that he can’t.
He has several meetings that he must attend. Seriously?
Every meeting in this town either starts 4 hours late or never happens
at all. Was this man really giving up a
free trip for meetings that will probably never happen? Fine.
I tell him to spread the word that I’m looking for someone to attend a
free workshop.
The next day I begin my search again. I leave notes at people’s houses, I find them
in their fields, and enlist the help of my counterpart’s son, let’s call him
Mario, to explain in Quechua the importance of this workshop. This goes on for days, until the day before
the conference I have no leads.
I was trying to stay in good spirits, knowing that something
would work out. But it all came to a
head when I inquired about WHY people didn’t want to come with me. Was it because I’m a woman? Do the people feel uncomfortable around
me? Do they have other more pressing
items to attend to? Can’t leave their
families for a week? I asked Mario to
translate what was being said in Quechua as people were declining my offer over
and over again. I was feeling like my
self-esteem was taking a beating. I
couldn’t even pay anyone to come with me.
Mario said the reason was because it was a “pérdida de tiempo” and “no
gana nada.”
In other words, they believe that 1. It is a waste of time &
2. They are not going to gain anything. Wonderful. So the community that I’m living in, and
supposed to be working with for two years, thinks my organization and me—being
an extension of my organization—is a waste of time. Furthermore, the literal translation of
“ganar” to gain refers not only to
earning of income, but also means gaining of knowledge, experience, and
training. There is no value in education
here. I don’t know if it’s just my town,
the sierra, or all of Peru. But the intensity at which it exists is
frightening.
I ended up bringing Mario with me, who is active in the
community tree nursery, and agreed to go with me a few hours before I had to
leave for the conference. Although the
conference turned out to be super-informative and pertinent to my work in the
community, I can’t help but have a bitter taste in my mouth for the apathy of its
citizens.
Scenario 3:
I ordered a table from my site-mate’s host father, who is a
carpenter. Although I could have easily purchased
a table from the market, I figured I would support the local community and give
business to the family who my friend lives with. He charged me 50 soles, but I only had 20’s,
so I gave him S/. 60 and told him to keep the 10 sol change. Maybe my friend would get a few more veggies
in her diet, and I’d get my table done faster with a 10 sol tip. Additionally, I live in a very small room with
limited space, so knowing that I could place a custom order for a
smaller-than-usual-table made me sure of my decision. One month went by with no sign of the table
being ready. The motor broke. Month two. There’s no wood. Month three, then four, then five, all with a
plethora of excuses. Six months later,
my table is done. I check it out and it
is 15 centimeters wider than ordered. It
will certainly not fit through my door and will take up half my room. Oh well, at least it’s done. He tells me he will send it down in a car
tomorrow. Although we are having our
regional meeting the next day, I tell him I will skip the meeting to wait for
the table. [This was 2 days before the
conference, and I was also still looking for someone to take with me.]
The next day comes and goes.
I walk in the dark up to my friend’s site which is the only place for
miles that has cell phone reception. [I
left this part out of scenario 2—the whole crying and upset about the
conference thing. So I was calling my
boss to tell him I had no one to bring with me.] On my way back home, I see a taxi driver that
knows me. I asked him to bring the table
down. He said he was done for the night,
but would bring it first thing in the morning.
I’m sure everyone reading this can guess that that never happened.
I go to the conference and am not surprised that the table hasn’t arrived in my week-long
absence. I see the taxi driver, and he
is very apologetic about forgetting my table.
He will bring it tomorrow.
Sure. Tomorrow arrives and I am
once again in my friend’s site. Her host
dad says he tried to send it down in a car, but there have been no cars. Liar.
I spend the afternoon running outside every time I hear a car go by. Five taxi drivers give me various reasons why
they can’t drive the table 5 minutes to my house that is along the main route
to anywhere. I am offering well above
the normal fare to carry my table.
Finally the sixth driver says he will bring it down if I find rope to
tie it down. I find it hard to believe
he doesn’t have rope. I have seen
mattresses, bags of rice and produce, chickens, doors, and children tied to the
roofs of taxis. Whatever. I ran inside to find a rope, tripping over a
chicken tied to a stake. (I almost took
that rope, but it was too short and skinny.
Plus there was a chicken tied to it.)
Within 30 seconds, I hear the car drive away. I run outside and stand there
open-mouthed. Once again, I find myself
in disbelief at the frustrations in my life, and am desperately searching for
reasons why I am putting myself through this.
Humble Beginnings
September 1, 2009
Since the last entry, the frustrating circumstances of
my life are taking baby steps in the right direction.
~I am finally over the flu/sinus infection, head-cold, and
raging headaches.
~The table arrived one morning while I was eating breakfast
and had completely given up on ever receiving it. It did not fit through the door as
anticipated, but my host parents swapped it out for their smaller kitchen
table. With my books and paperwork
organized for the first time in 10 months, I feel like a normal person again.
~One of the men who couldn’t come with me to the PC
conference bumped into me and asked me to come to a 6am meeting. Okay.
I am here for the community even though you are not here for me or my
organization. Even though my program is
Environmental Education and you are asking me to attend a meeting about
building a health post. Yes, I’ll be
there. At 6:05am, I was the ONLY one
there. Surprise, Surprise. I sit and wait in the cold and without
breakfast, but am in much better spirits since ditching the flu. By 7am, there is a small crowd of 15
people. I end up writing up the official
minutes for the meeting, and I feel important and wanted in my community (two
things I have felt have been missing for quite some time—see previous blog
entry.) People were thanking me for
being there, and as I walked home, I realized just how many people know my name
and wanted to know where I was going so early in the morning, and what I was
doing later, and will I be at the afternoon’s soccer game? Which leads to…
~I played soccer for the first time today in over 10
years. High altitude soccer. Even though I trained for the marathon at
altitude, it’s nothing compared to sprinting after a ball for 2 hours. We played men versus women. Luckily we had one guy on our team and he was
really good, yelling instructions at the girls and giving tons of positive
reinforcement. We won 6-2, even though
the men were much more skilled and one of the women scored a goal on
ourselves. (No, it wasn’t me, but I
wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been.)
The women are real cute, playing in their traditional skirts. The woman with the baby on her back wasn’t
there today, but in previous games, she’d run around with her baby bouncing
around in the blanket tied to her back.
It’s amazing how much weight one can carry with a blanket tied around
your back. Speaking of which…
~I carried huge bags of compost on my back, from my site-mate’s tree nursery, to my community tree nursery. I had to do it in four trips. Each one must have been 50 pounds. I am beginning my mission of re-introducing
native tree species to the Andes
mountains. I spent hours over the course
of several days filling little baggies with the soil mixture I prepared with
the compost I hauled. Next, I will soak
the seeds to get them germinating, and hopefully get them growing and in the
ground by December. Although I started
the task solo, a little helper came to investigate what I was doing and ended
up helping me to not only fill the baggies, but sift the dirt to remove the
rocks. When we had finished with our
pile of dirt, she ran to the pile to sift more.
I kept trying to explain that we were done, but she wanted to keep
going. Background information on this
little girl: I think she’s my host mom’s
little sister. She doesn’t go to school,
and therefore never really learned Spanish.
I once asked her why she didn’t go to school, and her cousin told me she
has “brain problems,” so she stays home and takes care of the animals, whatever
that means. When I arrived in Cashapampa
in December, she was my least favorite person.
Now I’m starting to think she has a developmental disability. Although I have extensive experience in this
field, there was something about her lack of respect for people’s space that
really got to me. For instance, one day
I was outside reading a book. She
thought it funny to throw dirt at me. I
told her that if she continued, I would go inside. Then she splashed water on me. I went inside and thought she was a lost
cause, since I couldn’t even communicate with her. Now, 10 months later, she screams my name and
giggles and runs around in excitement when she sees me. And today, she was the first person to help
me in stage one of reforesting the community. She was rattling away in Quechua
and smiling at me, asking if she could take pictures of our progress.
~And there you have it.
In one day—I participated in a community meeting, worked in the tree
nursery, received surprise help from an unlikely source, played soccer on the
winning team, ate three square meals, prepared a lesson for my first class to
be held next week, and played with my bunnies.
Oh yeah, my host parents bought me pet bunnies for my birthday.
They thought I needed something to take care of, since I don't have children.
September 3, 2009
Yesterday was Wednesday. Wednesdays I go to the school to help a high
school teacher with her English class.
What this “help” actually translates to is her disappearance while I
teach her class for an hour and a half, without having the actual authority or
language skills to make her students pay attention to me. This also has to do with the course material,
which is dense and boring and way over the heads of these kids. It’s not their fault their teacher can’t
speak English. It’s the school
system. Why have English as part of the
national curriculum if there are no teachers to teach it? Part of me is tempted to just take over
completely. One Wednesday a few months
ago, the teacher didn’t show up. The
school director told me to teach the class.
I began by asking what they already knew and what they wanted to
learn. We settled on colors. After a lesson on colors, we played a
game. The class was divided in half into
two teams. One player had to come up
from each team and write the color in English that I yelled out in
Spanish. There was an English word bank
they could refer to, but they had to be quick and write the word faster than
their opponent. When I returned the next
week, I brought cookies for the winning team.
We played this game another time with fruits and vegetables. That time, I yelled out the food in English
and they had to draw it. They really got
a kick out of “peach” because the word for pee in Quechua is “pichi.”
After an almost two-month absence
from school (because of the holidays & class cancellations due to the swine
flu scare), I returned to school yesterday.
I taught the class while the teacher disappeared for an hour and a
half. Afterwards, as I was trying to
track down the director to tell him about the ECO-Club I’m starting, I was
asked to sign a document stating I would attend the teacher’s meeting at 12pm
that day. I thought it would be a great
opportunity to spread the word about the ECO-Club, so I returned at 12pm. The elementary school teachers that I needed
to talk to weren’t there, so I didn’t get a chance to talk about the club. I did, however, volunteer for the “Caldo de
Cabeza” committee. You will realize that “Head Soup” is my least
favorite food in the world. And I’ve
eaten huge fried ants, fish heads, and chicken feet. How this volunteerism occurred is a long
story, but has a lot to do with the lack of participation by the teachers. The meeting was to plan the logistics of next
week’s school Anniversary.
The meeting went something like
this:
The school director was finishing
up a meeting with the equivalent of the Parent/Teacher Association. Except instead of it being Parents & Teachers,
it is just the Parents. The parents were
yelling at the director, presumably after spending the morning fixing up the
school in a mandatory work day, or face a fine.
These people are poor. The
majority showed up to haul rocks and cement walls, to avoid the fine they can’t
afford to pay. They must be getting
hungry, so they start to trickle away by 12:30pm. The director tells the teachers, who have
been congregating in the courtyard, to enter the room to start the
meeting. Twenty minutes later, 12 of the
23 teachers are inside. Another 10
minutes of shuffling papers and piddling around, and the director begins the
meeting in record time. Only one hour
behind schedule. That is amazing. They start going over the food, budget, and
necessary committees. Who’s going to buy
the food, what are the ingredients, how much food is needed, who will prepare
the food, who will serve the food, etc.
Out of the 12 teachers who
actually showed up, no one wants to sign up for any of the committees. This is painful to be a part of. One teacher brings up an obvious point: That
only 12 out of the 23 teachers are signing up.
Yes! Someone understands! I make a suggestion. I say that where I come from, if we are
forming committees, we make lists of the committees and leave open slots for
each committee. Ideally, there would be
23 tasks divided into however many committees there are. This way, everyone has to sign up for
something, whether you’re at the meeting or not. This also rewards the people who are present,
because they get first dibs on the committees they want to be on.
This advice falls on deaf
ears. The director tells me they have a
list. They are writing down the names as
people volunteer themselves to a task.
He’s not getting it. No one’s volunteering,
and on top of that, they keep coming up with new committees. One week before this huge event, and they
don’t even know how many people they need for each committee, because they
don’t even know how many committees are needed.
Somewhere in the confusion of the meeting, I volunteer to “support” the
cooking team. I end up being the only
one on the committee. I say that I will
not cook head soup alone because I am not from Peru and don’t know how to cook
it. I repeat that I will help, but not do it alone. After much discussion, and teachers volunteer
each other rather than themselves, and there are 4 more people, including men
who I’m SURE do not know how to cook. They
are arguing, because someone else volunteered them, and the director suggests
the men enlist the help of their wives to come in and cook. My god, is this really happening?
This goes on for 3 hours. They keep adding tasks such as, “Oh, what
about prizes for the winning soccer team?”
“Oh hey, we forgot about food for the band.” And my favorite… “Hey, do we have a
band?”
I leave the meeting in a
stupor. I got two different answers
about when I need to be there to cook the soup.
As we are walking up the steep, rocky footpath towards the main road, I
ask about how they will collect the vast amounts of trash produced by the
disposable plates, cups, and cutlery.
They ask me what I mean by collect it.
You know—Haul it away, take it to the main road, carry the cylinders up
the hill. By donkey? They laugh.
Haha, a donkey. Why is this a
difficult question? I re-phrase the
question. WHAT do you do with the trash
collected in the schools’ cylinders? The
answer: We burn it.
As an Environmental Education
volunteer, it is hard for me to hear that they burn trash in the school, when
there is a fully functioning municipal landfill with collection twice a
week. All they need to do is haul it up
the hill. All they need to do is bury it
in a mini-landfill. All they need to do
is CARE a little bit about ANYTHING beyond planning yet another party that
detracts from the actual point of a school—education.
Seeing this as an opportunity
rather than a quandary, I return to the school the next day with presentation
in hand. I implore the director to build
a mini-landfill. One class can get it
done in an hour. It won’t cost
anything. He leads me outside as we
search for the groundskeeper who is in charge of burning the trash. The groundskeeper looks frazzled. He shows the director the broken pvc-pipe he
is fixing, and lists all the other projects he is working on. He doesn’t care about the girl who shows up
and orders him to dig a hole. I tell the
director, in front of the groundskeeper, that we need to find a teacher and
class to dig the hole. Not the
groundskeeper himself. All the
groundskeeper needs to do is throw the trash in the hole and put dirt on top,
and NOT BURN IT! Back in the director’s
office, I hang up the poster I drew about how to dig a mini-landfill. 1 meter by 1 meter by 2 meters in depth. Not rocket science here. It’s a hole.
You fill it with trash, then dirt, then plant a tree if so inclined.
I leave a note to the teachers
explaining the importance of respecting the environment; stating that I will
return at 8:00am Monday morning to help dig the hole. I tell the director that in the meantime,
please find a teacher willing to help.
In my mind, I know I’m talking to a brick wall. He just doesn’t understand that it is HIS
responsibility to get this hole dug. No
teacher will willingly volunteer their class and time when they have other
things to get done before the Anniversary.
Once again, I walk home with my
tail between my legs. How do I change
custom? How do I change mentality? How do I make someone CARE about something
they don’t care about? How do I CONVINCE
someone to care about something they don’t care about? Where is it even my place to push my dogma on
someone else?
Monday, September 07, 2009
Too Good to be True?...Yet to be
Determined
My mother used to tell me, “Lower
your expectations and you’ll never be disappointed.”
With that in mind, I set out on
another day of uncertainty which has become my life. In this country, it’s not enough to lower your expectations; it is necessary
to have zero expectations.
I went to the school and found
the director in the middle of making announcements regarding the events of the
upcoming Anniversary. He talked about
proper attire according to the events of the week. Wednesday = street clothes to play
sports. Thursday = school uniform to
march in the parade. Tomorrow (Tuesday)
he wanted the kids to tell their parents about the mandatory work day. Aha!
Although I knew he wasn’t about to make an announcement about digging a
mini-landfill, I could stop by the
parents meeting tomorrow and steal some parents to dig my hole. I would take some parents with their tools!
After the announcements, I asked
the director what the teachers had said about digging the hole. He said it was fine. Later today the maintenance guys would dig
it. I’m thinking, “Yeah, right.” I tell him I will come back tomorrow, just in
case. If the hole’s not dug, I’ll steal
those shovel-wielding parents. Maybe there’s
hope.
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I return to my house and see the
bag of yet another failed project sitting on my table. The tourist surveys. The planning meeting for the surveys was five
months ago. The surveys were printed four
months ago. My site-mate and I tried to
train the worker at the park entrance booth at that time. He had NO idea what he was supposed to do
with these papers we handed him. We did
some role-playing activities. We
explained how to hand out the surveys, then pretended we were tourists arriving
in Cashapampa after our 4 day trek along the Santa Cruz trail. He still had NO idea what he was supposed to
do. My site-mate yelled at him. This guy was living up to the nickname we
gave him, George McFly. He was bumbling
around and utterly confused. He said he
wasn’t sure he was allowed to do what we were asking him to do. We explained that we worked on the surveys with
the President and Board of Directors of the tourist association. I felt bad for him, that he hadn’t had the
access to education like we had, and couldn’t comprehend the instructions we
were giving him. He thought the surveys
had something to do with something else entirely. It was a frustrating experience, and we told
him not to worry about it. We would
return another time when someone else was manning the booth.
The next time I had enough energy
to deal with the surveys again, I decided to do it in true development-work
style. I went to the president
himself. This time, I wasn’t messing
around. I arrived with clearly written
instructions, clipboards with attached pens, extra pens, labeled folders, and a
laminated paper to post in the entrance booth.
The laminated paper said in English & Spanish: “Please fill out the
tourist satisfaction survey located in the park entrance booth. Available in English & Spanish.”
The surveys were in the
possession of the president for almost two months. During this time, he was fired as president
and took off to Lima. In the meantime, I was in the Amazon thinking
of the thousands of tourists coming through my town and how much data we would
have for next year’s tourist season. Boy
was I wrong.
Upon my return to Cashapampa, I
went to the entrance booth to see how many surveys had been filled out. None, because no one knew anything about them
and had never seen them. I try to find
the president, and found out that not only is he no longer the president, but
has also taken off to Lima. I ask his wife if the surveys are still
inside the house after all this time, and she doesn’t know anything about them.
She was STANDING there when I handed the
prez the bag and went over the instructions line by line. Whatever.
I had other things to worry about.
[That was the week I was trying to find someone to bring to the PC
workshop with me.] More weeks go by, and
I finally get the surveys back. It is a miracle they are intact and the pens
weren’t stolen. Luckily or unluckily,
depending on how you look at it, the surveys never left the bag which never
left the house of the prez.
Which brings us to today. I walk to the entrance booth with these damn
surveys. It is September 7 and we are
very near the end of the tourist season.
I try not to think of it as a huge missed opportunity. Instead, I think of my replacement volunteer
and the work he/she has cut out for them.
;)
Low expectations. Low
expectations. No expectations. No expectations.
I arrive at the entrance
booth. The man greets me by name as he’s
registering a group of tourists.
Although he is busy getting change and registering tourists, he asks what
he can do for me. I explain the
surveys. I post the laminated sign. He reads the Spanish version of the survey. “Sure,” he says. Just to make sure he understands, he repeats
what he is supposed to do, without my asking him to do so. “Have the tourist fill it out and leave it in
the red folder. Replacement surveys are
in folders marked English or Spanish.
Any questions, I’ll find you in your house.” He double-checks who I live with. I tell him I’ll come back in a few days to
see how it’s going. I walk away,
thinking maybe there’s hope.
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Almost to my house, and a
community member flags me down. He asks
about “Recliclaje.” I don’t know if he’s
referring to recycling, trash in general, or the municipal landfill in my
site-mate’s town. We chat for quite a
while, about the trash, trash collection, and his wanting me to give a
community talk about separating garbage.
Oh my god. Really? This is fortuitous. I tell him I am currently working with the
municipality, the mayor, the techs and engineer that work in the landfill, and
we’re coordinating the whole garbage management thing, and I’m planning on going
from town to town to explain garbage separation & pickup. I told him that as soon as I know anything
more, I will let him know.
Upon reaching my house, it is
barely 10am and I have had an unexpected productive day.
I wonder if it’s all too good to
be true. When I see physical results, I’ll
believe. Until then, my success is yet
to be determined.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Happy Birthday Mom!
The last three days proved
typical. There was no hole dug at the
school, so I pleaded that they store the garbage until after the Anniversary,
and DO NOT BURN IT in the meantime. I
offered to come in and explain garbage management to every student, class by
class. If I can convince the school to
dig a hole, put garbage in it, and stop burning it, I will consider my two-year
service to be a success. That’s where
I’m at. I just want to see a hole.
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