Vacation

Hey all,

The title of this post is vacation, but that´s not strictly true as the first half of the week we had meetings in Pacasmayo, a coastal town in the north about 26 hours from my capital city by bus. I actually didn´t really go to many of them, because I got sun-burned badly the day we got in, got ill from bad seafood I ate soon thereafter, and already had a pretty bad cough and congestion problem. I then slept funny from the sunburn and couldn´t move my neck for three days. So, all in all it was a pretty bad few days, although I did get to hang out some with some folks I hadn´t seen in three months.
On Wednesday we had a Thanksgiving dinner together with most of the traditional dishes. That was really nice, as I think a lot of people were missing that Thanksgiving meal and fellowship. We all then scattered, the majority going to Trujillo, a famous beach to the south to soak up some sun and just relax together. That was a bit better of a time, although I still wasn´t feeling perfect. Now, on the way back to my site, I finally feel pretty good. Go figure.
It was great getting to see the other volunteers that are so far to the north and get a change of pace from our cold, very campo (backwoods- country) sites. Still, I´ll looking forward to getting back and finishing up the school year as well as starting some new projects for the winter. The rain is fast a-coming, and that will really change up how I work, probably for the slower. Still, I will do my best to fill my time and keep checking in with everyone.

Catch-up

Hey,

Missed this weekend´s installment. This week will be a quick one, as we are soon off to the sunny beaches of the North for our Reconnect meetings, which will catch us up on everything our training classmates have been up to over the last three months. We will be four down from when we started training, which is a bummer, but it´ll be nice to see everyone that is still kicking in site.
The school year is also wrapping up, with yesterday being my last day in the primary school. It was nice to get a little love from the students on my last day and I´m already looking forward to next year when I´ll have completed my new English curriculum. Still, it´s nice to have a break to work on other projects. I have two more classes with the high school and 3-4 more for inicial, and then it´s summer vacation! The only problem is that is when the rains will come, so I´ll be pretty much cooped up with my work for a few months.
Well, I´ll be sure to update with how the meetings went when I return and get back to talking about random subjects...

History

Hello all,

This week I didn’t accomplish a whole lot. School wasn’t in session on Monday and the Spanish agency AS had to postpone for Tuesday, making my Thursday meeting moot. So I did a lot of sitting around when I wasn’t in school the rest of the week, either in my house or waiting for the various members of the local government to coordinate a few things. Next week will have to be extra busy because I have a lot to prepare for my residential tourism organization.

I realized this week that I have not yet talked about the history of Peru. I’m no expert, but I can fill in a few details that should give some background on the country and where it is today. It once boasted one of the largest empires in the Americas, the Incan, which was particularly impressive because they governed an empire of thousands of square miles despite never having developed writing. Their heritage and language, Quechua, is still evident today, along with famous ruins like Machu Picchu.

What brought about their downfall, as with most of the indigenous empires of the Americas, was the arrival of the Spanish. Francisco Pizarro was in charge of the expedition and taking advantage of warring factions quickly captured the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. He demanded a room full of gold and silver as ransom, and after receiving what he asked for he killed the emperor anyway. Soon after this he made Lima his capital, which a change from the Incan capital of Cuzco, and it became one of the richest and most influential capitals in the world due to the natural resources of the country.

Peru gained its independence from Spain in 1824, although it was announced in 1821, due to Argentine General San Martin, part of an independence movement sweeping the continent. In the late 1800s Peru fought and lost a bitter war with Chile, which still colors their relations today. That is about all I know of Peruvian history until the 1980s.

The 80s were a difficult time for Peru, due to several blunders by young President Alan Garcia, including trying to change the currency. Alan Garcia was actually reelected for a second term and is President now once again. These years are vividly remembered by the population today, and I’ve heard stories of kids not going to school to wait in bread and milk lines for their families. These times spawned several domestic terrorism movements that locked down the country and are also often recounted by people around here, although this area wasn’t touched too much. Refugees from the most affected areas are one of the reasons for Lima’s rapid population growth, to a bustling city of 8 million now.

After Garcia came Japanese-Peruvian economist Alberto Fujimori. He defeated inflation that was well over 100% and all but destroyed the several terrorist movements in the country, making him one of the most popular presidents in Peruvian history to some areas of the country. The bad of his presidency was the methods he used to crack down on terrorism, many of which were down right illegal and contra human rights. This is why he is now on trial for human rights abuses. There aren’t many world figures that have been such a mixed blessing, and he still has his fair share of supporters and detractors.

Things have taken a turn for the better after Fujimori, even though his successors Toledo and Garcia are two of the most unpopular presidents in their history. Peru has an excellent rate of economic growth now and things are looking up, although there is still much work to be done, especially in rural areas outside of the capital.

Chivay

Hello all,

This week was pretty much the same old same old as far as work goes. I tried to meet with my artesans but they were no-shows, so I had to content myself with the schools and teaching computers to the Water Commission (Comision de Regantes)- which is the most important group in town because they regulate water usage for irrigation purposes in the fields. I´m in the capital city of Arequipa right now for my monthy meetings and we´re going to grill out American style tonight, which should be a good time. Tuesday I´m going to try to get somewhere to watch or track the election results, but other than that this should be a standard month until Reconnect, where all of my class will be getting together to find out what exactly we´ve been doing so far... definitely looking forward to that.
This week I think I’ll talk about Chivay, the closest city of any size, although it is probably better classified as a town. It is pretty much the only place to get most of the amenities of modern civilization such as internet, consumer products and food, or contact with the governmental resources that are necessary to get big projects off the ground here.
Chivay has maybe 20,000 people, a pretty sizeable town square with a beautiful white adobe church, and a bustling tourist trade as it sits at the end of the highway from Arequipa and at the mouth of Colca Canyon. It is pretty much the portal for the canyon and has all the connecting transportation for the region as well as plenty of hotels and adventure sports agencies.
I try to get in once a week to meet up with the other volunteers in the canyon, buy a few things I need, and check my email and the news. I also get my weekly shower in at La Calera, the regional hot springs. My town does not have a showerhead in it to the best of my knowledge, so I’m pretty much dependent on the hot springs or ice cold bucket baths to stay clean. La Calera is a complex of 5 or 6 pools, indoor and outdoor, and compartmented into the more expensive tourist baths and those for locals. I’ve been able to convince the staff by my frequent presence that I indeed live in the canyon so I can use the local baths. The water is quit hot and the showers, though public, do the trick.

Colca Canyon

Hello all,

This week I finally got to talk with my artesan group´s president and made some headway with resuscitating the residential tourism group. These are both excellent signs because they mean I am finally working on what I was brought over here to do, small business. I´m continuing my English classes of course, although I cut back my adult classes to just the teachers because they were the only ones who really showed an interest. I´m not sure if this is genuine disinterest or just the chacra keeping people from wanting to come or hearing about the class, but I won´t bother with the regular population classes again until I´ve made some headway with the tourism, when they´ll really want to be able to say some basic things in English.
Otherwise, things are going pretty well in town. I´ve settled into a routine for classes and meetings, which can get kind of boring but seems to be on the way to yielding results. I still have the mountains to look at every time I walk out the door, which helps recharge me when I´m not feeling particularly like going to a meeting. These mountains and the wide-open sky above them have a different look and color every day, and some sunsets are simply indescribably beautiful. So I´ll certainly survive the monotony of work since my environment offers me anything but that.
This week I figured I’d touch on the region I’m in right now, the Colca Canyon. There is a bit of a debate on whether this is the deepest canyon in the world, but all agree that if not Colca it is the Cotahuasi Canyon, also in Peru. A group of Polish explorers just mounted an expedition into some unexplored reaches of Colca with the intent of establishing it once again as the deepest in the world, but I have yet to here about the outcome.
The canyon itself isn’t like the classical example of the Grand Canyon with its sheer walls diving down from a fairly flat surface. Colca is nestled in the Andes Mounains, so the canyon sides slope down from huge mountain peaks and make more of a V than a straight plunge. There are several towns nestled on the lip of the canyon, underneath or on the side of mountain peaks, and the upper reaches are thinly populated with llama and alpaca farmers that rarely come down into the valley.
My last post described the tourist attractions of my town, which pretty much encompasses the tourist attractions of our side of the canyon excluding the whitewashed old churches that each town boasts. On the other side of the canyon is Cabadaconde and its Cruz del Condor, which attracts the vast majority of tourists in the canyon. Cruz del Condor is an outlook that overlooks the canyon, although not the most impressive portion by any means. The real attraction is the fact that condors fly across the canyon there frequently and can pass quite close to the outlook point. Other attractions are the numerous hot springs and the adventure sports possibilities such as rock climbing and mountain biking. Lastly, if you climb up behind the ridge directly behind my side of the canyon (or take a round-about route by car) you can reach the origin of the mighty Amazon River, something I’ve yet to do but would like to get around to before too long.

Town

Hello all,

This week I finally got to do some talking with town authorities on the subject of small business in Madrigal, which is my trained and educated specialty, instead of youth development which is where most of my work has been directed so far. I will still work in this field as no work with adults begins before seven o’clock here due to the farm-centered lifestyles of the people. The organization that is showing the most promise is Turismo Viviencial, which centers on a type of live-in tourism that pretty much just attracts Europeans at the moment. This form of tourism involves people coming to live in a home in another country for a period of time, from a week to a couple of months, to get an idea of the habits and customs of a people and their surroundings. Since we are in one of the most beautiful spots in the world this is a big opportunity for the town. Still, there is a lot of footwork and restructuring to do before we can get a move on things.

On other news this week, I’ve been a bit under the weather but still doing everything I need to. The amusing part of all of this is when anyone hears me cough they have another natural remedy they would like me to try to cure it. I had to have received more than ten amateur prescriptions this week. I also pinned down a learning aid my high school English students enjoy- using activities centered on song lyrics. It’s good for listening comprehension and vocabulary building, and I had a completely quiet classroom for the first time since I began!

It just occurred to me that I haven’t really got around to describing the town. It is seated in a depression surrounded by mountains, the most impressive of which is an extremely jagged peak that is right next to where the canyon really plunges down. You can’t really see the canyon from the town because you need to descend a series of step-like slopes full of farm fields to get to it, a difficult descent. The jagged peak bears an Incan fortress, Chimpa, overlooking the deepest part of the canyon. Also on that side are ancient rock tombs including a mummy, cave paintings, a ghost town, a rock forest, and a forest of puyas, plants that flower once a century, Closer to the town is an abandoned mine and then kilometers of farm fields.

The town itself is built around a central plaza that has a small park with a fountain, a few statues, and bushes cut in the shapes of animals and objects. For the most part small stores and governmental buildings populate the square and residential houses radiate outwards. Towards the edge of town are a large public meeting hall and the schools. The schools are single-story complexes of buildings built around a cement common area. Most houses are built of painted adobe with tin roofing, including mine, although there are still some of the traditional stone, straw-roofed houses around.

As far as amenities go, we have streetlights and for some, including my family, thankfully, running water. The roads are still primarily dirt, although we are building a stone and asphalt one entering town. The stores don’t have a huge selection, but you can find most of your amenities and fill in the gaps by going into the closest big town, Chivay. Madrigal has all of the hallmarks of a small town, but it has everything I need and I have certainly never lived in a place so naturally beautiful.

Food

Hey all,

This week has been more of the same, although I did walk to the town across the canyon to visit another volunteer Saturday, which pretty much left me burnt out. It took four hours of descending into the canyon through all kinds of terrain and then climbing back up and out to the highway. This is particularly difficult at altitude, and as skinny as I’m getting I’m still in terrible shape. Should probably start up that running pretty soon… Getting back was as difficult, but only an hour as I hopped a ride from my fellow volunteer’s town back home. As far as work goes, I got to talk to a local governmental agency called Sierra del Sur about a variety of projects, including a women’s savings club that will be meeting next week. I’ll also be meeting with a residential tourism group that needs revitalizing and the mayor to talk over some possibilities, including starting a town library. Still no dice on the radio show though, although I’m working on getting the radio key.

This week’s topic is food, then. For the most part, it’s pretty tasty, although after they butchered a sheep we ate random guts for a week straight. Not my favorite week. They have a different approach to meals in the canyon. Breakfast and lunch are the biggest meals of the day and more or less the same. Dinner might be a smaller plate of food or just tea or coffee and bread. I don’t get a whole lot of meat, although when I do it is usually sheep jerky or on good days chicken. We also get alpaca, a llama-like animal, every once and awhile. Yesterday in my friend’s town we even had donkey, which was tough but not too bad.

Generally, though, we eat rice with some sort of side that usually involves potatoes, including a type of sun-dried potato, called chuño, that tastes awful in most settings and the very strong regional red onion. One of my favorite meals is spaghetti with a sauce made primarily from shaved carrots. Soup is another constant, and is usually quite good and sporting potatoes and chives. My mother also makes a simple cheese that is quite good and often makes tostado, which is just corn fried until it is nice and crunchy. To drink we get fresh milk, tea brewed from local herbs, coffee, or chicha, which is kind of like a sour beer brewed from corn that usually isn’t alcoholic. Overall I can’t complain, and going into the capital once a month gives me the opportunity to get hamburger now and again so I can’t really ask for more.