Almost A New Beginning

The last week of training is upon me and the last 3 days look as long as the first 3 months did when I got here! Things are moving paradoxically at a snails pace and at lightening speed! Classes crawl along, but the time outside of class flies by.

We won`t be meeting President Toledo or the Ambassador to Peru at the Swearing-In like we had hoped. I`m a little disappointed as I was looking forward to meeting some political high-ups, but on the flip side, now I feel much better about wearing the very non-formal skirt I brought to the ceremony! :)

I`m really looking forward to getting to Jocos, but that will have to wait until the 7th as I`ve got one night in Lima, one night on the bus to Cajamarca, 2 nights in Cajamarca and probably 1 night in Cajabamba. Does everyone have those names straigth yet? And don`t forget Lluchubamba (Meredith`s site)! :) See below for phenetic spellings.

I`m not sure what the next few months are going to hold for me. Lots of changes and "renovations" in my lifestyle, I`m sure, but I`ll handle them with as much grace as I can!

I`m still trying to figure out how to get pictures out there for you all! Sorry its taking so long!

Spellings:
Jocos = ho-coe-s
Cajamarca = caw-ha-mark-a
Cajabamba = caw-ha-bom-ba
Lluchubamba = you-chew-bom-ba

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving in Perù! Amazing what a little creativity and ingenuity can accomplish! We had a completely traditionalThanksgiving feast (minus the cranberry sauce - can`t even find that in Lima!)! We had:
2 fried turkeys
2 roasted turkeys
30lbs of mashed potatos
10lbs of fresh salad (a real treat as lettuce is insanely difficult to clean so many of us don`t eat it much)
Pies of every sort (including 2 pumpkin pies) complete with whipped cream
Various other goodies

It was all sooooo delicious! Who says you can`t take a little bit of home with you? I hope all your Thanksgivings were fabluous! I thought about you all and I miss you!

Sweetness

So I`ve taken charge of a t-shirt project for the group and its been a bit trying, I`ll admit. Lots of organization and on a shortened timeframe it was definitely stressing me out. But as of last night, the shirts are on order and will be arriving soon. With a great design too! I`d describe it, but its a bit difficult so you`ll just have to wait until I figure out how to post pictures.

Anyway, I was surprised on my home by my neighbor Quinn who handed me enough money to pay for a t-shirt. At first I thought he wanted to buy another one, but he explained that some of the group had taken up a fund to pay for my shirt to say thanks for organizing it all. I was so surprised I cried! Thank you sooooooo much to Quinn and Tom and Kurt and everyone else who contributed (though I don`t know who you all are!)!

And thank you JJT for the scarf (another surprise gift)! I love it!

Stories From The Field

I was thinking more about my site visit (I do a lot of that!) and I thought you all might enjoy this little story.

My second morning in Jocos, Natalie and I hiked to one of the nearby by towns where Natalie has been working. The town (Santa Rosa) has a small school with about 50 kids and one teacher. Yes, one! I am beyond impressed with that! Anyway, when we got to the school, Natalie headed into the first classroom to greet the kids. They errupted into a chorus of Holas and Natalies. I was a few steps behind and as soon as I came into view the entire class went completely silent! You could have heard a pin drop! Natalie introduced me and asked the kids to say Hi. Nothing. Not a word. They all just stared at me! Natalie then tried a different route, repeating my name asked them to say it. After what seemed like forever, a brave little girl in the back of the room quickly said Kellie and ducked behind her nearest neighbor. We repeated this in the next class room as well.

Far from being upsetting, it was an interesting experience for me. I rarely think of my looking different from the people I encounter here. Perhaps that is because that near Lima, light skinned persons are more common and not that big of a deal. It was bizarre for me to think that, in all likelihood, the kids in Jocos and the surrounding communities have never seen someone as fair as me, let alone have one show up in their classroom in the middle of a lesson on identifying tree leaves!

It will be fun to get to know these kids and have them get to know me!

Back To Temporary Reality

The ride back from Cajamarca to Lima was uneventful - for the most part. There was a brief stop while a fuel line was fixed that had somehow broken (things like this become non-issues in Peru - it gets fixed or you settle in for a long wait; complaining or worrying about it does nothing but needlessly waste energy and time), but other than that it was speedy. Perhaps a bit too speedy. Sometime during the night, Lorena and I woke up to watch the pavement fly but as the bus careened around the curves of the road. Being at the top of a double-decker bus, it was an interesting feeling - like we were in emminent danger of tipping over at any minute. I like to think that it was just a feeling and that we were far from it actually happening - it helps soothe my mind a bit!

Durning the trip, we came upon a small lake bookcased by two small towns. The glow from the towns gave the scene an eerie, extraterrestrial feel. As the seemingly barren landscape flew by, the trees and small hills melted into the shadows of the larger hills. We could have been anywhere - Peru, Africa, Mars. Then we were suddenly in the middle of a highway town, and back in Peru. The doors and windows spilled light onto the highway and people lazed in the doorways watching the life of the highway fly by.

I`m back in training now and it is going to as hard as I expected it to be now that I know what is waiting for me. At times training seems frivolous, but there are resources here that I still can and will take advantage of (language training, technical resources, the proximity of Lima).

Home Sweet Home

So I´m back in the big city of Cajamarca City after visiting my future home of Jocos (ho-cos). The short and sweet of it is that I LOVE my site! I can´t wait to get back in a month and start living there!

The low-down on Jocos: Jocos is a small community in the south of the Cajamarca Department in northern Peru. There are about 1500 people in the community (and that includes the surrounding, smaller communities of Bella Vista, Santa Rosa and Shocorco - sounds just like it looks - that I will be working in as well). It is in an absolutely beautiful valley of the Andes (strange to say I´ll be living in the Andes, of all places!) and right now it is insanely green as the wet season is upon us. Natalie, the volunteer I´ll be replacing (a tougher job than I had expected or hoped for), has done some simply amazing work in the area and I have a great base to work with. From school gardens, to educational talks to bigger projects like roofing a new school or starting a bee keeping project, Natalie has given me some huge shoes to fill!

Jocos is a very rural community. I will have running water (i.e. a faucet outside) but no electricity - unless you count the car battery that powers the light bulb in Natalie´s room! - as of yet (though there are rumors that electricity might be coming soon!). There is a health post in Jocos and they have the only shower in the community - cold showers at that! I may have to invest in a solar shower! :) I´m looking forward to 2 years of being dirty 90% of the time. Vanity goes by the wayside pretty quickly in the campo ("country").

So, about my visit. We (there are 15 people from my volunteer group working in Cajamarca) started from Lima on a Friday night - we got to Cajamarca City 14 hours later by bus. I spent one night in Cajamarca City with the other volunteers and then Meredith (my closest neighbor in Jocos - she´s a two hour hike away) and I meet up with Natalie and Chris (the volunteer Meredith is replacing) and headed to Cajabamba City. This is a 5 hour bus ride from Cajamarca City. We spent two nights in Cajabamba getting to know the town as it is the largest one near us and will be our source for internet and most of our groceries. On Tuesday, we heading to our sites - me to Jocos and Meredith to Lluchubamba (U-chu-bomb-ba). It is a two hour bus ride for me to Jocos and a two and a half hour ride to Lluchubamb for Meredith. For those of you totaling the hours in a bus to my site I think we´re at about 21 (it is physically impossible to get to Lima on the buses in one day). The best analogy I can come up with for the travel to Jocos is this: the Old West - where Cajamarca City is where the last train stops, Cajabamba is where the last stage coach stops, Lluchubamba is where the last guy will take you in his wagon and to get to Jocos you need to hire an Indian guide. :)

The first day I was there we hung out with Natalie`s host family and went to the health post where Natalie spends a lot of her time. I met the nurse who runs the post and met some of the people in the town as they came by to talk to her. We also walked out to Natalie`s host family`s field to say hi and ended up helping a bit with picking potatoes. The direct result of that experience was that the next morning I cut off all my finger nails! They are all gone and it is weird! Some of those nails haven´t been cut off in 10 years (filed down, yes, but not cut off!)!But, a small sacrifice! The second day we hiked to one of the surrounding communities (Bella Vista) that Natalie works in to visit the school and the gardent that she started there. When we got there, the teacher and all the kids were out working in the garden! It was great to see!

As we were hiking back to Jocos, we were stopped by some people picking potatoes and they invited us to eat with them (boiled potatoes and a very tasty soup/dipping sauce). We hesitiated as it looked like it was about to rain any minute, but in the end stayed to eat. We weren`t there 5 mintues before the sky opened up and drenched everything! We huddled under a plastic sheet for about 15 minutes before it let up a little and we decided to head back home. Of course, we weren`t any where near the house before the rain started again and we were literally drenched in a matter of mintues. We had a great (though cold and muddy) walk home and even stopped to have one of the teachers in Jocos take our picture! We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking hot chocolate, baking banana bread and talking. All in all, a perfect first day.

The second day we hiked to another community nearby to introduce me to the teachers and important people and to see their garden (I`ll be doing lots of gardening! And hiking! Which has lead me to decide to get a dog!). It was a short visit as Meredith and I made the decision to leave that afternoon for Cajabamba. Little did I know that the hike the Meredith`s site is painful at best - especially with my pack on! We made in in about 2 hours though and had a nice rest in Lluchubamba before getting on the bus to Cajabamba. We spent the night there and re-traced our steps back to Cajamarca.

That was my first site visit. I move to Jocos in December (around the 6th or so). I can`t wait!

Getting Started

Okay, so I´ve moved to Peru and have finally decided to go tech! Getting a digital camera, starting to blog (I don´t even know if that is the right usage of the word- geez!), but by now I´m all about ease and this is about as easy as it gets! I´m hoping this will provide an easy way for me to tell you all my stories and to see some pics. I have no idea if this will end up being a polished sort of a thing or if it´ll be a journal of sorts or if it will even work, but heres to trying new things! :) I will hopefully be adding pictures when I can. But keep in mind, this is NOT to replace emails from you all!

More to come when I get back from my site visit!