domingo, 22 de junio de 2008

Anniversario






So this will be a short one. So we just had our towns 183rd anniversery. This included a beauty pagebt, mini marathon, a talent competion, a parade, and a huge concert. The pics are from 1: international day for conservation of the enviornment. I spoke infront of all of them!! As you know public speaking does not fluster me, but this occasion was different. They asked me after I planted 11 new trees and was really dirty. This is one of the things about the culture. it is really not cool to go out in public when you are not sparkling clean. Let alone speak infront of 500 youth. I was not prepared but it went well. I got a huge applause and then ran home to take a shame shower. The second is of the new girl I would like to start dating and my gangy on a good day.The last ones are from the parade. What a parade means is that each school has a marching squad, a band, and a color gaurd. The march in unicen while the parents belittle them. But look at the pictures they are so cute. I will post another blog in a couple of minutes with just more pictures of the kids. I want to do this as a get well gift to my mom. I know she loves the pictures of the kids here. For those of you that do not know my mom had surgury last week. She is recovering well,

but it is hard when you are this far away. So please put her in your prayers, hopes wishes, what ever you believe in. Gracias

miércoles, 11 de junio de 2008

What part am I eating? They really have parts but if I had to say it would be the knee.






Dont get used to this frequency but the next couple of weeks are jammed packed with cool things so I will try to put up two more this month. My towns anniversery is next week so I will have lots of great stories and pictures, and the last week of this month I am going to the second biggest bullfight in the country. It is in the department of Cajamarca in a town called Chota. Oddly enough the majority of my town has migrated from Chota. So betwwen the two I should have two great blogs. I had to get this one up before hand because I have two really great stories.

The is about a a peruvian tradition. It should be mentioned that in what ever peruvians do they have godparents. Birthdays, Baptisms, Weddings, Anniverseries, and in this case putting on the cord. Putting on the cord is a tradition for children in thier first and last years of school. For the kids who participate in school police, ecological police, flag barrers, and class monitors are rewarded with a largve public cerimony and a special colored cord places on thier right shoulder of thier school uniform. So each of the kids have a godparent to do this. I usually shy away from things like these because you are suposed to give gifts. But the people do not tell you how much and then after the fact ask for a lot. You are left in this really awekward spot; do you get extorted or do you call them out for abusing your generosity.

In this case the little girl (ten years old) asked me very professionaly and I was taken by her maturity. She later said that we were not allowed to give gifts and I knew I was in the clear. For her honesty and being forth-right I decided to get her some school supplies. I went to her house before hand and gave her the gifts I had boughten. We left for the cerimony. The cerimony started at three we got there at three thirty and the festivities began at four thirty. While I was waiting a strange thing happened. A young girl was with out a god parent. This is exactly what I dreaded. I wold get pawned off on some body and then taken for all of the money in my pockets. I forgot one important thing, I am a registered member and carry a gringo card. This for better or worse allows racism to play out. Sometimes bennificially more often non bennificially. In this case the girl was soooo happy to have a gringo god-father she did not ask for anything. So I figured I would take a picture of us (huge tradition). I will print it out and give it to her in a frame. Well the reaction of the peruvians was a little much. It was like when you go in to the back hall to put food in Elma's dish. The mothers of these little kids came running over kid in hand begging to have their child in a photo with Heather and I. I felt like chuckie cheese with out the delicious american pizza. I made it out all right, but feeling a little wierd. I left for Chiclayo shortly after and had plenty of time to think about it. It was when I got back home things were really really odd.

My houseworkers 14 year old daughter is 8 months pregnat and will not tell anyone who the father is and is having complications. The resault is we do not have food at my house. So when I came back from CHiclayo I found my grandmother and sister in the kitchen. I had brought with me peas, lentils, and three kinds of beans. It was a warm welcoming. I went to my room to unpack and soon returned to my kitchen to find my dad talking to the rest of the fam. He turns to me and asks two questions. First, he puts his hands up about a meter and a half apart and says, "Have you seen a snake about this big?". I am not blown away by questions like these any moer, just slightly unsettled. I responded calmly, "No I haven't what color is it?". It was brown. I did not know any snakes in this area were that big so I had to ask, "Is is venomous?" He reponded while laughing, "Of corse not. You think we would eat a venomous one?" He proceded to tell me that he was keeping it for my return and that we were going to eat it for dinner. But it had escaped. I said that maybe it would eat some of the rats that are living in the roof and would get fatter. Thinking that more meat the better. I have a lot to learn. My sister responded quickly and with conviction, "If that snake eats a rat I will have nothing to do with it!" So then he asked me the second question, "So what are you doing right now?" So as if it was not odd engough that I was going to eat snake, but now I had to hunt and kill it. That we did. When we got it the snake was a lot closer to two meters. I asked my dad, "I thought you said it was a meter and a half?" He response was classic, "If I told you that you wouldn't of wanted to hunt now would you?" So we sat down for a nice quiet family dinner.

This I fel tops the trantuala story in the Dominican, and I am sure that it will not hold the crown for long.

The pictures are from putting on the cord, my mother's day preformance, and the anniversery of the private kindergarden.

martes, 3 de junio de 2008






Well I have a lot to tell. I have my projects lined up.\ for the next year and a half. That is right I have finished a quarter of my service, and with Perú 11 coming this month I will no longer be the “freshman” of volunteers. I am going to do four main projects. Fist I am going to have an Eco-tourism club with the youth in the area. I will have professionals come in and talk about ecology and tourism in the areas this is accompanied by a series of excursions to different areas in our zone. The idea is that by the end the youth will be ready to receive capacitating to become a guide at Chaparri. I have been giving the guides to people who can not speak Spanish. That has been a lot of fun. I have taken people from Australia, England and Tennessee. The second project is a household organic garden campaign. I hopefully will establish fifteen fully functional gardens. I plan to focus on the youth and mothers of my community. I want to do this so it directly translates to a healthier diet and a reduction in economic expenditures. The third is a solid waste management campaign. I have coordinated all of the loose ends and we start next week. It will include house visits, bulletins, community selected pick up locations, recycling campaign, and scheduled pick ups. Let see how this works. I do not trust that people will stop burning their trash but I have great support and have to give it a shot. The last is the money project. I have been designated as the engineer for a 1000 hectare reforestation project. I will be spending my efforts educating families about resource management and alternative uses of the dry forest.
Now for the stories. I have a lot but you will be previed to the gems. First is about my new Aussie friends. I went to the beach one weekend and met some travelers who were trekking through the north on their way to the jungle. I invited them to stay at my house when they came up to Chaparri. They were not ready for that kind of poverty, but they took it well. In appreciation for my hospitality they brought a great bottle of Chilean wine which we drank underneath the stars. It was a perfect way to finish a day of hiking. The next morning one of the guys found a scorpion in his bag. I am not sure if it was that or the fact that I was impartial to it that really scared him. After that we took a walk to the reservoir to look for some raptors. There we ran into a family that I am friends with and they took us up a dry river bed to see a heard of llamas. We had four kids under the age of 11 with us. While we were waiting for the llamas to descend a near by hill I taught the children how to skip rocks. On our way back they told me how incredible what I was doing is. I told them that poverty has its perks, for example how happy those kids were learning to skip rocks. Stuff like that is so simple but so rewarding.
The second story is about dancing. I do not like to dance but that excuse does not fly here. People love to dance every hour of the day in all social settings. I can not get out of it if I tried. Especially because every women and their mother need to get a song in with the resident gringo. This is a picture of a birthday party. Me and my two left feet were treated to a great meal of goat, cake and humble pie. I was asked to dance by everybody. Sure no problem right. I mean everyone else is dancing and it would be rude of me not to. The catch is that when I got up to boogie down everyone sat down to watch and give me pointers. Their were a lot of suggestions.
Mother’s day is huge here. I mean gigantic. I had no idea. It is like a second Christmas. The thing is they still do all of the cooking that day while the men get smashed. It was a week long festival with different events. Heather, my site mate was recently back from the US and wanted to do something for the municipalities’ party. I was not going it to have anything to do with it. Some how with their persistence and her lack of ability to say no. I was roped into singing (acapela) and doing a sketch. We wrote the sketch and preformed both in front of five hundred people. It went over really well and we are now living immortals in town.
Life is good. My weight has stabilized. I see a new girl, and work is coming together. Hope all is well. Please keep me in touch. I am much quicker to respond to email than I am to put up blogs.