Santo Domingo to Vice

It is a little strange to pass Sept. 11th in a place where time stnds still. I only know dates of paydays and concerts. To think tht everyone will be subjected to hours of propaganda and forced to tell stories of 2001. I on the other hand realized the date because it is two buddies birthday (yan and Ian). I am in a very new phase of my service. I am in the process of getting funding for my projects, and AND I m getting it. So work is looking good.

I have been on the road seeing new places and visiting sites of successful volunteers. Finlly I made it to alta piura. The first four picutres of the road to nd Santo Domingo. Thier we visited a enviornmental volunteer who is closing her service in a couple of months. She was a replacement volunteer and after four yer it is amazing what they have accomplished. They have a waste management system in place. Including home pick up and a recycling center. I look t my community nd it is hrd toimgine the change. It is really beautiful there. The people re extremly beutiful in her small town. The hydrology there was also very interesting. s you can see in the second to last picture the clouds are in the valley below the town. during the day the sun heats up the clouds and the raise to block out the sun. During the night they cool and go bck down. For this it is known as a equtorial cloud forrest.

The lst photo is from the souther most mangroves one the pacific coast. We hve a volunteer there working with a group of healthy living premoters. It is also very beutiful there. They have lmost as many bird spicies as I do in my site. Mine are much pretier. His are all gulls. I hope everyone is getting back into school and ending the summer well. I will post again next week with some great pics from our secudariy schools anniversery. I am going to judge a beauty contest fridy.

The endless excitement of development work

So I m writing this to tell two stories but first I will have to get you caught up on my life. I went to the most touristy beach in peru. It was not all that it is cracked up to be. It was like spring break, and cost like it too. Which is fine when you earn money in the US but when you are in the Peace Corps it is a little harsh on the old pocket book. My work looks to be making head way. I have huge meeting today were I will present all of my projects for the up coming year. So if I get funding it sould be really a great year, if not I will continue the search.

Okay first the first is the resault of the second. I told my grandma about the second story and she told me this gem of a tail. Now if you dont know my grandma is 87 can not see, walk, or think really well. She is amazing and full of life all the same.

My housekeeper told me one day that my grandma was smelling really bad. I mean really bad. My grandma told her it was probably because she wet herself. My housekeeper, Rose did not believe that was the case, but it is kind of caste like in my house so she did not say anything. The next day a chicken got satuck under my grandmother's bed. When Rosa went down to get it out the smell returned, and it had grown. She told my grandma she was smelling then same thing as the day before. After a descusion they norrowed it down to two things Rosa's upper lip or my grandmotyher's feet. So Rosa took her shoes off. The smell increase (Rosa told me later se had to leave the room and gag). On my grandmother's toe was what appeared to be a foot leg of some sort. Rosa washed her feet, and thaught it was all over. It was not. The smell was still there. So she looked in the shoe. Eureka! It was a toad carcas. The toad was in the shoe a few days before when my grandma had put them on, and as you might of guessed she killed it. I do not know what you do not feel something the size of a baseball in your shoe, but if thier is some one one the planet who would not it is my grandma. We all had a good laugh and my grandma once again explained to me was old.

So as I mentioned this was all braught on because I had told them a story. A tale of my sitemate Heather and I earlier in the day. Now to be fair I should say that Heather and I are shameless with each other. I mean literally thier is nothing that we do not talk about. NOTHING! So I had been telling here about how many mice live in my room. I am all about mice or whatever but the little (Explicative)s keep me up all night. I try to kill them and they hide in these holes they have dug in my dirt floor. My grandma told me to pour boiling water in the hole, but I told her it would stink when they died. I was quickly negated because the hole were in dirt and dead animales dont stink when they are in contact with dirt. Go figure. Let continue with the story.

Heather and I were revising a document for a eco-tourism club I I kept smeeling something just aweful. She told me she had gas and thaught that would be that. I kept smelling and she had not let any lose. She tried to convince me that they were really bad. I told her that if her insides smelled like that she needed to go to the doctor. She told me that mice were living under her bed, and it was probably that. So I started to take everything out from underneathe. No luck. So I smelled the matress. I pulled back both of her blankets and took a wiff. It was not there. So I smeelled the blaket. Bingo! Boy did it stick. She told me that her farts had been absorbed into the blanket. Now I should mention that Heather is freaked out by crickets let alone a small fast moving mammal. With the mystery solved she went to make her bed. She seperated the blankets and let lose a blood curdling srceam. She ran at me and started to hit me. All I could do was ask, "Why are you hitting me? What did I do?". She said, "Look, Look at my bed!" So I did. In her bed was a dead mouse. The best part is the mouse had been dead long engough to start to stink. Let me connect the dots. She had been sleeping with a dead mouse in her bed for a few days. Oh the magic. Hope you enjoyed. I will post some pics soon. I have a great idea for a series of black and whites.

He gives and takes away

So this blog will be quick. I have two super high quality stories to accompany the photos.

First the bottom pic. It is a picture of my latrine. I think you need to click on it to really appreciate the story.

My dad is a real handy man so of course he built his latrine by hand. It is really nice. Normally the latrines are made from corragated metal. Which you might imagine this close to the equator are just plain aweful. Our is made of a hole covered by wood support beems covered with a mud- concrete mix. It has adobe walls and has got great airflow.

Between us volunteers we joke around alot about are digestive tracts. We are always sick, and it is a part of every day life for us. So it manifests itself in conversation. This story is along those lines. About two weeks ago I went for my morning stop at the latrine. All seemed normal enough. As I sat down and got comfortable I experienced one of the scariest moments of my life. It needs to be mentioned that I have seen multiple scorpions in the latrine before, but this blows that level of fear out of the water.

So I was just getting comfortable when I felt the floor move. I do not mean an earth quake but the hand patched floor started to give way. I can only begin to describe to you what was going through my head, and it goes something by this. The floor is about to give way to a two meter deep hole filled with awefullness. To top that off I have my pants around my ankles and the walls look like they will fall on top of me as well. I have intergrated but if this were to happen I would not want anyone to save me.

The floor did not give out. But due to my irregular bowls I would continue to use the latrine. For another two weeks at least. Two days ago it happened. If you look closly at the foto you can see that the far side of the floor has caved in. I can say this for all of you that it takes a awlie to wake up in the morning. Being inside a collapsing latrine will get your motor going.

Now the big news. You can see in the fisrt picture one of my resident bats. I have no screens on my windows so at night the fly in and rest on my light bulb. The battle these noctural birds that have a call very similar to a monkey. We do not have electricity so at leasts it has some purpose. I have sat awake many nights listening to the squabbles thinking I wish I had electricity so that when the bats landed on the bulb it would burn thier feet and I would not have to worry about night rabies exposure. Well last saturday the elventh of July 2008 electricity came to LAs Colmenas. I can now do my work from home. I do not have to lug my 20 lbs battery 7 km to get it recharged. LIfe is good. Can you say ability to cook after 7 pm. Man this is awesome.

Bullfights in Chota

I live in a town that consist mostly of people who move here from the mountians. There are two towns in the province of Cajamarca that the people come from, sanat Cruz and Chota. Chota is famos for two things. One is that the people are violent and weild machetes. The other is for the second largest bullfight in the contry. There are only seven countries in the world that have bull fights.
The first one was really aweful. The matador was from Spain. He was supposed to be one of the best in the world. He had a hard time killing the bull. At that point I was not thrilled at all I had to watch anoth 17 bulls get treated like that. But the very next matador was from Mexico. He was increadible. He taunted and danced like no other through out the weekend. With out question he was the best matador there. But due to racism he did not win. The peruvians wanted a peruvian to win. The head judge is the acting mayor, so I imagine it would kill your carrer tpo vote for a foriegner. We did go out with the mexican guy at night. He not only was good at what he did but he was also one hell of a guy.
We were treated to the wonderful weekend by the volunteer who lives in a small town outside of Chota. He family had us over one day to kill a pig. Yes, kill a pig. The typical food of the region is fried pork skin. So her family wanted to prepare some for us. It was really nice to see a small cajamarcan town. To see the real form of life there. Her family raises guinea pigs, so they had a barn full of them. I mean hundreds of them. The food was great and her mom sent us on our way to the fights with a bag of meat. How sweet of her, right.
So the best story from the trip came on my last night. My buddy Justin and I went out to eat at a resturaunt. It was Chota so the fact that we were eating at the nicest resturant in town does not mean much. It just so happen that all of the matadors were sitting to the table to the left of us, and to our right was Grupo 5 the peruvian beetles if you will. About half way through our meal justing and I noticed something. We were getting better service and more attention that either of the afor mentions groups. We had a good laugh about it. We are very acoustomed to the racisim here but usually it is the negative type. I went to the grupo 5 concert that night and had a blast. It was one of the best shows I have been to in my life.
I got some huge news for everybody that I will put in my blog in the next couple of days. I am trying to get my pictures up but my camera is out of batteries. They will be up tomorrow.

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

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.

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.