La Rutina

Great news! I saw a puppy today!

So, I promised to write about training this blog and I will make sure to do that, but I got some more questions about my housing so I felt like I should give you some more info on that. Anyway, I'll walk you through my house now. This is the outside of my house.

There's some great cacti on the outside and that window to the left and on the first floor is my room. It's the only room on that floor and then we immediately head up some stairs to the second floor which looks like this.

It's very empty because it's under construction. Then you go up one more level and you are on the beautiful beautiful roof patio that leads to the living area of my family. The garden/porch and view from the top looks like this:

So you now you know where I live. Through training exercises, I’ve come to know a little bit more about my town. For instance, there are 5 zones of the town and I live in the 2^nd zone. The first and second zones have water and waste systems but the ones above do not. We get water 2 days a week for 20 minutes. During this 20 minutes, we fill our cisterns full to be used until we get water again. There hasn’t been a problem with having enough water yet but I know a few of my companyeros’s families have forgotten to refill a couple of times and have run out of water. So I have a shower, yes. The temperature of this water depends entirely on the time of day and whether there are clouds or not. If it’s a sunny midday, my shower could be pleasantly room temperature but more often, it’s evening or early morning as the neblina is settling on our mountains.

I know that the rundown of the house will not be complete until you get pictures of the other inhabitants but I haven’t gotten those yet so it will just have to wait.

On to training. Training happens at a center in Santa Eulalia which is a 30 minute ride on the ‘combi’ public transportation system. One ride there costs 1 Nuevo Sol (~30 cents). Though the mountains around the center are dry and dusty, inside it is somewhat of an oasis. There are all sorts of flora and one important bit of fauna.

That is Panchito. He’s the pet alpaca of the center and we all love him. So much so that I think he will be nominated for general assembly president next week. Our training sessions go like this: Language/Culture training in the morning (8-12), lunch (12 -1) and then tech training (1-5). There are also occasional Health and Safety talks as well as some vaccinations. (I’m 2 rounds into being immune to rabies!) It’s a pretty long day when you think about it and I get home about 5:45.

Much of language training is general conversation about cultural affairs with bits of grammar thrown in. We take field trips into the town and conduct interviews with random strangers, first practicing introducing ourselves and then asking what they think about such and such event.

Tech training is pretty fantastic. I liked it a lot last week as we immediately dove into necessary skills for an environmental education volunteer. We first learned about basic composting and then built three piles at the center. The next day, we learned the basics of beginning a tree nursery and then built one in a shady corner of the center. We have a few experiments going to find the most effective way to sprout our native species seeds as well. This week has been a little slower with actual lectures on things but there is something that keeps things interesting.

That something – no, it’s not Panchito – is the manner in which information is presented to us. We are in an age of the powerpoint in the United States and there is no denying it. But in Peru, projectors are not abundant and electricity isn’t a guarantee. The manner in which information is given us is in itself a training mechanism. We are seeing alternative and interactive ways to present information. Our trainers are huge fans of sequentially taping things to the wall as they speak. They also like to keep us moving, playing games, participating, and chatting as a whole, in small groups or in partners. Such activities take time and are in no way efficient in that sense. However, the benefits gained by ensuring participation through game-playing etc., far outweigh any time loss – especially for a person who has all sorts of time and is freely giving it.

That is one thing I’m learning and becoming comfortable with. Yes, we are being trained in technical skills so we can be an expert to communities to request us, but the most important thing we are giving is a full-time dedication of our hours to the development of sustainably meeting the needs of our communities.

I’ll leave you with this: I went for a hike today with two other trainees. This is where we ended up.

Blessings.