IST Chapter 2

Hi everyone!

As promised, here is the much anticipated second tome regarding IST. In an effort to get this to you before I accrue more stories, I felt it important to get it out today. I think I briefly mentioned in the last one that traveling to Lambayeque, a landscape and reality completely unlike my own, helped cement in my mind that I am in the right place in my mountain top village. And to help you understand why, I present to you.... a top ten list! As you know, my top ten lists have no order of significance, however, this one actually does arrive and end at 10! So here we go.

Top 10 reasons why I prefer to live in the Sierra:

1. Capital city: My capital city is called Huancayo and it is in the department of Junin. The capital city in Lambayeque is Chiclayo. Chiclayo is actually a very nice city and has some easily-found karaoke and a fantastic pizza restaurant but giving the higher cost of living there, I think I prefer my grittier and more down to earth Huancayo.

2. Temperature: Now, I may have mentioned that it is cold in the sierra but it is HOT on the coast. We had temperatures in the upper 90's everyday, no air conditioning (of course) and the only relief was the shade or the slight breeze that appeared every now and then. I would be doing a lot more laundry if I were sweating through my clothes everyday like they do in Chongoyape. I'll stick to the cold.

3. Bugs: In the colder sierra, either I am more covered or there are less biting bugs but whatever the reason I receive significantly less bug bites in site. On my visit to the coast, despite my use of bug spray, in the first two days I had received 123 bug bites on my right leg from the knee down alone! The left leg came in just behind with 113. On the bright side, I got a lot of sympathy from the locals. The down side? I looked like a leper and itched like crazy.

4. Space: All the volunteers who live on the coast are very connected - in a geographic-layout-of-the-towns sense. It almost reminded me of being in the suburbs where you can't tell when you've gone from one town to the next. It is good in one way because there are many options and work opportunities for these volunteers. If you hit a brick wall in one town, just try the next one. But, I prefer my little isolated town up in the mountains because even if it is tough to get in and out, I know that I would be intimidated by the suburb atmosphere and would not know where to begin.

5. Air: Now, you may think that this is an argument in favor of the coast. After all, there is a lot more oxygen at sea level than at 3550 meters above sea level. But, nope. The air on the coast is thicker yes, but also thicker with humidity and pollution. The pro is that I can run forever but the only reason for that was because I have been training at altitude. Thank you 3550m! I went running with a friend and it was flat and oxygen abundant so that when we finished after 45 minutes I was hardly tired. But the only reason I could do that is because of where I live. I will stay with the think, pure air and maybe keep training for a sea level race.

6. Community: This speaks mainly to our regional meetings. In our region, we are a small group and it makes us tighter and self-sufficient. Also, we are only volunteers in the environment program and so are able to focus our conversations on topics relevant to everyone while volunteers in other regions are together with other sectors of development.

7. Vegetation: In my site, it is GREEN! On the coast, it is very brown and very sandy. It is part of the bosque seco ecosystem so it has some trees - ones that do well with low water and high heat (palo verde, palo santo, ficus). They are interesting just like the ecosystem that inhabit but I don't think I would appreciate it as much as I do my cultivated andenes.

8. Comfort: Now that's a nice, broad term, isn't it? One that can mean fluffy pillow top beds with down blankets and silk pajamas, a warm cup of tea and a good book inside on a snowy day...or it can mean a state of mind that you have while walking down the street. And it is the second comfort to which I am referring. In my site, there are few people, few cars and few cat calls. On the coast, it is the opposite. As a visitor, I found the catcalls entertaining and only slightly annoying. The worst is where the man will pucker his lips and make a sloppy wet kiss sound. That's just gross. But the funny ones involve the caller speaking in stilted and heavily accented english the one or two phrases they have managed to retain since high school. Usually it's just "heylo bayby" but my personal favorite was "I love you lady." But let's be clear: if I got that on a regular basis where I live, I would probably be driven crazy or in to a bitter and cynical woman - or both. But luckily, my site is small and the people know me and everyone knows that the #1 rule of catcalling is that you can't harass people you know. Lucky, lucky me.

9. Water: We have plenty of it in my site and I only have to boil it to make it safe to drink. On the coast, they only get water a few hours a day and most likely have to filter out the sediment as well as boil out the organisms. I bought water all that week and my wallet was not pleased. We also get lots of rain and with it, its calming effect. But we acknowledged, whether coast or sierra, you can't do hardly anything in the afternoons be it for the heat of the rain, respectively.

10. Soft serve ice cream: Now this one doesn't make sense, I know. It's downright counter intuitive. But when does anything ever make sense, really? So, in my capital city, there is 1 sol soft serve (that's about 40 cents)! And it is so good and it doesn't matter that it's a little bit chilly and it is way better than what the coast has to offer in terms of ice cream. On every corner on the coast, there are vendors selling chupetes - basically, homemade popsicles. The chocolate one was fantastic even after I realized it was basically frozen chocolate milk. They reminded me of making popsicles in ice trays when I was little.

So that about sums it up. The coast is nice for a visit but I am glad to be living where I am living here in Peru. Lest any of my Charleston readers fear that I am knocking the life on the coast, rest assured, I still love the coast and fully intend to settle on a coast some day. Just not the coast of Peru. There's got to be green, fresh air, lots of water, tight knit community and of course, ice cream.

Blessings.

For Love of our Leader

Hey folks

Happy April! Actually, I think that is a good place to start. Let's talk about April. Better yet, let's talk about the last week of March going in to April. I spent it with my other environmental volunteers in Chongoyape, Chiclayo, Lambayeque (this is one place and it is found in the hot, hot north, on the coast and much nearer to the equator). I could probably right a lot of things right here, right now on this blog about the trip but for the sake of your time and attention spans, I'll share the experience one story at a time. And oddly, we're working backwards. Because, while this story is fresh in my mind, I would like to share with you all, the story of my April 1st in Peru.

First. Some background. We spent all week doing training, giving and receiving powerpoints regarding our own sites, the sites of other volunteers, personal safety, health and well-being and technical work like building worm composting beds. The expositors of these talks were our safety and security officer, one of the Peace Corps doctors, our third year volunteer and of course our beloved APCD. Let me tell you a little bit about this man, Diego.

He is a man surrounded by legends, based on fact, woven, augmented and disseminated by his Peace Corps volunteers. Before working for the Peace Corps, he lived 10 years in the jungle working for an NGO and literally saving the rain forest. While there, he made a few enemies in the logging companies and decided to start carrying a gun after someone shot up his camp one night. This past week, he told us that he found out one of these men had had a stroke and here is the direct quote: "So...I guess that is the good news."

And somehow this BA, no-holds-barred (what a weird phrase), jungle saver came to work in our bureaucratic government agency that is Peace Corps as the director of the community-based environmental management program, a transition which I am told was not easy for him. He rolled in shaking things up in the establishment and flouting some rules. Flouting? I think that's the word. He's since calmed down and learned to work within the system and I think it's safe to say that he is more loved by his volunteers than any other APCD is by theirs. And with reason. He tries very hard to understand where we are coming from and be in tune with how we are feeling. He works hard and will go to the mat to stick up for us. And although he is our superior, he never talks down to us in that condescending tone reserved for misbehaving children. He has the support of his volunteers because he supports us with all that he is.

On top of all that, he is a family man. Happily married with two teenage children. And I think that is how despite all that he has seen and continues to see, he is able to maintain his sense of humor, mischievous grin and a twinkle in his eye.

And now that I've set the stage a little, I can begin to recount the things we did over training our of love for our leader.

First off, most of the men in our group set aside their razors for the month of March so they could participate in the "stache-off" to take place at training in homage to Diego, who has not been without a mustache in 25 years. When asked about it, he shared with us his personal philosophy: "Kissing a woman without a mustache is like eating an egg without salt." I don't know from who's point of few, but so goes the philosophy. So the last day of training, our esteemed judge evaluated mustaches from just a straight mustache to a go-tee a la conquistador and decided a winner. Here he is during the judging.

Ok, now I need to back track a little and just state this fact: Friday, our last day of training, was April 1st, aka - April Fool's Day. So naturally, we pranked our beloved boss. Here's how it went. We coordinated with the police in the town where we were staying, as well as our third year, the doctor and the safety and security officer to make sure that it wouldn't get out of hand. Friday morning, we all went to the police station and locked up two volunteers from our group (not me) while the rest of us went to hide. Our 3rd year called the boss and told him that two of his volunteers were in jail. He was there within minutes. The police cooperated beautifully, making up this story that the two co-ed "prisoners" had been found drunk, half-naked and entwined in the plaza during the night and so they had locked them up. Diego was about to explode with fury on pretty much everyone, I'm sure, when all of us came out of hiding and happily yelled "April Fool's!" He was confused for about a minute until the doctor explained that it had all been a joke. Then out came that well-known smile and twinkly eyes.

Here he is with the two culprits. Note the handcuffs on the right. He enjoyed the joke and explained that Peruvians do something like that on December 28, Dia de los Inocentes. He also warned us that "revenge will be sweet." So I will be on the alert come the end of December.

Some believe that his revenge came that afternoon in the form of a surprise water balloon fight between powerpoint sessions. I like to think that that was just good old fashioned fun and a welcome relief from the afternoon heat of Lambayeque. It also turned in to teams of all of us versus our boss and our 3rd year.

And then, like good environmental volunteers, we picked up all of the balloon scraps littered about the street and threw them in the newly installed trash cans nearby.

Like I said, it was a good week. It was a lot of fun and good bonding for everyone. I know that I personally feel a lot more connected to our support personnel in Lima after this week. I have a lot more to share with you but like I said, I don't want this to go from long short story, to novela. It was cool to see another part of the country that is so completely different from where I am living and now I am glad to be going back to my "home."

Blessings.