Happy September everybody! As lots of folks head back to
school or feel like they are having a new start but for me, this is the
beginning of the end. Whoah. And part of my big finish here in Laraos was our
big youth event – The Amazing Race: Nor Yauyos or in Spanish, La Gran Carrera
Nor Yauyina! I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the reality show The Amazing
Race, but it involves teams of two racing from location to location around the
world, completing challenges based on the culture of their destinations. And
while we couldn’t fund tours around the world for our participants, we could
set up challenges in three different towns in our region. And that is exactly
what we did!
The last weekend of August, 42 youth and 15 volunteers met
up in Tomas (about an hour from my site and home to my good buddy, Alex) to
begin the Amazing Race! Some participants had to travel eight hours to attend.
If that isn’t impressive enough, add in the 5 hours they had to walk to get
around a roadblock set up by some strikers against the construction of an
airport and then you’ll really be dropping your jaw. The unhoped-for strike led
to us here in Yauyos to be very worried that six of the teams and their
volunteer chaperones wouldn’t make it at all. But by lunchtime the day of the
race, all participants had arrived.
The first leg of the race took place in Tomas. There, the
teams of three competed to place historical events in order, separate trash,
construct the food pyramid, dance the Cha cha slide, run 2 kilometers carrying
a watermelon, find endangered animals in the field (cut outs of course) and
race one final stretch to the finish where we were waiting.
From Tomas, we all boarded the bus to drive up to Laraos
where, because we were behind schedule, we set up the tents by the full-moon-light
in the dried out lakebed. We lit a campfire, toasted s’mores and then tried to
rest up for the next day’s challenges.
In the second leg of the race, Laraos had the teams digging
in the lakebed sand to find and identify “arqueological artifacts,” demonstrate
knowledge of the reproductive system, remove materials from the garbage that
shouldn’t be in the landfill (i.e. batteries), know the politics of Peru and
the United States, identify non-native species and medicinal plants and answer
questions about pregnancy, STIs, HIV and AIDS before racing to the finish.
Back on the bus and we were heading to Yauyos for the final
leg of the race. The challenges of the provincial capital were to again
separate trash, prepare bags of soil for seedlings in a tree nursery,
demonstrate knowledge of first aid, speak English, play baseball, play soccer
and race to the final finish.
I don’t think I have felt so much success after putting so
much work in to a project in all of my Peace Corps service. So either I worked
much harder on this project than on others, or this one was much more
successful than other projects. I like to think it was a little of both. I
could not have been more proud of the collaborative effort put in by all the
volunteers and their communities. We had judges and support coming from the
municipalities, health posts, schools, mothers’ clubs, natural resource
committees and park service. And I don’t think I can say enough how happy I was
to welcome my fellow volunteers to our small little region. And how happy I was
for their help in this crazy event.
After the awards ceremony and a Pachamanca dinner, we all
went our separate ways to get the kids safely home, exhausted but so satisfied with
the event’s success.
The very next morning, I was on my way to Lima for our close
of service conference. This was a week full of doctor appointments, dentist
appointments and meetings where we learned about our benefits come the end of
our service, what the office needs to officially close us out and how to deal
with reverse culture shock. They put in our head the importance of tying up
loose strings and saying goodbye to our communities. So I know that I should be
thinking about what these last two months will be and to whom I will give my
things and how I will say goodbye. But the truth is that I feel like I still
have so much work to do before I can begin to think about saying goodbye. There
is no doubt that these next couple of months will be incredibly busy and will
fly by. Time to think about what’s next…
Blessings.
