The Unblogged Life is Not Worth Living

I’ll be finding out where my permanent site will be this coming Tuesday. Meanwhile, I have three more weeks of training to go. Training has started to resemble more and more the actual work I’ll be doing at my site, which suits me just fine. Two weeks ago we visited the department (the equivalent of a state in the U.S.) of Arequipa and taught business principles for a week in Chivay, a small town in the mountains located at an altitude of 13,000 feet. It was cold at night and in the early mornings but bright, absolutely clear and warm during the days.

Arequipa is an area where descendents of the Inca predominate and much Quechua is still spoken in Arequipa. Generally people speak both languages, Spanish and Quechua, but occasionally you’ll run into older persons who speak only Quechua. The area where we were staying is called Colca Canyon and Colca is a Quechua word meaning silo or a place where grain is stored. To store grain to be used in periods of drought or times of war the Inca made use of cylindrical cavities carved into the sheer walls of cliffs. The picture above shows a wide portion of El Cañon Colca near Chivay before it begins to narrow and deepen. The canyon is debatably the deepest in the world. Scientiests are doing measurements as we speak.

The day after we finished our teaching stint we hired a combi (small bus that holds twelve people but carries twenty people) which took us to La Cruce del Cóndor (Condor Crossing) in the canyon. We saw some magnificent condors with wingspans of up to three meters floating in the updrafts from Colca Canyon aad hunting as the day warmed. The condor remains the symbol of the Inca people and on Peruvian Independence Day (July 28) in some mountain communities they still capture condors and tie them to the backs of bulls (the symbol of Spain) and parade the bulls through the streets. the condors pecking at their hides and tearing them with their claws. It’s a symbolic demonstration of the fact that although the Spanish may have conquered the Inca they have never truly dominated the Inca.

The teaching gig in Chivay was grueling. If the kids were the condors then I was the bull. But in retrospect it was a useful and even entertaining experience. Three of us taught a class of 16 kids about accounting, the principles of entreprenership, how to draw up a business plan and how to do a market feasibility study. Groups of students formed their own temporary businesses and attempted to operate the businesses for one day in Chivay. Our groups opened a ceviche stand, screened a movie and set up a Casa de Terror (House of Horror). We managed to keep all of our students for the entire week—no small accomplishment since one class went from 25 to 11 as the week wore on—and all three of our groups showed a profit or broke even.

The food was beyond great in Chivay. They eat a lot of alpaca there. The alpaca is a smaller version the llama. I generally ate in the Market and Doneria, my favorite among the vendors, cooked caldo—soup with yucca, potatoes, vegetables, cilantro and, yes, alpaca—and segundos, main dishes, of rocoto relleno, a hot pepper stuffed with raisins, onions, shredded vegetables, spices and, naturally, alpaca. Mate, a tea made from coca leaves, is the drink of choice instead of coffee. Peace Corps volunteers are not allowed to drink it because if one were to do so and if for some reason the medical staff decided to screen that person for drug use he or she would test positive for cocaine. However, the tea really isn’t that strong and just between you and me the evidence disappears from you blood and urine after 48 hours.

There were only nine of us working in Chivay so it very soon became clear who the slackers were. All of us are hoping that next week when we’re placed in our permanent sights the two designated stooges won’t be placed anywhere near us so that we won’t be obliged to work with either of them on projects. As far as I can tell no one has accused me of being the third stooge. Although I would hardly place myself in that category everyone seems to consider me to be one of the more commendable recruits. Evidently only I know my dirty little secrets.

You’ll be among the first to hear when I find out where my site will be. So watch this space. And don’t be disappointed if the place they send me is nowhere to be found in your Michelin Guide to Peru.