I visited Callanca, my permanent site, the week of August 9. It’s a dusty, rural, mainly agricultural town of 1500 a half-hour from Chiclayo, the capital of the departamento of Lambayeque. It’s a community of basic block and brick houses most of which line the one paved road that runs the length of the town. It seems extremely impoverished; however, because many people are able to grow their own food, there’s probably less dire poverty than one would think. It will take some time for me to determine how much less.
It’s hardly a picturesque community so I think that during my two years there I will need look for sources of inspiration other than natural beauty. A river, the River Reque, runs to the north of town. It’s a short walk from my house and the river provides the only tranquil spot for leisurely contemplation that I’ve found so far. It seems that my host family will provide many of those other sources of inspiration that I mentioned above. The father, César, is a mototaxista. He drives one of the taxis, a hybrid of a motorcycle and a carriage, that transport Callancanos from the town to the Interamericana, the highway to Chiclayo, about two kilometers away. Margot, the mother, runs a bodega or general store from the house. The kids are Milton (13) and Pamela (7) and Nicole (5). A third daughter ran off to Lima with her boyfriend and thus there’s an empty room upstairs for me. It’s the nicest room in the house by far, with a ceramic tile floor and a large window that overlooks the town’s main street.
Things are quite basic, even rustic in the house. There’s a bathroom, however there’s no desagua (public sewer system) and no septic system either, so exactly where the effluent ends up is anybody’s guess. The toilet currently flushes by means of a bucket filled with water that one empties into the toilet after each use. The float mechanism in the tank is broken and the float is tied to a towel rack to maintain it in a position that (usually) prevents water from filling and overflowing the tank. The overhead light in the bathroom doesn’t work. Because of the aforementioned emission of effluent the drinking water in the house is contaminated with e coli and so we boil all the water for drinking and cooking. The whole family, all five of them, sleeps in one medium-sized bedroom downstairs.
In short, we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
It would appear that there are ample opportunities for me to do work in Callanca. Many of the farmers maintain restaurantes campestres, country restaurants, and use their own produce and meat to feed visitors from Lima who come to Callanca to dine on the weekends. The restaurants are quite pleasant with a lot of outdoor seating and views of the fields and a general summer-camp atmosphere. They serve cebiche, arroz con pato (duck and rice), cabrito (young goat) and many other local specialties. I sampled cabrito and it’s tender and quite tasty. One of my jobs as a small–business development volunteer will be to assist the restaurant owners in improving sanitation standards, client service, bookkeeping methods, publicity, etc.
There’s also a school, Fundación James D. Turner–Enrique Pisfil Villalobos, founded by an American and a Peruvian, with extremely modern facilities, including computers and internet, and I’ll be able to conduct classes and workshops for members of the community at the school and make use of the computers and internet for my work. The director of the school, Rita Ayasta de Díaz, is running for mayor of the district so if she wins I’ll have frineds in high places. She’s currently leading in the polls or according to whatever means that they determine candidates’ prospects in Perú. She was mayor once before so I think her chances are good.
Sometime next week I’ll be shopping for a mattress and bed, strapping them to the roof rack of a taxi, then a combi, and moving them to Callanca to furnish my room. Unlike in America, where locatng one’s business implies placing it someplace where no other such services exist, in Perú businesses cluster. So if you want a bed you go to Calle Cuglieván in Chiclayo and there are 5 or 10 furniture stores located one after another on the side of the street opposite the public market. So you can go from one store to the next and compare prices and haggle and get the best price without having to travel all over town.
The public market is a masterpiece. You can buy anything there, from running shoes and luggage to a sheep’s head or a chicken or a python skin with which to place a curse on the guy who sold you a lumpy mattress in the furniture store across the street. The market is a traditional bazaar as you’d picture existing in Turkey or Saudi Arabia. It’s a crowded labyrinth of individual stalls and narrow passageways that provides more exotic smells, chaotic activity and indeterminate noises in two or three square blocks than most of the five boroughs of New York. There are sections with stalls offering books and stationery products, vegetables, meat, fruit, shoes, jackets, pots and pans, locks and hardware, jeans, t-shirts, breakfast and lunch, and a special section offering herbs and medicinal plants and all the essentials of witchcraft and sorcery, including dried buzzard heads, crow’s wings, the claws, teeth and feet of animals associated with powerful healing or hexing properties, and brews like ayahuasca, an hallucinogenic elixir made from the boiled bark of a vine from the rainforest. Two hundred milliliters (6 oz. or so) costs 30 soles or about $10. Don’t worry, I didn’t partake.
It’s difficult to convey what it’s like coming from the U.S. to a third-world country and learning to conduct one’s everyday activities all over again from the ground up, plus do it all in a language with which one has until now been expected to use to only to check into a hotel or ask directions to the toilet. “Living at the level of the local population” as Peace Corps’ mission mandates often means waking up in the morning and finding sewage all over the floor of the bathroom (if you have a bathroom), wondering if whoever cleans up the sewage (if it isn’t you) will wash his or her hands before fixing breakfast for the family with which you’re living and dealing with the gastrointestinal consequences if that person did not and thereafter making your own immediate and urgent contributions to beginning the aforementioned unglamorous cycle all over again. Although people are intrigued by you nobody really understands you. You’re from Mars. You know the generic names for things you want and need but frequently not the specific local term for the item so you end up pantomiming and describing in convoluted language objects that you’re attempting to purchase—let’s say a two-pronged adapter for plugging in an electrical device with a three-pronged plug—and getting, instead of the adapter you wanted, the plastic cover for a wall outlet. I’ve made a lot of friends at the training center here in Chaclacayo and as we go out separately into all of Perú to seek our individual fortunes we’re beginning to say our good-byes. As I said to a group of friends last night as we sat around a table in the restaurant run by my host mother: “It’s been fun, guys. But I’m trading all of you in for intestinal parasites.”
I’ll be moving permanently to my site, Callanca, on August 23. It remains to be seen how reliable or fast or frequent my internet access will prove to be. But at the very least I should be able to post an occasional update from Chiclayo. I’m moving from Chaclacayo to Chiclayo. From the sound of it you’d think it won’t be so difficult an adjustment.
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