Todos mis retos vienen de por dentro

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.

Callanca

Callanca, Lambayeque, Perú will be my permanent site. Callanca is the community, Lambayeque the department (state). It’s located about 12 hours north of Lima near Chiclayo, the capital of Lambayeque. The population is 1,500.

It will be hot and dry there. For instance this time of year (winter down here) it’s around 80–85 in the daytime, 60–65 at night. I’m near the coast, about half an hour from the beach.

I’ll be working with restaurants, farmers and, believe it or not, ducks. They raise and slaughter and serve a lot of ducks in Callanca. The food is said to be spectacular and pato con arroz, duck over rice, is a specialty as are ceviche (raw fish “cooked” in lime juice) and all varieties of seafood. The waters off the coast of Perú and Ecuador are some of the best fishing grounds in the world.

I’m visiting the site this week with four other volunteers who’ll be working in other parts of Lambayeque. We’ll stay a week and get to know our host families (all volunteers live with Peruvian families) and our work counterparts, Peruvians who’ll be introducing us to local officials and keeping us from making total fools of ourselves (we hope).

However, the Peace Corps has managed to make my placement a bit more remarkable than it otherwise would have been. On Friday they booted one of the volunteers that would’ve been working with me in Lambayeque for being “immature, culturally insensitive and a behavioral risk.” They sent him home. And to make matters worse, he had a girlfriend with whom he’d hooked up here in Perú and in protest she has decided to leave as well. She was supposed to have served in Monsefú, a community about 10 kilometers from my site. Like me, she was a small–business development volunteer and so we likely would have been working quite closely on multiple projects.

So now it’s hard to say whether I’ll be asked to take over her site, work in both sites or continue working only in Callanca. Monsfú is the municipalidad of the district and a city of 30,000 people so clearly my work would be cut out for me were Monsefú to be included in my area of responsibility. It’s also possible that they’ll move a volunteer from one of the other departments to Monsefú or that they’ll decide not to assign Monsefú a volunteer and wait for the next group of small-business volunteers to be trained next summer and then assign a volunteer to Monsefú.

So the suspense isn’t over. I’m still not altogether sure where I’ll be working or what I’ll be doing. But at least for the next week my site is Callanca and I’m giving my full attention to ducks and restaurants specializing in duck.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video about Lambayeque.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sOmQSCxxlo

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.

Greetings from Perú

Greetings from Perú. It hasn’t been easy getting situated especially as regards the internet so that’s why it’s taken so long to post this first entry. Peace Corps hasn’t made any arrangements for us to have internet access during our training so the best I’ve been able to do so far has been to go to a locutorio (a business that sells internet time and phonecalls) and shoot a few e-mails to Judith. However, wireless exists even in Yanacoto, Perú, and this morning I found that if I stand on a chair and set my laptop on top of the armario (tall cabinet for hanging garments) I can get one bar of reception at pepe2yanacoto. So thanks, Pepe.

Training has been brutal. It’s like going back to college. We have Spanish classes, business classes (I’ll be working in Small Business Development) and classes on the culture and history and geography of Perú from 8.00 to 5.00 daily. We also have presentations to deliver in schools and at businesses and to each other (for practice) every week, all In Spanish of course. So I’m keeping busy to say the least. You haven’t lived until you’ve delivered a two-hour presentation on accounting principles and market feasibility in Spanish.

One big surprise has been how well I’ve been accepted by a group of volunteers whose average age is half my own. I needn’t have worried about that. I’m living with a host family in Yanacoto, a 10-minute combi ride from the training center and my “host mom” Benedicta owns a restaurant. So I’m eating well and volunteers stop by every night to gossip and eat alitas, fried chicken wings, and papas fritas and to drink a couple of Inca Kolas. I think the economic collapse in the U.S. resulted in a better than average group of trainees. They didn’t have a lot of job opportunities in investment banking. They’re a pretty sharp bunch. It’s been fun for me. Like getting to go back to high school and this time doing everything right that you screwed up when you were an awkward, anxious, hormone-drunk adolescent.

I made it into the advanced Spanish class so I’m finding it challenging. It’s me and six mejicanos, all native speakers, and one gringo whose father is Bolivian. The only other gringa in our class dropped out after the first week and asked to be moved to intermediate. Wish me luck.

I live with a Peruvian family in the dusty, hilly town of Yanacoto about 30 minutes north of Lima, the capital. It’s generally sunny here because the entire coast of Perú is desert (the Humboldt Current flowing up from Anarctica keeps the breezes offshore and so it rarely rains. There’s not much vegetation or scenery. Even less greenery than in Arizona, though nowhere near as hot.

Living with my host family has been a great experience. My host father Doroteo is a teacher and was mayor of the town up until a few years ago. My host brother Carlos is also a teacher and my other brother Hernán drives a mototaxi, a tiny 3-wheeled vehicle about the size of a golf cart except with a fully enclosed cab. They’re capable of carrying two passengers but always carrying three. Two sobrinas (nieces) also live here while they’re going to school in nearby Chosica. Yanina is studying to be a nurse and Ana María a teacher. Other reatives sleep here from time to time as well. We’ve been as many as 10 on a few nights. It’s cozy. However, I have my own room (though I feel guilty about it on nights when there are 9 other people in the hose) and the Ronseros have made sure it’s the best room in the house.

In Yanacoto since my arrival there has been an attempted assault on the current mayor—a mob broke into his office and tried to pummel him. He’s accused of embezzling funds from the community coffers. And my sobrina Anita was robbed in Chosica—they took her money, took her schoolbooks and even took her shoes. It’s the wild west here. Lima is even worse. When I go to Lima I empty my pockets entirely except for my insulin, a syringe and a folded-up 10-soles note.

The food in Perú is carbs and more carbs. Potatoes and white rice pretty much every meal along with a small amount of meat, a soup, and ají, a terrifically potent hot sauce a bit like habanero salsa. There are some tasty garlic and peanut sauces with which to smother the rice and potatoes. We also eat cuy here. Guinea pig. The guinea pig has been raised as a food source since Inca times. It’s an important food item but also has a place in the folklore. Curanderos y brujeros will cut open a guinea pig for you and will claim to be able to read your future in the entrails. When you’re sick, someone might pásate el huevo—crack an egg into a cup and pass it over you in order to draw the ailment from your body.

I’ll be posted to my permanent site about five weeks from now—the place where I’ll serve for the next two years. It will likely be on the coast but in an area perhaps slightly less austere and barren than Yanacoto. At least that’s what my guinea-pig guts are telling me.

I’ll try to keep you better informed from now on. However, a lot of that depends on Pepe and whether or not I keep getting that one bar of signal. I’m passing the huevo over my keyboard as we speak.

No me llames frijolero pinche gringo puñetero

What is a frijolero? and what is that word doing in a pinche gringo document like this one?

A frijolero (in English, beaner) is a Mexican, Mexican-American, or in fact any brown-skinned person of any nationality who comes from—or whose parents or grandparents came from—south of El Río Bravo del Norte (in English, Rio Grande) whether or not that person utilizes beans as a primary protein source.

For frijolero scholars, I cite lyrics from the song “Frijolero” by the Mexican group Molotov:

No me llames frijolero

pinche gringo puñetero.

Don’t call me beaner,

you fucking gringo pudthumper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwaDYc1IWY

(The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or of the Peace Corps.)

If I understand correctly my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, one of my primary goals during my two years of service will be to learn to pass for a frijolero or at least to behave among frijoleros in a manner that will less and less frequently provoke in frijoleros fits of helpless laughter.

And so I freely admit it—I'm no frijolero; not even a beaner wannabee. I’m only borrowing the name for a couple of years. Don’t forget: we call the Rio Grande—the very river which frijoleros would be forbidden to cross—by a Spanish name.

Huckleberry Finn

The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect the positions of Mark Twain or of his estate.

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…” says Huck in the first sentence of the book that bears his full name. I could say the same thing in regard to my three months in Panamá between January and May of 2010. Those three months in Panamá represent the Tom Sawyer to this Peruvian Huckleberry Finn. A synopsis:

December, 2009. I withdraw my application to the Peace Corps and accept a job with a reforestation project (Azuero Earth Project) on the Azuero Peninsula in Panamá.

January 11, 2010. I begin working for Edwina von Gal, the founder of the Project, as a volunteer and also as a paid employee helping to maintain her private properties.

January 15, 2010. I decide: this is not a marriage made in heaven. Get me the hell out of here.

January 18, 2010, 2PM. I have yet to receive any communication from the Peace Corps in response to having withdrawn my application. I receive an e-mail from my Placement Officer saying, more or less, “Too bad you decided to withdraw your application. We found a spot for you in Small Business Development in Peru.”

January 18, 2010, 2:01PM. Is it too late to say yes?

It wasn’t. Edwina was kind enough to let me work for her until April and the Peace Corps was kind enough to let me work for her until April so I worked for her until April. Then I returned to the U.S. to prepare for Perú, and a “leave date” of January 10, 2010.

And so my Tom Sawyer could easily be said to have ended with the same words as did Tom Sawyer’s Tom Sawyer:

“Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

“The unblogged life is not worth living,” or so Socrates might have said had he lived in 2010. That being the case, and against all my instincts and better judgments, I begin to compose this narrative of my 2-year enlistment in the Peace Corps, which, let’s hope, will be worth examining.

I'm going to Perú.

A few choice Perú factoids:

• Three times the size of California.
• Population 29 million.
• Capital, Lima.
• Monetary unit, the nuevo sol. Value, about .35US.
• Climate, highly variable. Temperate or even arid (45–90F) along the coast (see map); cold (0–50F) in the high central mountains (the Andes); tropical (65–95F) in the eastern, Amazonian lowlands.
• Favorite alcoholic beverage: pisco, a clear liquor distilled from grapes. From pisqu, Quechua for little bird.

I’ll be leaving for Perú on June 10.

And by the way: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or of the Peace Corps. If that doesn’t keep you reading then nothing will.