Ojo!

I just got my new address in Ancash:

PCV Shannon Doran
Casilla Postal No. 277
Serpost Huaraz
Ancash, Peru
South America

Looking forward to hearing from you all :)

Yo Ando en Ancash

Ancash 9

Nov. 6th I found out that my new home for the next two years will be in Ancash! Turns out that I will be living in the same department where I had my field based training. Maybe it was a test to see if I could survive in the Andes. There are 9 of us going to Ancash- three from the health program and 6 from the environment program. The 3 health volunteers are going the farthest away from the department capital of Huaraz- to the other side of the Cordillera Blanca (one of the major mountain ranges in Ancash) in the Conchucos valley. I’m only about 2 ½ hours from the capital, but the roads are in really bad shape from the giant mining trucks that travel back and forth from Conchucos to the capital and Lima. I haven’t gone to Claudia or Tyler’s sites yet, but they’re about 2 hours walking distance from me. I’m so glad to have other volunteers near me! Here’s a little bit more about my site:

Caserio (community): Huarimayo
District (town): Chavin de Huantar
Province: Huari
Department: Ancash
Population of Huarimayo: approximately 450 people
Nearest town: San Marcos, 30 minutes walking or 15ish by car
Altitude above sea level: 3000 m, or about 10,000 ft.

Plaza de San Marcos

And now comes the fun part- my host family and house. I spent the last week visiting my new site and meeting the people I’m going to work with. I have a host mom and dad (who are really like host brother and sister because they are 27 and 28), a host grandfather, and a 2 year old girl, Andrea, and 6 year old boy, Emerson. My host family has a farm and all of the animals that come with it. We also have cats, dogs, chickens, bunnies, and guinea pigs that run all around the house. My house is mostly just open to the air, except for the bedrooms. We don’t have a bathroom or even a latrine for that matter. Well, when I asked where the latrine was, my grandfather pointed towards the farm. So my bathroom was the farm all week. My first project will definitely be helping them to build a latrine. My mom cooks over a wood fire and all the smoke just fills the house and it’s hard to breathe or see. Second project=cocina mejorada. We have electricity, but we don’t have working light bulbs. The first night we ate dinner in pitch black so the only food item I could actually make out was spaghetti. Oh and potatoes, but that’s just a given because a meal is not complete without potatoes. There was something crunchy in the spaghetti, it could have been cuy I’m not sure. Speaking of cuy, my third project will be building cages for them so they aren’t running around and peeing in the kitchen area. We don’t have an area for bathing either. We have a pipe that pumps in water so I suppose I’ll fill up buckets of water, heat up the water, and bucket bath in my room. Needless to say, I didn’t even attempt to bathe at my new site. I waited until I got back to the hostel in Huaraz.

My community Huarimayo

My kitchen. Note the guinea pigs under the right chair.

My room. Fortunately my room is separate from the rest of the house. It’s tiny, but so am I so I really don’t need that much space. I have a cement-ish floor, in contrast to the rest of the house which is dirt/mud when it rains. My walls are adobe, my roof straw and tile, and my door only locks from the outside so I had to use a giant stick to “lock” it at night. I have a bed but I’ll probably buy a new mattress and frame with the moving-in allowance the PC gives us. I’m mostly afraid of any kind of bed bugs or fleas that might be living in my bed and blankets. Currently, my waist, ankles, and hands are covered in some kind of bites. When I arrived, there was a giant white bunny hanging out on my bed but I kicked him out. I have a lightbulb that hangs from a string over my bed. When I tried to turn it off the first night I electrocuted myself. I have A LOT to do to make my room a healthy living space but I’m really really excited about it. My room is going to be so cool when I’m done with it! I can get basically everything I need in Huaraz or San Marcos- the only problem is going to be transporting everything out to my site. I have no clue how we are going to get mattresses, furniture, etc. over and through the mountains to my little pueblo. I’ll let you know in two weeks when I move in.

My room

The volunteer I’m replacing, Amanda, picked my host family and town for me. She actually lived in San Marcos, but I live outside of it. I’ll be working there and in Chavin with the health centers and different NGOs. All of the volunteers have counterparts that the PC designates to work with them- nurses, mayors, etc. My counterpart is a social worker at the health center. She was supposed to show me around and introduce me to important people in the town but that didn’t really happen. She was always “too busy.” To be honest, I did not get a very good impression of her and am not really looking forward to working with her. I ended up walking around San Marcos by myself just knocking on doors and introducing myself, explaining Peace Corps and that I would be living in Huarimayo for 2 years. I introduced myself to the governor, the radio station, a couple different NGOs, the orphanage, the owners of the tiendas (I went to a bunch to find out which ones have the best selection of chocolate haha). Amanda gave me the impression that she didn’t really work with our counterpart that much. She found other leaders in the community to work with, which is probably what I’ll have to do. It was a really difficult couple of days and most of the time I just felt lost or out of place, but the times when I came across a really friendly person (a tienda lady who offered to teach me Quechua, a little old man who chatted with me one day and on my last day gave me a giant hug, and the radio station DJ who was super excited to work with me) I felt infinitely happier and at ease. From what I hear, it’s a lot of ups and downs in the Peace Corps.

Despite everything, I’m pretty sure I live in one of the most beautiful areas of the world. I can hear the river Mosna from my room and when I wake up and look outside I’m surrounded by gorgeous mountains. It’s really cold at night and in the morning, but by noon it’s sunny and hot. The rainy season is approaching in January which scares me a bit, but I’ll just have to strap on my boots, put on my raincoat and brave it the best I can.

I’m going to have a new mailing address soon. The volunteers have a PO box in Huaraz where you can send me care packages and letters and presents (Christmas and my birthday are coming up!). I’ll probably go to Huaraz once or twice a month to check my box and from experience, it seems that packages can take anywhere from 2 weeks to a month to get here. If you would like to send me some lovin, send it through the postal service (not DHL or UPS) and make sure it’s small (I think they recommend under 1.1 pounds or it will get stuck in customs). I’d love to get some stickers or art supplies of any kind- kids loooove stickers and balloons. Also chocolate chips for baking, I can’t find them anywhere! Oh and magazines and books. Cosmo, Newsweek, People, Runner’s World, anything to keep me updated on the latest fashion, gossip, and music.

I miss everyone MUCHO and love getting your letters and emails. I hang them up in my room! And thanks for reading my blog! I hope it’s keeping everyone entertained. More adventures and awkward stories to come.

Con carino,
Shannon

P.S. There is internet in San Marcos! Unfortunately, it is incredibly slow. I couldn’t even open gmail. Unless some miracle happens, I won’t be checking my email that often (once or twice a month when I go to Huaraz). However, emails and snail mail are still amazing so don’t hesitate in writing- I will get back to you! I will also have a cell phone at the end of the month.

ANCA$H

It’s about time for an update! Sorry to keep you all in suspense. Up until last week, I didn’t have too much to report- training just continued on as usual. But before I talk about last week, which was Field Based Training, I’ll just give a brief update on some of my other activities.

Although we’re at the training center from about 8-5, I manage to squeeze in some time to run in the afternoons with some volunteers, have some cookie and movie nights (I made the perfect oatmeal cookies for our Mama Mia movie night), bust out some dance moves at the local discoteca, and have a rather intense rock paper scissors tournament with the whole group, amongst other things. Turns out birthdays are also really huge deals here so I’ve been to several birthday parties. I went to my neighbor’s dad’s birthday party where they had a Peruvian-style BBQ called Pachamanca. Basically they dig a hole and fill it with hot rocks, top the rocks with various types of meat, then potatoes, then beans and tamales, and then cover the whole thing in com husks, straw, and finally dirt. They let the whole thing cook all day and it’s absolutely amazing. Last week, my family had a party for the father of my host niece (I’m not really sure what title to give him because my sister isn’t really dating him and isn’t married to him). They cooked all day, hired a band to play at the house, and invited a whole bunch of guests. Parties, like baptisms and quinceneras, usually go to like 7 in the morning. Fortunately, I was leaving for Field Based Training the next day so I had an excuse to go to bed early.

Field Based Training has been my favorite experience in the Peace Corps thus far. For FBT, all the volunteers head out to different departments (essentially states like in the US) and get some real experience working with volunteers who are already at the their sites. I went to Ancash with three other volunteers, our program director, and one of the Spanish professors. Huaraz, the capital of Ancash, is about 7-8 hours by bus from Lima and the volunteers in the department live anywhere from 30 min to 5 hours from Huaraz. Ancash is known for its beautiful mountains- especially Huascaran which I believe is the highest mountain in Peru. A lot of backpackers, mountain climbers, and mountain bikers come to Huaraz so it’s a fairly touristy city. It has lots of hostels, restaurants, and markets, and you can definitely feel a French/Swiss/Canadian/American influence. We only stayed there the first and last nights of the trip but it is definitely a place I would go back to (if only to pay for another hot shower at the hostel haha).

From Huaraz, we went to visit a married couple in a community called Mato. It’s in a valley in between two mountain ranges, the Cordillera Negra and the Cordillera Blanca, so you can bet the views are spectacular. The two of them are health volunteers and we had the opportunity to help them on their projects. We gave charlas (chats) to the community about cocinas mejoradas (I’ll probably talk about these in detail later), worked with youth health promoters by giving talks at the school on sexually transmitted diseases, did surveys and house visits, filmed a commercial about anemia, made candles with the youth group, and gave charlas about trash and recycling. Our program director certainly kept us busy but it was completely worth it. I learned more in the one week in FBT than I’ve learned the whole time I’ve been here. We got real hands on experience which is what I’ve been craving. It made me so excited to get to my site and start working. The other volunteers have told us that the last few weeks of training are painful because once you find out your site placement, all you want to do is get there.

After we left Mato on Wednesday, we went to visit another volunteer in a community called Musho. He was a little higher up in the mountains so it was a bit colder. However, it was generally pretty hot during the day and then got cold in the afternoon and night when it rained. We helped him with some surveys to monitor a cocinas mejoradas project. This meant that we went house to house interviewing families and inspecting their kitchens/stoves. In Musho, the houses are really spread out so we spent the entire day walking up and down the mountain side. I enjoyed every minute of it. We walked through streams, ate berries off the trees, got chased by pigs, and trekked through corn fields. The truly tough part was visiting the people’s homes. It is hard to believe that such generally kind, hardworking people can live in such a state of poverty. The majority of the homes I visited didn’t have a latrine, didn’t have clean water to drink, had dirt floors with tin roofs, etc. And yet they still offered us bananas or rice and potatoes from the little supply they had. A lot of the families also spoke Quechua. The older generations tend to speak Quechua and very little Spanish but the younger generations seem to speak more Spanish. I tried to pick up a little bit of Quechua on our trip. I’m not sure that I’ll be at a site where it’s spoken, but it is possible.

Our last day, we returned to Huaraz. We walked around the streets to the markets, sat in on the 9 Ancash volunteers’ regional meeting, went to see a business volunteer’s site (he works with artisan pottery-making groups), treated ourselves to some ice cream and Chinese food, and headed home exhausted but satisfied. The week was hard but it flew by. The volunteer’s were fantastic hosts and if I have the opportunity to be a volunteer in Ancash, I know I’ll have a great support system. If I don’t end up spending my next two years in Ancash, I at least have to go back to see Huascaran- we spent a whole week in Ancash but couldn’t see the mountain because it was too cloudy! It will definitely be an excuse to go back.
Some side notes:

I almost forgot to mention that this week I had three traditional Peruvian dishes for the first time! I had ceviche (raw fish in a sort of lime juice), picante de cuy (guinea pig), and pollo a la brasa (I think it’s cooked like rotisserie chicken). It may be hard to believe but all of those dishes were incredible! I also ate a lot of potatoes. And rice. But what would a meal be here without rice and potatoes?

Tomorrow is a big day for the US! You can bet that we will be finding a TV to watch the election results. And yes, I did get to vote by absentee ballot. Go OBAMA!

THANK YOU ALL for the letters and emails. It is such an amazing feeling to get mail. Please keep them coming!

The No "No" Rule

Another volunteer passed on a little piece of wisdom from a friend of hers who is also a PCV. It’s called “The No ‘No’ Rule.” She told me about this rule after she had been out until 4 a.m. at a baptism party with her host family (Yes, a baptism party. Here baptism parties are more like wedding receptions). Basically the rule is that you never say no to an invitation. If someone invites you to eat cow hearts from the street vendor, you do it. If you get invited to go to a discoteca on a Sunday night, you do it. If your host mom asks you to help kill a chicken for tonight’s chicken noodle soup, you do it (well, taking pictures of her doing it can also count). I think this is a really useful philosophy for my next two years and two months here in Peru. If you never say no, think of all the great adventures and stories you’ll have!

On Friday, I will officially have been in Peru for a month. The last two weeks have flown by. My typical schedule consists of 4 hours of Spanish class and either 4 hours of community health training or training in things like first aid, diversity, and sexual health. I wake up around 5 a.m. to the sound of roosters and chickens (sometimes around 3 to the one rooster who’s internal clock must be off) but try to go back to sleep for another hour. If I’m feeling brave, or really dirty, I take a 5 minute cold shower. Then I get dressed and have breakfast with my host mom. She figured out that I love coffee so now I get coffee every morning. Unfortunately, instant coffee is all they really drink here. I don’t really understand this, since coffee is a major export for Peru. Where are they hiding all the good coffee? At about 7:30 I walk with the other volunteers in my neighborhood to the bottom of our long hill to wait for the bus or combi. The combi probably was made to be a 15 passenger van but I’d say they can hold about 40 people. I would put up a picture but I haven’t figured out how to hold my camera in one hand while clinging desperately for my life to the railing with my other hand. I am one of the fortunate volunteers that gets to make this trek at least twice a day- to the training center and home from the training center. We get out of training around 5 so I’ve been trying to run as much as possible with other volunteers before I go home. There’s a marathon/half marathon/10k/5k in July that a PCV started at his site and I’d really like to run in it (probably the half or the 10k). Sometimes the walk up the hill to my house at the end of the day is enough exercise.

On Saturdays, we go to an agricultural university near Lima to learn how to garden. It’s been one of my favorite activities so far. The first day we learned some basics on planting (the names of certain plants in Spanish, which ones take a long time to grow, which ones need more light, etc.). The second week we learned how to make compost. Gardening is one of the projects we can do at our sights not only to help the community increase their production of vegetables and plants, but also to have more of these nutritious foods available for ourselves. I’ve really enjoyed it so far, perhaps because it’s one of the more constructive things we’ve done. We’ve had a lot of interesting lectures, classes, and activities, but we haven’t gotten a chance to get our hands dirty. That’s all coming in the next couple weeks.

After we finish at the Agraria on Saturdays, we have the afternoon free to go explore Lima, go shopping at a big commercial plaza (where they have such great American delicacies as the Whopper, the Big Mac, and the personal pan pizza), or just return home. Last week, a couple friends and I decided to have a picnic in Miraflores, which is one of the more upscale/prettier areas of Lima. It sits high up on a cliff and you can see the Pacific Ocean. I made hummus the night before (which was a whole other adventure, involving my host mom boiling garbanzo beans for 7 hours over a wood fire and then me burning out the blender) and we all ate lunch in Parque Kennedy. Then we walked toward the water and toward a place called Parque del Amor. After exploring Miraflores for awhile, we decided to get some ice cream and head back home. Getting home from Lima is the tricky part. You have to take a couple of combis to get back and only if you are super lucky do you get a seat. I was not so lucky and stood for a little over an hour to get home.

If you’ve made it this far in this blog entry, thanks for reading! Today we have the day off from PC (minus Spanish interviews to reevaluate our class level) because it’s a holiday. I’m writing this blog on my laptop and then hopefully going to an internet place to post it. Free time and personal space are two things we don’t get a lot of so I’m thinking that today will be a good day to do some reading, write in my journal, maybe make the effort to heat up water on the stove for a loofa shower, who knows. I’ve learned quickly that your plans can change in an instant. That personal time you thought you had might be interrupted by a visit from an uncle that lives in the jungle or an unexpected trip to neighboring Chosica for a parade. Sometimes I wonder how much is lost in translation and how often things are just left unannounced. I tried to explain the phrase “like a deer in headlights” to my host mom the other day. Fortunately, I think she got it.

Snail mail not so sluggish

Since I don´t have a ton of access to email, I´d love to get some snail mail. I might even get your letter before I get a chance to check my email next. The address is on the right side of my blog. Give me updates on what´s going on back home! :)

Mi Casa y Mi familia

I´m still working out the kinks on uploading photo albums to my blog. I´ve tried a couple different ways but the internet connection is really slow and takes a wicked long time. For now, here´s a couple photos of my family and my house for the next three months. Above is my host niece, in the kitchen are my host mom and cousin (My cousin doesn´t live with us, she was just over for lunch. Photos of my host sister to come later), below is my neighborhood Chacrasana and my house and room. It took me an hour just to load these photos, so enjoy! :)

El Cuerpo de Paz

This is my very first post from Peru! I´ve been here a little over a week now and Peace Corps keeps us so busy I haven´t really had a chance to sit down and write an entry. It all started in DC- we had a two day orientation called "staging" which by luck happened to be at the Georgetown Holiday Inn. I flew down to DC early so I could see all my Hoyas one last time before I left. After staging, we flew to Lima and had another two day orientation at a sort of family campground place called Huampani. The last day of the orientation, they took us to the Peace Corps training center to meet our host families. The Peace Corps training center is beautiful! And the staff that runs it are amazing, so up-beat and excited to have us. More on the training center later.
Now for more on my family and living situation. The training center is about an hour outside of Lima in Chaclayo. The volunteers live with host families in different communities around Chaclacayo. I live in Chacrasana with my host mom, host sister who is 24, and my host niece who is 1 and a half. My host dad apparently lives in Chicago and comes to Peru twice a year. My host brother in law comes home from somewhere twice a month and I have yet to meet him. My family is also related to the majority of the people in the neighborhood so I have a lot of uncles aunts and cousins. To get to my house you have to walk up an enormous hill, so I should be in pretty good shape after my three months of living here. So far, everything is going well with the host family. It´s all girls so it´s a real chick house. I have my own room which is maybe a 6 ft x 10 ft box that shares a plywood wall used to separate my room from my host mom´s. We also share a chandelier for light at night that has one working lightbulb. We have running water from about 5 am until 10 pm, a toilet (I was prepared for a latrine so I was psyched about that), cold water shower (it´s pretty freezing so I boil water and take a loofa bath), cable tv, and a phone. I actually feel like I made out like a bandit. This is Peace Corps luxury.
The food so far has been delicious!! My host mom is a great cook and is determined to make me gain 2 kilos. The big meal-lunch- mainly consists of rice, potatoes, and some kind of meat. No G.I. problems yet so far, knock on wood. Tonight I´m going to attempt to bake cookies. My host mom keeps talking about how the last volunteer baked for them all the time so I´m gonna give it a whirl tonight. The other volunteer also was a vegetarian so the first couple of days I had to reasure my host mom that yes, in fact, I do like meat.
I have many stories to tell already and lots of pictures to share, but unfortunately my time is almost up at the internet cafe so I´ll have to wait until next time. They give us 8 soles a day (around 3 dollars) as part of our stipened, so I´m trying to budget a little. Most of that money is spent on the combis (little busses) to the training center, which is a whole other story itself. Ciao for now!
Shannon