Lots of people in tight spaces...and other various observations

It´s been some time since my last post, due mostly to the lack of internet in the house currently. But I´ve found a locutorio (essentially a convenient store with internet and telephones) that has fast internet and cost about 40 cents an hour. So here I am.

It´s incredible in Peru how resourceful the people are when it comes to space. The combis, or mini-buses, that crowd the city streets pack the riders in like sardines. One person hangs out the front door yelling to people on the street the destination of the combi, hoping they will jump on. Often you hear cries of ¨Huanchaco, Huanchaco¨ which is the beach town nearby. The bus may stop for you to get on, but you can´t always be sure it will come to a complete stop when you are getting off. More surprising than the buses, however, are how many people ride in one taxi or even on a bicycle. Usually the volunteers share a taxi to work or wherever else we may be going. Rather than 7 people taking 2 taxis (how silly) we jam pack into one. Unlike in Boston, where fitting even 5 people into one taxi is some sort of sin, the drivers generally don´t mind and don´t charge anymore. Even more amazing, are how bicycles are used in El Porvenir. El Porvenir is the district of Trujillo where the SKIP offices are located. It´s a very impovershed area here in the desert with scant resources. It´s not uncommon to see a father riding a bicycle with 2 or 3 children placed in various places on the bike. I was surprised when, after working in the nursery, the older brother of a 4 year old boy came to pick him up. The 8 year old took his 4 year old brother onto his bike and they rode home together like that. It´s truly a different world, yet similar at the same time. I´m still becoming accustomed and learning cultural norms, which happens to be fascinating for me. I think if I could spend my life becoming immersed in new cultures and learning new languages I would never get bored. However, reality calls.

But, for the time being, here I am :)

Arroz con leche...y helado y chocolate..

According to most parents, dinner comes before dessert. I guess the same will be true for this blog post. But clearly it's about the dessert. Apparently each week someone in the house makes dinner for everyone and we eat family style. The new volunteers are supposed to do it, so my week may be coming up soon. Any suggestions on what to make would be much appreciated. I think the idea is to do something from your home country, but what is American food anyways?? I'm surely not making hamburgers and french fries...Anyways! Ursula, a volunteer from California, but raised in Peru, cooked last night. She made rice with lentils and fried bananas. Very delicious. Moreso with aji added to it, which is a hot pepper sauce they add to just about everything here. We had it with beer, aptly named Trujillo. It tasted like bud light diluted with water. But the beer was just an added bonus anyways. When the meal was finished, I mentioned I was craving some chocolate, as I often am after a savory meal. The others agreed and said they wanted ice cream. Jenna, an australian volunteers, and I offered to go across the street and buy some. As we were leaving, Cat, a volunteer from the UK, offered to make Arroz con Leche with the heaps of leftover rice. Not knowing what arroz con leche was (aside from the name giving it away) she explained its rice with milk, sugar, butter, cinnamon, cloves etc. I thought it sounded fine, but we decided to get the ice cream and chocolate in addition. Upon return from the store (with chocolate chip ice cream and chocolate con mani in tow) we discovered the arroz con leche made. With my first taste, I had the kind of moment you only get when you are so pleasantly surprised with the intensity of your enjoyment at that moment. It was sweet, buttery goodness. Already full from the meal, I gave myself seconds when I realized that if you added ice cream to this heated concoction it became infinitely more delicious. Then when chunks of the chocolate bar were added, my mind was blown. The british called this rice pudding, which I of course had heard of but never tried as how appealing can rice pudding be? But I had been foolish before today, the rice pudding wins.

Training meeting

Today we had several training meetings which reinforced for me both the organization of this NGO and also how much it falls in line with my skills and interests. The two trainings were on consistent behavior reinforcement and child development, with the second being on group dynamics. Both topics that are highly useful when doing social work with children. It is a shame that my Spanish is not better and I am not here longer as I could get some very valuable social work experience here. There is a social work and psychology team that track cases and set up behavior plans for children, as well as work with the entire family. I like the holistic approach that SKIP takes to educating children. They recognize that children do not live in bubbles and in order to thrive each aspect of their lives must be attended to. The success of the child truly depends on the entire family, maybe even the entire neighborhood. Thus SKIP, an organization focused on education for youth, has not only social workers and psychologists, but also an economic development team that provides microloans and helps set up other projects for adults in the community. Moreover, SKIP utilizes members of the community to run the nursery, teach classes and play other various roles. It is not an organization completely run by outsiders, but involves community members, something necessary for the success of such an organization. The website for SKIP is skipperu.org in case you want to read more about it.

Hasta pronto!

Cebiche

Cebiche - good, but I'm not sure how much I can eat in one sitting. I think it will take some getting used to. Essentially it is raw fish that cooks in lime juice. Quite spicy as well. I'll post pictures of it later to give you a better idea. Cebiche or Ceviche is served all over Peru and Cevicherias are very common.

First two days at the SKIP house

Upon arrival at the SKIP house, Fran gave me a tour and sheets and a towel. I took a shower and fell fast asleep. It's quite cold here, especially when the sun is not out. So I was a bit chilly under the blankets but I have found that as long as I wear long pants, socks, shirt and sweater to bed, I'm usually bien. I guess usually in Winter there is sort of a gray haze that blankets the sky, but the past two days it has actually been sunny with blue skies. I told people I brought the sun from home, but I'm not sure they bought it. I can't wait for it to warm up just a bit. I think I forgot how cold the 50s can be (at night) what with all the hot weather we have had this summer at home. It's generally in the low 60s during the day.

When I woke up from my nap I met the other volunteers. They are all very nice and seem to be in their mid to late 20s. I was worried I may be with all younger people but that doesn't seem to be the case thus far. There are 9 volunteers currently living in the volunteer house, apparently it has capacity for about 20 people. I think more should be arriving in the coming weeks. SKIP has been on break for the past 3 weeks so things are just beginning up again. The classes don't begin for 2 more weeks and the offices don't open up for another week. I would like to get started, but at the same time I am greatful for some time to adjust. I will explain more about the SKIP organization in another post.

On Monday (my first day here)several of us we went to Huanchaco. Huanchaco is about a 20 minute taxi ride from Trujillo. It is a beach town where surfing seems to be quite popular. It seems a bit nicer than our barrio of Trujillo with perhaps more gringos, mostly in the warmer months though. I had my first taste of Peruvian cuisine out at dinner that night. I had a massive bowl of soup with what seemed to be cabbage and rice in a chicken broth. It was delicious. For my main course I had pollo saltado. It is essentially chicken stirfried in sauce with some vegetables. Served with rice and french fries. I think everything must be served with rice here. It was pretty good. After dinner we went to a very unique coffee shop. It had a room with a huge round cushion type thing and flat screen TV where we watched a movie. Boys Don't Cry was what we ended up with. Good film but really tragic and depressing. Maybe not the best choice for a Monday night!! I was so tired by the end that I was very happy to return to the house and hit the hay.

I told Sam, one of the other volunteers, that I never sleep late. That if I sleep til 9:30 it is a very good morning. So when I slept til noon the next day I surprised both him and myself! I guess I really needed that sleep. I got up and we covered donated books for the SKIP library in plastic. A few hours later we went to the SKIP offices and tidied up the library there a bit and organized some of the classrooms. I have yet to get my specific assignment but I think it will be in the guarderia or nursery. That night, five of us went and saw Hitchcock's Vertigo in a theater in the city center. I liked the film okay, not sure why it's such a classic though. I thought there were too many plot holes. But I'm no film critic.

Off to try my first ceviche! mas luego

El Mercado

There is an open market a few blocks down from the house that is absolutely massive. Today was my first venture there but I'm sure it will not be my last. I hope to return and take some pictures to show. I was quite intimidated on my first visit. Primarily because I don't feel adept to communicate with the vendors and various other people talking to you in the aisles. The market sells vegetables, fruit, meats, clothes and other household products and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Bargaining is a way of life there and things rarely sell for their asking price. But it is cheap cheap cheap either way. What struck me the most at first was that this was not a place for vegetarians. There were chickens hanging with the guts hanging out in all their glory. Chicken feet are plentiful and must be quite popular. Full animals hang, not sure what they are, perhaps goats. Leaving the market I saw pigs in a bag, quite heartbreaking to say the least. I could feel my stomach churn; this may take some getting used to. There were more bananas than I thought could be in one place. Literally streets full of bananas. Big, little, plantains. You name it. I ended up with carrots (one carrot may be the thickness of 4 carrots, incredible) and bananas. A good start I suppose. People walk around with wheel barrows asking to carry your things. I couldn't understand them and so at first thought they were asking if I would like a ride. I'm sure they would do that to. I will definitely return to the market. I'm sure it will be a great way to work on my spanish and get some good veggies and fruits for next to nothing. Tomorrow I'll write about the taxis, quite an experience each and every time...

Live from Peru

I've finally arrive to the southern hemisphere after many, many months of decision-making and planning. I'm relieved to finally be here and beginning to learn the culture, daily rhythms of life here and continuing to work on my Spanish. Unfortunately, for the latter, I have not been speaking it nearly as much as I should as often the volunteers speak English with one another. Despite this, I do think it is improving each day. Peruvian Spanish, unlike the Spanish I experienced in Argentina, is very clear and much like the Spanish one learns in school. Maybe if they didn't speak so fast I would actually understand more than half of what they are saying. BUT at least I'm understanding half.

Getting here was an adventure in and of itself. I left Pittsfield at 4:45 on Saturday afternoon and picked up the train in Wassaic. From there I arrived to NYC around 8:45 and spent a few hours at a friends apartment. A car picked me up at 3:30 am to arrive at JFK. My flight took off on time at 6:20. I had an hour layover in San Jose, Costa Rica and then finally arrived to Lima at 3:15. The journey through immagration and customs was quite painless. Upon entering the outside area of the airport I was bombarded by taxi drivers offering to take me to my destination (as Lonely Planet warned me I would be). I politely declined their offers (or maybe not so politely) and chose to sit in the airport for 4.5 hours as my bus did not leave for Trujillo until 10pm. After many hours passing the time reading, making friends with the nice waiter at the coffee shop and doing some excellent people watching (I like to think of this as my own anthropological study), I finally was ready to head to the bus station. As soon as I headed over to the crowds of people I was unsurprisingly approached quickly by a taxi driver. Wearing the sweater vest and name badge that many of the other taxi drivers were wearing, I decided to trust this fellow. I told him to take me to the Cruz del Sur bus station. After a bit of confusion, I clarified (in my most broken Spanish, as he spoke no  English) exactly which Cruz del Sur bus station in Lima I wanted to go to. Which is lucky because we passed the first one on the ride and I may have feared for my life sitting there. Driving through the part of Lima from the airport to the bus station was interesting. It was clearly a seedy area of the city evident by dilapidated buildings and people idly hanging out on the streets. I was glad to just be passing through. This would be my first glimpse of the truly developing country that is Peru. The taxi driver was pleasant and we made small talk, which was the first time I felt comfortable using my Spanish. The truth is, it is better to speak it and make a mistake then not use it and never learn. But I get nervous sometimes, you know. I finally arrived at Cruz del Sur bus station and not realizing that I should bargain with taxi drivers and that you do not tip them, I paid a whopping 55 soles and tipped 5 soles. Well at least I made his evening a little better. The bus itself was lovely, much like the one I took for 18 hours in Argentina. This was a slightly shorter bus ride of 9 hours, but after little sleep it was comfortable enough that I was able to sleep most of the night. The seats lay out nearly flat into beds (bus cama) and you are given a blanket and pillo while a movie plays. We were also treated to an assortment of sandwiches (I'm fairly certain most were bread with mayonaise and rolls with ham and cheese, intersting introduction to Peruvian cuisine) and beverages. I arrived to Trujillo on time at 7am. I was not sure if I was being picked up or was to take a taxi but I chose to take a taxi to the address of the house I had been given.

Mateo, the project coordinator, answered the door to the house and told me that Fran, the volunteer coordinator, had gone to the bus station to pick me up. Whoops. I hadn't been able to check my email since Saturday. He went to the bus station and told her that I was here, as she didn't have a cell phone. What a great first impression, I thought to myself. They quickly arrived back and after clearing up the confusion all was well. More to come on the first 2 days in Peru