Diarrhea and Dogs

Living in a country where you have to boil the water before you drink it, there comes a few more medical tidbits good to know. This is straight up- cover your eyes if its too much.

1. Diarrhea is inevitable.

2. Sometimes vomit is also in the cards.

3. Your shot portfolio becomes quite impressive.

4. Dogs are everywhere and sometimes they bite.

5. Your body could go through a wild ride from the change in diet- from gaining to losing weight.

6. You will have the chance to learn one of life’s most valuable lessons: patience. Especially with yourself.

7. Contact lenses can trap bacteria and dust in your eyes, doing their will with your cornea.

8. Your body and mind are equipped to adapt to almost anything. It’s really quite impressive.

Physically and mentally it’s a tough experience and it’ll undoubtedly get tougher for most of us as we offer our services in more rural settings. But it’s also probably the best healthcare we will ever receive in our lives.

Imagine having not one but two doctors just a phone call away, willing to help you in whatever way they can. Getting medicine shipped to you overnight free of charge. Being able to walk into a hospital and receive attention solely based on the fact that you’re a PCV. Being reimbursed for anything health related you buy out of pocket at the drugstore. Mid-service, full check-ups scheduled for you with all expense paid trips to get to the examining room. The gentlest hands this side of the equator- or so I’ve been told… It really is a medical dream come true.

And what’s more is that those two doctors? They’re some of the kindest, funniest, most intelligent, on-the-ball doctors you’ll find. They’re named Jorge and Suni.

During training we sat through a medical session a week, covering basically everything listed in those tidbits above and more. Each session had a fantastic powerpoint presentation created and led by Jorge and Suni. Learning about diarrhea, dogs, and STDS couldn’t have been more entertaining.

We started it off with Youth and Business together in one room learning that the big D and V happened due to three main culprits: bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Usually- except for the parasites- you can wait it out successfully, however uncomfortably and sometimes embarrassingly, for your body to rid itself of the little buggers.

From there, we received our solid black plastic medical kits (botequines) containing essentials such as Cipro- the anti-diarrhea medicine, sun block, and condoms. Lots other salves and pills were stuffed in there as well.

We got intimate with the information found on a stool chart shown to us as a way to gauge our bowel movements.

We received about a shot every two weeks. Rabies. Hepatitis. Younameit.

We were clued into the secret of discouraging dogs from biting you as acting as if you’re picking up a rock to hurl it at them. Not always fail proof.

We were separated into women and men to talk about our body image. Women usually gained weight from all the rice and potatoes and men usually lost weight. Needless to say, women tended to have a little more discomfort in their body image over the two years.

We learned that PCVs number one issue, besides digestive sickness, was mental health- feeling lonely and depressed.

We saw tons and tons of ghastly pro-abstinence pictures about STDs. Better to just say no.

We learned about all the potential diseases we could catch and some of the animals that transmit them.

Many of us stopped wearing contacts. I’ve been sporting two pairs- a black plastic frame- where’s waldo style- and this classic pair that makes me look kinda professional.

And I’m not sure where else to mention this next block, but it seems most fitting somewhere in the scary medical post. It’ll be a reality check of sorts- it certainly has been for us.

Running water and electricity are luxuries in too large a portion of the world. That being said- hot water, toilets, internet, and cell phones are beyond luxuries. In many places in Peru, meals are cooked over an open fire- often in the actual home, smoking the walls. And even though a family in these areas might just have enough for the one-time cost of a stove, the natural gas that it uses would be too much to cover regularly. Our doctor told us that many people have never had consistently solid bowel movements and so believe it normal to use the restroom 3-5 times a day.

So many things we take for granted… Knowledge we take for granted. Things you didn’t know you learned at some point. And then there are those things you don’t know you don’t know…

I do want to say this though- you’d be surprised at how quickly you can adapt to things or how quickly you realize that luxuries really aren’t necessities, although they’re definitely niceties. A new normal only takes time to settle in. And maybe some patience.

How does one develop youth? It depends…

Technical Training is exactly that. Learning what our goals are. Our objectives. And then figuring out how exactly we will be technically achieving them.

Each program had their technical training hours outlined in the calendar and each program had their two technical trainers. Youth Development (YD) had the dynamic duo of Mike and Mariu.

They each brought to the table an understanding of what it meant to be a volunteer working in development- Mike was a past PCV in Peru for youth development and Mariu had served in Africa. But along with these similar experiences, they each brought their cultural perspectives- Mike’s American and Mariu’s Peruvian- which made a nice fusion for our training experience. And they’re just plain awesome… Mike has this way of crossing his legs and leaning in a chair look that I would gladly imitate for anyone who requests it (my fellow YD volunteer Jah does a great one). And Mariu has this laugh and this sweetness…

Generally, our tech time followed a steady introduction to Youth Development’s Project Purpose, which is as follows:

Peruvian youth will be positively prepared and engaged in improving their quality of life by strengthening their personal and social development to better prepare themselves for family life, the world of work, and involvement in the communities.

There are three main goals (which are basically listed at the end of the purpose statement) and objectives for each that detail how exactly we are to achieve the purpose.

The steady introduction involved lots of icebreaker games and real life practice out in the communities. And this mainly came in the form of the Youth Group Activity.

We were divided into groups based on our neighborhoods and for the better part of three months of training, we entered our local school and filled hour long class time with interactive lessons and activities. At first it was super scary, but then you get to realize that the kids absolutely love you and want you to be there no matter how silly you look or sound. Kids rock. And overall, the experience was another guinea pig success (we were yet again the first to try it out).

The biggest challenge we will face will be figuring out what the reality is in our community- what does the youth need, what opportunities exist for them, what they can do about them, etc. It is for this reason that for a lot of the questions asked during training, the answer was an intangible "It depends...". It really will depend. They say that after two years of service, each volunteer will be the expert on their site. So after two years honing some expertise, the "it depends" will become a tangible and highly specific answer.

Diving into Language and Culture. Head first. Complete submersion.

The first day in Huampani we were introduced to the amazing core of language instructors. There were eight in all and all were Peruvians. It’s a sixth month job so the rest of the year they work elsewhere. Some continue to teach English classes at a university, but they don’t all necessarily teach nor do they all know English. Although, at the beginning, we were made to believe not one of them could speak any English at all. It was part of the complete submersion method and part of learning the lesson that it can be very exclusive to speak English in the presence of even one person who can not follow the conversation.

So the three language levels were as follows: low, intermediate, and advanced with three sub-levels within each of the same name. As mentioned before, Peru9 was guinea pigging this new location so the staff had to decide how to group us for living situations. It took a while (or atleast me) to realize their strategy but it ended up being by language levels, which further meant that within each neighborhood there were volunteers from both Youth Development and Small Business. Woohoo! It turned out to be one of the best decisions ever as far as group integration. So maybe language skills struggled a bit more than usual, but Peru9 came out of those three months pretty tight.

The advanced group did its business a little differently than the rest. No hours and hours of classes for us. We just had one hour a week for a group meeting and then we each individually met with RosaMaria an hour and forty min a week for private one-on-one attention. There were six of us in all. It was pretty nice. No lie.

BUT we didn’t get off as easily as you might have imagined- there was an assignment to be done with all those extra hours. A mini-project. To be done in our communities. Topic to our liking but still remaining within our program goals. No collaboration.

I chose to develop a youth class on leadership figuring it’d be good to start now on what I hope to do in the future, you know?

Over all, my project went well. It was more practice in preparation than actual action since it proved pretty difficult to ACTUALLY get kids to show up. There WAS one successful evening of about 12 girls which made me super happy. My main points that night were to explain that leadership is learned, that leaders weren’t born, they were made, and that we all have the ability to lead, but first we should learn to lead our lives as examples for those who will follow us. I did an activity with a raisin- something I got from someone I met once who I really respected. It went a little like this.

You each have a raisin in your hand.

Many of you already know what a raisin tastes like.

Many of you already know whether you like raisins or not.

How many of you DO like raisins?

How many of you don’t?

Can you think back and remember the first time you tasted a raisin?

Can you remember the first time you decided whether you liked it or not?

Now observe this raisin in your hands. The color. The texture. The size.

Bite into it.

Take a moment to experience the flavor again.

What does it taste like?

For those who like raisins, do you think you could learn to not like them?

For those who don’t, do you think you could learn to like them?

Often, we have learned long ago what we liked and what we disliked and we stayed there. I’m not trying to question what anyone likes or dislikes. I’m trying to pose the thought of the power we all have to change our minds, even on the most basic decisions we’ve made in life. The power to change, the power to learn.

the low-down on training (a shout-out to Father Tim)

As stated in our pre-service handbook, the purpose of training is to become an effective volunteer which includes developing “a good understanding of Peruvian culture, of how things get done in this society, of the language, and of how to adapt technical skills to the realities of assignments”.

And here are the details of that training.

We were at the center Monday thru Friday 8-5pm and on Saturdays we had classes in the agricultural university in Lima called La Agraria. Sundays we had off to spend time with our families.

The major aspects of training were:

language and culture classes (four hours a day, four days a week)

technical training (Peru 9- small business and youth development)

medical sessions

safety and security sessions

administrative sessions

two major community projects:

Development of a Community Contact (DCC)

Community Development Activity (CDA)

Two week-long trips

Field Based Training (FBT)

Future Site Visit

And a bunch more special day activities, like our Fourth of July Field Day.

Much of it was done using non-formal education (NFE) techniques which is also what we are trained to use as well. The basic premise is that there’s nothing wrong with getting a little silly- in fact, the sillier, the better. Let loose. Have fun. Be creative. Enjoy what you’re teaching and anyone will enjoy learning it.

Like I shared in my first and only letter thus far, training was extremely intense the first two weeks, but all the crazy newness became more and more comfortable and things settled down into a nice, busy, set schedule. Though, it still got frustrating at times. I think this had a lot to do with the complexity of what “training” is supposed to do for us. There are a lot of intangibles and unknowns- some major and a lot of minors, which comes with the reality of the situation. We will all be placed in such specific sites that we most likely will not use all of the information learned in training. Just being prepared involves a lot of practice work of which the real-life situation is hard to imagine. But we have to be at least exposed to all possibilities, just in case. And to add to this, two other major aspects of training are 1) to give us a chance to make sure Peace Corps is right for us and that we’re right for it (which involves a lot of group and individual discussions and evaluations) and 2) to find the best site match to our personality, strengths, and work style (sounds hard? It is.). So more than half of training was experienced without any idea of where we might be placed and as I will describe more later on, Peru offers an endless variety of environments and people.

Peace Corps Peru staff is pretty sweet- from training to the Lima office, from group to individual. As hard as volunteers work in the field, our support network is working behind the scenes to make sure we have all the information we need, that we’re safe and secure, that we’re healthy physically and mentally, that we’re able to feed and shelter ourselves. Understating a lot and maybe still being a bit cheesy, we couldn’t do this without them.

I’m sure I’m not doing it justice, but I hope this gives somewhat of an idea as to the amount of time, energy, and dedication that’s involved on the other side of this experience.

A Typical Day for Me as a Peace Corps Trainee

~6am Get up and take a shower. Relax a little. Look over what’s in store for the day. Read.
7-730am Eat breakfast with Rebeca, Steisy, and Vivi (Eduardo usually has left for work by now).
~730am Start walking down the steep hill for the Yanacoto entrance.
737-740am Catch a combi (bus) which should only cost 50 centimos, but sometimes the cobradors (bus attendants who open and close the doors and collect the money) try to put the gringo tax on us, asking for 70.
~750am Quickly signal to the cobrador that I want to get off at the “Lavanderia” sign.
750-8am Debate with myself about going into Danilo’s Breadshop. Go into Danilo’s. Hurry through the park, passing other little shops, and on to the training center.
8-815am Classes or information sessions begin.
815-12pm Learning continues with mini-breaks for coffee, tea, and snacks in the kitchen.
12-1pm Eat the lunch that my mom packed for me. Visit the little stand lady just outside the gate selling cookies, chocolate, chips, and anything else bad for my teeth. Or walk to the little shops in the park for a Coke Zero or an Inca Light or an ice cream.
1-5pm More learning in the form of more info sessions, special presentations, or discussion groups. And more mini-breaks.
5-530pm Either head home or stop for a coffee or beer with my new rad friends.
~530-630pm Chill at home with little sisters or begin homework.
~630pm Eat dinner, talk with my family, visit friends in my neighborhood, more homework, and/or whatever else.
10-11pm Go to sleep.

As training went on, everything started later and later. It’s funny because Hispanics, not just Peruvians, are notorious for this, but in Peru there is actually a national campaign that’s called Peru Puntual (Punctual Peru). Maybe it’s a natural phenomenon that comes from being super chill and easy-going?

Here goes the rest...with pics to come (they take a while to load)

Ok, some of this is going to be a little dry, but I’m working on juicing it up. :)
Friday June 8th. Off the plane at 1130pm, we made our way through the gate and were greeted by Peace Corps Peru staff, waiting with signs to welcome us to our new home. They corralled us into baggage claim, then through customs- a quick and painless process. I remember stepping out just past the airport’s sliding doors and feeling the night air on my face, a coolness lit with streetlamps and camera flashes- one of our doctors coming to capture our faces seeing Lima for the first time.

We steered the luggage buggies toward the parking lot, all the while being very aware of our belongings, a challenge with so many people around- volunteers, staff, some looking for a quick tip, some looking for something else. We packed away the main bulk of our luggage into one bus and then packed ourselves into another heading out toward a retreat facility called Huampani. It was around 130am by the time we found ourselves in our rooms and ready for bed.
Our first Peruvian breakfast was a nice tall glass of pulpy papaya juice and a typical bread roll with a slice of bologna. Our waiter also served us café con leche (coffee with milk), pouring the espresso like syrup into our cup and topping it off with steamed milk. I was wary about the fruit juice but excited about the coffee. Lunches and dinners at Huampani also had that mixture of hesitation and pleasure, which served nicely as an introduction to Peruvian cuisine. More on food later as I absolutely love the food here.
The objectives of the Huampani weekend were to introduce Peace Corps Peru, to personally discuss and reconfirm medical needs, to determine levels of Spanish for placement in intensive language and culture classes, and to interview for prospective family matches. Time flew by and before we knew it, we were out the door on another bus headed for the new training center in Chaclacayo. It was previously in a small city called Santa Eulalia which is about an hour up the road from where it is now. A total of eight Peace Corps Trainee groups have been through, living and sharing with families that came to intimately know how an American’s first three months could go- the excitement of new food, friends, and family, the withdrawal pains of old food, friends, and family, the days and nights of non-stop bathroom use, the language frustrations and rapid successes, the wetting of the feet with mini-projects upon mini-projects, etc… These families were asked to accept us as one of their own- another son, daughter, sister, brother, cousin- to feed us, sending us off in the morning with our lunch boxes and receiving us again at night to sit and talk over light dinners and tea, to look after our physical and mental well-being, to be patient with us. As anyone can imagine, it can be stressful at times, but little by little, we learn to say no thank to the extra helping of rice or potatoes just like any son or daughter would. And they eventually let us wash the dishes and tease us about gaining weight on the rice and potatoes. Sometimes, the familiarity happens quickly, a nice fitting of the glove deal, and other times it would need a little more than three months for the glove to stretch out a bit, (or the hand to shift a little).
There’s a main road or “pista” that connects Santa Eulalia to Chosica to Chaclacayo to Lima and anywhere along the way you can hop off to explore more names. Our new families live in four different neighborhoods just off this stretch: Yanacoto, Chacrasana, Tres de octubre, and Huascaran. Somewhere between Tres de and the Huas lies the Peace Corps training center of Chaclacayo, near the nice grassy park with the awesome bread shop called Danilo’s. It’s where every morning one trainee, all, or variation there of go in for fresh baked bread rolls or apple tarts or coconut haystacks or alfajors topped with their pretty layer of snowy powdered sugar… I guess it might not have been JUST the rice and potatoe.
The day I went home with my new family was a full one. We arrived to the center in the morning, found out our language levels, were divided into classes, had some quick get-to-know-you time, and then sat down to a very typical Peruvian lunch the staff prepared for us called aji de gallina (pulled chicken in a spicy yellow sauce over rice and/or potatoes- literal translation: chicken chile pepper). One of my favorite Peruvian dishes by the way. My language instructor, RosaMaria, was just about done passing out these family profile packets when the arrival of the families was announced. The center has a garage where the big chunks of luggage had been stored during Huampani time, so after heading directly there to sort through and unite with our respective chunks, we sorted through the faces of our families. I was greeted by (with the help of RosaMaria) my dad Eduardo, my mom Rebeca, and my little sister Steisy. Lots of smiles, kisses, and relief being absorbed by the afternoon. And after a quick goodbye, we hopped into their parked car outside the gate and headed home.
Yanacoto sits at the top of a very long and steep hill (one of the many foothills or cerros around here) and just at the steepest point in the paved road, with a curve to the left, my house comes into view- the first one, which always meant I would be breaking off from the rest soon, breathlessly saying the ciaos and seeyoutomorrows. It’s a green two-story house that Eduardo himself built little by little over a few years. Once, we went on Google Earth and all that could be seen at the time of the picture was the first story. Now, we have get-togethers on the roof, cooking those delicious beef heart kabobs called anticuchos, listening to Grupo Cinco sing about love (what else is there?), and talking about what’s new with everyone.
So for eleven weeks, I lived here quite comfortably with my family of four. Vivi, my other little sister whose 4, was at home with the mamita (grandma) that first day. She’s super funny and likes to draw on the walls, something she probably picked up from me. Steisy, 13, is really sharp and fun. Together we baked two red velvet cakes and stacks upon stacks of banana pancakes. She became so much of an expert that soon, even the first one off the pan was golden brown- and that’s hard to do. And Eduardo and Rebeca, who had me when they were about 10, became easy friends. They talked to me about Peru, about life here, about their lives, their thoughts. I told them about the States, my life, my thoughts, what brought me to Peru. We talked a lot about the Peace Corps and how we could help Peruvian youth. They’re both teachers and know a lot from first-hand experience.
Although every person and experience is different, by the eighth PC trainee that lives in a house, a family pretty much has a handle on some of the intricacies of American culture and other little quirks. For example, we can be pretty attached to our privacy and it doesn’t mean that we’re being anti-social. We can’t drink the water without it being boiled first and prefer our food, our tea, and our coffee so hot, it can potentially burn us. It can take some time for us to get used to the food, spending some of the first few weeks off and on in the bathroom. We coordinate many small events of all kinds in the neighborhood, even if it might be hard to understand us at first (or even up to the end). We ask a lot of the same questions, sometimes awkwardly, directly, and without pretense about day to day topics. Not to mention how we move, how we talk, blue eyes, blonde hair, pale skin- or maybe dark skin and dreadlocks… None of this is to say that no one had ever experienced any of this before or that it’s something so unbelievably amazing, but it is something quite different to be living with it. From what I’ve heard, some general perceptions Peruvians have of Americans are that we’re pretty reserved people (I’ve even heard the word “cold”) and we eat a lot of our food from cans. So just imagine not having any idea at all of what it would be like. It takes some hearty curiosity and courage to accept a new, strange person into your house, to live with you and your kids as just another member of the family. And the reverse and same can be said for us trainees. What’s really awesome about being Peru9 is that we’re both experiencing this newness together.

Here go some pics...

The Jacksonville Airport.





















PERU 9



















Waiting for the morning flight in JFK Airport, New York City.





















Flying American.














The view right before we landed in Lima.