Alyssa's Peace Corps Megadventure

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Nice...duck.

This entry is dedicated to my immediate family, who will probably find this story considerably funnier than the general population.

It rains about 5 months a year in Santo Domingo, beginning right about now. Unsurprisingly, it was raining really hard yesterday, and when I looked outside and thought to myself that I didn’t really mind it, I thought about something my dad always said when it rained in Michigan: ‘it’s a good day to be a duck.’ This saying always made me feel pretty amicable toward rain, because hey, how can you hate something that makes ducks so happy.

Yesterday, I related this saying to Flor during dinner. I told her that I didn’t mind the rain, because like my dad always said, ‘es un buen día para ser un pato.’ She laughed, and then Humberto came in and asked what she was laughing about.

Flor: Alyssa’s dad always cooks a duck when it rains in the United States!
Me: Wait, what? No.
Flor: Isn’t that what you just said? ‘Es un buen día para hacer un pato.’
(Ser = to be. Hacer = to make.)
Me: No…SER un pato. It’s a good day to BE a duck…you know, ducks like the rain. They’re happy…when it rains. So it’s a good day…for ducks…when it rains.
(Blank looks)

The conversation was saved by a discussion of the deliciousness of duck and in what parts of Peru they prepare duck the best, allowing Flor and Humberto to stop wondering why I would care so much about the emotional wellbeing of a duck.

Nice…language misunderstanding.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Success?

Yesterday, in my continuing war against the bedbugs, I rehung my mosquito net, as I hung it backwards the first time, and with unwaxed dental floss...not exactly reliable. I also decided it would be a good idea, though no one who deals with bedbugs regularly has ever suggested this, to clean my mattress and sleeping bag with rubbing alcohol. The problem is that even the rubbing alcohol here is somehow grape-based, so my bed sort of smells like a Pisco hangover. I committed to sleeping naked, so as not to carry any questionable insects into my bed. (This actually started as a joke, and then Flor said that ''the doctors'' here actually recommend it.) One night this week, I attempted to sleep naked and covered in Deet, but the bedbugs still found a way, the bottoms of my feet or something.

So while I admit that bedbugs have turned me into a crazy person, I have to say, I only got one bite last night. Success, I think.

That little children's good-night saying will never, ever be cute again.

Friday, December 15, 2006

I itch more.

I am in a losing war with bedbugs and am running out of ideas. I am confused as to how everyone else who lives in the sierra just deals with this problem, but that is true of many things.

It's been an up-and-down couple days here at site, and this will be a shorter blog entry due to the first down: my keyboard going absolutely haywire and pretty much rendering my laptop useless for things unrelated to iPod charging and use of Microsoft Paint. I blame the dust and the culture shock. My keyboard is unacostumbrado to all the Ñs and Ás.

My laptop has, however, proven quite useful in providing me with an outlet for my mad Microsoft Paint skills in designing a flyer for the upcoming compost sales in the campo. I lack an adequate design program on my computer and Juan wanted it done for next week, so Paint it was. One black-and-white, oversimplified diagram of a functioning compost pile, coming up. The part of me that remembers all the hours I spent in the 3D lab last winter on the virtual reality project is dying a slow death.

There are two roosters running around the computer lab right now.

Humberto's cousins painted my room yesterday and today, and I am now the proud inhabitant of a light blue adobe dungeon. Granted, everything I own is a little bit splattered with paint (note to self: when you come back from work to find the dudes painting your room passing around cervezas, take action), but it probably vale la pena. That room will improve poco a poco. Someday, maybe rats won't fall through the roof, but hey, I'm not holding my breath.

Amidst all these issues, I had perhaps the greatest conversation I have had in Peru with Juan today, second only to perhaps when my host dad in Sta. E. acted out Ghostbusters.
Me: Juan, how are we getting all this compost up the hill?
Juan: Oh, a burro will carry it.
Me: Whose burro?
Juan: Our burro.
Me: WE HAVE A BURRO?!
Juan: (sudden, uncontrolable laughter)

Seriously, whose idea was it to NOT tell the Volunteer that her new project comes with its own donkey. And that the donkey is named after a nearby mountain.

It has come to my attention that this blog insufficiently explains what my project actually is. We collect trash. Before, the people of Santo Domingo had no choice but to throw their trash in the river, which is pretty rank as it is. Now, the people separate it into organics (for the compost, to be sold in the campo starting in February-ish), and inorganics. What can be sold for recyclables of the inorganics is, and the rest of it...well. Juan has the plans and is applying for a sanitary landfill to put on his farm. Currently, they are still burning the trash. We added a new neighborhood to the collection this week, so I have been walking around with Juan, handing out buckets and bags, and instructing people on how to separate their trash. Oh, me and landfills. Destined since every Take Your Daughter To Work Day of my childhood. Thanks, Dad.

Saturday, December 02, 2006

Me acostumbro.

After my first five days in Santo Domingo, I feel surprisingly relaxed. My big preoccupation during training was what to do with my time, and, as I somewhat expected, that all just sort of sorts itself out. Something to do presents itself everyday. With the combination of a continuing project and a sitemate (actually, two, Lillian has about a week before she moves to Lima), I don’t think I’ve had quite the site-arrival shock that other Volunteers have.

A favorite question of people here is, “¿Te acostumbras?” or, quite literally, “Do you accustom yourself?” During my site visit, I found it sort of off-putting. “Yes, I’ve been in your small town in the sierra of Perú approximately two hours, and now there are no mysteries. You all make perfect sense. I accustom myself! (cue jazz hands)” Then I realized people were still asking it about Ryan...after two years. “¿Ryan, él se acostumbra?” Two years!! They then sometimes follow it with an explanation that sometimes, people come and they don’t acostumbrarse, and then they have to go home, and it is sad. I have no idea who these un-acostumbrados people could possibly be. My stock answer for this question is now a patient smile and a “Poco a poco.” (Bit by bit? Day by day? I just noticed I don’t actually know how to translate that. Regardless, they accept it.)

I have had, if anything, almost TOO much presented to me to do on the project during the first week, and I’ve been trying to slow down and explain to Juan that I have other stuff I need to do during these first few months. Namely, acostumbrarme. I went to the campo this morning with Rachel, Lillian, and the president of their weaver’s association. I played non-competitive volleyball with some 11-year-olds outside the Municipality. The resulting bruises on my forearm indicate that I am not ready for competitive volleyball here (with girls of any age), because they are insane about it. And, also, I knit. They love me for it. Yesterday I was knitting with Flor on the front stoop, and an old woman came by and starting positively glowing in my direction. “Oh, her white skin is so beautiful...and she KNITS!” (with the latter part clearly being the more valued, as it should be).

The other thing I have been doing with my time is solving the small proyectos that come up in a developing country. For example, I had been dreading taking a shower here because there was no door on the shower, and you have to pass by the shower to get to the toilet. This made me apprehensive, for perhaps obvious reasons. Today, though, Lillian informed me that they sell plastic by the meter, so I went to a tienda, bought two meters of plastic and some packaging tape, and ta da! My dignity, for only S/.5.

My living situation is unreal, it’s so good. I can’t believe it happened by coincidence (Ryan knew Humberto from the municipality, and he happened to mention he had a room), and not through some sort of rigorous interviewing process. I started eating all my meals here, unexpectedly. I thought I would be treated more or less like the other tenants, but Flor has somewhat taken me under her wing, and part of that involves feeding me...a lot of food. She’s super-sensitive to my tastes, though, and to what she imagines an American would find disagreeable about Peruvian cuisine. Yesterday she gave me a plate of potatoes, and said, “I gave you rice last night, and I don’t want you to get bored of it.” What? I didn’t think the idea of the possibility of being sick of rice existed in this country. Amazing. Also, yesterday she casually asked me if Americans put lemon on all raw vegetables like they do here, and I said that in fact they don’t, and possibly even mentioned that I’m not fond of the habit. Today, she gave me a plate of spinach (picked from Juan’s farm), and said, “Here, I put less lemon on it for you.” A compromise, if you will. Also, phase one in my secret side project, Get Peru to Export Less of Their Abundant Spinach and Asparagus So I Can Eat It. Humberto and Flor are awesome in many, many ways unrelated to food, but I’m writing this post hungry, which is a bad idea. Like grocery shopping hungry. Also, food is something of a constant battleground between Volunteers and their families, so a good food situation is something to write home about...literally.

Upon coming back to this well-fed, I can share one adorable story about Flor. When I first got here this time, she ran up to me and immediately said, “Alyssa! I had a dream about you! I was waiting for you to come, but then you didn’t come. Some other gringa came, a bajita with black hair. And I cried because it wasn’t you.” Adorable, no?

I was sick my first couple days here, with an inexplicably painful sore throat. It was really the ultimate irony, as all Peace Corps Volunteers have to do during their first few months is talk, and that was the one thing I couldn’t do. I don’t remember if that’s actually irony. Sorry, language usage precisionists. But by the time it went away, I felt so relieved to be able to talk to people and thereby unreasonably confident in my Spanish, a good boost for the first week. Going to the Puesto de Salud here was also some sort of adventure. I didn’t actually need to see the doctor to get the amoxicillin that Dr. Jorge told me I needed, but I feel so guilty about the fact that antibiotics are non-prescription that I waited for the doctor to look at my throat with only the examination lamp in the room, offer to inject me with penicillin to see if I was allergic, and tell me that my throat was, indeed, bien rojo. As Rachel put it, sometimes we feel like we live in a reenactment: there’s an internet cafe in town, a TV and DVD player in my house, and everyone knows American movies, but the most basic things, like a flashlight to look down someone’s throat, are lacking. Poco a poco.