That's not a paint splatter! That's Angorra!

(written March 18th, stuck on my computer until now due to losing of USB)

Stuff I have thought about recently:

-I was sitting in my room today, thinking, man, I could really go for some candy. I think this thought with a frequency that might surprise you, or not, if you know how much esteem I have for candy. But this time, I really thought I had some candy sitting around the room. I was convinced. I thought to myself, “I know there’s something delicious and wonderful that I got sent from home that I’ve been hoarding and trying to save for a time when I really needed it.” And then I realized that something was not in fact candy, but “This American Life” podcasts. This probably says something about my general level of intellectual stimulation.

-That said, I did finish “Death in the Andes” today, which was a fantastic book, though I wonder what I would think of it if I weren’t living in Peru. Mostly the whole book was me thinking, “Oh man, I know EXACTLY what they’re talking about!” despite the fact that it was written about a totally different part of the sierra than the part I know. There are a lot of references to Piura in it, but mostly to the city. The only reference to the sierra piurana explains that the serranos who live here don’t have the same indigenous superstitions as those the book centers around, in the central sierra. Which is true,

-as evidenced by a conversation I had with Juan’s dad in his kitchen the other day. He was asking me about religion and telling me he was “Catholic to the judge,” yep, that’s what he always says. It gives him “pena” to see people who aren’t Catholic, like that Ryan I replaced. I was going along with it, as I often do during conversations about religion here, when he said, “One really suffers to be Catholic here.” I thought initially that this was a very odd thing to say if he was referring to religious persecution, because Catholics have over a 90% majority in Peru generally, and quite near 100% in Santo Domingo. But then I thought I should give him the benefit of the doubt; there are certainly other ways he could find he suffered because of his religion, like if he meant to say that seeing people suffering through poverty was a test to his faith, for example. I guess I’ll never know what he did mean, because when I asked him, “How do they suffer?” he misunderstood (perhaps on purpose) my intonation, and thought I was saying, “Oh, how they suffer!” I figured this out when his answer was, “Sí.”

-A word on Santo Domingo generally. I haven’t really described it here, probably because I’m just now feeling qualified to do so after almost four months of living here. Basics: town in the Piuran sierra, 4 hours from the capital city by terrifying bus ride on unpaved Andean highway. There are about 1,000 residents in the town proper, and 10,000 residents including all the caseríos (rural communities that surround it). By ecoregion, Santo Domingo is in the high jungle, which is quite rare on a global level, I think. Right now we’re nearing the end of the rainy season, and everything is a brilliant color of green that I’ve never seen before. It’s in a valley, at a little under 5,000 feet, but people tell me the caseríos get up to about 10,000 feet. This is believable, but I have yet to ascertain it for myself. As far as the town character goes...well. This is something I think about a lot. Santo Domingo has neither the very closed, uninviting to outsiders character that is associated with other parts of the sierra, nor the warm, iniviting character often associated with rural communities generally. The people here more or less let me do my own thing as they do theirs. I don’t hear outrageous gossip about myself (though I have heard that I’m skinny and a good cook. The gossip chain is working out for me), nor do I get invited into people’s homes all the time just to hang out. There are ups and downs to this type of town, like any town, I suppose. Santo Domingo has also been a center of NGO development of alto Piura for some time, so it doesn’t really blow people’s mind when you say you’re there to do development work. The upside of that coin is I don’t have to explain what I’m doing there all the time, the downside is I don’t feel particularly novel. There’s a certain level of education that you can expect from people in the urban zone, which is nice, though at the same time, Juan pointed to Russia on the world map today and said, “Canada, right?”

If I am going to make these statements about a town at large, I suppose I should provide evidence:

-When I went to visit Casey and Mike’s site (Chalaco), an hour and some up the mountain, I was talking to a man who asked me, “Which is easier for you to speak, English or Spanish?” I explained that English was of course EASIER, because it’s my first language, the one I’ve been speaking since I was little. “Oh,” he answered. “For me, Spanish is easier. English is hard.” This man did not have enough education to understand the concept of first versus second languages, just “easy” and “hard.” He didn’t speak any English whatsoever, and didn’t understand that the only reason he can’t speak it is it has never been taught to him. Casey and Mike tell me they’ve had to explain this many times. So has Tessa, who’s about 3 hours away (by car, when it’s not raining) in Tamboya. People there can’t believe she grew up speaking a language other than Spanish. I have never actually had this conversation in Santo Domingo.

-I was sitting next to a man on a bus, who asked me if I worked for an NGO. I answered, “Sort of, but it’s not an NGO, because it’s actually an agency of the U.S. government that does development work.” He looked confused, and said, “So...it’s an NGO?” The term “NGO” has been tossed around so much over the years that people only know that it’s associated with outsiders, especially gringos, who do development work. It’s been so overused that this man didn’t know what it stood for, that in order to be an NGO, by definition, it would have to be not of the government.

So basically, the town is gorgeous, there’s tons of hiking that I am just starting to get into because the trails are confusing and ankle-deep in mud, there’s good work to be done, people are willing to work with you, and you have to make your own friends, though there definitely are cool people to be found.

-The world map is almost done, the next step is touching up where there are smudges, missing countries that certainly exist, countries that don’t exist yet, etc. Currently, according to our map, the Bahamas are a conglomeration of blobs that amount to the size of Texas, and Sri Lanka is a peninsula. If my instinct is right about projects like this, the touching-up will be the most time-consuming part. Then, I need to recruit kids to label the map with the country names, cover it with a clear enamel, and I am done. This project has been good for me, as a test of my patience with children, more than anything. One kid INSISTED on calling me “Alicia” and I would constantly correct him, to the point where if he called me it I would shout, “What is my NAME?!” or just not answer until he said it how he already knew was correct. This kid tended to ask a lot of questions, usually “Alicia? Is this good?” in response to work he already knew was fine, so I would be annoyed with him daily within 20 minutes or so. I thought my reaction was more or less justified. No one likes to have their name constantly mispronounced, right? And then I realized I was being a pronunciation Nazi despite the fact that the pronunciation I was demanding was also not correct. I was demanding that he say “A-LEE-sa,” which is the closest I ever expect Peruvians to get my name, though I would totally correct it in the U.S. I am quite often terrible with children. Something to work on in the next year and eight months, I suppose.

-On the topic of time, we passed by the six-month in-country mark on the 15th, which is a good milestone to have under our belts. In Spanish, “How long have you been here?” translates more to, “How much time do you have here?” which is quite appropriate given the way I think about Peace Corps. Time, more now than at any other point in my life, is a commodity, a possession that once obtained, can never be taken away. I have six months here, no matter what I filled them with, no matter what happens in the future, they’re my six months.