Earthquakes, etc.

I woke up at 5 a.m. today to a (minor) earthquake, which, due to recent events, inspired a certain amount of terror. Unfortunately, my current reaction to earthquake terror is to freeze and stay exactly where I am, as if playing dead will fool the adobe house into not falling on me. I will have to work on that. Or I can be like Tori in those episodes of “Saved by the Bell” and carry a helmet with me everywhere I go. I woke up again at 6:30 a.m. to a loudspeaker announcement that the women’s association was selling a delicious intestine dish for breakfast. Somehow, I resisted the temptation. I woke up again at 7:30 (for the record, the latest I have ever slept at site is 8:00) to Humberto and his buddies shouting “GOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!!!!!!” at the televised Peru-Costa Rica soccer game, which I am told was being held at a reasonable time in Korea. Overall, a very Peru morning.

Last night was a late one (midnight, if you can believe it) because of the goodbye party for Carla, the dental intern from Lima who was on her mandatory rural service here for four months. I have now seen three Limeña dental interns come and go, and I’m about to see the departure of my favorite doctor friend Otilia, whose rural service kept her here for a year. I’m beginning to feel like I’ve been here awhile.

I was supposed to just be returning from a technical exchange trip to the department of Ica to learn about the GALS environmental certification project fellow PCV Amy is working on, but as many of you know, Ica was the epicenter of an 8.0 earthquake on August 15^th that killed over 500 people. If you feel like helping, Peruvian television channels have been asking nonstop for donations for “our brothers of the south.” Donations can be made through USAID, the lead group for all the relief groups currently here.

In an inconvenience that only ranks at about #578430 on the list of post-earthquake inconveniences, my project is currently at a standstill, as we had been looking to the trip to Ica to kick-start the certification process. We don’t have any more knowledge resources to start the project than a 40-page technical manual and my vague memory of a two-hour lesson on the certification during training, when neither my Spanish nor my attention span were doing so hot. The Peace Corps highers-up are looking to send Amy to Santo Domingo to run a workshop, which would be awesome on many levels. Last I heard, Amy’s site was flooded, and it was up in the air whether she’d be able to return to it before her close-of-service in November.

I’ve been trying to camp out in the office to get some time in with my counterpart, but he’s been off doing important things all week, which has been frustrating. To give myself something to do, as well as address what I see as an impediment toward efficient computation, I installed keyboarding software on some of the computers in the municipality. The people to whom I gave the software seemed more or less enthusiastic about it, but it’s hard to tell, because people here have the habit of wanting to please gringos and be non-confrontational, so you almost never hear if your ideas are unfeasible. I thought that if even one person learns to type using more than their two index fingers, it would be worth it; the software is Peace Corps-issued and therefore free, anyway. The second I walked into the muni today, though, the president of Vaso de Leche (the governmentally-supported women’s organization to fight childhood malnutrition) came up to me and said, “So, I heard you installed typing software on the secretary’s computer. Can I get in on that?” This made me so happy. Outsiders and Peruvians alike are often bemoaning the Peruvian education system (for those of you just tuning in, it is the second worst in the Western Hemisphere, second only to Haiti’s), which is a whole lot of rote repetition and a whole lack of creative thinking. For once, though, this works out of me, because keyboarding is a totally uncreative, repetitive, and yet important, skill. Alas, we’ll see how it works out in the long run, when people realize that typing (much like, ahem, speaking English) is a skill that takes a good long while to acquire.

I’ve been working to organize a youth environmental group, which I think would be both fun and functional. There are about a million things I want to do with the kids, including:

- Radio shows with environmental themes, especially once we get trash cans in public areas. Radio is a good way to get out a message like “Put your trash in your pocket until you happen upon a trash can.”

- Hikes to visit the sites in Santo Domingo, possibly with a tie-in to promoting tourism, we shall see.

- Painting a mural with an environmental theme. What I think would be the coolest is a map of Peru highlighting the different ecosystems. I just like maps, what can I say.

- Plays with environmental themes to perform for the pre- and elementary-schoolers. These would probably also involve trash, as I am narrow-minded.

The possibilities are really endless, it all depends on what the kids decide they want to do at the first meeting next week. According to the teachers, there’s a lot of enthusiasm among the kids for the club. I think it will be good for me, too, partially as a way to unite parts of my projects, and partially as a way to improve my working-with-youth skills.

Pop! Goes My Heart

Yesterday I was outside my room and I realized someone had anonymously written “ALISA” on my wall. I didn’t see it as particularly malicious, just mildly helpful, in case I ever forget where I live or how to phonetically spell my name in Spanish.

This week has convinced me that I am at an age in between being mothered and being a mother in which I settle for just mothering myself. I went to the office yesterday morning only to realize that my counterpart was in the campo for the day (something that happens maybe half the times I try to go to the office). The second I completed the thought, “Man, there is NOTHING to do today,” I could literally HEAR in my own brain a voice saying, “There’s never NOTHING to do.” It was creepy, because it was my own voice saying this, and I am not a particularly motivated person when it comes to self-maintenance. So I reorganized my kitchen. I put plastic on my wire shelf so my fruits and veggies don’t fall down, designated drawers for spices and other things in packets, and bought a little bucket for all the bottles that need to be upright so they don’t take up room on my counter. It was incredibly satisfying.

And then it was afternoon and I’d already taken my nap, so I painted the exterior of my house. It needed to be done. There’s a Peruvian custom of political supporters painting the exterior of their house for an election, with the name of the political party, the candidates’ names, the basic tagline, and the party’s symbol with an X through it. The X used to confuse me, because it really looks like the house is saying “This political party? BOO! Put an X through that,” but it is actually showing you how to vote. “Mark an X through this political party’s symbol, like this.” The day I figured that out was probably the greatest epiphany about Peru I’ve ever had, next to the day I figured out that the people in vests on the street in the city sticking calculators in my face were not actually trying to sell me calculators, but trying to get me to exchange American dollars with them.

It was not just that the house was painted for the local election (that happened last November) that necessitated the fresh coat of paint, it was also that sometime between the election and now, I put a window in the front wall of my room. So the window was unintentionally busting through the propaganda, seemingly making a political statement. It was sort of awkward, but no one said anything about the fact that the house no longer read, “UNIDAD POPULAR SANTO DOMINGO,” but instead, “UNID------LAR SAN-----INGO.” So anyway, I took it upon myself to paint the house yesterday. The woman who sold me the paint asked if I knew how to paint, and when I asked, “Houses?” she said “Yes.” I thought that might just be something everyone kind of knows how to do, but a little girl who walked past the house told me that I paint pretty. Some old campo man just laughed like a crazy person at the site of me painting, but old campo men tend to do that.

(the rest of this entry is written a week later, at which point I realized I never finished/posted the entry)

My point about the kitchen organizing and house painting is just that Peace Corps life is (theoretically) a lot of looking at how things are done, thinking, “There’s a better way,” figuring out what the better way is, and implementing it. This is usually done toward other people’s way of doing things, but it’s a good feeling to turn it inward and fix your own life, too, even if it’s in small ways.

In other ramblings, I generally find that I can separate in my mind life in the U.S. with life here, and likewise, Spanish from English. It didn’t feel weird to be in the U.S. in May, because it was sort of like I turned on the part of my brain that expects all food to come out at the same time at a restaurant and partakes of public drinking fountains and off the part that boils tap water for five minutes and thinks nothing of streets drenched in animal poop. I also find that I can generally turn off the Spanish when I’m speaking English, unless it’s one of the following scenarios:

1. Spanish just does a phrase more efficiently than English does (i.e. “aprovechar” instead of “to take advantage of,” “demorar” instead of “to take a long time.”)

2. There isn’t a good English word for the concept (i.e. “campo”)

3. There is an English word for the concept, but I’ve had way more conversations about the concept in Spanish than in English, and therefore the Spanish word comes to mind first (i.e. “chacra” instead of “field,” “charla” instead of “informal lesson.”)

4. The Spanish word is just cool sounding (i.e. “bacán” instead of “great,” “fufurufu” instead of “person who talks a lot”)

5. I say the word so incredibly often in Spanish that I sort of forget that it’s not a word in English, too (i.e. “derepente” instead of “maybe,” “algo así” instead of “something like that”)

However, I recently had an experience in which all my mind-separation was blown to shreds. I was reading the back of a packet of apple cider mix my mom sent me, and it said, “Just add hot water. No need to boil, straight from the tap is fine!” or something like that. I stared at that packet of hot apple cider mix for a good three minutes trying to figure it out. It was like I understood that you don’t have to boil your tap water for health reasons in the U.S., but what did they mean by hot tap water? Did they mean you could mix the tap water with the mix first, and then find a way to heat it? It took me those three minutes of pure concentration to remember that in some parts of the world, you can obtain both cold and hot water from a sink.

I shared my hot apple cider with Humberto, and he enjoyed it, but not nearly as much as he enjoyed last week’s gastronomical cultural exchange. I strongly recommend that if you are ever bored in a Third World country, you find some Pop Rocks and share them with your friends. It is endless amusement for all parties involved. Jaime had sent me two installments of Pop Rocks that I had sort of forgotten about, and then I thought, “Man, if you’d never had Pop Rocks before, they would blow your mind.” So I told Humberto and his brother that I wanted to share my American candy with them to thank them for all the work they’d done on my room, but that they were supposed to put them on their tongue and not swallow them immediately. Confusion gave way to surprise, which gave way to nervous giggling, which gave way to stating the obvious (“¡Explota!”), which gave way to appreciation (“Bacán”), which gave way to scientific exploration (“¿Qué tiene?”), which gave way to lament (“No tenemos algo así acá.”) I’m considering producing a video montage of Peruvians trying Pop Rocks for the first time. I have a lot of spare time.