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.