In which Alyssa maybe circumvents Peruvian property laws?

Yesterday was the national Peruvian census. I don’t know how the census works in the United States, but in Peru, this means the country basically shuts down so that everyone can be in their house between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. I’m not sure how strict those rules are, but I did not want to get on the bad side of the census-takers, and I literally did not open the door of my apartment during those ten hours. This was remarkably easy to do, since I had just gotten back from a pretty stressful trip to Lima that ended in:

a) an uncomfortable night on the 15-hour semi-cama bus
b) a yellow fever vaccine that I had been missing since training
c) a not serious, but still scary, car accident on Javier Prado in Lima
d) some weird illness that made me throw up totally undigested food every so often
e) an apparent Dramamine overdose

So overall, my body was up for a day in bed, doing some nothing. I watched finished The Namesake, which might be my new favorite book.

Around 6 p.m., right when the census mandate would have lifted, I am still lying in bed, when suddenly, the television next door, in Humberto and Flor’s living room, turns on at the highest volume possible. They have apparently turned on an alarm (why for 6 p.m., I have no idea), left the house, and forgotten to turn it off. Both the doors into their part of the house are locked with padlocks. I am told by neighbors, also disturbed by the painfully loud noise, that they both have gone off to some far-away caseríos to do census-taking and will probably not be back that night.
Well, crap. My first move is to go to my sitemate and whine, which helps for a little bit, until she wants to go make phone calls and I still cannot comfortably return to my apartment. My second move is to go the police. I generally have good rapport with officers of the law (just ask the University of Michigan Department of Public Safety about “iPod girl,” you’ll hear all about it), so it seems reasonable to me that they will understand my predicament and let me watch them use wire cutters on the padlock. They say that while they did not have the right to just cut the padlock off the door, I can go find the guy who’s in charge of the electricity and he can cut their power. Hm. Is it just me, or does it seem less intrusive to cut something totally replaceable off someone’s door than to cut their power for an entire night? How can you have the right to do one and not the other? I’ll bet they forgot to sharpen the wire cutters and were too embarrassed to tell me. Or maybe I just think the twisted metal of the mangled padlock would best symbolize my anger over the alarm being left on in the first place. So I go off in search of “Daniel, el encargado de la luz.” I go first to the house that people pointed to, am met by confused parents, and then sent further up the hill, where I am met by a señora adamant that she is only in charge of electric billing, and promptly sent back to the house of the confused parents. The man who led me there says some magic words to the parents, and the dad looks at me with sudden apprehension, and says something I choose to translate as, “Oh, DANIEL. Yeah, he has the tools. And the know-how.” The legal right? Unmentioned.

So I wait for awhile for tools-and-know-how to come back and meanwhile I strike up a conversation with his dad, who excitedly lists for me every American he’s ever met (he’s met exactly 26 Americans in his life, he tells me), and stares at me patiently until I show some recognition. The worst part is, all the Americans he knows are either nuns or priests who Spanish-ized their names for the Peruvians’ convenience, and let me tell you, the likelihood of me knowing someone called nothing more than “Padre Juan” is pretty slim. I do offer the mention of the one American whom I think we might have in common, the PCV in Santo Domingo in the ‘70s, and he seems briefly to remember him, but then he realizes what he must have been putting me through and says, “The United States is huge, isn’t it.” I agree. I patch up the next moment of disappointed awkwardness by praising the cultural exchanges he must have had with those 26 Americans. He responds, “Yes, Americans! You have great culture! Peruvians? NO CULTURE WHATSOEVER!” This is when I realize he is using “culture” to mean “manners,” and I am relieved when tools-and-know-how walks in so I don’t have to respond to that allegation.

The light wizard tells me to wait half an hour, so I do. I write Andrew a letter by streetlight. Eventually some other guy finds me and says, “Señorita? I’m supposed to come help you because Daniel’s busy.” He, however, cannot grasp his purpose in this phase of the dilemma, and reiterates my initial suggestion of wire cutters. He even bangs half-heartedly at the padlock with the Phillip’s head he’s brought, bless his heart. Just when I am exasperated enough to send him on his way, he silently unscrews the cover to the electric meter and switches off Humberto’s power. I thank him profusely, and once I realize that this magically has not turned off my power, I throw my arms around him in gratitude. He smiles and says, “Qué tranquilidad.” My sentiments exactly.

Flor returns within ten minutes of the power shutoff, and is rather displeased with my course of action. She is upset because she also lacks a key to the padlock (another mystery of Calle Libertad 130), and cannot get into her dark house, where she fears I have done irreparable damage to the television by shutting off the power. (As my sudden wakeup two hours later can assure you, I haven’t.)

And then, at 8:35 p.m., I got censused! It’s weird to me that the Peruvian government expected me to stay in the confines of my apartment for twelve and a half hours, although I apparently obliged. Rachel and I agreed that the funniest census question was definitely, “What is your religion, Catholic or Evangelical?”

And of course there’s more to say, about Lima, about project development, about the rain, but I’m going to respect the theme of this entry and go try to figure out if I have plagiarized “Ghostbusters” or not.

My goings-on, as told through the three goals of Peace Corps

Well, I am back after a considerable blog absence. The absence was due, at least at first, to an incredibly boring lull in activity. A good amount of time was spent in my room, absorbing books, TV shows on DVD, and movies at an alarming rate. I tried to write an entry about two weeks ago about how bored I was, but then thought better of inflicting my boredom on my blog readership. But this brings up a good point: I’ve gotten a fair amount of comments from people about to join the Peace Corps, saying they read my blog to prepare for what’s coming, so let me note that I only write about the most interesting, say, 4% of my life. Just so you know. Peace Corps = lots of spare time. Get ready to have the time to learn a language or an instrument, get in shape, knit a lot of sweaters, or if you are like me, watch the same 22 episodes of “Arrested Development” over and over and talk to yourself a lot.

In summary of that really boring month or so, let me just say that I now consider myself conversation-ready on the following pop culture topics:
Seasons one through five of “The Sopranos,” “Dog Day Afternoon” specifically, Al Pacino’s hair generally, Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, “Guess Who” (starring Ashton Kutcher and Bernie Mack), Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A story of race and inheritance, “The U.S. vs. John Lennon,” Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and why Adriana was the best Sopranos character ever.

And then salvation came in the form of Amy, a Volunteer in Ica. Amy successfully did the environmental certification project in her own community, and since traveling there was impossible for us following the earthquake, she visited Santo Domingo to lead the workshop that led members of the Municipal Environmental Commission through the steps of doing an environmental diagnostic, plan (20 years), and agenda (two years). Moreover, she kind of led me through what the next year and change of my service is going to be like with the task of setting up an effective, sustainable, and transparent environmental management system in Santo Domingo. It’s interesting to note that, since the community members will establish their own environmental priorities, I have no idea what projects I will actually be taking the first steps on in the next year. It could be reforestation, organic agriculture, preparing a trail map of the campo, setting up an interpretation center for all the archaeological artifacts sitting around in the schools’ libraries, improved wood-burning stoves, anything people see as a priority, really.
Somehow, with Amy’s visit, it’s sort of like time snapped, and suddenly I’m done counting months into service and thinking “will it never end,” and I’ve started thinking, “how can I possibly do all these things with the extremely limited time I have left?” I’m sure this won’t be the end of me having spare time, but probably the end of me not being able to think of a single productive thing I could do for days on end. I will be “helping the people of interested countries in meeting their needs for trained men and women,” indeed.

Right before Amy’s visit, there was a town party for the high school’s anniversary with a questionably famous live cumbia band. I gulped down organic coffee before leaving and beat my record for how late I’ve stayed at a Peruvian party. At exactly 3 a.m., I became a huayno rockstar. I heard some gossip afterwards (it actually reached another Volunteer’s site) that I am an excellent dancer. I wouldn’t be unhappy if, at the end of my service, the vast majority of the population cannot remember what I actually accomplished in my work, but they know for certain that I am a great dancer. (It would also be great if they did not remember the massive quantities of beer required before I show off my mad skills.) At least, I think that’s what’s meant by “to help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.”

And then, just five days ago, one Andrew Cornelius finally made his way up to Santo Domingo for three days. It was good to have him here, if somewhat anticlimactic. I think other people’s sites are hard to get excited about on any given day. “Look! Look! It’s that teenage couple that always makes out on the stoop outside my window, like I told you about!” is not exactly something to write home about. The mountains are also not at their prettiest right now; four months into the dry season, the dominant landscape is mostly dried fields with some scrubby trees separating one person’s field from another’s. It’s a far cry from the rainy season, when it seems incredible that the English language only has one word for the concept “green.”

But Andrew’s visit was good. We hiked, waded in a currently quite shallow river, made eggplant parmesan (quite a feat if you’ve seen my "kitchen"), watched some movies, and did the requisite introductions to the big players in SD. Mostly I think the value of visiting someone’s site is not in the visit itself, but in the frame of reference for every future conversation. It was pretty weird to be dating someone who had never seen the place where I spend, on average, 11 days of every 14.

It is probably time to stop putting off actual work with extensive blog entries. Unless you consider blog entries work. I think “to help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of all Americans” leaves that open.