My "Work" Week

A typical day of a Peace Corps volunteer is as hard to describe as it is to pin down a cloud (Freulein Maria anyone??) Therefore, this coming week I’m documenting my comings-and-goings to you all, so you might get an idea of what a typical work week looks like for me. Gone are the days of 9-to-5 and instead, anything goes…Usually I wake up and there is nothing to do (or so it seems)…and before I know it I’m being invited to a ladies house, going to a meeting that I just found out about, or playing basketball with some kids…Like I said, anything goes…

Monday: Having nothing set in stone to do, I took my sweet time getting out of bed this morning having finally emerged from my dungeon around 8:30 ready for some soup and cow milk for breakfast! Yum! Another reason to take my time is the fact that I have been “distancing” myself from my health post lately, do to personality clashes. But since my social told me I needed to find a list of mom’s, there was no choice. But first, I dabbled a bit on my computer and read a manual before finally heading to the health post. My socia Doli and I are starting house visits in a community, so we need a complete list of mom’s with kids under 3 years old and I needed to make a house visit survey.

So I took my 10 steps from my house to the health post, started my work day. Much to my surprise and delight, I was greeted by some of the nurses who both had stuff to discuss with me. I had a brief meeting with Sonia, the head nurse of health promotion, about possible projects in the future: Sessiones Demonstrativas (Nutrition Sessions) in San Juan, Early Stimulation classes, and possible garden project at the health post. Next up, was another meeting with Jessica, the nurse in charge of adolescent and women’s health. I’ve been trying to get this youth center up and going for a while, but nothing has been happening in the community, so I’ve let it be. But much to my amaze, Jessica said she wanted to meet with the committee formed and start a work plan! Hallelujah! Afterwards, I did some office work and typed up my list of mom’s and the survey.

Lunch came and went, and back to the health post I went to finish the survey. My nurse told me about a meeting at 3:00, so I tagged along to help coordinate the nutrition session we’re having. Having daylight to burn still, I started to get to work on making a fence for my garden. With the help of my host dad and mom, we dug the holes and put in tree branches. While digging, my mom screamed and backed away. I looked down and what did I find? A dog’s skull. Apparently, I’m making my garden on top of an old pet cemetery of my aunt. Still wanting to play in the dirt, I dug up dying onion plants in my almacigo in order to indirectly plant some other vegetable tomorrow. The onion had been there since March and still hadn’t been transplanted, so best to make room for another delicious vegetable…I’m thinking cabbage.

Tuesday: My morning got off with a jolt as I received a call from Doli during breakfast at 7:30 saying she was waiting for me in the plaza. This morning we were planning on doing house visits in one of our caserios, Tucopampa. But as it turns out, there happened to be a Juntos meeting at 8:00 in which all of our moms would be at…so I was basically going up to this community to sit around and not do house visits. Oh well. I got some good reading in and relaxed with the nurses. The one productive thing we got out of the meeting was that we grouped the mothers according to where they lived, so that we won’t have to go up and down searching for everyone. We re-scheduled house visits for next week, in which Doli wants to go visit all the houses…We’ll see how that one goes. Having been in Peru almost a year now, I now know that things take longer than they seem.

Having walked a lot in the morning and not able to drink my daily coffee, I decided to take a little nap. I cranked out two collages for upcoming friends’ birthday while watching movie and later helped my family put up the fence for my garden. My host dad says the plastic will only last three days, so this is definitely an experiment. I’m planning on using my youth group to help me plant tomorrow…nothing like child labor to help things along…

Lights went out at night. This happens from time to time, but no matter, it’s still a big inconvenience always. My host mom didn’t have a flash light while cooking, so I lent her one of mine. What is a person to do past sun down when there is no light? My town has had light for 7 years, but before that…I can only imagine. Thank goodness though; I had enough battery in my lap top to watch one more episode of The Wire…

Wednesday: When I woke up this morning, I had every intention of going to my primary school this morning to talk about my Kids-to-Kids grant project and others (tree nursery, English classes, youth center…), but like life, things happen. Today happened to be a national earthquake drill, which I didn’t think was a big idea, but my nurse said it pretty much takes all day, so there was no point of going to the school. Huh. How do you figure that one out? Anyway, so I went back to my room and since it was so early, thought why not just polish off one more episode of The Wire. After that, I sat down on my bed and wrote out my Kids-to-Kids grant proposal in Spanish, so that I can present it to the school and school district, as well as a timeline of activities. The plan is to start in September, but I’m still waiting on the money.

Today is Wednesday, and every Wednesday I have my youth group from 3-5. My youth group has 8 members, but the main members are: My brother, Kalin, and Elly, my next door neighbor. The rest of the kids, we usually have to go door-to-door to round them up. Today though, no one was able to come, so it was just us three. I decided to have them help me with my garden. We made rows, watered the soil (which is a chore in itself…), and planted the following: zucchini, beets, radishes, swiss chard, spinach, rosemary, carrots, cilantro, and broccoli. Phew. And more is on its way in the almacigo: lettuce, cabbage or cauliflower (couldn’t tell the difference between the seeds), and basil. This whole garden is an experiment since I’ve never really grown anything in my life, but I figure I might as well try since I am the one promoting gardens around here.

Again, the lights went out. This time at 6:30. One night was fine, but two?! I had to dig around the dark looking for my head lamp, and read for a while before being called to another dinner in darkness. The lights came on again and then off again for a while. But for right now, they are back on. And with that, the blaring sounds of the hayno on the radio in the other room.

Thursday: I got to sleep in a little bit this morning (8:30ish), since I had nothing pressing. But soon enough my day was about to change, as right after breakfast started to feel nauseous and actually ended up throwing up my recently devoured breakfast of oatmeal, bread, and egg. This isn’t a typical thing for me, so called the Peace Corps doctor. The doctors, while great as they are, really can’t do much to help us except prescribe medicine. Since I have been having on and off again issues with diarrhea as well (nothing out of the ordinary though) they suggested I take Cipro, the miracle tonic for any-and-all intestinal problems in the Peace Corps. I’ve only had to take once before, but it couldn’t hurt. Since I wasn’t feeling good in the morning and the health post was closed, I decided to relax and read in the morning. Hopefully in three days, I’ll be as good as new or at least in mint-condition.

The afternoon was a little bit more eventful. My mom left early to go cook lunch at a neighbor’s house, so my host brother and I went to find her. What I thought was just going to be lunch turned out to be a full-blown campo wedding. This was my first legit campo wedding, so was interesting to watch, and yet, the one-track traditional wedding song that was repeated over-and-over again was starting to get on my nerves. We all sat outside, since there wasn’t enough room in the house and merely watched the procession, as we couldn’t hear anything. What is different about a Peruvian wedding, at least where I am, is that the whole town is invited, so the couple’s family has to feed everyone; the reason of why my mom went down earlier. They ended up cooking an entire bull, 3 huge sacks of rice, and 20 buckets of potatoes. My host mom said they cooked for almost 400 people! I’m just thankful we have guest lists in the states. After about three hours of sitting in the blazing sun, we were served our food, and soon after everyone left. The party is continuing tonight with a “banda tipica” (local band) to the wee-morning (or so they say), but I’m going to have to sit this one out.

Oh, and the lights went out…again. That’s starting to really get on my nerves now…

Friday: GDHDEV! (¡Gracias a Dios hoy día es Viernes!) Today’s agenda consists of going to my school finally and coordinating a whole laundry-list of activities. First off, my Kids-to-Kids grant. I wrote up the proposal in Spanish and also made a schedule of activities in order to give to the school. After talking, we discussed meeting the following Monday with all the professors. Next up, tree nursery. For the past several months, we’ve been trying to finish a tree nursery project from the last volunteer by planting the trees. Last I left, we had asked a local NGO to give us wire to protect the plants. Honestly, I didn’t have much hope as this NGO doesn’t work in our town. But much to my surprise and amazement, we actually got what we asked for! This, ladies and gentlemen, is a first! We are going to coordinate the planting with the high school on Monday. After that was CAID, the youth center we are trying to get started. Jessica, the nurse in charge, told me to set up a meeting. So once again, Monday we are going to find the committee together and spread the word about an upcoming planning session. And last, but not least, the community library, I’m trying to get started. We have a location in the plaza, but lack much needed organization and interest from the community. I’m hoping by the end of my service, we will finally have one. All and all, my meeting with the director was very productive, and now I have a whole lot to do on Monday.

I went from one school to the next, as I continued on the road down to another primary school in Capuli, about 30 minutes away. I’ve been working there for a few months giving health charlas to the kids. I needed to coordinate my next charla and also my world map project I’m about to start. I got there in what I thought was enough time to spare before school let out, but the director left early. No matter, I talked to the still remaining teachers and scheduled the talks for the beginning of September.

After that brief stop-over, I continued on my walk down to Bambamarca, where the glorious world-wide-web awaited me. When I first got to site, I checked my email probably three times a week, but now it’s down to one time…if I’m lucky. I look forward to checking my email because I’m almost guaranteed a full inbox and it’s a small glimpse back into the land of amazing. I got to Bamba right during lunch time, so I thought I would have my pick of computers. Instead, my favorite cabina was closed, which was weird as they are never closed. So chose another one nearby, and came to find out that the internet was down today. Of course it is…To cure my bad luck, I decided to do some retail therapy and finally buy a cardigan I’ve been eyeing for some time.

My day winded down as I finished another book and started a new one. I also decided to make a carrot cake. Two in fact. One for the fam and another for my friend’s birthday coming up. This was officially my third attempt at making a cake, but this time I had the advantage of having an actual oven. Before we tried using our cocina mejorada, which needless to say, didn’t turn out too well as we ended up eating the cake mix uncooked both times. But this time, the cake turned out beautifully and delicious, I might add.

Oh, and I found out that the reason why the lights have been going on and off lately is because of a fire started in Bambamarca. Now I can rest easy...

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And that lady's and gent's is a typical and yet non-typical week. As from the look of things, nothing is ever typical in the Peace Corps.