A Long Time Coming (part 1)

As I write this post I realize that it`s been two moths since my last post, so I`d like to apologize to those of you who read this (which, from the complaint, I have realized includes more people than I previously thought).

So, I`ll begins where I left off and try to go from there with the lapses that memory will bring.

Sometime in August I left Urubamba in the afternoon.  The day before included farewells, and a bit less excitement than I had expected.  I realized that I had really grow attached to the place, to the people, to the organization and to the work.  I even flirted with the idea of ditching school and staying to keep on doing what I had been doing in Peru.  But that was just a brief idea.  ProPeru paid for a cab, and so I got a nice comfy ride to Cuzco, or so I had thought.  I feel, in some ways, this is the epitome of Peruvian culture:  When I got in the cab there was a woman in the front seat, presumably the drivers wife/girlfriend, etc.  The first half of the ride she and he sat in silence, save a few comments and listened to the same song over and over.  Yes, the same song.  I think it was Groupo 5, who I love but whose song is now ruined for me.  About half way through the ride we stopped at a gas station, presumably to get gas, which we did.  Then, about 15 minutes down the road we stopped to get gas again, this time in the form of a woman carrying a plastic jug full of gas.  Apparently there was some deal with the driver and the woman and the gas was hoisted into the trunk, half-heartedly strapped down and we were off again.  Then, a few minutes outside of Cuzco, the gas was let off to the charge of someone else.

I got to the bus station and boarded a night bus for Lima via Nazca.  The ride was uneventful except for the horrific American war movies they showed.  Luckily, as often happens, the buses TV stopped working after a few minutes, so I didn`t have to sit through all the horror.  On a side note, I once asked a taxi driver what he thought was the best way to avoid a bus crash when taking a night bus (they`re not super frequent, but they are more frequent than in the States).  What I was asking for was if one company has a better record than another in terms of safety, but I got this response instead: no one company is better than another, they`ve all had crashes.  What you need to do is sit in the middle of the bus, in an aisle.  Generally, the front section gets killed, and often the back section does to.  But nothing ever happens to the middle section, so that`s where I always sit when I ride.  So, I`ve been sitting in the middle section.

I had no desire to go to Lima because it would take up the majority of my trip if I decided to spend any amount of time there.  So I got off in Nazca, at 7 in the morning, on a dirty street on a grey day and hitched a cab to the recommended hostel.  Let me tell you, Nazca is a damn ugly city and there is absolutely no reason to be there save the Nazca Lines.  It`s Peru`s version of "urban sprawl" and they don`t really pull it off as nicely as some other places.  When I got to the hotel they were offering a trip to the view point for the lines for 50 soles, about 17 dollars.  I decided to try my luck elsewhere, so I headed to the center and found a tour operator who was going to the Chinchero cemetery and the lines viewing point for 30 soles.  And it was the same tour guide.  The tour was me and a guy from Japan who spoke a little English and no Spanish, so I got to practice my wonderful translating skills.  In all honesty, I never thought I`d be translating about mummies and grave robbers and that sort of thing.  But, such is life.

I`m a terrible flier, so the normal Nazca lines viewing method - small, small plane - was out for me.  However, there is a 10 meter tall observation deck from which you can see three shapes - a hand, a tree and part of a lizard which some international highway cut right through.  The lines are very interesting, especially the theories surrounding their purpose (agricultural map, signals for aliens, etc), but their not as awe inspiring as I would have thought.  It`s probably because I didn`t go by plane.

Anyway, by the time I was done at the lines, it was only about 1:30, and I really felt I had seen everything there was to see in Nazca.  Really, the city`s pretty damn depressing, and I had no desire to stay.  So I headed back to the hostel, picked up my gear lost my three dollars that I had paid for a room, and hoped on a bus heading about 2 hours up the coast to Ica.  I got to Ica but hadn`t planed on staying.  Instead, I hopped in a cab with two Norwegians to a hotel in an oasis about 10 kilometers away.  We got there at night, didn`t really do much, but did sign up for a bodega (vineyard) tour and some dune bugging for the next day.

I got up, as often happens, very early in the morning.  Because I hadn`t really had a chance to explore the night before, I set off to the pond that makes the oasis and oasis, which is not really something you "set off" to because the entire oasis is tiny and only has about 300 residents.  I was sitting there, reading a bit, reflecting a bit, when, out of the mist, walks a man wearing what can only be described as a cape and his five dogs who are playing in the sand.  He eventually sits by me and, as he is quite literally a hippie ("do you mind if I smoke [a joint] I always have one for breakfast") we get along quite well.  He`s an artist/environmentalist/tour guide for desert walks and has apparently found shark fossils in the desert.  There`s a lot of talk about the Pacha Mama (mother earth in Quecha) and in tourism destroying her and respect for her, all with communist undertones, and then we part ways.

At 10 am on the dot I headed off for a two- vineyard tour with the Norwegians I had met the day before.  First we saw the oldest vineyard in Ica, a city place known for producing wines since the 1850`s.  I must say, it`s the earliest I`ve drunk wine in my life.  Not only are these vineyards known for wine, they`re also the biggest producers of Pisco, an Andean liquor, in Peru.  So, suffice it to say, I was alcoholed-out by the time we got back to the oasis at around 1pm.

When we got back I met up with my hippie friend who showed me how to make a certain type of bracelet while playing the drum.  We ate ice creams for lunch.

In the afternoon I went dune bugging (one of the most fun and most terrifying things I`ve done) in the dessert around the oasis.  Then I went sand-boarding, which I highly recommend.  It was extremely fun, but also incredibly beautiful.  I never realized it, but I`ve never had the chance to be in a real life desert (unless you count driving through parts of Texas).  The dessert stretched on and on for miles with no end in sight and the topography - the hills and valleys of sand - were spectacular.  Because no one lives in the dessert it seems (despite the tons of tourists and sand boarding enthusiasts who go there) untouched by humans.  It feels like something pure and quite.  Some place that you could discover secrets about yourself and the world.  In fact, it felt a bit as though we, with our noisy and fast dune buggy, were invading the peace that the dessert had created.  I would have loved to stay for longer, or go on a walk through the sands, but I`ll have to save it for next time.

A note about traveling alone: I think it`s incredible but, over the course of just 6 days, figured out it wasn`t for me.  A lot of people say that they like the freedom that traveling alone gives, and it`s very true that there`s vast amounts of freedom (and excitement) inherent in that sort of travel, but for an indecisive person who often feels the need to talk, or at least listen, to someone else, traveling alone can be a lonely experience.  Luckily, what they say about backpackers being able to find other backpackers, become quick friends and travel together seems to be true.  Although I was only with the Norwegians for a day, I feel as though we could have traveled together for longer.  And I feel that, after being alone for so long, we both appreciated each-others` company. 

I got back from sand-boarding, picked up my stuff from the hotel and headed into ICA to catch a bus to Arequipa, in the far South of Chile.  I almost didn`t get a bus because the company I went to was all booked up, but then found a slightly sketchier company and got a seat no problem.  And that`s how, at 10pm, I boarded a bus and headed off to Arequipa, the Cañón del Coca and, ultimately, Chile.      

List of things lost along the road up till this point: flashlight (rolled out of my bag and into some unknown depths on the bus to Nazca), phone (stolen), sun glasses (stolen), flash drive (stolen), water bottle (left at a hotel).

I promise I`ll update again soon.

Miss you all very much,

Julia

The Last Full Week

Monday morning, after getting in late from Puno and then staying up late talking to Mleanies´ parents, I woke up early to go build stoves. We met at the gas station and took a combi to a little town about 10 minutes away (in the opposite direction of Yanahuara) called Yucay. Our first stove was in a rather well off house that sportted two cows, a horse, a bunch of dogs, three ducks and a gaggle of adorable baby chickens. And, for the first time in my history of building stoves, I built a stove outside. Apparently, the outside part where the stove is located will eventually be a new kitchen.

The stove took about an hour and fiftenn minutes, after which Gianna (another volunteer who had helped to build the stove) and I went to Yucays´ municipality, where we were to meet Freddy, the stove coordinator, who would tell us where our next stove/house would be. Ginanna and I followed a set routine that we´d created our first day doing stoves together. We went to a little cornerstore, bought bread and cheese from a very nice lady, and then went to eat it (this time along with a neon yellow Inca Cola) on the steps of the municipality. We waited, but Freddy didn´t show up. It dawned on us that a new group had arrived that morning, and that he was probably busy with them, so we kept on waiting. In time, I began to knitt. A bit later a police man walked out of the municipality and told us about how he had worked at Machu Pichu and in Cuzco, but liked Yucay better. He lived with his wife in teh country side surrounding Yanahuara (but had never heard of Durazno Ti´kay) and, while they had been careful about not having kids at first, they now wanted kids but couldn´t seem to have any. They were both going in for impotency testing in about a week.

This is something that has happened to me a lot here: people are very open with very personal information after knowing me for just a short time. One of my women confideded her mothers´ illness in me a day after we met, and people all over just seem to tell me things that tehy would not tell me in the states. It´s a little hard for me to decide how to act in these instances.

After waiting for two hours, and deciding that even if Freddy came at that very moment we wouldn´t have time to make another stove, Gianna and I headed back to Urubamba.

In the afternoon I continued to read a book on Chile that is required for my study abroad program.

Tuesday we had a meeting with the women of Durazno Ti´kay where we worked on, once again, on the Business Plan. I think we got a lot done; when we finalized a system of fines for not complying with quotas we finally finished the second section (of three). The section was “fortalizar las habilidades de la asociacion y las mujeres en negocios” (strengthen the abilitis of the asociation in regards to business) and included procedures on how yarn will be bought, what activities are necessary to be “organized,” what classes are necessary and other basic things (attend meetings, start keeping track of income and expenses, etc.) After being here for so long, and watching the decisions of the group, I´ve realized that I´m very invested in the group, and that I really believe in the power of this business plan. Because of this, my goals for the rest of my time have shrunk from lofty ideas to the simple pleasue of finishing the business plan and knowing that the women, and future volunteers, have a framework in which to focus their efforts. Because this is my goal, the work we did on Tuesday made me immensely happy.

Wednesday was a particularly cool day because of two things. First, a bunch of the peopel working on health campaigns were heading over to see how water filters that ProPeru is producing are made. I tagged along and got to check it out. ProPeru has decided to make Potters for Peace models. They´re effectively clay pots with tiny holes in the clay to let water seep out. On the inside they´re coated with coloital silver (which, every now and then, volunteers have to bring through Peruvian customs). The coloital silver kills bacteria while the tiny holes in the clay traps parastes. The only thing the filters do not kill are viruses (but neither do most developing world water treatment systems). The machiene to make these filters is ahuge industrial chunck of iron in someones back yard. It requires a lot of man power to move the pieces.

To get the mud used to make the pots the right consistancy is a job within istelf. The mud must be mixed throughly (three hours by hand) and must be mixed with finely ground sawdust (also a job done by hand) until it is perfict. For all of these constraints, I cannot for teh life of me figure out why ProPeru chose the Potters for Peace method. The method, whcih is used throughout Latin America, was designed for locations where mud was a easily acessable resource and where minimal work (into creating mud, at least) was required; that´s the beauty of the system. I think a biofiltration system (making use of rocks, sand and dirty water, whcih are all easily acessable in the Sacred Valley) would have worked much better for this area. Still, it was intersting to see the process.

The second thing that made the day exciting was my excursion to the second market, primarily a livestock market. There were guinea pigs, ducks, rabbits, sheep, pigs, cows and every other manner of edible animal. There was also a used colthing market where I got an awesome Landsend jacket (it´s winter in Chile) that cost the equivelent of US 10 dollars.

Thursday we planned to give the women a break from the business plan; they had been working on it for the last three meeting sessions. We planned a fun activity that combined yoga and team-building (courtesy of Katy, who´s a counselor) and and Englsh class to review basic business English and add in a few new vocabulary words. However, when we got the the meeting, the women were in the middle of deciding who owed what fines (as per the business plans fine system) for the moth of July. The discussion was spurred by the arrival of two women, MIA up until that point, who had somehow herd that there had been a donation of yarn, and wanted to take part of the free material. The women were divided on whether the yarn should be given out, whether the women should be made to pay fines, or whether the women should be kicked out of the group for their habittual absence.

What happened next was incredible- the vice president of the group decided that all women present should speak up with their opinions and then a vote should be taken. Everyone waited patently and listened as all member of the group said what they thought was fair. Katy and I did nothing but watch. The whole process reminded me of traditional Roman democracy (minus only the landed men being able to vote part) in which each person in the community was entitled and encouraged to give her oppinion. It was truely the most egalitarian decision making system I have ever seen.

In the end, the women decided on reduced fines for the two who had been absent, and after the fines were paid gave the women their yarn. The dicussions took the whole meeting time, so we had to postpone our activities until later.

Friday was, effectively, the culmination of my work here. The business plan was finished, with provisions for a very, very basic health insurance, a bank account, classes focusing on empowerment, leadership and relaxation and a marketing plan. I could not have been happier with how the plan turned out; it gave the women huge responsibilites to insure their own sucuess, the suport of ProPeru, timelines in which to complete each enumerated task and a living doccument that could act as a guide, but be changed when necesary. The combi ride back to Urubamba was complete euphoria.

As soon as the business plan is typed up in pretty Spanish, I´ll post a copy.

Puno and Lake Titicaca

Last weekend I headed out to Lake Titicaca, 7 hours away from Cuzco.

I took a night bus and got in at 5am, just in time to take a walk along the lake and see the sun rise, whcih was beautiful (for the most part). In Puno there´s something of a no-mans-land inbetween the lake, littlered with bottles, wrappers and the like. I was a but surprised by it, given that Puno is such a big tourist city. It was interesting to see how the locals converted this area into their own park of sorts. As early as 6am there were boys playing soccer and a woman getting yarn ready to knit on the stark area of land between the road and the lake.

I walked up to the main plaza to get a sense of the city, checked out some tourist agencies and booked a trip to Sillustani with one of them, and then headed back down to teh docks at about 8am. I got on a boat heading to the Uros Islands, floating islands made entirely of reeds. Behind me, a noisy group of high school kids got on the boat, and I thought the trip would be ruined for me by their chatter. It turns out, the school group was the luckliest thing that could have happened.

The group had arranged to visit three islands and have guides at various islands explaning this and that. Because I happened to be on their boat, they let me tag along and listen to their guides. And, it turned out they were from Urubamba! By the end of the tour we were all friends and they invited me to come with them on the rest of their tour (which I declined, I already had tickets for my own tour). I haven´t seen any of them in Urubamba yet, but I´m just waiting for the day taht someone calls ¨Julia!¨ and I turn to find a high school class waving at me.

The idlands themselves are fascinating. They are made entirely of reeds, which need to be replenished every 15 to 30 days. You sink into the reeds as you step, but everything is very sturdy. Unless you get too close to the edge of an island (where there is no reinforcement, because you´re not expected to walk in that direction) which, of course, I did by accident. In this case, the island drops perceptibly and you have the feeling that you´re standing on a sinking raft.

Surprisingly, some of teh idlands have solor pannels, electricity and running water. Apparently, Fujimori visited the islands (he was the only president to do so,) staide a night and offered the islanders bits and pieces of modern technology. The result is that, even though he´s now serving a 6 year prison sentence for various abuses commited while in office, teh general reaction of teh islands is that he was the best president in modern history.

The islands were origionally built to escape from war-like people on the main land (or so says my guide book) but now, sadly, it seems as though they were build for tourism. Origionally surviving on fishing, the islands now rely heavily on tourism. Pretty much every woman has become a crafts-maker, trying to sell her wares to visitng tourists. The islanders charge for taking pictures, and some capture endangered birds to show to tourists, and then charge for pictures with the birds or for holding the birds. The reliance is disgusting. It´s almost impossible to enjoy the islands for their architectural ingenuity because you´re constantly being heckled to buy this or buy that.

After my tour of the islands I headed back to the main plaza, intending to visit some museums, but discovered that they were all closed. Instead, I sat in the plaza and tried to read. As I was reading, a pack of shoe-shine boys, from ages 9 to 12, came up to me and tried to pursuade me to get my shoes shine (I was wearing hiking boots). After about 15 minutes of firmly saying no, they gave up, and instead began to chat with me about this and that: the US, fútbol, school, etc. It was fun to talk to them for about an hour. I think I got a better sense of life for kids here through our talks.

At two I headed to a tour of Sillustani, funeral towers from Incan and pre-Incan cultures. Along the way I met a sociology major from Lima, who was also headed for teh tour, it´s so strange the people you meet. The towers were majestic, if a little odd. They encorporated the typical Incan block cutting/placement method, whereby there´s no mortor; blocks fit perfictly together. t was incredible, because teh circumferance at the top of the towers was larger than that at the bottom of the twoers, meaning that some serious craftsmanship went into building the towers.

There weren´t just towers, however. The site is a perfict example of pre-Incan hierarchy: while rullers and other VIP´s were laid to rest in towers (along with their servants, wives and concubines), the rest were burried in the ground, where they could be walked on.

After the tour I made my way to Juli, about 1.5 hours away, on the edge of the lake, were I turned in early. My sleeping arrangements were fairly comical. The one decent guest house in Juli is a family-run affair and, as there were no extra rooms, I was put in a storage-room off of Grandma´s room. Grandma is a character. Primarily Quecha speaking, she listened to Quecha radio for a good deal of the night, slept in her traditional skirts, and kept her many top-hats in the storage room (I got a kick out of looking at them and trying them on). She offered to make me breakfast, was hard-of hearing when I told her I was fine and then proceded to ask me where I was from about five times. After she decided I was from Europe she told me about her adventures to Spain and Sweeden, where she had been invited for various artseans´ fairs. When I got up to leave in the morning she was all business: give me the 15 soles, now (she said it from her bed, and didn´t bother to get up at all during the transaction). It was an interesting experience.

I decided to stay the night in Juli to visit its four colonial churches. Because of the churches it is known as the ´Rome of Peru.´ It also has truely breath-taking views of the lake, especially in early morning. I got to all of the churches, entered one for part of mass and stayed at a curmbling and dilapidated church for a good deal of time, taking in its beauty. By 9am I was redy to go (I had got up at 6) and made my wat through a very interesting market to the combi station.

I headed back to Puno and, from Puno, to Juliaca, a fairly ugly town. I walked around its huge market, a great contrast from the tiny on in Juli, and happened apon a casino in the process. I went in, lost 2 soles at the slot machienes, but was able to oserve a very strange casino-culture while I was losing my 70 cents American. There were an equal number of men and women in the casino, which I found strange, but what I found stranger was that there were a good ammount of people in traditional dress also at the casino. It was a sight to see: women in their many skirts, little bowler hats atop their heads and delicately embroidered tops playing poker machienes or slot machienes. And these weren´t young women, but women that must have been in their late fifties or early sixties. I was reminded of the rampent gambling addiction on Indian Reservations in the US. But, of course, I have no idea what that is like here.

From Juliaca I caught a six-hour bus back to Cuzco. The views, especially at sunset, were beautiful. I got back to Urubamba at 9 and headed to a hotel to see a freinds parents, who happened to be staying in Urubamba. they were a welcomed sight from home, and checking out their (upscale) hotel was an interesting contrast to my acomidations the night before (and in all the places I´ve traveled).

All in all, a good weekend, although I would have liked to stay the night on one of the less touristy islands. Next time...

Short Week, Lazy Weekend, New Week

The week after Dias Patrias was only three days, but I think pretty much everyone felt as though it should have been shorter.

Firstly, my Quechua teacher, who I was supposed to begin lessons with on the Wednesday we got back, had decided to continue traveling, so I kept up with the Spanish instead of switching. Secondly, we had fairly poor attendance from Durazno Ti'kay on Wednesday and Thursday, and I think we only had good attendance on Friday because it was Michelle's last day at work.

Wednesday we were planning to do a lesson on competition (and what we could do to beat it) and brainstorm things to add into our business plan related to competition. We were hoping the women could come up with some new ideas for products they could create that were not already readily available on ever street corner of Cuzco. However, only four women showed up. The combination of just coming back from a holiday, plus a funeral in the town, was a bit prohibitive for the other women. We ended up just sitting on the patio (occasionally being amused by two dogs having sex) and chatting about competition. Surprisingly, given the small number of people we had and sense of sluggishness, the discussion turned up a lot of good ideas, although not about how to beat the competition. Most notably, the discussion reanimated a previous discussion over the various benefits and disadvantages to having a quota system. When that previous discussion had been had quotas had been rejected outright. However, as soon as the idea was brought up a second time (and this time from one of the women, not from one of the volunteers) the idea was seen as positive.

I also got a good sense that day for the prise of materials here. Apparently, a cone (about a kilo) of alpaca wool mixed with sheep wool is 37 soles (about 14 USD) while a cone of 100% alpaca wool is around 110 soles, approximately 40 dollars.

Thursday we had a slightly better attendance rate, eight women, and did a lesson on the color wheel and reviewed some basic business English. The color wheel lesson was all about how to effectively combine colors in combinations that are appealing to the womens' target audience: tourists. It had been prompted by a poncho that was neon orange with neon green accents (enough said). In English we reviewed a basic conversation one might have between a tourist and a woman selling her wares. We went over the phrases "how may I help you?" "what are you looking for?" "what do you like?" "how much is it/that?" and "it/that is X soles." It was a little difficult for the women to grasp the phrases, and pronunciation in English is always difficult for them, but I think it was helpful. To practice, we had the women partner and go through a basic interaction using the above phrases. It amused them to pretend to sell goods to each-other, and it especially amused them when I was the 'seller' and they were the 'buyer'.

Friday we started off with some yoga, or at least what we call yoga. It's effectively a mixture between movement activities and basic stretching that you would do as a part of a high school team. However, we were interrupted when two women said that the food for Michelle's despedida (good-bye party) was ready. It was a really sweet gesture, even if I wasn't hungry and had to force myself to eat so as not to hurt feelings.

The way these despedidas work are a little awkward for me. In our room there is one small table, about big enough for four people squished together, a bunch of stools and two benches. When we're teaching, the table usually just has our materials on it, and we're standing writing on the white board or going amongst the women, making sure they've grasped whatever concept we're going over. When we're just hanging out with the women before or after we begin a lesson, we're sitting with them on benches or stools, interspersed among them, talking and making jokes. However, when there's a despedida, the volunteers sit at the table and eat while the women sit on the opposite side of the room, on the stools and benches, and eat. It's a bit like a staring contest but, more often than not, I feel like an animal at the zoo being observed by tons of people.

Anywho, it's a lovely gesture and a great way to say good-bye. After the food, there was singing and dancing. For a brief period we convinced the women to model their own goods, as we took pictures, which will eventually be included in a catalog of the Durazno Ti'kay's goods. When we left it was dark (a rare occurrence), signifying that we had stayed longer than normal.

The weekend was fairly uneventful. I had planed to travel to Puno but, as the vast majority of the people that had come down to Peru at the same time as I were leaving, I decided to stay and hang out with them. Saturday night was the official good-bye party so, after having a bite to eat, we all strolled over to one of Urubamba's two clubs. Michelle and a friend convinced the bar tender to let them bar tend, which was amusing, and we all danced a bit. My host-sister, being home from college for the weekend, dropped in with her aunt and joined us for a while.

Sunday I took a trip out to some near-by salt mines, which were absolutely beautiful. They sparkle incredibly in the light and seeing an entire red-rocked hillside covered in patches of white is different and interesting. On the way down from the salt mines (they're located on a hillside which is a short but strenuous walk uphill) we noticed a house with what looked to be a replication of Orwell's 'Animal Farm.' An older dog lay outside, observing everything, ducks and baby pigs strolled around together and two adult pigs payed no attention to anything but their food. It was one of the strangest mixtures of animals that I've seen to date.

I decided to walk back from the salt mines, about an hour along the highway, and ran into some interesting ceramic places, some adorable kids, some angry dogs and more breath-taking views than I can describe. It was a great walk home because it is the route I travel to get to work, but have never been able to fully enjoy (as we're speeding along in a crowded combi).

Monday was back to work as normal, but with a few changes. As it was the first week in August the new schedule that we had decided on two weeks ago went into effect: meetings three times a week on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday with a time for individual work form 3:30 to 4:30 and a time for lessons from 4:30 to 5:30. The week was also different because... new volunteers arrived! My project has two, Katy and Carly, who will be here for three weeks and three months, respectively.

So, Monday we didn't have a meeting with the women, but I did help do an orientation for the volunteers where I went over the general gist of what I'd been doing, what the program was about, etc. Unfortunately, the new volunteers are splitting their time between the two womens' groups (Yanhuara and one other), so they'll only be going to Yanahuara meetings twice a week. The combination of the volunteers of the two projects is something that's got me a bit worked up, as the needs of the two womens' groups are very different and time-consuming. I feel bad that, after I leave, there will not be a volunteer at every Durazno Ti'kay meeting. Of course, the goal is to make Durazno Ti'kay a fully self-sufficient organization, but I feel that, being only two and a half months old, the group still needs support, even if it's just having a volunteer there to facilitate discussions between the women.

Monday, being all of the volunteers first days, was also the orientation on stove-building, a project that builds cleaner-burning, more fuel-efficient stoves out of bricks and mud. I decided to go to the orientation and learn so that I could build my own stove on Tuesday.

Tuesday morning I helped in the construction of two stoves, which was really exciting. They're fairly basic, but include a chimney and insulation, which directs health problem-causing smoke out of houses and which creates a need for fewer logs to burn. So, we're helping health and teh environment all at once. It's a really dirty job, but extremely fun and surprisingly fast (it takes about an hour and a half to build this stove) and very, very gratifying.

Tuesday was also the day when I was by myself at Yanahuara but, actually, I was with ProPeru's director, Sara. We went to finish up the business plan but, instead, ended up outlining a money-management system, which was equally helpful and necessary. What had been happening up until that point was that each woman had been buying her own yarn, making her item, selling it, and keeping all the profits. Which is all well and good for a woman making some items to sell on the side, but not very association-like. Of course, if the women had wanted to continue with that course, we wouldn't have stopped them. But it turned out that they didn't.

We ended up with three options. The first option (A) was that the group , Durazno Ti'kay, would buy yarn as a group (and at wholesale prices) and give it to the women. In turn, the women would give a percent of every sale, high enough to cover the cost of the yarn and a little extra, to the group to be able to continue buying yarn. The second option (B) was that each woman would continue to buy her own yarn but would put a little something from each sale into the group to fund activities, teachers, transportation, etc. The final option (C) was a mixture of the first two. The group would buy yarn at wholesale prices and then mark it up and sell it to each individual member. In addition, each member would contribute a little something to the group pot for the above expenses.

At first it looked like the group was favoring plan C, although there was one strong hold out for plan B. Then the came to the realization that A and C were practically the same (which I don't agree with) and decided that, if they had the starting capital, they would prefer plan A. Well, it just so happened that Sarah, the director who was there to make sure that the plan was remembered well after I was gone, is the woman in charge of the money. And it also just so happened that Michelle and my payments to ProPeru go, in a large part, to our projects and, although we had around 1000 soles to spend, we had only spent about 40. So the group asked Sara if ProPeru could buy the yarn, and Sara said yes, and the group decided on Plan A. Now all I need to do is set up a system of how Plan A will work in practice...

Wednesday I was supposed to be doing background research for Yanahuara but, as my semester program starts so very soon, found myself trying to prepare for it by reading some assigned books on Chile. I also found a scorpion in my room, which was not very fun.

Thursday we continued with the business plan, worked out time-lines and concrete goals for the various parts of the plan that we already had and introduced the women to the new volunteers. We figured out the percent that the women, under Plan A (it sounds a little ominous that way) would have to give back. By figuring out the cost of wool for each product (5 soles for a hat, 7 soles for a scarf and 20 soles for a poncho) and the lowest price the women would sell their goods for (7 soles for a hat, 15 soles for a scarf and 30 soles for a poncho) we figured out that, to cover the cost of wool and then a little extra, would mean putting back 75% of the profits into the group. While this seemed very high to some women, we reminded them that they were not buying the yarn and that, if they were shrewd business women and managed to get higher prices for their goods, they would also get higher profits.

This entire sort of pricing work was entirely new to me, and extremely interesting to be a part of. Luckily, Sara had done development work in the Peace Corps, so she could guide me through it.

Friday we decided, after all the business progress that had been made, all the headaches and debate, that the women deserved a break from business and a time for fun. Thus, a self-esteem exercise and English review. However, as the women were busy trying to figure out what color of yarn each of them wanted, we could only get through the self-esteem exercise.

Katy, one of the new volunteers, is a psychologist, and about to start her work when she gets home. As such, she has some great activities for boosting ones' self-perception, and she decided to do one with the women on Friday. What we did was we had each woman write five positive things about herself and one positive thing about every other woman in the group. After, we went around and asked the women questions about the messages they had received: 'did anything surprise you?' 'what do you most/least associate yourself with from the comments you received?' etc. I think it was a great activity because it created a sense of community, friendship and safety within the group. Many of the women were wearing big smiles at the end.

Some other things that happened this week:
1. I started Quechua classes. Mostly I'm working on basic interactions (Hi, how are you? What's your name?) so that I can talk on a very low level with people. It's a fascinating language both because of the pronunciation, which I'm terrible at, and the grammar. What I find so interesting in terms of grammar is that the language relies a great deal on suffixes. Any possessive or directional word will be added onto the end of the noun, while other endings (that I don't yet know) will be added onto the end of a verb (more than simply conjugation). It's really fascinating.
2. I was taught how to crochet. For a while, I've been wanting to learn to crochet because the women I work with make it look so easy, and because I want to get a sense for the sort of effort they put into their work. I think that once I understand the true value of the work, I'll be better able to advocate for it.
3. I got comfortable with the women. I feel like they're finally friends and companions, as opposed to students. I'm really glad this change has happened, because I feel strange with unequal power relationships.

That's about it for last week. Stay tuned for...Puno! The Urus Islands! and Week 2 of the new schedule and stove-making!

Dias Patrias Holidays: Machu Pichu and Cuzco

Dias Patrias are the Peruvian independence day holidays. Being patriotic, it means we get a four-day weekend. Some other volunteers and I decided to take advantage of the extra time and make our way to Machu Pichu.

We live in Urubamba, which is in the heart of the Sacred Valley and makes it fairly easy to get around to multiple ruins. To get to Machu Pichu we: 1. Took a combi to Oyantaytumbo, 2. Took a train to Aguas Calientes and 3. Took a bus up the mountain to Machu Pichu at 5:30 in the morning (but I'll get to that.

Saturday we left Urubamba at around 10, got to Oyanta at 11ish, had lunch and hoped on our train at 12:30. The train was spectacular. Because all of the seats in the backpacker train had been booked when we went to buy tickets, we had to opt for the slightly more expensive VistaDome. It was 100% worth the extra money. The VistaDome, as its name might imply, has glass ceilings, so you can see out the sides and the tops of the cars. Given that we were traveling through mountained country side, past pastures, rivers and glaciers, the view was absolutely incredible. And the early afternoon sunlight only added to the experience.

We got to Aguas Calientes at around 2:30, walked around the market a bit (so situated so that you have to walk through it when leaving the train to get to the town) and went in search of a hostel. Aguas Calentes is a town that straddles a river. The river effectively acts as a divider between the tourists and the locals; on one side are lots of restaurants, hotels, bars, shops and the bust station to Machu Pichu. On the other side are the same things, but markedly less fancy. What really struck me, even though it was just a little thing, was that there were bodegas on the local side of the river and not really on the tourist side of the river, clearly tourists are expected to eat at restaurants as opposed to buying bread and cheese and making their own sandwiches.

Well, we decided to stay on the local side of the river because of money and the fact that we wanted a slightly more 'real' experience. We ended up at a hostel where you had to walk through what looked like a jungle to get to your room. Very cool. We dropped off our bags and then went on what was supposed to be a fairly easy hour-long hike to a vantage point where you could see the entirety of Machu Pichu. We had some misinformation.

We began at round 4 in the afternoon. The hike started out fine, a little challenging on the uphills, but entirely doable. Then, about thirty minutes in, we saw a ladder. Not just any ladder, but an entirely vertical ladder scaling the side of the mountain - that was the way to the rest of the hike. We figured it wouldn't be too bad, so we continued up. And, when we had finished the ladder (which had something like 110 rungs) we saw another ladder. And that was the hike. Ladder after ladder after ladder scaling the shear side of this mountain. After about 45 minutes of this we passed some people coming down from the vantage point. But then it was around 5:30 or so. They told us it was another 45 minutes up to the top. Which would have been fine, except for things start to get dark at around 6:15 or so, and climbing down ladders next to a vertical drop was not something we particularly wanted to do. So we came down and didn't get to see the view. Sounds fine. But it just so happened that there were three of our group mates who had zipped up the mountian ahead of everyone else, and we had no way of telling them how much further they had to go and how they would be returning in the dark (no one had thought to bring their flashlight or headlight.)

We waited by the train tracks, where we would have a clear view of anyone coming off the mountian, for about an hour and a half. In that time we witnessed cats falling off a roof and almost hitting one of our group members on the head and we were attacked by three fiver-year-old Peruvians who wanted piggy-back rides (or to strangle us, but I prefer to think the former.) The entire time we were expecting to see our group members walking along the train tracks. Finally, we figured worrying wouldn't do any good, so we got some dinner. When we finished dinner and were about to walk to our hotel, who did we see but our missing companions! It turns out they had used iPods and cell phones and cameras to light their way down the ladders and the rest of the mountain and, although there had been some (very) near death experiences, everyone was fine and surprisingly calm.

We headed back to the hostel, wound from a very stressful day with some wine and beer and went to bead by 11, we would have an early day on Sunday...

But no one realized exactly how early. It turns out that our hostel was situated next to what can only be described as a farm. A farm with a very, very disoriented rooster. At 3am the rooster decided it was time to sound off, and didn't stop until 4am. It's the only time I've wanted to kill a living thing with my bare hands. We had to get up at 4:30 anyway, so we got very little sleep.

Why, you might ask, were we so determined to get to Machu Pichu at the crack of dawn? Well, the answer, my friends, is Waynapicchu. It's that ridiculously tall peek that is in the back of every picture of Machu Pichu, and they only allow 400 people up a day. It is supposed to have the best view of the ruins of Machu Pichu and, what's more, there are some amazing runs on the top of the peek. So we got up early.

We were in line at Waynapicchu, after a few mishaps (having to check too-large backpacks, having one of our group members almost not be let in because the stub for her Machu Pichu tickets had fallen off,) at 6:30. At 8, we found out that we were the last 8 people in the first group of 200, and would be allowed to go up the mountian shortly. At 8:45 we signed into a book that kept records of all hikers, and that we would sign out of when we returned. In this way, they could see if someone had fallen off the side of the mountian.

Climbing Waynapicchu made me come to a realization - the Incas must have been in extremely good shape. According to historians and anthropologists, the Incas were short. But their stairs were tall. The stairs got up to something like 2 feet, which made it very difficult to climb them. And the way to the top was about 85% stairs. The other parts involved sheer rock scrambling and narrow paths. But it was doable (especially after our experience the previous afternoon) and in an hour or so we hit the summit.

Wow. There really are no words to describe the amazing view. You feel like you're standing above the clouds (which, in some cases you are) looking through time. From up there you can really see that Machu Pichu was built in the shape of a condor, and the agricultural, residential and military sections of the town are clearly defined. It is an absolutely incredible feeling, even if it feel like you're intruding on the Incas worlds and even if you get a touch of vertigo.

We had lunch at the top (at 10:30am) and then just wandered the ruins. We sunned at the very peak on two rocks that come together at a 90 degree angle and then headed down. We tried to see as much of Machu Pichu as we could but we were exhausted and, after seeing the view from the top of Waynapicchu, the rest seemed to pale in comparison.

We made our way back to Aguas Calentes and our hotel, and I feel asleep until 8pm. Got up, ate some dinner and went back to sleep.

The next day, Monday, we headed out, back to Oyanta and then to Cuzco for Dias Patrias celebrations. In actuality, there were no celebrations. It seemed like people, with their four day weekends, had left to go to other parts, creating the illusion that there were more tourists in Cuzco than residents. It was a very strange feeling.

Cuzco, regardless of the fact that it is a city overrun with tourists, keeps a very hip, Peruvian vibe about it. There's an area on steep incline called San Blas. It's filled with adorable little boutiques, fun cafes and bars, live music venues and, of course, remnants of Inca life. It's the area most like New York's SoHo that I've found in my travels; even the streets are cobble stone and narrow, twisting so that where you come out of them is a mystery. Avenida del Sol is the main shopping street, about 3 blocks of the main plaza. You can find everything and anything there. About a half mile down Avenida del Sol is a cultural center which we happened to walk by just as a dance show was starting. We dropped in and were treated to 5 traditional dances and some traditional music, form the Cuzco (Qusqo in Quecha) area and from all around. My favorite dance represented male llamas and female herders. The men dressed up in such colorful outfits with huge amounts of colored wool hanging off them from every side. They would dance around the women, with the women and with each other to show their comradeships. It was very different and very interesting. Connecting the main plaza to the area where all the hostels and hotels are is called, colloquially, Gringo Alley. It's got lots of souvineer shops and even more camping rental and trip-booking agencies. And, what's even more interesting, is that everything seems to be written in Spanish and Hebrew. It's a fun place to wander around for a while, seeing the differences in prices between identical items in one shop or another. It's also a good place to practice ones bargaining skills.

Monday night, after the dance, we were all craving a taste of home. So we went out for the most American food we could think of: Chinese. It was a bit disappointing to say the least: my wanton soup didn't even have wantons, just noodles, but I guess there's something to be said for having tried Peruvian Chinese food. I think I'll just stick with the cuy. After dinner we went club hoping, which was great because I haven't been dancing since Guatemala.

The clubs around the main Plaza are very Gringo-friendly. We began at one, had a great tie dancing before it got overly full, and then decided to hit up the next one. The next club had a 10 sole cover, which we weren't willing to pay. Because we were white they let us cut the line and not pay the cover. The last club (three in one night is my limit) had a huge line outside of it but, as soon as the bouncer saw a group members' blond hair, they pulled all of us to the front and let us in.

In all of Peru there is discrimination, either positive or negative or just curios, based on skin color. But it's never been so blatant to me before. I felt awkward being given these special privileges - for something I had not control over. In all honesty, if I were a Cusquenian, I would hate the clubs for their neo-colonial perspective. As an American I can't stand the implication that the clubs give through their policies: that white people are rich and thus worthy of special treatment. It's an assumption that I've had to deal with throughout Latin America, and i think it makes interactions between Americans and locals less equal .

Tuesday we spent some time wandering around Cuzco, doing some shopping, and, at around 3, we headed back to Urubamba. Surprisingly, it felt like coming home. I think I've finally adjusted to small town life. And although I enjoyed the clubbing until three in the morning, as soon as I got back I was craving the hanging out in a cafe until 10 at night and then going home to read or sleep, which is a nightly occurance in Urubamba.

A Day in The Life

I figure I might let you all know what an average day is like for me, or at least has been like, as my schedule will soon change (my partner is leaving and I´m switching from morning Spanish classes to evening Quecha classes)

Every day (minus Fridays) I get up at seven, don´t take a shower because I don´t feel like being cold, and then head down to breakfast. I eat a half a piece of bread with some margerine that doesn´t need to be refrifgerated and take my vitimins, something I´ve never before done but am doing now in the hopes of not getting Giardia (don´t ask, it makes no sense but it´s a placebo type ting).

I head out at around 7:30 to walk to the Spanish school which is only 15 minutes away. I like to take my time, though. And each time I try to walk a different way to the school (but, as there are only about 10 different streets in Urubamba, I´ve done them all by now). Usually I walk on the market street, whcih also takes me past teh church/plaza. In teh mornings there are ladies on the market street who set up carts with some type of hot drink. From what I can tell there´s some base liquid, and then people choose some other flavors to add. It´s an interesting sight: the cups are glass, so the peopel cannot take the drinks to go. Instead they stand around, sometimes chat, finish their drinks and leave. It´s interetsing to watch because it´s so different from an American mentality of rush rush rush and drink your diet coke on the run.

There´s a man a little farther down the market street whose presence I´ve come to love. He seems to be about 50 to 60 and is the villiage sandal maker. What´s cool, however, is that he makes his sandals out of old and non-useable tires.

More recently, there have poped up a group of older women who seel shamanic products. They´re adorable, but I have absoluteloy no idea what they´re selling wor what it´s supposed to be used for.

Of course, on market days, there are people with all sorts of fruits, veggitables, meets, cheeses, pocket knives, bootleged CD´s and cheep magazines on everything from raising cueys to lovepoems. It´s crazy and bustling, and I usually get to Spanish late because I´m distracted.

Spanish class is off the highway, so I walk along it for about 5 minutes, getting honked at by little taxies that are really just converted motorcycles, tourist busses and combis. I get to Spanish class and chat for 2 hours with Michelle and my Spanish teacher. We´ve covered everything from abortion to euthenasia to health care systems to sexy Latin actors (Gael Garcia Bernal, we all agree, is sexiest). Sometimes we read articles, but mostly we just talk. My teacher, Maritza, is from Colombia, so I´ve heard a lot about the way of life there.

After Spanish Michelle and I walk along the highway, past the bust terminal and up Calle Torre Chayok to the church. There wa make a left, but not before stopping at the packeged food vendor on the corner. This woman gets so much of my business. She sells these delicious packeged slightly poped corn kernals, salted to perfection. Every day I buy two packeges, and they´re gone within 20 minutes, she must think I´m crazy or an addict (whcih, I sort of am at this point).

We head over to ProPeru, where our two resident sheep (bought to cut the grass) sometimes meet us at teh gait. Sometimes there´s also a huge black male cow on the road outside of ProPeru, he scares me.

We get to ProPeru and spend two or three hours brainstorming our lesson for later that day. We usually do a two-part thing, yoga and English or business and leadership or something like that. It takes a surprisingly long time to put these lessons together, and really gives me a great ammount of respect for teachers.

At around 1 we head off to our separate houses for lunch. In Peru, lunch is a big deal. It always has two parts: a soup and a ´segundo´or second course. And there are always potatoes and rice (and often noodles) with the meal. So far I´ve loved the food, but the carb intake, so different from my own at home, is hard to deal with. Luckily, my housemate Grace, loves rice, and can usually eat mine so that I don´t offend our host mom.

After lunch Michelle and I meet at the bus termanal where men hawlk at us to go to Cuzco or Chinchero or some other place. We head over to a combi and squeeze ourselves in. Generally, if we can´t get seats, we´ll wait for the next combi. The ride is about 10 minutes and absolutely beautiful. We go past mountians, salt mines, the river, abandoned train tracks and houses of all sorts. We yell out to the combi driver - bajo! (let us off) - whe we see the green house in Yanahuara and head over to our house to start setting up.

Usually we get to work by 3:20, but don´t start until 3:45 because not enough people have shown up. For those 25 minutes we sit with the women who are there, chat and watch them knitt. We have lessons for about an hour, wither in a large bleak room (whcih we´re trying to liven up with posters) or outside, a courtyard covered in flowers. We teach for about an hour, hang out and talk a little more, and then head back to Urubamba. To get back, we flag down a combi, whcih sometimes takes forever and sometimes comes right away. Usually, though, by the time we get back it´s packed with people, products and (on ocassion) animals.

I head back to my house, have a significantly smaller dinner than lunch, and then head out. Around teh plaza there are four volunteer-friendly locations; comfy couches, chill atmospheres, bopard games and, at the most visited location, a special discounted volunteer menu. Generally I meet the volunteers who came in July (with me) here, and hang out until about 10, when we all are too tired to stay out any longer and go to bed. Wednesdays are special. On Wednesdays all the volunteers from ProPeru and the other NGO´s in Urubanba (there are something like 5 or 6) get together to play Trivia, a modified version of Jeopardy. It´s a great time with categories like ´famous people,´ ´geography,´ ´Peru,´ and ´song lyrics.´

All in all it´s a pretty great schedule, even if I do feel weird going to bed at 10 every night.

Week Three: Two steps forward and one step back

Well, I think the title of this post says it all. The week was trying and frustrating, but still had its moments of fun and acomplishment.

Monday, as a reward for their hard work throughout the previous week, Michelle and I decided to aceed to requests for songs and dances from America. There was just one problem: we don`t really have dances like they do in Peru (except for things like the Lindy Hop and Fox Trot, which neither of us know). So, we started out with songs to prevent the enevitable embarassing dancing we would do. Happy Birthday went over pretty well. The tune is the same, so all the women had to focus on were the repetitive lyrics. A few women took turns having it be their birthday and giggiling appropriately. Next we tried Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, which proved to be a poor choice: too much vocab, too little repetition and too difficult a tune. We only got through four lines befire deciding it wasn`t worth it to do the full six. Still, I think that the songs helped in getting the women familiar with the sounds of English. And then the dances. We started with the most universal dance we could think of - the Hokey Pokey (which is a really difficult title to explain to a group of 20 to 50 something Peruvians). But it turned out to be an absoluetly great choice. First, the movements of the dance cracked the women up and got them feeling pretty good. Second, the song allows for the practice of left/right and body-part vocab, which is something that could actually be useful in selling products. Seeing all of them `put your butt in, put your butt out, put your butt in and shake it all about` was really amusing. And then we ended with the classic: The Maccarania (in lieu of the Chicken Dance) which turned out to be a good number review (one macca, two macca, three maccarania...). All in all it was a fun and positive day.

Tuesday was a prime business day. We scheduled a grand reunion for the women (complete with soda and cookies, a tactic learned form university to get people to attend meetings) to create their work plan. Michelle and I had previously created a work plan that we thought would be suitable. We only got through one part with the women:

Goal: Sell More Products
Activities to achieve goal:
a. find markets in which to sell products (Responsible parties: VP, ProPeru)
a. hostels and hotels
b. restaurants
c. Spanish schools
d. Shops
e. Tour organizations
b. have a stockpile of products (Durazno Ti´kay)
c. decide on new types of products and produce them
a. something different and unique
i. cards
ii. crocheted things: sweaters, baby clothes, shawls, bags
iii. dolls
d. Better the Durazno Ti´kay office (Durazno Ti´kay, ProPeru)
e. Have English classes (ProPeru)

It was great to get this much done and decided on with the vast majority of teh group present, but it took the time we had imagined the entire 4-part business plan would need. The women kept on going off on personal tangents; they got mad at the board of directors for sometimes not showing up or defended their own lack of attendance. It was extremely frustrating to see the women work individually as we tried to organize them to work as a group. As we didn`t finish the plan, we scheduled the continuation and termination of the grand reunion for Wednesday.

Wednesday: Market Day. Having a big group meeting to decided important (business life or death) issues on a market day is a terrible idea, and I should have known. I wanted to bash my head against the wall: only 5 women showed up, so we couldn’t finish the work plan, as it is a group activity. We hadn`t planned a back up, because we figured everyone would show, the work plan being so important and all, so we had no activity. We sat and chatted with the women, helping them practice English names for clothing and colors, but it wasn`t nearly as good as if we had planned something in advance. The deal with market day, for those who have not lived in a small Peruvian town, is that the largest town in the vicinity, Urubamba in this case, shuts down a few streets so that vendors can come from all over and sell their wares. It´s a beautiful sight, with people from super rural areas in traditional garb next to (relatively) large-city dwellers. There´s everything you could want from watches to food to key-chains and livestalk. Because this is the main buying/selling day, and because many of the women in Durazno Ti`kay sell their own wares on the side, a good proportion head the ten minutes into Urubamba to sell their things. The other good majority of women say that they do and use it as an excuse to not come to meetings. So we have a tiny attendance. This was by far the most frustrating day as of yet. We deriously thought of just heading out and getting furteada (chicha with strawberries) with teh womanwho had come, as opposed to sitting, letting them workand practicing English.

Thursday was Michelle´s day to jaunt, in her case to Nazca, so I was alone. I decided to review the English vocab that the previous two volunteers had taught. We did ´How are you?´ ´I am (good, bad, tired, crazy, fantastic)´and I also introduced the phrase ´I like to (sing, dance, sew, cook, play)´ to review verbs (sing, dance, sew, cook, play). Verbs seem to be hard for the women. They have trouble keeping words and actions together in their head. I decided it would be easier for them to remember the verbs if I made a fool of myself, so I acted out verbs which seemed to work fairly well (and get a laugh). I dribbled a basketball (I like to play), cooked a very inept meal (I like to cook) and danced like I had no clue what I was doing (I like to dance). ´How are you? ´ and ´I am…´ seem to be sticking fairly well.

After, we played two leadership/ group bonding games that I had played at one time or another. First, I had the women count (from 11 to 20 and from 21 to 30) without ordering who would say what number. If two women shouted out the same number, we would start from the beginning. I think I did this in 6th grade. Anyway, the game was a big hit; not only did the women work together and really like the game, but they reviewed numbers that they often don’t get the chance to practice. We ended the day by playing a game that I did during a Rice leadership retreat. In this game the women had a long circular piece of rope that they were asked to make into shapes (a house, a rectangle, a car, a flower). They had to work together to create the items. It went over well and encouraged certain women to take leadership roles, while it encouraged teh rest to work together to comply. Not unexpectedly, the women taking leadership roles were part of the board of directors.

Friday there was a parade in Yanhuara for Dias Patrias (Peruvian Independence Day) that the women had arranged to march in as Durazno Ti´kay. They wanted me to come and support them, which I did gladly. WHat I didn`t know was that a) I would be the only non Yanahuarian (I couldhave guessed I would be the only non-Peruvian) and that b) they wanted me to march in the parade as a part of the group. I was flattered but it was a bit more than alkward, to say the least. Firstly, the women gave me a poncho and matching hat to wear, which looked a bit ridiclous in teh burning sun of the day and, seccondly, I was a head taller than everyone else (whcih has nenver before happened in my life!) At one point a randomewoman came up to our group and asked why the hell I was in line to march. The women had to defend me and say I was a part of their group. And then we marched all of 20 feet. It was a good experience, but not something I think I´d really like to repeat. The parade took the place of a meeting (the womens´ decision, not mine) so we only really had three days of instruction.

A hard week, but followed by a four-day weekend, soon to be posted...

Week/Weekend 2: In the Swing of Things

Our second week went well, with a good deal of business decisions being made. I´ve got to give props top my partner Michelle, who stuck it out for two days while I jaunted around on one of the random adventuresd I´m prone to taking, but I´ll get into that later.

Monday we did a typical half yoga half English lesson. The yoga was great: it´s mostly just tstretching wth some stengtheing exercises thrown in the mix. I had to reach back to my swimmer days to find stretches that would be appropriate. We did something taht I though worked really well: we held each position for ten seconds and had the women count form one to ten while in the position. Then we would do the position (if aplicable) on the other side and have them count from eleven to twenty. I think this really helped in number retention. For English we went over clothing items, things the women are making and trying to sell to tourists. We made a poster with all the items in picture form; I´m a real believer in visual learning. Then we would ask the women what they were making. Invariably, they would respond in Spanish and we would have to prompt tehm to respond in English. (The people who were making ponchos got off easy, as the word is the same in both languages).

Tuesday and Wednesday I skipped town to go to teh Fiesta de la Viurgen del Carmen in a pueblo about 5 hours away. The virgin is supposidly very miraculous, and every year the festival brings in at least 5 times as many tourists as residents. There´s non-stop dancing and music for two days with teh highlight being on teh second day when teh virgin is brought out of the church and paraded around the town. I got there Tuesday at 1pmish, just in time to witness the beginning of the dancing. And wow, was it dancing! Each dance had around 30 or 40 participants, fully dressed in elaborate, detialled costumes as anything from doctors and nurses to bulls and matadors to African slaves. The costunes were made up of thopusands of beads, sequines, plaster and, ocassionaly, the dead animal. The dances represented a variety of things. The doctors and nurses all became infected with malaria and ended up on the floor shaking like eplilectic patients, the matadors acted all high and mighty (presumably a reference to Spanish haughtiness), the African slaves held likenesses of closed fists and raised them in a black power sign. There were also bakers and bread-women, adorable little girls in traditional garb and men with whips who took turns hitting eachother. Before every dance came a strangely decorated man with a whip, whose job it was to move teh crowd out of the way so that the dancers had room. Invariably, being a very white tourist, I was picked on: I gave a high-five to one whipper, kissed the mask of another, and was pertend shot at by a third.

The dances lasted until about 8 at night, at which point all the dancers went to eat and get drunk at local homes. The rest of us hung out in the plaza, talked and listened to the band, whcih didn´t stop playing all night. All through the day the townspeople had been working hard assembling the magically-looking structurs made of wood and tissue paper. They were about 30 feet high and had parts that spun about. They were some of teh most beautiful things I´d ever seen, straight out of a fairytale about flying-machienes. At about 10 at night I found out that these weren´t flying machienes after all, but fierworks. One by one, the three beautiful structures were lit up with the spinning parts spinning even faster, setting off beautiful colors and, eventually, fading into darkness. It was a beautiful and (partdon the repitition) magical show.

As the town of Pocartumbo houses about 3000 people and, at festival time, has around 20000 people in it, there was no hotel or hostel or even floor to stay on. But that was no problem, because all of teh student-aged tourists (those with less money) also had no place to stay. So we all hung out in the plaza, dancing until early in the morning. At three or so I hopped on a convi (a van packed full of people) to head to Tres Cruses, a mountian about 2 hours away where the sunrise from May to July is supposed to look halucinogenic: the sun bounces about, there are halos and sometimes it looks as if stars are falling from the sky. Unfortunately, when I arrived at 5 or so, it was extremely cloudy, so I didn´t get to witness the sunrise as intended but, I did get to take a nice hike and experience being entirely above a beautiful layer of clouds that was possibly more celestial that naything I´ve experienced since.

At 7 we made our way back to Pocartumbo and, at 11, I headed back to Cuzco and, from Cuzco, Urubamba. I got to Urubamba at around 5, in time for a group dinner cooked by volunteers. As it was Wednesday, after a deliciously American dinner, we headed top The Muse, a volunteer-oriented lounge, to do our weekly game of Tirva (sort of like jepordy, but in teams). And the I promptly went home and fell alseep.

Thursday was business as normal and, after Spanish class and a hard bit of brainstorming and planning with Michelle, we helped the Yanahuara women to decide upon an attendance plan. Lately, we´ve been having a lot of women miss meetings, so this was a way for us to figure out how to encourage more women to come more regularly (or, as it turned out, how to discourage less women to miss less meetings). What teh women decided is that we would reduce meeting times from 5 to 3 days a week. I think this is a great change because market day, Wednesday, sees a particularly low attendance and, with the new schedule, no one will need to come Wednesdays. The women also decided on a 1 sole penalty for every missed meeting (the proceeds of which would go toward buying the whole group something) and a prize for the women who showed up on time most often. We also decided to switch teh order of things. As it´s been, volunteers have been teaching for an hour, and then the women have had an hour to knit. What we decided is that it would be an incentive to stay for the lesson if the women could knit first for an hour, and then have their volunteer-led lesson.

Thursday night there was a big party to celebrate two of the ProPeru volunteers getting married. You heard me right, they got married in Peru. It was a big to-do with their host families prepairing a big meal and lots of music. Very different and interesting. The couple, Canadians of 19 and 20, put it as practice for ´real world marriage,´ as the Peru marriage doesn´t hold in Canada.

Friday we continued on the business-focused mentality and hammered out the responsibilities of the board of directors (president, vice president, treasurer etc.). It took much longer than anticipated, and we spent the whole session on that, as opposed to on yoga as we had planned. Still, it was important for every woman to know here roles, rights and responsibilities.

I really think that the work of this week, especially the attendance rules, will help Durazxno Ti´kay be more cohesive as a group. And I hope the other things will help them as an organized business.

The weekend was full of adventure: On Saturday we went to the ruins of Oyantetumbo, an ancient Incan city, followed by the ruins of Saqusaywaman, an ancient Incan sun temple. Then it was off to Cuzco to explore and spend the night. On Saturday I got up at around 6, hit up too many churches to count for mass, climbed to a beautiful lookout over Cuzco, and generally experienced the city wthout the masses of tourists that it attracts. I found teh market by accident and ended up spending a while pouring over fruits veggies and lambs heads (ew!) of all sizes, shapes and colors. Then I followed the abandoned train tracks to a poorer part of town and discovered the market there, significantly smaller than the other. I finished by stopping into a beautiful galary exibit by a man whose works come straight out of fantasy novels: twisted figures and dream-like colors. It was great.

Sunday we headed back top Urubamba via the Pisac ruins and, after, teh Pisa market. The market was overwhelming, filled with the same goods over and over, and overpriced. Still, it was beautiful and I was able to find some truly magnificient works. We got back to town and }went out for curry (yes, there´s curry in Urubamba) and then slept full and happy.

The First Weekend

ProPeru has many positives as an NGO: the people working with it, the wide array of projects from which to choose and free internet access (from which I am writing this post). But, my favorite perk by far, are the weekend trips which ProPeru arranges for its volunteers. Last weekend we went on one such trip.

Lares is a small town about 3 hours from Urubamba. To get there, like to get to most towns in the Sacred Valley, you must drive precariously close to the sides of multiple mountains, over mountains and next to packs of llamas grazing and giving you confused looks. The main attraction of Lares, aside from the beautiful ride there, are it's hot springs. And what's really nice about them is that they're not just a touristy thing. Saturday baths in the hot springs are something of a local tradition, with whole families gathering, bathing, eating a picnic and maybe taking a hike. Some people even come to the springs to just hang out, and don't even bother to get into the pools. But of course, I'm not one of those people.

We hung out in various levels of really hot to cold water, which was a good way to relax after our first week of work and stress in a new country. After, we took a walk into the town of Lares and had a two course meal for the equivalent of one dollar.

Sunday we went on a once-a-month mini-project in a town about an hour away where ProPeru has a history of construction projects. We were told that we would be helping build a kitchen for a school. However, what we weren't told was that there was absolutely nothing done in preparation. So we spent our morning and early afternoon using pick-axes (!) to knock down adobe walls that were in the way and pull up the grass and roots that were where the foundation needed to go. We dug some ditches and moved rocks from the near-by river to make up parts of the foundation as well. Although moving the rocks was extremely hard, I think it's a great tactic: the rocks will be used to make parts of the foundation, so that the village can save money on concrete. Talk about sustainable design - using rocks from a river so that you don't need to use other materials!

The work was absolutely back breaking (and, in my clumsy case, hurtful in other ways as well). I spent a good part of my time knocking down walls, which was a great way to get out aggression (unfortunately, I didn't have enough to keep my stamina up throughout the whole project), but I spent the majority of the time bent over a pickax ripping up vegetation. I'm proud to say I only hit myself in the legs with the ax twice, and both times were thankfully lacking force. By lunch time, I was spent.

Lunch itself was wonderful. Some local women had cooked three huge bowls of potatoes and brought out huge slices of what's known as Andean (or local) cheese. All of this for just 12 volunteers. Apparently it's a typical lunch, and it was exactly what we all wanted at that point. After lunch we worked for another hour and then drove back to Urubamba to sleep.

Looking at the weekend, I think we should have done it in reverse: the mini-project and then Lares. The burning water would have done good things to my muscles. As it is, I was only sore for a week or so afterwards.

The First Week

Our first week working with the women was short but sweet. We arrived at,what I think, was the best possible time; a week before the two old (and first ever) volunteers left. We would have had a week to work with them and the women, see how they worked and what techniques they used but, Peruvian strikes did not work in our favor.

Monday we helped the old volunteers give out English assessment tests to see what the women had learned and what they needed more work on. Because the women are so used to working in a group (not necesarily in our group, but in life in Peru in general) we had to phyisiscally separate them and do a one-on-one administration of the tests to make sure that we really knew what each woman knew, as opposed to what the women and their neighbors knew together. What we discovered was that there was a wide range of comprehension but that, in general, numbers and colors were easire than clothing items (and forget about congugating verbs). Wefound out later that the old volunteers had worked extensively on numbers and colors, so there is no surprise there. We then spent some time chatting with the women as they knitted their wares.

Tuesday and Wednesday were national strikes protesting the rising cost of living through oil and food. Thousands of people marched in the streets, made rock barricades in the roads so that transoprtation couldnt pass and burnt tires, and thats in the sleepy little town of Urubamba. People from all surrounding parts of the Sacred Valley filtered into Urubamba and ended up in the tiny town square, outside of the church, where giant speekers were set up. And then the best part happened: leaders of all communities, including a large ammount of women, gave speeches. They sounded very moving, whith rounds of applauseand dramatic pauses, but I couldnt tell because...they were all in Quecha! It was so moving to hear these people speak their grievences in their first language and take power into there own hands. Of course, because I´m a protest junkey, I stuck around and did catch a few of the chants, some of which were really quite clever:

Theres the clasic: El pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido
(The people, united, will never lose)

And then some new ones for me: El pueblo, escucha, uno cada lucha
(People, listen, all for one)

El pueblo en las calles por culpa del gobierno
(The people in the street by fault of the government)

Aqui, alla, el paro es total
(Here, there, the strikeis everywhere)

La costa, la selva, la teirra, el paro es total
(The coast, the jungle, the plains, the strike is everywhere)

I especially like the last one because it highlights Peru´s vast array of climates, peoples and regions. And that was really what there was in the strike: People dressed in Western clothes mingled with men and women in traditional outfits from all over. And what united them was a desire for change expressed through a language that, years ago, a colonial government had decided wasn´t up to standards.

Which brings me to something else (although by no means a chronological something else). I´m working on switching the daily classes I take from Spanish to Quecha. Some of you might think this is hasty, but I really want to be able to communicate with these women in their own language and, if I do say so myself, my Spanish is pretty good (although no where near perfict).

So, the strike left Thursday and Friday for work. Thursday we worked with the women on their views for their organization, Durazno Ti´kay. When we fianlly hammered the goals out, we had the basis of a mission statement, a huge acomplishment. We then took the ideas home and made them sound nice. So (drumroll please) here´s the recently created mission statement of Durazno Ti´kay:

´The Durazno Ti´kay mission is to improve the economic situation of the women in the group while providing friendship and support to one another and facilitating the exploration of new cultures and ideas.´

I really think this mission hits on the true purpose of the group. Namely that it´s not just a business but a place women can go to meet other women, socialize and share problems and joys. Also, through it´s connection to ProPeru, it brings in volunteers from far away lands. Given that these women have never left Peru, have often never left the Sacred Valley, this cultural exchange is extremely valuable.

Friday was the last day of the first volunteers time. They had both been there for a month, since the inception of the group, so it was a very emotional departure. The women made a delicious stew, chiche (traditional beer mythically, although not actually, fermented by saliva) and a tradition juice. There was dancing and singing , in English, Quiche and Spanish, and general merriment. It was a great fiesta.

And that wrapped up my week. A generally good end, with premoniotions of even better things to come.

Next installment, my past weekend

And, a promised, a little Quecha for you all at home (phonetically written because,as we all know, spelling in any language is not a strong point for me and the computer does not have Quecha spellcheck):

No´qu muna tikki: I love you

The Project

As you know (or might not) I´m working with a womens´collective about ten minurtes outside of Urubamba in an even smaller town called Yanawhara. The groups´ name is Durazno Ti´kay which means, in a mixture of Spanish and Quecha, Peach Flower. The group is made up of about 30 women, although we can expect around 20 to be at any one meeting, who make up the lower economic group of Yanawhara.

About a month ago the group formed with the very lofty goals of creating woven products to export, especially to the US, and there-by increase their economic situation. The beauty of the group is that they can 1) band together to get their name out and provide each other support and 2) work from home so that they do not neglect tehir children and families. The group came to ProPeru, the NGO I´m working with, and asked for support. So here I am...

Every day at 3:00 I take a convi (a van filled to the brim with people) over to Yanawhara. The meeting place, a large bare room with stools and benches, is in the house of one of the women who belongs to Durazno Ti´kay. People, women, kids and dogs, start to filter in at around 3:30 and fill teh room with chatting and with knitting (tejando). When we´ve reached our maximum for the day we start an hour-long lesson of some sort. The women really want to learn business English, so they´re working right now on colors, numbers and the names of the items they make. The problem with the English is that, although the women span in age, the majority are more toward the thirth/forty group, ages when learning new languages is fairly difficult. Still, some seem to pick up the English right away and begin to ask me and each other ´how old are you?´and ´what is your name?´

There were two volunteers before me and my partner, Michelle, who began teaching English and a variety of other things. They discovered that the women absolutely love a varieation on Yoga whcih basically involves streching. They also tried to teach some basic business skills like accounting and the importance of keeping inventory. We´ll keep up these lessons as well as start some new ones on basic math, womens´rights and, really, anything else that strikes us. Because the project is so new, we´ve got a great indepoendence in what we teach (whcih is at the same time thrilling ans terrifying).

And now to the women themselves. They´re wonderful. There are a few women in their twneties, more in their thirties and some in their forties. None of them has ever been a part of a group like thsi before and, from what I can tell, none of them has ever worked outside of their home (although, technically, they´re not now either). The vast majority are bilingual in Spanish (whcih is called Castellano) and Quecha, the most widely spoken native language in Peru. Some, however, only speak Quecha. Most are literate and some have absolutely beautiful penmanship. There are two mothers with young children who consistantly come to meetings. Their children are adorable and a source of entertainment (one began to dance wildly on Friday) for us and the group.

The organization has a board of directors consisting of four women. They are, by far, the most dedicated women. They are very willing to share their thoughts and oppinions, always come to class and work hardest at their English skills. They are truely amazing and are inspirational to the rest of the group, myself included.

After our lesson the women have an hour or so to work on their projects. However, the vast majority of work they´ll do at home. This is a time for us to interact with the women, to learn about them, their lives and their goals. This is also a time for us to learn from the women. On Friday I began my first Quecha lesson, which consisted of much giggiling as women point to parts of their bodies and named them in Quecha for me. There are a lot of sounds in Quecha that I´m not familiar with, as well as some glotteral stops, whcih we don´t really have in English (the apostrophy in Ti´kay is an example) so I´m going slowly. Hopefully I´ll learn enough for a sentance or two by the next blog.

Until then...

Urubamba

Hello Everyone!

I'm late for dinner, so I'll make this short. I origionally thought that I would be in Cuzco, a large city in the South of Peru, working with battered women. Instead I am in Urubamba, a tiny city an hour away from Cuzco, working with a womens' collective. Such is flexibility and life in Latin America.

I arrived, after 17 hours of travel and a bad 3 hours of sleep on a bench in the Lima airprot, in Cuzco on July 6th. I had a quick orientation there with about 15 other ProPeru volunteers and then 12 of us took the beautiful and windy drive to Urubamba.

Urubamba (which means something-valley in Quiche) is a city/town of about 3000 (talk about culture shock) built in a grid arround a central plaza and, of course, the local Catholic church. It's surrounded on all sides by beautiful mountians, some that we can see in the distance, are snow capped. Two mountians on eather side of town have large crosses atop them and, on all sides, various organizations have somehow written messages in the mountian grass. The most prominant is a huge "711" which is not a fast food store but a local high school. Needless to say, it is beautiful.

The weather is also a shock. Teribly cold in the morning and as soon as the sun disappears behind the mountains, it is extremely hot during the day. Still, it's not as cold (nor as elevated) as Cuzco, so that's a blessing.

More later...

Julia

It was a sad Friday. My three Rice compatriots left me and, although I got three more, this change over marks the last days of my own stay down in Guatemala. It feels a little bit like passing the toarch: teaching my songs and plays, showing where the best clubs are, reminiscing about clinical work. It will be hard to leave. But, at the same time, I think it´s about time. The rains are here, the natural rainy season augmented by huge storms that are hitting Guatemala from Mexico or Hondorous, and I left my umbrella on a chicken-bus comming back from Pana. That´s a sign if anything is.

This weekend I spent at Lake Atitlán again. We got luckly with the weather and even had two mornings of sun. We were in Pana(hachel) for one day, but didn´t spend much time there. Instead, we walked up part of the highway to Sololá (and when I say walked up, I do mean up) and took a turn off to get to Reserve Atitlán, a nature reserve boasting spider monkies and large racoon-like things whose name I can´t remember. It was an absolutely gorgeous hike, offering great views of the lake and Guatemala´s nature. It´s hard to remember, living in the Highlands, that Guatemala encompasses all climate zones, so this was a tropical reminder. Every now and then we would come to a clearing where we could see the lake and, right in front of the lake, we would see these two green monsters- highrise hotels echoing a Cancun sort of culture and causing an eyesore for everyone involved. It was heart-wrenching and, at the same time, assuring that these were the only two and that, for the most part, Atitlán has escaped the sort of mass-market developement that other parts of Latin America have seen. Which is not to say it has escaped developement, quite the contrary, but it seems to have done it in more it´s own way than other places, something that´s especially evident in San Pedro, but I´ll get to that.

After our hike we visited the museum/workplace/living area of Pana artist Raul Vasquéz. He gave us the tour himself, explained the significnce of certian works and generally tried to seduce us. His works, for the most part, seem to mimic the style of Picasso´s Guernica figures, although not quite so traumatic. However, some pieces that draw inspiration form Mayan folk-lore really shine.

After the museum we took a boat across the lake, whcih is about 9 miles by 2 miles, to San Pedro, the much talked about hippie capital of Guatemala. San Pedro is devided into two sections, below the hill and above the hill. Below it´s a city-girl´s dreams: restaurants, bars, clubs, internet café´s, bodegas, kyack and horse rental places, hostels and hotels. It seems that the majority of these places are owned by European or American ex-pats. Above the hill it´s a completely different story. There´s a good sized town with a bustling market, normal shops, not a club in sight, and hardly any foreigners. I get the sense that the vast majroity of people who stop in San Pedro never even climb the hill, and that the vast majority of people who live in San Pedro only descend when they have to take a boat to another town. It´s shocking and strange to see this divide, when in the entire rest of Guatemala that I´ve vistied the tourists and the locals have been completely integrated. While each half of San Pedro has it´s own charms, I have to say I´m more a fan of the upper part. Lower San Pedro feels too much like The Villiage for people on a budget. And, what´s more, barely anyone in Upper San Pedro speaks Spanish, they all speak a Mayan language whose name I´ve forgotton (there are 22 in Guatemala, so it´s a bit hard to keep them straight). The sounds are so different and beautiful that it makes just standing in the market a pleasure.

Still, lower San Pedro attracts a lot of very interesting and interested people, and that´s one of its best qualities. Saturday night, after arriving in our hotel and setteling in, we herd some beautiful gutiar music through the paper-thin walls. We ended up having a sing-a-long of old time music with an Jeffory, a 60-something music/Spanish teacher who had fallen in love with the lake 14 years ago during, and despite, the civil war. The music, the oppinions and the stories were political in nature, and really make you think about the subtle histories that you don´t learn in school. They´re a call to action that everyone should hear at least once and, hopefully, constantly.

That´s another thing I really love about travel in developing world countries: the people you meet are united by a common theme or awareness. Most all the travelers I´ve encountered here have been leading medical missions, trying to bring a voice to often over looked Mayan peoples or actively trying to expand their own understandings of the world and the people of the world. Because we are united by these themes, age need not act as teh uniter (or divider) that it often does. It doesn´t matter whether you´re eighteen or sixty-eight, you can get along, share stories, and form wonderful friendships. It´s something we should learn how to do in the States, both parties would learn a lot.

In the morning we kyaked across the lake to a small beach where we swam, took in the sun and relaxed. We kyaked back across, explored some more of San Pedro, and began our boat-bus-bus-bus journy back to Xela.

And so begins my last few days in Xela and Guatemala. In the mornings I´ll work in the clinic and try toi help with the transition of Rice students. In teh afternoons, because I don´t have classes this week, I´ll most likely try to explore parts of Xela that I missed or head to a neighboring town or two to see what´s going on there. Wednesday afternoon I´ll head over to Antigua, a beautiful and built up city, to spend the afternoon and night before flying out of the capital on Thursday.

Song and Play Book

As some of you know, it´s been hypothesized and highly correlated that kids learn best when they´re having fun or when they´re not aware that they´re learning. I´m a huge supporter of this oppinion, given my own experiences learning and teaching, and so my educational efforts in Guatemala so far have made heavy use of play (obras de teatro) and song (cancion) . I´d like to share the songs and the plays with anyone who feels that they would be helpful in their own educational efforts, so feel free to ´borrow´them.

We´ve tried to use common, well known tunes, so that the songs will stick in the kids´ heads and unconciously or conciously make their way into the kids´ daily habbits. For this reason, we´ve also got hand motions, but of course, that´s a little harder to demonstrate over the Internt. Keep in mind that these songs were geared to kids from age 1 to 7, so they´re a bit simple:

Al ritmo de ´Ring Around the Rosie,´ jugando el juego
Sepiar el pelo largo/
Desde los raises/
Piojos, Piojos!/
Todo el mundeo caye

To the tune of ´Ring Around the Rosie,´ while playing the game
Brush long hair/
Starting at the roots/
Lice, Lice!
We all fall down

Al Ritmo de ´Ten Little Inidans´
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes (X3)
Trez veces cada día

To the tune of ´Ten Little Indians´
Brush, brush, brush your teeth (X3)
Three times each day

Al Ritmo de ´Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star´
¿Por qué sepiamos los dientes bastante?/
Porque necesitamos evitar las carrias/
Comida puede ocultar allá/
Y hace nuestros bocas sucias/
¿Por qué sepiamos los dientes bastante?/
Porque necesitamos evitar las carrias!

To the tune of ´Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star´
Why do we brush our teeth so much?/
Because we need to avoid cavities/
Food can hide there/
And make our mouthes dirty/
Why do we brush our teeth so much?/
Because we need to avoid cavities!

Al Ritmo de ´Row, Row, Row Your Booat
Lavar, lavar, lavar los manos antes de comer/
Limpia, limpia, limpia, limpia, no nos vamos a enfermar!

To the tune of ´Row, Row, Row Your Boat´
Wash, Wash, Wash your hands before you eat/
Clean, clean, clean, clean, we´re not going to get sick!

Al ritmo de ´Frére Jacque´
Lavare el cuerpo, lavar el cuerpo, cada día, cada día/
Es muy importante, por ser felíz/
Lavar el cuerpo, lavar el cuerpo!

To the tune of ´Frére Jacque´
Wash your body, wash your body, every day, every day/
It´s very important, to be happy/
Wash your body, wash your body!

Al ritmo de ´Cumpleaños felíz´ (Courtesy de Brandon Hayas)
Limpiar el o-ido/
Con tu propio dedito/
Una vez cada semana/
No usen algodón.

Al ritmo de ´Happy Birthday to You´ (Courtesy of Brandon Hayas)
Clean your ear/
with your own pinkey/
One time a weel/
Don´t use a Q-Tip.

I´ll get better with this whole blog thing, I promise. But, in the meantime...

Spanish classes have been going well. Went from the Imperitive (comands) to the Subjunctive (indicitive of doubt, a case we don´t have in English) and have actually been using them, sometimes at least. As always, should be studying more, but there are just some many more interesting things to do here.

Started a week of salsa classes and have never gotten so many side cramps in all my life. I think that dance was invented to remind you to eat more potassium and drink more water. Couple it with the heat at a club, and I can make it through maybe two songs without having to take a break. But that doesn´t stop me from trying.

As for work: I´ve gotten really good at taking medical histories in Spanish. Some of the questions we ask are really interesting from an outsiders´ point of view. For example, we ask religious affiliation, which I thought was a bit odd, but which the doctora explained to me was necesary for certian questions that she may later ask. Surprisingly, a large part of Guatemala is Evangelicial, I has assumed the vast majority would be Catholic.

It´s amazing the things you learn from thtse medical histories. Most of the women I´ve talked with who are over forty have had somewhere in the range of 8 to 12 births and sometimes over 16 pregnancies. The average woman, regardless of age, has never had a pap smear and uses no method of birth control, regardles of whether she´s married or single. And, my teachers have told me, machismo prevents men from using condoms, despite them being available at every pharmacy, and a pharmacy being located every two blocks (think Starbucks in New York City). What I think really needs to happen are family planning clinics and sexual health education to kids, starting young. Of course, to do this would be to face a huge taboo, and who knows how you would get the majority of schools (many with some connection to the church) to authorize this. So it turns into a cycle: girls get pregnant very young and, to save their honor, must get married. Sometimes their quincineras and weddings are only weeks apart. They are then regalated, for the most part, to the role of wife and mother and their husband must earn a living. Both are denied the higher education that would really help them make decent livings, so they are stuck at the bottom rungs of society. And the problem is worse in the often rural Mayan communities, which are already the poorest communities and are often discriminated against. Of course, this is not always the case, but it happens far too much for comfort. Throw in the higher rates of spousal beating that are often caused by young, haphazard marriages, and anything over a small ammount of ten births seems like too much.

I´m working at a free clinic that, when it has it, gives away medicines to its patients. It seems to me that the majority of peopel we see are indiginous, as opposed to Ladino, but there is a mix. The most common reasons for comming in seem to be throat infections and bactirial/parasite stomach things. Of course, I´ve seen everything from STI´s to musle problems, but those are less common.

We´ve also continued our work with the middle school, and expanded this work to include a day care center with kids from babies to 7 years of age. We´ve now talked to all the kids in the middle school about brushing their teeth and keeping themselves clean and healthy over all. We still go back to play with them, though, as we´ve become really attached to the kids; it´ll be hard to leave them. At the day care we did some weighing and measuring of the kids to make sure they were normal for their age. We´re going to do hygine stuff with them as well but, because they´re much younger, we´re going to approach it a different way: through song! Remembering how much I loved music time as a kid, I wrote up a bunch of songs about health and hygine. Hopefully they´ll be so catchy that the kids will remember them when it comes time to brush their teeth or take a bath. Here´s one for your reading/singing pleasure:

To the tune of ´three little Indians´
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes
Sepiar, sepiar, sepiar los dientes tres veces cada día

Translation:
Brush, brush, brush your teeth
Brush, brush, brush your teeth
Brush, brush, brush your teeth three times a day

Needless to say, I had a lot of fun making the songs, and I´ll post a song book of sorts when I have a good ammount. I think this will be an ongoing project.

We´re prepairing to do education on vacines to patients this comming week; last week we did a free blood pressure and blood glucose level clinic. I am proud to say that I am now a master blood glucouse level taker and that, for the most part, our patients were relitively healthy. There was one older woman with off the chart gloucose levels, and it was terribly sad to see her reaction to the news that she was diabetic. The problem here isn´t intent to change lifestyles or stay healthy, it´s money. There´s no way that this woman could afford dialysis or even some of the more costly drugs. So, despite her best efforts, the result of this diagnosis may very well be death, despite technologies that would prevent it. I think a lot of people here are accutely aware of this, so they would just rather not go to a doctor to find out their status on any number of things. Their reasoning being: what will knowlege do other than cause anguish, when there´s no money.

I´ve been able to travel quite a bit with the school, but last week was the first time I traveled with just a friend and no school guide. We hopped a bus to some distant place, changed at a gas station to a pickup truck that mush have held 20 people, 5 baskets of fruit being brought to market and a few chickens. We were headed to San Andres Xecul, a town about an hour away that is famed for a brightly colored, somewhat psychadelic church. The church was OK, although not as crazy as it was made out to be, but the view was what was really worth traveling for. We climbed up the hillside, caught the tail end of a pick up soccer game between local boys, and marvled at how we could see the entierty of the Questzelangelo valley. On the hill we also passed some people separating thread using 50 yard steaks, another very cool sight.

I´ve taken two weekend trips so far. One to the beach town of Monterico, where we did absolutely nothing (and it as wonderful but too hot after having lived in the highland for a month), and one to Panahachel, on Lake Atitlan. Compaired to Atitlan, Monterrico is nothing. The lake is huge and beautiful, and has lots of towns around it that you take a boat to get to. Because of the hurricanes and storms hitting Central America at this time of year, the lake was surrounded with a beautiful fog whcih, on short and maraculous ocassions, let up to reveal sky. The water is warm and inviting, and I saw more than one native to the area bathing in it. The area is a paradise, and I loved it so much that I´m going back this weekend. However, I´ll stay in a different town, Panahachel is too touristy and doesn´t feel real.

We took a trip to a chcolate factory and, hopefully, we´ll be able to get to the beer factrory that we live right next to at some point. The woman working at the chocolate factory, the mother of one fo the teachers at my Spanish school, walked us through the whole chocolate making process and, of course, let us taste, She makes the traditional Mayan chocolate used to make hot chocolate, not to eat. This stuff is so rich that it works fine to make it in just water, as oppose to milk, which works out well because milk is too expensive for anyone here to buy.

Well, I must say that it is sad, but true, that I am no longer a teen. But my 19th year went out with a bang. I started off in the day care center and got spit up on by the most adorable little baby ever. We helped the kids break open two pinatas, and the smiles were inredible. I had clases and ran some erands and then got together with a bunch of friends for a big Indian feast. ¿And who knew there was good Indian food in Xela? It was like a taste of home. Some friends of mine, Inge and Brandon, bought me a delicious cake and, before I could eat it, I was sung happy birthday in a total of 5 languages: English, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Czechk, Dutch and German. It was definately the most multicultural birthday I´ve had. After, we met up with some of the teachers from the Spanish school and danced until the lights at the club came on and the music was turned down. It was a wonderful day, but bittersweet because Inge, a good friend from Holland, headed out to Mexico the next morning. Still, her birthday present to me, sticking around for my birthday, was one of the best I could have asked for (sweet as a shnoopia or papernoten!)

At the end of this week my fellow Rice Humanitarian Medical Outreachers will head out and six new ones will head in. We´ve gotten colse during our time here, despite not knowing eachother before, so It´ll be hard to say goodbye. Still, I have another week left after them, and I´m sure I´ll find something great to do.

Tonight we´re off to a café or, tal vez, a new casino that just opened up. I´ve never been to one, so it should be an interesting and cultural experience.

Hasta pronto mis amores,

Julia