I found out the general area where I'll be living for 2 years, beginning at the end of November. It's the department (state) of Junin. It's very high in the central Andes. My best guess from the descriptions I've been given is that I'll be in the Mantaro Valley, near the city of Jauja. That puts me at 3,400 meters altitude, or a little over 11,000 feet. Temperature ranges from 32 to 62 degrees. I haven't been there, but here's a picture from the internet.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Some field training adventures
The past two weeks have been busy. I’m amazed by how much I’ve
learned. I’m so grateful for my host family, who feed me
meals like this:
And eat with me,
and keep me amused
There are 17 of us living in our village, a 20-minute
commute to the town where our training school is. Last week we celebrated Amanda’s
birthday.
She and her husband Charles are great dancers.
One of my favorite days was last week when we went to a
village to the south and built a mud stove for a family. They were doing all
their cooking over a wood fire. The women are prone to respatory disease from
leaning over the smoke all day.
The new stove began with a base of mud.
Then we built up a base
After that, we added layers of adobe bricks stuck together
with mud.
we worked hardOnce the oven part was complete, we added a stovetop that had been made of cement a few days earlier.
At the end we added a chimney.
A volunteer who lives in that
area will finish off the stove and the family can cover it with a layer of mud
and paint it for a finished product. We had a great day helping the family.
Our next field trip lasted five days. We went to Chancay,
which is a few hours to the north, on the coast. We stayed in a hostel that had
actual hot water. I had my first hot showers since coming to Peru. I loved
visiting the marketplace and exploring the town. This is a shrine I discovered one evening.
We visited a loma, which is a tall hill near the ocean that
captures the fog. Most of the coast is very, dry, with few living things, very
desolate. But the physics of the lomas create a lush island of vegetation.
We
learned about reforestation in the ecosystem.
We also learned about their environmental education program:
making planters from trash
And teaching lessons with puppets. I got to perform a spontaneous puppet show for a bunch of children in the park, but I don't have pictures of that. This is the owl puppet I used.
I was especially interested in the way they used the “authority
of the resource” strategy in their signage.
We enjoyed a hike through the park.
We also visited a dump to learn about solid waste management
and a former dump-turned-wildlife refuge. Our guide was a community leader
working on environmental issues, an amazing visionary.
The difficulties of land
restoration are huge. There isn’t enough money for meaningful enforcement, so
people continue to use the wildlife refuge as a dump. For example, in this
area, a meat factory dumps pig bones and leaves them to dry in the sun.
Then they burn the bones, creating an ash that is fed back
to the pigs to return minerals like phosphorus to the system. It’s a smart
nutrient recycling strategy, but doing it within the refuge isn’t healthy for
the water there.
In this trip, I got to eat ceviche is a seaside restaurant.
I didn’t get sick!
Our group visited the water treatment plant
We also visited a castle. That's the neighboring fishmeal factory in the background.
The castle was built by an eccentric wealthy woman in the 1940s.
It had a variety of art
And taxidermy
And a collection of pre-Incan artifacts and mummies that we
weren’t allowed to photograph. It was interesting to see how a tourist
attraction is managed here.
In pairs, we taught lessons on the environment at a local
school. Kati and I did ours on trash in the ocean.
We played games with them, which was a little chaotic.
They liked our puppets.
The best part was hanging out with the kids during recess.
They were fascinated with us, and insisted on getting our autographs.
These months of training are intense. There’s an enormous
amount to absorb. I’m starting to feel more comfortable here. I know my
language skills are getting better, bit by bit. But I’m trying to do more
difficult things in Spanish as we go along, so my skills are always inadequate
for what I’m trying to do. It takes a lot on energy. The good news is that I’m
sleeping better than I have in many years. The blessings of exhaustion!
I miss everyone at home. I have received zero snail-mail,
which is ever so sad. My address is:
Alane Brown
c/o Cuerpo de Paz
Calle Via Lactea 132
Urb.Los Ganados
Lima 33, PERU
I would love to receive a card or letter. Email is great,
but actual paper mail is valued here in ways you might not understand unless
you’ve served in the military, Peace Corps, or the like. It’s not like being on
vacation; it's full of ups and downs. For example, last week, I found a scorpion in my room. I drowned it in the wash basin.
On the other hand, we had a big fiesta on our block. Guys danced around in these bull costumes, which were covered in fireworks. They spun and shot off sparks. They were gorgeous and dangerous and very, very Peruvian. I hope I'll get to see many Toros Locos during my time here.
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