Spring Break Peace Corps Style!

Easter weekend in Peru warrants a four-day weekend and as part of our "cultural integration," Peace Corps volunteers are given free vacation days. I decided to head up to Mancora, the Spring break destination of Peru, and spent my four days playing on the beach, eating amazing foods, and enjoying the infamous Mancora nightlife scene (with every precaution taken to stay safe of course). About twenty other volunteers showed up from all over the country so this turned out to be an excellent opportunity to catch up with people I hadn't seen since training and to meet volunteers who have been here longer than I have. The Peace Corps pretty much took over our hostel and enjoyed a weekend in the roll of tourists rather than idealistic, international do-gooders.
When the weekend ended it was back to reality, a transition that has been a little more difficult than I anticipated. I had taken full advantage of the Mancora culinary scene and eaten fresh seafood quesadillas, amazing octopus curry, and even some waffles at a restaurant called Green Eggs and Ham. I had left some loose ends before hitting the beach so I had to jump right from mojitos overlooking the Pacific Ocean to sorting hundreds of kilos of recycling and writing my community diagnostic. I am proud to say that I have completed both of these missions and I am back to feeling like a PCV.
The recycling campaign was the most fulfilling thing that I have done since getting to my site. I gave every student a bag (the waste in plastic probably seriously decreases the net benefit of the project but the educational aspect was more the point anyway), which they filled with recyclables and brought to me in exchange for candy and stickers. We ended up filling an entire room with bags of recycling and when I got back from my trip it was time to sort. I enlisted the help of some older students (all male despite my insistence otherwise) and we spent a total of four hours over two school days sorting out the garbage and putting all the recycling in sacks to be weighed and sold. At one point one of the boys helping sort the trash found a "toy" shaped like a certain part of the male anatomy, which belongs on the shelves of fantasy video and not in an elementary school recycling campaign. This provided for lots of giggling and extreme awkwardness on my part. When the recycler came to purchase the material, there was still much work to be done so I ended up staying at the school until 10 pm two nights in a row to finish up the sorting, weighing and transporting. The recycler transported all the material to his storage area across town using a tricycle with a big basket type of thing. It took about five very full loads but we finally sold a total of 170 kilos (374 lbs) of recyclables which is a huge amount considering a plastic bottle ways next to nothing. The enthusiasm on the part of the students was so satisfying that I have high hopes for instituting a permanent recycling program in the schools and I look forward to more campaigns like this in the future. The director has already requested that we make this a monthly campaign, I just need to figure out a more efficient way to collect the trash than individual bags for each student.
My next big project is to set up an Earth Day parade and banner contest among the school children. So far all of the schools have agreed to participate and I am looking forward to drawing more attention to environmentalism in Pacora. As my boss Diego always says, "the children are your little soldiers."

Diagnostic Troubles

I am sitting here eating lunch and trying to work on my community diagnostic, which is technically due by the end of the week, and I realize why I usually head into Chiclayo to work on anything that involves focus. I lost complete focus about 30 seconds ago when my host brother-in-law came into the room with a live chicken and proceeded to saw at its jugular with a dull kitchen knife. He then shook out as much blood as possible as I pushed the remainder of my lunch and my community diagnostic to the side. Currently, he is laughing as the dead chicken makes strange noises as he plucks it. So much for concentration but at least I know where my dinner came from!
It is Monday 1:30 and while I have been working diligently all morning to get a recycling campaign off the ground at the elementary school, my neighborhood has been drinking on the sidewalk in front of my house since 9 am. I guess I am still in the American mindset that Monday morning is a dreaded hour where one returns to the grind but apparently that doesn't always apply when Sunday night's party was too good to end. I ask my host sister what the occasion is and she laughs as if this is irrelevant. I think this was the first time I've been made to feel guilty about turning down booze at 10 am on a Monday while on my way to work in the elementary school.
I don't want to give the impression that this is a regular occurrence, it usually only happens on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. The majority of town has been hard at work today, including myself. I have actually had a rewarding morning in the Peace Corps. I had asked the elementary school teachers to help me design a recycling campaign and we came up with handing out sacks to each student to fill with recyclables which they will bring back to the school in exchange for stickers, pencils, and candies (care of Aunt Patty and my mom). We will then sell the recycling and buy something for the school or throw a little party. Today I was pleasantly surprised to find that a bunch of students had actually brought their bags back full of plastic bottles, paper, cardboard, and tin cans! Once the students who had forgotten the bags saw the stickers I was handing out they got really excited and promised me they will bring their bags tomorrow. Overall, the first phase of this project has been much more successful than I was anticipating and I look forward to going back tomorrow to find that even more students have brought in their recyclables. Another reason this project has felt so successful is that I have enlisted the teachers to talk to their students about how recycling benefits both human beings and our environment. I have never felt so excited about the potential impact of one of my projects.
In other news, I recently returned from Lima where I was working on planning a women's HIV/AIDS leadership workshop where we will work with female leaders on relevant skills. My favorite of these skills is "negotiation techniques." The machismo in Peru has made it difficult for women to take charge of their own birth control and the men are completely against condoms so we will work on self esteem and "negotiation" (I find this business-like explanation of the family planning process comical and disturbing at the same time). I am looking forward to this workshop and conference because I have become passionate about women's rights and sexual rights in particular.
When I arrived from Lima I found that 6 guinea pigs had been born while I was away. I enjoy watching the baby guinea pigs follow their mothers around so I was thrilled. I stupidly did not learn my lesson the last two litters of guinea pigs all of whom died, and I quickly got attached. The next day, there were two left. Some had disappeared, probably thanks to the neighbor's cat, but worse than that were the rapidly decomposing baby guinea pigs in the corner of the cage covered in ants. Ants have become the bane of my existence as they are tiny but numerous and relentless. Anyone who has read the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver probably remembers the scene where the ants come in and devour everything in their path leaving only carcasses of animals in their wake. The ant feeding frenzy through the guinea pig cage was kinda like that.
Now that the plucking process is done and I'm only slightly nauseous, I think I will head out back to my hammock to decompress before tackling my community diagnostic with a newfound appreciation for my current situation. It is moments like this when I look around and realize that I am still outside my comfort zone even after 4 months in my site. As I watch my host sister gut the chicken I realize that a sharp knife could be an excellent gift to my host family, and it might help me stomach the process a little more easily.