Life as Señorita Dani

The past couple of weeks have been incredibly busy between planning and executing an Earth Day parade and recycling collection, continuing in my efforts to get funding from the municipality, and attending my first in service training. I am feeling very productive and I am incredibly excited to continue with larger scale projects that will be sustainable. The work that I have put in over the past three weeks has been the most rewarding part of Peace Corps yet.
The Earth Day celebration was weeks in the making and I couldn't help but worry as I waited in the plaza for the students to show up for the parade. As it turned out, there was no need to worry. At 9 am exactly the students from the four schools that I had invited came flooding in carrying the picket signs they had worked so hard to create. One of the elementary schools even brought their marching band along which made it impossible for the community members to ignore our parade. During the parade, the students from one of the schools went door to door to collect recycling, which they then sold to raise money for an amplifier they can use at school events. The parade was incredible and boosted my confidence as a volunteer. Of course, as with any project, there were a couple of glitches. The prizes we had solicited for the poster contest were meant for individuals but the students worked in groups so we had nothing to give the winners but we have decided to buy clocks for the winning classroom once the money for our solid waste management education budget comes through from the municipality.
Working with the municipality has proven quite an ordeal so I am concerned about relying on their timetable. The volunteers that I replaced got a solid waste education project approved last year through a program called the participatory budget. I came to site thinking that I would have this large budget waiting for me but, as with any bureaucracy, it was not that simple. I have spent the past six months fighting alongside the solid waste committee to get the money that the previous volunteers had been promised. As it turns out, their project had been lumped together with a large municipal project that is going to cost 700,000 soles (about $250,000). The municipality will never have this kind of money and they refuse to simplify the project in order to make it more feasible. They also insist that they cannot start any aspect of the project until they have funding lined up for all of it. My job has been to get the solid waste committees project separated from the large-scale municipal project so that we will have control over the timetable and logistics. This week I made huge strides to getting my hands on the funding that my predecessors were promised last October. I should have access to the money to start purchasing garbage cans and educational materials next week but I will believe that once I have money in my hands. I am confident that we are almost there in which case I can establish recycling programs in all of the schools of Pacora, which will earn them income and, therefore, have more of a chance at sustainability. I have learned a ton from this process about patience, persistence, and lobbying skills. These are all qualities that will come in handy if I decide to work in the U.S. government. I'd like to think it will be easier to get stuff done in the United States but that would be naïve, bureaucracy is bureaucracy.
In terms of general Peruvian life, I don't have anything too exciting to report. This may be because I am getting used to the things that used to throw me. I now don't think twice about the goats in bags on the combi or the bowls of organs in the refrigerator. My perspective on some things is much different now. For example, I am no longer offended by people publicly picking their nose, ears, bellybutton, or other orifices. I only hope that I will be able to shed my rural Peruvian manners once I get back to the U.S., especially since I will be traveling home for my sister's wedding, not the ideal setting for public displays of personal hygiene maintenance.