Dead Goats and Sex

My blogs quite often mention culinary adventures and misadventures and this blog will not disappoint in that respect because, even though my main topic will be my recent foray into HIV/AIDS education, the killed a goat this week and the aftermath is too gross to go unblogged. My host dad's birthday was Monday which meant, apart from copious amounts of booze (not on my part), a good slaughter. Goat is the typical birthday food of the region where I live and I have come to love it. They cook it up with vinegar, cilantro, veggies, and other deliciously flavorful ingredients and serve it up with white rice LOADED with MSG. Before Peru I always thought of MSG as a negative but I have started to see it as a necessity for everyday cooking (this is what we refer to in the Peace Corps as TOO integrated into Peruvian customs). On the day of the birthday we got all the yummy parts of the goat that we back home in the States consider meat. For the days after, every meal is devoted to using up the rest of the goat which, in my previous life, I would never have known to be edible. These days every time I open the fridge I have to suppress my gagging because some organ or other is looking at me. When I use the word "looking," I mean this quite literally. The past few days the first thing I see when I open the fridge to get my water is a goat head, complete with eyeballs but missing skin. This finally got cooked in the typical post birthday lunch of head stew but I found it even more disturbing to open the pot where I expected to find boiled water and instead I found a boiled head, still with eyeballs, staring at me. The legs (with hooves and fur), liver, heart, intestines, and all other manner of organs still await their turn in the fridge. The use of every last bit of the animal is excellent from a sustainability perspective but I am just not there yet. The lack of money does glorious things for the ecological footprint and hopefully I will come back to the US a little tougher and more willing to apply these concepts to my own life. I will be back for Thanksgiving in 2011 so bring on the giblet gravy!

As promised, I am branching out from the culinary theme to tell everyone a little about my adventures as a sex ed teacher. The Peace Corps gives us the opportunity to apply for various grants and one of these is PEPFAR (President's Emergency Prevention Fund for AIDS Relief). This program was a positive pre-emptive strike taken by George W. (insert snide remarks here) in order to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in certain target countries around the world. I applied for a grant and, with the help of my excellent obstetrician, am executing an education campaign in the high school and other local institutions to prevent teen pregnancy, HIV/AIDS, and other STDs. This project encompasses a huge range of topics and right now we are working on sexuality and sexual development. I have to admit I was very intimidated at first to talk to high schoolers about sex in Spanish but it is really fun. They laugh at me because I only know the vulgar words for a lot of stuff rather than the pc scientific words. Our lesson today was about physical development. The kids worked in two groups, one drew a naked man, and the other drew a naked woman. We then discussed what they had drawn and the importance of these changes for development. Part of the reason these activities are so fun is because throughout the course of one lesson, the kids go from being shy, immature, and uncomfortable to being mature and genuinely interested in how to develop into sexually responsible adults. Sometimes a giggle escapes me when I learn a new phrase (i.e. wet dream) and I find myself being less mature about stuff than they are about this subject. I might have to grow up a little before I go give a talk to the municipal authorities or the teachers but for now I am having a lot of fun.