Photos! 2 month mark

I've been down in Peru for almost 5 months now and as I suspected, time is flying by. I've been up in the mountains for about 2 months and here are a few of the pictures I've accumulated.

This is a pic of me and the boys doing a little pregaming. Since we're all on the Peace Corps salary, pregaming is even more essential to saving money before hitting the town.

Here is one of the cacti that decorate the area up here. Once, when jumping from a rock wall I became intimately acquainted with one of these. Not fun. This cactus is not to be confused with the “San Pedro cactus” – which has hallucinogenic properties. San Pedro, you boil in water and drink like tea, and depending on the strength, you’ll hallucinate for 6 to 12 hours. Shaman (witch doctors) are still prevalent through the mountains of Peru and the San Pedro is one of their ‘medicines’. Pretty sweet, huh?

Here are some nice photos of the area.

That brown spot in the field is a house. Pretty sweet real estate.

Night out - this is one of our favorite watering holes, Trece Bruhos (13 Owls). You can usually be assured of two things at this place, some cheesy American music and other gringos. Downstairs is a Peruvian club. These two bars make for a perfect combination - a taste of home upstairs, but downstairs you can emerse yourself with Peruvians, salsa dancing, and getting hit on by "gringo hunters" who think I have money...and I keep up the facade until the morning...he-he.

My homeboy Frank and I - just two heterosexual guys hanging out in a bathtub. What?

Laguna 69: check out that blue water. This lake is surrounded by beautiful snow capped mountains, which you can't see because it's a little cloudy.

Don't know what the elevation is, but I'm guessing it's around 4,300 meters (a little higher than 13,000 feet) . You start out around 2,800 meters, drive for about 1 hour and a half, winding up the mountain, then hike for another 2 and a half hours through a valley that was a glacier thousands of years ago.

That's my buddy, Ryan, the volunteer who lives closest to me from a different group. We tried fishing for about 30 minutes, but then we figured the elevation is probably too high for fish. The fish were probably in there laughing at us...

Look at these exhibitionists! Right out in the middle of town. Have they no shame?

The site of animals procreating in the streets is all too common. Witnessing these acts of love are still funny to me though.

A few 'firsts-of-many', and some pics

I don’t like updating the blog this quickly, simply because I wouldn’t want to bore you, but I had a few ‘firsts of many’ over a very short time span and I would like to share, since I think you would find them interesting.

Yesterday was the day of a huge project for Peru, their census. No public transportation, few stores open, not much to do. Hoping it was open, I began walking to the local restaurant that has a ‘menu’ (a 3 sol/1 dollar lunch, always soup and a plate of something after, the soups are amazing), it was around 1pm. As I stepped out my door, I noticed Senora Carmen, one of my neighbors struggling to pull a motorcycle from her house, so I asked if she needed help, which was happy to receive. On the other side of the motorcycle is her husband, very drunk. After moving the motorcycle, I tried to escape, but her husband starting talking to me and I was doomed to spend the afternoon drinking for a couple reasons.

Three interesting things occurred during the Sunday afternoon:

First, some background information: A Padrino means Godfather, and it’s a big deal here in Peru. There is a ceremony and a big fiesta afterwards. The family usually cooks a bunch of cuye (guinea pig) and there is a lot of booze. In fact, anytime there is any sort of religious event, birthday, anniversary, etc, that’s an excuse to drink. For example, I have no idea why a 5 year old’s birthday party needs to last until 4 in the morning, but it does. Don’t argue, just accept, right?

After spending about an hour drinking with this guy, he asks me to be the Padrino of his 11 year old son. I just met this guy, although I’ve spoken to his son and wife a few times over the past month.

Then we go inside to talk with everyone and he announces that I am going to be the Padrino, of Richard, my soon-to-be godson. That’s a reason to drink more! The old grandmother starts talking to me and all the other ladies in the room gather around to talk also and they all agree that I have pretty eyes. The grandmother then tells me that I should leave a child with her granddaughter so that child could have pretty eyes also! Her granddaughter, involved in the conversation, immediately turns red (I probably did also). She doesn't say I should dance, or date, or marry (which are all normal requests now)...but to leave my seed. Awkward? Yes.

About an hour after being told to 'leave my seed', someone else asks me to be the Padrino of her child, who is about a year old. I don’t know how to say no, so I said, sure. More drinking!

Below is an example of how meetings go down here. You probably already know what is coming, so I’ll keep this short. But first, a few pictures:

- A would-be beautiful river flows through my town. It's difficult to see there, but that's all trash. One of my goals to is to enlighten people about the beauty of garbage cans and landfills that are not the river.

- It's not a fiesta unless there is a bullfight! Yes, the guys dress in women's clothes, it adds to the entertainment. Especially in a 'machismo' culture.

Ouch!

Soon to be more ouch...

So the meeting: this last week, we had a meeting scheduled for Thursday at 3pm. Knowing I would be the only person, I showed up at 3pm. The next person showed up at 3:30…then the next at 3:50. By 4:30 pm, we had 8 people out of 18. No meeting that day.

The meeting was rescheduled for Saturday at 5. Once again, I show up at 5pm…solo. I walk out to the main street and run into someone who says that the president of the association is at the local watering hole. About 5:15 I see the vice president stumbling down the road – chat with him for a few minutes, turn down the offer to drink about 5 times and he tells me others are passed out because they’re a bunch of women and can’t drink like he can.

About 5:30 a few others show up with me on the street corner. One of the more outspoken guys (drunk also) says the president is refusing to come to the meeting. There is a fair coming up (good opportunity to make money), no one has worked in a month at the center and there is nothing to take to the fair in less than a month. This is when everyone looks at me and asks me what they should do.

Since I’ve been there for a little over a month and do not know enough to tell people what they should do, I attempted to thwart the decision making to others. That didn’t work. Now I see the president of the group up a couple blocks so I tell the group to hang on, I’ll go talk to him. He is drunk and chewing coca leaves and helping someone build an adobe house. A house for “hockey”, which is the inside joke referring to sex but anytime someone out of the loop asks what hockey is, we say it’s a sport over ice. Those who know find this very, very funny. He tells me that he’s the president and he didn’t call the meeting. He doesn’t even know anything about it – which is contrary to what others say. Nothing is happening there, so I politely turn down booze and coca leaves and go back to the other group. I tell them no meeting is going to happen and that I will speak to the president (don't know why they won't) and I will call a meeting, will go around to everyone's house to let them know when and where. Of course, I will emphasize punctuality and we are NOT on the 'hora peruana'...but who am I kidding, I'll bring a good book.

Thanks for reading!
Jake

First month in...the job

After a month living here, life has still to present any type of routine or normalcy that I’ve known in my past lives. That lack of normalcy produces some anxiety, part of it is probably because every time I interact, I am bound to be confused somehow, though my Spanish isn’t bad now. Usually, three people are talking to me at once, one in Spanish, one in Quechua, and one mixing the two languages. I try to give the best “I’m confused and can only listen to one person at a time” look, but that look must be in English because they keep on until eventually I just say yes to everyone and have now promised to marry someone’s daughter, baby-sit some sheep, and to go drink the local liquor whose closest relative is rubbing alcohol and flames aren’t allowed within 10 feet. When I’m one on one, the conversations are usually good and don’t end up with me saying yes to some odd request.

So the job is pretty interesting and the pictures scattered throughout this post are products. The first three months, you don’t really do much – and the first month of those three, a sloth is probably more productive. I have though, been learning quite a bit about the problems of my association, and in general, the problems of any association where there is no boss (probably why you don’t see this type of group in the States or Europe).

The primary group I’m working with are potters/ceramists. They seem to be very talented in their art and the town I’m living in is known for the ceramics. It seems that if you are born here, when you are 3 or 4 years old, instead of play-dough you get clay and are told to start making vases.

Throw everything you know about business, teamwork, ambition, efficiency, and many other factors of working life out the window. Take this example, another volunteer who lives close to me, his host-mother didn’t know the world was round. My friend used two bowls on top of each other to explain to her that the world is round (and not 6,000 years old like the bible says…I’ll tackle religion in another post soon). Take that example and extrapolate that type of education into business. From the records my association has kept over the past year, I’ve uncovered they have made about 20 sols per month per person – which is about $6 dollars a month. But then I haven’t factored in errors, miscalculations, or lies about profits/costs in those numbers.

The way an association is supposed to work is that you bring together the collective skills of the group. Two minds are better than one, 4 hands better than two, etc. The idea is that they can produce more, combine artistic ability, and overall create a pipeline of products sharing the process steps, creating a brand, then attracting and retaining customers. Then the group splits the profits evenly – and that’s where one of the problems arises – how do you know everyone is working evenly? Currently, that seems to be one of the biggest speedbumps and instead of solving this, most just shrug their shoulders and go do something else, like drink.

I am still observing and learning how things work here and the cultural differences about sensitive topics and how to approach it, like work and money and trust. For instance, confrontation here doesn’t work. You can’t just have a 10 minute conversation about something that needs to happen or change, you need to have tea first (if they can afford tea). I get looked at weirdly sometimes because I’m straight to the point and then I’m out.

Primarily, with exception of a few, most don’t think much about the before or after of making their products. That’s what I’m here for.

(The pictures are all products that my group makes. I'm currently working on putting together a catalog so I have a bunch.)

Life in the Andes in Ancash - Confessionals

Since this is a PG-rated blog, you’ll just have to use what you know about me to guess some of the other things that might have occurred during these experiences.

Living in a country is much, much different than being a tourist – as you would imagine. The experiences I value the most are those which I wouldn’t be able to have if I were simply a tourist.

For instance, in a small town near me there was a party a few weeks back – when I and two friends arrived, we were immediately greeted by the mayor of the town (who we knew) with homemade liquor, which they heat up, dump full of sugar, and serve from kettles. After passing around a cup of it, some older ladies grabbed our hands and we began dancing to a live band playing “huayno” – the native music of the area. Not long after we arrived, a line of younger ladies formed and the mayor pointed at them and asked who we wanted to dance with, as if they were there for only us. After going down the line, shaking hands and giving a kiss on the cheek, we were then grabbed by some older guys who wanted us to drink with them until it was time to dance again. Being white at these parties is instant celeb status and most everyone is excited to share their customs with you – as long as you’re excited to participate.

The night continued with much merriment and much drinking and dancing in the streets. At one point, the town links arms and then does a sorta-horiztonal-conga line snaking our way through the town’s streets while the band follows us. This entire time a feeling of utter remoteness hovers through your thoughts as you dance through the unpaved, rocky streets laced with adobe houses, glance above and see a nighttime sky reserved for poetry, and continually pass around the homemade liquor (using only one cup for each group – it’s the custom…and it’s gross, but whatever). (pic: The bands jackets were really similar to mine...so I joined them for awhile.)

The following day the party continues with a bullfight in a ring made of mud where the most entertaining aspect comes when the really, really drunk guy thinks he can take on a bull. Many times this just ends with a few bruises – sometimes not. Luckily, this time no one was hospitalized or killed. This guy got close though, other pic below.

A group that is quickly becoming popular is “Grupo 5”. Imagine a boy band in all its fabricated corniness, then imagine the stereotype of Latin music with a huge background band, someone yelling “Arriba” and then some other guy always yelling into the microphone as if using a bullhorn – and that’s this group. They do have a couple good singers and a couple of catchy tunes. Well, they came to play in a town near me…

The concert was said to start around 8pm…we arrived at 11 to a very long line to buy tickets and an even longer line to get into the concert. Since we’re all white…the cops keeping order (by order I mean harassing all the girls) took us to the front of both lines. Once in the arena at 11pm, we notice they are still setting up the stage…around midnight the concert began. We used the hour to become even more familiar with the beverages of Peru – even though we spent the past 5 hours copiously sampling.
Around 2 am, us gringos got a shout out by the band – and we were the only white people at the concert. Anytime you needed to navigate your way to the bathroom it was nothing but stares and invitations to drink (the bathrooms by the way was just a cardboard wall with ample space behind it, same for the male and female ‘bathrooms’…that’s right, no toilets, just space for squatting).

- (another pic of the bullfight)

Around 3am all the other gringos have left except me…but that’s okay because I made some new Peruvian friends…in fact, I found a lovely lady to dance with. After about an hour of dancing…around 4:00am, I was ready to go. I asked her if she wanted to leave and she replied yes – but…and this is a huge BUT…she needed to get her baby. That’s right…she brought a baby to the concert.

This baby was a year old, beautiful little girl who had spent the last 4 hours having her eardrums blown out because her mom wanted to go to a concert. In fact, looking around the concert, the practice of bringing your baby to a concert seemed to be popular…or at least not a big deal. So what did I do? I carried her baby home for her, lectured her the entire way about why she shouldn’t be bringing a baby to a concert, empathized with her story about the father not wanting to help out, and wished her luck.

After that I walked around lost for 30 minutes, didn’t have a single bit of money on me because I spent it all at the concert, ran from some dogs, ripped my jeans as I climbed over the fence to my hostel, argued with the hostel owner at 4:30am about why she was going to pay for my jeans, barely made it to my room and passed out to laugh about the experience the next day and subsequent days after.

I didn't bring my camera to the concert, otherwise I probably would have lost it. So, here's a pic from mustache day with my fellow volunteer, Drew.

Thanks for reading.

- Jake