Chalaco

16/11/2008

I returned today from a visit to my home for the next two years. And it rules. The town is called Chalaco (province: Morropon), and it’s in the department of Piura, which makes up most of the little northwest corner of the country that sort-of juts up into Ecuador. The place is absolutely gorgeous (new pics are up: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2044496&l=1e02e&id=8701459). I’m several hours into the countryside from the capital of Piura city; the bus trip is all uphill, and mostly on a single dirt road, with mountain on one side and cliff on the other. Chalaco, the district capital, is an agricultural community well into the sierra; half the time I was there the town was shrouded in some of the thickest fog I’ve ever seen. The town produces and is home to all kinds of crops and livestock: sugarcane, corn, grains, mangos and oranges and other fruits…plus pigs, horses, cattle, mules, donkeys, goats, chickens, tons of dogs, and more. The climate is turning colder, as the winter is beginning in the sierra regions of the country (opposite of the coast), but still hot during most of the day. I got pretty sunburned my second day there when I walked an hour or so to one of the surrounding caserios to check out the medical post there (run by a young guy named Wildor who I think I’m going to get along with really well). But by five that afternoon you could barely see through the fog, and that night I was comfortable zipped into my zero-degree bag. The rain is going to start soon, and it probably won’t stop until about May, which will be interesting. But for now the climate up there is exactly what I was hoping for.

My family is gonna be a ton of fun. The dad’s a cop who’s in his fifties but literally bounces around the house. Hilarious guy. We’ve already worked out an arrangement where he’ll speak broken English to me and I’ll speak back in less-than perfect Spanish. His wife is at least fifteen years younger, and just really, really welcoming and down to earth. She runs the house and operates a little shoe store in town. She also teaches adults at night (at least some is basic English, which is something I definitely want to get involved with). They both seem real laid back, and I think it’s going to make for a pretty ideal balance between a great family environment and plenty of autonomy for me. I have four little brothers, which is awesome. From youngest to oldest they’re three, seven, fourteen and fifteen. My host mother was so busy getting ready for my arrival that she apparently forgot that the seven year old’s birthday was the same day, only realizing this when I asked Cesar how old he was and he looked up at his mom and said “seis…siete?” (“six…er, seven?”). She almost burst into tears, but myself having brought a panneton – or Christmas fruitcake – as a gift (they’re big on those here, and it’s almost Christmas…right?), I semi-saved the day by interjecting with an overly-enthusiastic “Hey, and I brought a cake!! Perfect!!”

Each night that I was there, after dinner my two oldest brothers and I went to the covered fulbito court behind the comisaria (the police station where their dad works…about 200 meters up the road from the house), and played soccer or volleyball with a group of men and women from town. Definitely a routine I could get used to, and I think it’s going to be a great way to meet people and get settled into the community when I go back in a couple weeks. Athletic diplomacy: almost as good as drinking with people. Which is something I’m going to have to be careful about – from the sound of it Chalaco’s a pretty serious drinking town, especially on Sundays. I’ve heard that previous volunteers sometimes just avoided going out on the street on Sundays. We’ll see. The drink of choice is called cañaso, which is basically super cheap sugarcane moonshine. The stuff burns, hard. Some people claim it has hallucinogenic effects at very high levels; what everyone agrees on is that it’s dangerous when combined with machetes (which there’s no shortage of in town – a little ironic that the same tools used to harvest the crop are later employed under the effects of its fermented version). I got to meet the previous Chalaco volunteer for a few minutes in Piura city on my way up, as she was on her way down to Lima. It was great to talk to her, and to get some advice…like, stay away from parties with a lot of machetes. Noted.

My house, like most in the campo, is made of adobe brick, and it’s plenty big for all eight residents (including myself and Claudia, a seventeen year old who helps around the house during the day and goes to school at night). To be frank, it’s way nicer than what I envisioned a year ago when I thought of a Peace Corps house, and indeed it’s considerably nicer than a lot of the places volunteers are living in Peru. We get water for a couple hours in the morning and a couple more in the evening, which will take some getting used to, but is totally fine. We’ve got a toilet and shower (though the pressure and cold water combo might make bucket showers the more logical option), and the food is plain but more than edible. I see a lot of potatoes, rice, chicken, and – the only surprise on the list – canned tuna, in my future. Could be a lot worse. What I don’t quite understand is the lack of toilet seats in most houses with flush toilets. It would seem like a pretty worthwhile investment, but who knows. More to come on that.

Piura (the city) is a sweet town. It’s a major city of about 500,000, but the city center is super-tranquilo and just has a really cool vibe. And it’s hot, with a capital “H.” The unofficial Peace Corps Peru hotel, a couple blocks from the Plaza de Armas, is perfect: comfortable, clean, has cable and wireless internet, and what I think will very quickly become the highlight of the whole place, easily the best Peace Corps library in the country. You name a cool book, it’s probably there. And the food in town is awesome. Our first day there we got ceviche, and it was the best I’ve had yet by far – black mussels, unreal. Then that night we got some of the best burgers I’ve ever had; there’s one little burger joint that has a whole menu of different varieties. The Mexican burger, with guacamole and Doritos inside, was easily the crowd favorite. One volunteer who lives right in the city said he has probably had a thousand burgers there in his first year of service. I don’t doubt it.

The next day we met our socio-comunitarios, or official work counterparts, and hung out all day getting to know each other and putting together a preliminary schedule for our site visits and first weeks of work. My partner is this guy Miguel, and he’s on the ball. Lots of volunteers end up having to ditch their original counterparts because they just aren’t with it, but I’d be shocked if I have to change anything. He’s THE water guy in the district, works out of the health center in Chalaco, knows everybody, and wants to work. I’m volunteer number six in the community, and there have been some water and sanitation-related projects before, like the latrine project that Casey (number 5) started this year. But I can tell Miguel is psyched about having someone come to town to work on water specifically. It looks like I’m going to be doing a lot of walking (or biking, or maybe horseback riding) to and from the 45-plus surrounding towns, which have a variety of issues, including namely, lack of clean drinking water. I’m also hoping to get some secondary projects going in Chalaco, including a solid waste initiative, a basketball program, and probably English classes. But that’s a little ways off.

There are two bus lines that run through Chalaco, and they both leave town at about the same time every day: noon and two AM. Which means that if you have to be in Piura any time before about six in the evening, as I did, you’re taking the madrugada (roughly, the “super friggin’ early” bus). So it’s about four in the morning, and I’m trying to sleep in a cramped seat, but mostly focused on breathing through my mouth so as to not smell the baby throwing up behind me, thus potentially inducing a similar reaction on my part. We stop in the darkness to pick up a few people in a little town. This kid gets on, and even in my dazed state I realize he’s pretty American-looking. He winds up sitting next to me (why wouldn’t the two tallest people on a packed bus made for people who max out at about 5’8’’ sit next to each other?) and I point out his apparent non-Peruvianness. He turns out to be another volunteer, as I suspected. What I didn’t suspect? That he’s from Cleveland, graduated from Ohio State this year, and worked at Huffman’s Market in Upper Arlington while in school. For non-UA folks, that’s about 3 and a-half minutes from my family’s house. I mean, that’s just ridiculous. Small world.