Chalaco

19/12/2008

I made it to Chalaco. In fact, I got here about three weeks ago and have been quickly settling into my new life in the sierra of Piura. No updates in a while because I got my laptop, camera, and most of my other shiny objects stolen on the way up here from Lima about a month ago (all conveniently packed together, along with my passport, in a single backpack...total rookie move on my part). Fortunately most of it was insured, so I may even come out on top. We'll see.

So that sucked, but it hasn't affected me as much as I would have thought. That probably has a lot to do with my having a pretty ideal set-up here: family's great, the place is beautiful, and there's definitely no shortage of work opportunities. By Peace Corps standards, I'm living it up. I've been hiking out in the campo several times a week to Chalaco's outlying caserios or small rural communities, where I've begun talking with teachers, health workers, and other community leaders about the issues they're facing and how my water/sanitation program might be able to help. The other day my buddy Gerson (a dental student who’s interning in Chalaco for a few months) and I went for what turned out to be a full-day hike to the tallest peak around, at about 3,300 meters. It was unreal – we left at dawn and after several hours of bushwacking and asking for directions/suggestions from every campesino we came across, we got to the cima, sandwiched between the fog far below us and the clouds just above. The twelve-hour day was pretty aggressive, but definitely worth it, or vale la pena as they say around here. I've done some inspections on the latrines built by Casey, the volunteer before me, and I've all-but taken over the English night-classes taught by my host mother (who, despite being a very well-educated and hard-working woman, but doesn't really speak English). I've had various meetings with community leaders in Chalaco itself, and after Christmas I'm planning to start English classes of my own (summer vacation is just starting here, weird).

Speaking of Christmas, it feels nothing like Christmas here. Actually that's not entirely true, but the replacement of snow and Christmas cookies with impenetrable fog and panneton (like fruitcake, except that I actually really like it) creates a very surreal feeling. The Polar Express dubbed in Spanish and Christmas carols with the same tune but totally different lyrics add to the weirdness for me. But at the end of the day families come together and celebrate together, and fundamentally it's not all that different from the holiday I’m used to at home. It’s a busy time of year with graduations and clausuras (end-of-the-year school parties), and New Years sounds like it’s going to be a community-wide rager, so looking forward to that.

Otherwise, I've been playing a lot of guitar, reading, running, and hanging out with the health center workers in Chalaco. Also, slowly piecing together my room (which now consists of a bed, a hammock, a little table, and a rope-nail-hanger system I rigged up for my clothes). I also snagged a sweet, gigantic map of the whole district from the municipal center in town, and am on the hunt for other items to “decorate” with. I was thinking about trying to paint my walls, which are pretty nasty, but the adobe/cement/plaster/old paint combo can be a little tricky to work with, so now I’m thinking I’ll just try to cover up as much as possible. One of the carpenters in town is making me a desk and chair (specially customized for the tallest-ever Chalaco resident), and next time I head down to Piura I’m going to bring back some kind of a shelving system, a whiteboard, and whatever else I can get them to strap to the top of the bus.

Cultural differences aside, it’s also weird to be living with a family again after four-plus years of relative independence. But I totally lucked out with my family (or, rather, with Casey picking them for me), because they’re super laid-back and I already feel pretty comfortable talking with them about pretty much anything (including, for example, when I’m just not really feeling the pig-skin-with-little-black-hairs-sticking-out-of-it soup my mom makes for lunch). It’s been really easy to laugh that kind of stuff off, which is way more than I can say for a lot of other volunteers (some of whom can’t even really communicate with their families yet because they speak only Quechua, for example).

So, with three weeks down, and about a hundred more to go, life’s pretty damn good. More to come.