a real casual "business" trip

Hi all- I’ve spent the last couple weeks out of site, travelling up and down the north coast of Peru for a few meetings and some vacation time on the beach. I’ve added a couple new photo albums, so check those out. Below are a couple recent entries from the road. Hope everyone’s doin’ well.
-Matt

7/3/2009

It’s 10:30PM and I just settled into the back of a buscama or overnight sleeper bus, on my way from Trujillo down the coast to Lima for the Peace Corps Volunteer Action Committee (VAC) meeting on Monday. I said goodbye to my good friend Kara in the terminal, who’s on her way up to Ecuador to travel for a while. For the past few days I’d been staying in the apartment she shared with about ten others, all volunteers teaching English for various lengths of time in Trujillo. They were a cool bunch – lots of Brits – and I had a blast hanging out with them in their city for a couple days.

The bus is ridiculously comfortable (one of many perks of travelling on the Peace Corps’ dime), but all day I’ve been dealing with the less-comfortable combination of explosive diarreah and by-far the worst sunburn of my life to date. The stomach issues happen only when I come down to the cities from Chalaco and eat things like peanut butter, pizza, cheeseburgers, and ice cream for days on end. I guess after several months of an almost exclusively grains-and-starches diet, your stomach loses tolerance for things you once took for granted. Bummer. But it doesn’t stop me from eating all that stuff anyway. As for the sunburn, that happened yesterday at the beach in Huanchaco (only twenty minutes or so from the center of Trujillo.) Gorgeous beach and really cool, laid-back surfing town – in fact my new favorite place in Peru. Not as cool? I found out (too late) that Peru apparently sits directly below the world’s largest ozone hole outside of Antarctica. I went for a half hour run down the beach at about 11AM, and the rest is history. Usually when I get burnt I’m pissed as hell at myself, knowing I could have taken very simple steps to prevent my own pain. In this case I don’t feel all that responsible; I was out there for thirty friggin’ minutes. So the fact that someone else is responsible takes a little bit of the edge off, but there’s a certain amount of physical pain associated with a full-upper-body scorch that no amount of positive thinking is going to help. So I’m trying not to move too much in my large, reclining leather seat.

Trujillo’s a fantastic town. Like most Peruvian coastal cities, it was founded by the Spanish in the 16th century and retains much of its colonial architecture and overall feel. Piura’s similar, but you have to really seek out the old, colonial homes and buildings. In Trujillo they line the streets. There seem to be about 4 restaurants and cafes and bars per capita, and I’d imagine it’s a pretty fun spot for Kara and her friends to hang out. I just happened to be visiting during the city’s annual anniversary celebration, and my first night in town there was a huge concert in the Plaza de Armas. The square was almost totally full – had to have been around 5,000 people. After a few hours at the bar, we headed over around midnight and caught the end of the second of three bands – a cumbia group, with the familiar line-up of guitars, drums, and trumpets backing up five singers harmonizing and coordinating their simple dance moves in a line across the stage. The final band was a mariachi group, who wasn’t nearly as entertaining, but it’s always cool for me to see a whole bunch of guitaristas playing together.

The next day Kara and I took off to see some ruins, for which this area is famous. We paid twenty soles for a full-day tour of sites called Huaca de la luna, Templo del Arcoiris, and the ancient city of Chan-Chan. The first was spectacular: a pyramid-shaped temple of five stories decorated inside and out with ancient paintings and carvings, each adobe story built on top of the last by the Moche people, who lived here throughout most of the first millennium AD. The Moche god is depicted frequently in repeating, high relief designs, with various expressions meaning different things. This was one of the most interesting parts of the ruins: the Moche, apparently, were one of the few ancient peoples ever to differentiate so specifically among facial expressions in the carvings they left. We also learned about the evidence pointing toward the human sacrifices which probably took place at this religious temple, the victims being losers of Gladiator-style battles and serving as offerings to the god during times of extreme drought or rain (a phenomenon known today as “El Niño,” or for those of you who don’t speak Spanish, “The Niño.”) Also wrapping around the adobe walls are the repeating images of snakes, fish, spiders, lizards, and other sacred animals. The sheer scale of the ruins, and the vividness of the amazingly well-preserved painted wall carvings, really blows you away. Huaca de la luna (meaning the Temple of the Moon, an arbitrary name bestowed by archaeologists because the still don’t know the original, Moche title) was easily the highlight of the sites we saw that day.


After lunch we headed with our tour group out to the Rainbow Temple, built somewhat later by the next major civilization to settle here, the Chimú. We found out that actually, the Chimú were just the next several generations of Moche, but after a drought-induced relocation they reorganized and became known by a new name. The Chimú would be conquered by the Inca a few hundred years later, but they left some amazing creations behind. The temple was less impressive than what we had seen in the morning, but very cool nonetheless. Lots of fertility symbols, which is always interesting stuff. The day ended with a tour of Chan-Chan, apparently the largest mud-brick (alias “adobe”) city in the Western Hemisphere. This place is just amazing. Though it follows the same designs of repeating fish, birds, and other symbols, and adds a few new ones like the rhombus of the fishing net which is found in all parts of the ruins, it doesn’t have the intricate painted carvings of the Moche Moon Temple. But what it comparatively lacks in decoration, Chan-Chan makes up for in sheer size and as a feat of ancient engineering. I couldn’t tell you how many square acres or miles it covers, but 30,000 people lived here at one point, and the place is like a giant labyrinth whose once-fifteen-meter-high trapezoidal walls have been eroded to about ten today (still very, very tall.) The city is made up over a dozen different Chimú palaces, each like its own little city. At the center of the palace we explored was a massive courtyard, and farther back lay a freshwater reservoir for the palace’s inhabitants. Despite the fact that the city lies only a few km. from the ocean (the sound of the waves ripping through the city in the high afternoon winds creates a very cool effect), its people extracted groundwater within their city walls in order to make themselves as fully self-sufficient as possible, in case of an attack (which eventually did come, when the Incas swept north in the 15th century AD.) The day ended with a stop out at Huanchaco, which I would get to know better the next day, and we went home to teach the Brits how to play beer pong.

Like I said, Huanchaco is my new favorite place I’ve been. It’s just a really nice, seemingly endless beach with nice waves and tons of cool bars, restaurants, and hostels overlooking the surf. Surfers share the water with fishermen, who still shove off in their traditional reed boats or caballitos and spend their down-time on the beach repairing their nets in the shade. Lots of gringos, too, which was both weird and cool. After my fateful jog, I ate a lunch of peanut butter and blueberry jelly (another decision I’m still regretting), and that afternoon one of Kara’s buddies taught me how to surf. I’ve always wanted to surf but never had the chance – Huanchaco is apparently a great place to learn because of its small but pretty dependable breaks. I’m not gonna lie, I thought it would be easier, having snowboarded all my life. But I got up a couple times, if only for a few seconds, and we quit as the sun was going down. Kara and I got some damn good ceviche and called it a day. Today we went back to the beach, but my burn-stomachache combo kept me mostly on the beach and in the shade. I’ll give surfing another shot in a month or so when a bunch of us head down to Piura’s world-famous beach. Mancora, during the national holiday of Semana Santa. After the beach we went to go see Watchmen, which is a pretty absurd movie – containing one of the most unexpected, graphic sex scenes that I’ve ever witnessed in a mainstream film (plus it takes place in a hovering craft.) So that’s always a nice surprise. But a pretty weird movie overall, and way too long. Anyway after that I packed up my stuff, left a thank-you note and an offering of half a jar of crunchy peanut butter for Kara’s housemates, and that brings us up to now.

The attendant just brought me a dinner of a ham sandwich with mustard, a shredded chicken sandwich, a cookie, and a cup of neon yellow Inca Cola. I’m starving after a day of Saltines, so I’m gonna give some real food a shot. This would be a terrible place to have to “go,” but as a wise man named John P. Lundquist used to say, sometimes in life, you just gotta say “F--- it.” There’s an REM show playing on the in-cabin TV. They came to Lima a few months ago, but this looks like it might be on the mall in DC. The lead singer – you know that bald guy? – is taking himself way too seriously. I mean, OK band and all, but he’s doing way too much snarling for a song like “What’s the frequency, Kenneth?” Plus, he’s either wearing some kind of fluorescent facepaint, or the TV color is off, either of which makes his expression appear even dumber. All the lyrics are subtitled – in English. Which is odd.

17/3/2009

Ten days later, I’m sitting in a hostel room in Pacasmayo, another beach town about an hour north of Trujillo, playing around on the amazingly fast wireless internet and watching Big Daddy dubbed in Spanish. For the last couple days I’ve been doing all of the following: surfing, running, drinking cold beers, eating Chinese food and fresh fish and ice cream, and generally hanging out with all my buddies who I haven’t seen since we left Lima over three months ago. My standard attire has been board shorts, sandals, a throwback Trailblazers jersey, hot pink 80’s sunglasses, and the Euro-trash mullet I’ve been sporting since the Inaugural Peace Corps Mullet Competition we had two nights ago. For obvious reasons, the phrase of the week has become “Dude, Peace Corps is so hard!”

Believe it or not, we’re here for “work” reasons. The three days we’re spending here (or four...I and a few others showed up a day early to take advantage of the world-class surf) are for what’s called “Reconnect” – an opportunity for all the volunteers of the same training group to get back together after the first three months at site and reflect on everything they’ve seen and experienced, and to think about what the next couple years might hold. It’s been fun – and weird – to see so many familiar faces after so long. There were a few faces missing from the group, though; since parting ways in December our group has lost three members. One went home after a month or two, having realized that this life just wasn’t for him. Every group loses a few volunteers, so statistically speaking, with a training group of almost fifty, it was bound to happen. The circumstances of the other two cases are a little more complicated: Sarah (AKA “Sarita”), a rock star of an older woman who I know has seen this whole experience through an entirely different lens than the 20-somethings like me, had to leave for medical reasons a few weeks ago. She’s already missed by a lot of us, but it was the right decision for her. But I’m gonna miss Jason the most – just a really, really great dude from Alabama and NYC, hilarious and very talented, and got along with everyone. Unfortunately he has some family things going on at home in the States, and he really had no choice but to leave. I got to spend most of the last week with him, as he was in Lima filling out paperwork and such, and we had a blast. Actually, he gets credit for the new Peru 12 mantra I mentioned above. To Jason: best of luck man, we all miss your goofy ass.

The waves here are awesome; I’m still a beginner surfer, but I’m loving it. Even if you don’t catch a wave all day, it’s so cool just floating out there, a couple hundred yards offshore, looking around at waves stretching forever in either direction, and back at the largely empty and just-as-endless beach. This place, according to a couple surfers we met at the hostel, is largely unknown to foreigners (except, of course, for surfers.) Very rarely does it show up in a guide book or tourist brochure, and the general consensus among the few who know the place is that that’s a good thing. Pacasmayo’s a lot like Huanchaco down in Trujillo, except even more laid-back. Replacing Huanchaco’s vegetarian restaurants and zen-inspired hostels are a few authentic ceviche kitchens, more fishermen mending their nets on the beach, artisans selling their little miniature surfboards and necklaces, and a beautiful boardwalk lined with brightly-painted, yet crumbling oceanfront buildings from a time before.

There’s a marathon here in July, started by a Peace Corps volunteer last year, and I just officially signed up the other day. (Side note: I couldn’t believe this place was actually a Peace Corps site...if I lived there I’m not sure I would ever get anything done other than surfing and chilling real hard on the beach.) Anyway, I know very little about distance running, but I’ve been running on my own ever since the end of my formal athletic career a few years back, so I’m not too concerned about my work ethic or motivation. What I am worried about is all the damn mud up in Chalaco right now, and whether the road’s ever going to dry out. Right now I’m running laps around the soccer field a few times a week, but in terms of excitement that’s roughly equivalent to banging your head against a wall, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep it up. Plus, my knee is starting to bother me, which is a problem ‘cause it’s the same one I had arthroscopic surgery on a couple years ago. We’ll see what happens. In any case, the marathon course runs along the beach, over asphalt, dirt, and compacted sand. I’ve been out running a couple times here in the last few days, and it’s a totally surreal landscape – once you get out of town, it’s just barren, sandy terrain as far as you can see, with the ocean beside you stretching away toward the horizon. The wind and the waves, and your steps and your own breathing are the only sounds you hear. It’s like running on Mars.

I got here a couple days ago after a full work week in Lima. The VAC meeting was an interesting experience, and I’m glad I got to be part of it. I’d been describing it to non-volunteers as a sort-of Peace Corps student council, and that’s exactly what it was: a forum for volunteers to get together with the PC Peru staff and talk about issues we’re having and brainstorm ways to solve them. Everything from cell phones to host family issues to vacation policy came up in the four-hour meeting, and as secretary I got to spend the entire next day typing up the minutes. I think I can go ahead and scratch secretarial work off my list. While in Lima I helped out with various Wat/San programming tasks, notably getting our page on the new online Peace Corps Peru database up and running. I also got to stay at my friend Lane’s house, who is just a fantastic guy. An environmental consultant from Arizona, he was our “tech-trainer” for Wat/San during our initial months in Lima, and he and his wife live just down the road from the Peace Corps office in a nice townhouse. It was great to have a real home to stay in after so many nights at hostels, and I will definitely be looking Lane up again next time I come to town. I gained a new appreciation for certain parts of Lima, too. It’s often dismissed by volunteers and experienced travellers alike as just a big, sprawling, dirty city with little to offer other than some museums, churches, and other landmarks. But a few things surprised me: there’s a great malecon or boardwalk stretching for several miles along the cliffs leading down to the beach in a part of town called Miraflores (easily the city’s nicest, cleanest neighborhood.) While running out there one morning, I was surprised to see a handful of surfers bobbing in the early-morning waves just offshore, and the amazing number of attractive women running alongside me kept my mind occupied...maybe I’ve been in the campo too long. We also had some of the best food I’d eaten in a long time – one place was a tiny, unpretentious, and cheap Indian restaurant that took us half an hour to find in the cab, but was totally worth the effort.

While in Lima, I went back to visit my host family from Chacrasana for a night. On the drive from Lima, sweating in the back of a combi, I was struck more than ever by the extreme barrenness of the terrain on the outskirts of Lima. It’s totally unlike anything I’ve seen before – just desolate mounds of beige-colored sand interrupted by little one-road towns winding their way up the valleys. Upon my arrival, needless to say, the whole family was pretty excited to see me, and it was great catching up and sharing some pictures from my new life. I was pleased to learn that all are doing well (though the señora Nilza is having some back problems), that the girls are excited to be starting a new school year, and Rocio is keeping busy with a new job at a military uniform store in Callao, Lima’s port and the Navy headquarters. Raquel is still making burgers out in front of the house, though she gets less business these days without the gringos around, and the second story of the house is advancing slowly as her husband Reni invests a little more each month in the project. It looks like they’re going to receive a third volunteer from the next training group, which is great both for whoever winds up there and for the family itself. All told, though, the visit really made me appreciate my current set-up more than anything. With my family up in Chalaco I just have more space; I rarely feel pressured or awkward around them, because there’s just so much action all the time that even if they wanted to hover over me the way that the Chacrasana family often did, it would be impossible. Don’t get me wrong, the family in Chacrasana is awesome, and they all have nothing but the best intentions. I can’t imagine a better way to get settled into a new culture and language. My issue is purely a cultural incompatibility; what I call overbearing-ness, they call normal life at home. Regardless of culture though, through interactions with Peruvians and fellow volunteers alike, I’m finding more and more that I really just like having my own space and the freedom to do my own thing. And that people dwelling over me, or constantly consulting me, or scrutinizing my every little move is suffocating and makes me feel very claustrophobic. This shouldn’t be earth-shattering news to anyone who knows me, but my experience here has affirmed it more than ever before. Obviously I’m constantly in the public eye in Chalaco, but for some reason up there it’s different. I love my family from Chacrasana, and I plan on staying in touch with them forever. But seeing them confirmed my notion that I won the lottery with my family and the community in Chalaco.

I’ve now been out of site for about two weeks, and it feels weird. On one hand I feel guilty for leaving Chalaco for so long. But on the other hand, I know that I really didn’t have any other choice, with VAC and Reconnect and no realistic chance to return in-between. I guess I didn’t need to spend those four days in Trujillo, but I’m glad I did. What does make me feel a little bad is the knowledge that I’m going to be spending much of the next month on the road, as well. From here I’ll head back up the coast to Piura, spend a night or two there, and then it’s back to Chalaco. But nine or ten days later I’ll turn around and head right back down to Lima, where our Wat/San program has a three-day workshop called PDM (Project Design Management...I think) where we learn about the opportunities available to us as funding sources, and how we can go about accessing those funds for community projects. My friend and work partner Miguel is coming, along with his boss Jesús, who heads up the Health Commission in the district. Obviously a worthwhile and necessary trip, but I hope people up in town don’t start wondering where the hell I’ve gone. Especially because about ten days after PDM I’ll be heading down the mountain yet again for four days at Piura’s most famous beach and surfing destination, Mancora. April 9th and 10th are national holidays, and for us volunteers they’re considered “free” vacation days; that is, we don’t have to use up any of the days we accrue during the year. So you gotta aprovechar (“take advantage,” a very useful phrase here)...it would be stupid not to. I just called a hostel yesterday and they’re all full, but the owner knows Peace Corps and will let us camp there for cheap. Should be a great base to explore Mancora’s world-renowned beaches and waves during the day, and hit up its equally-legendary parties at night. Finally, directly following Semana Santa we have a three-day workshop on HIV/AIDS; PEPFAR (The US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) has given three departments in northern Peru about $20,000 for education and prevention programs (apparently we live in a region that is considered at a high risk level for an epidemic, given the culture of machismo, the large number of families that are separated for long periods of time for work reasons, and the lack of education and contraceptive use.) That should be cool, but I’m really wondering how much time I’m going to be able to devote to AIDS work, with everything I’ve already got in the works. But free money is too good to pass up, so I’ll be out of site on and off again until mid-April.

In the meantime, once I get back I’m eager to continue with my water system inspections and latrine planning in the caserios, adult English classes in Chalaco, and some other side projects I’m thinking about, like a trout farm, possible environmental programming with the schools, and the vegetable garden and worm composting pilot project I’m starting at home with the family. It’s still raining like a bastard, but hopefully we’re over the hump and things will start to clear up in a month or two. If not I might be reading a lot of books and watching a lot of Sopranos second season episodes. I guess I got on the bandwagon about five years late, but that’s a pretty damn good show, in my opinion.