Calmer Waters

El Presupuesto Participativo

As of late my experience in site has begun to shift towards the less dramatic. My first community meeting was successfully completed three weeks ago, with roughly 40% of the households represented. I discussed the benefits of improved cooking stoves to get an idea if there was interest in my community. For the most part they feigned interest in the health and environmental benefits, but were actually intrigued by the possibility of ceilings and pots and pans free of the blackening effects of the smoke produced by their traditional open flame stoves. Due to the positive reaction of the community towards the stoves I’m currently in the process of organizing a project and looking for funds. Unfortunately, this could have been significantly less painful than I’ve made it but, apparently unsettled by the lack of drama in my site, I decided to work with the local municipality.

In other words, I decided to acquire the necessary funds for the project by means of the Presupuesto participativo, the Peruvian government’s decentralized approach to the annual allocation of funds within each district. Basically, local organizations are allowed to present projects and to vote on which projects will theoretically receive funding from the municipality within the upcoming year. As the law states, each municipality is responsible for the organization and the realization of the process. Well, apparently I was jumping to ridiculous conclusions when I assumed that my municipality would therefore know how the process works and that the presupuesto would be a convenient and simple way to fund the stove project. I actually probably couldn’t have selected a more absurd way to most likely not get funds.

First of all, my local municipality is staffed by roughly 30 incompetent people, including the mayor himself. I visited at least four times asking for what specifically I needed to do to sign up as a participant, receiving at least four entirely different answers, none of them correct. Fortunately I ran into some random well-informed citizen who actually knew how the process should be run and who gave me a booklet from the State which detailed the steps of the process. Returning to the municipality, I turned in a request to participate in the Presupuesto and in passing mentioned that I had read about the rules and regulations of the process in a booklet produced by the State, a booklet I assumed they had. Rather than even pretending like they knew what was going on, they honest to God asked me for a copy of the booklet. Within a week the presupuesto had commenced, despite the fact that I was previously told it wouldn’t start until August.

Somehow, they managed to locate the one capable person within the municipality and put him in charge of the process. Nonetheless, I have found my hope for funds dwindling with each meeting. In the first meeting, my friend Susan and I arrived before the people running the meeting. The second meeting required more will power than I possess to not laugh. It started off when the acting mayor, who has a Hitler mustache, walked in wearing what I swear was a Nano-pet. Furthermore, the presentation was accompanied by the over zealous use of a laser pointer which, had I not been able to see the speaker, I would have thought was in the hands of someone suffering from a seizure. At the calmest part of the entire meeting, Susan randomly lost control of all of her papers and threw them into the air. Her host-Dad slept through the entire meeting which was pointed out more than once by the speaker. Probably the most ridiculous part of the meeting was when the speaker asked for general examples of projects that meet the specifications of the districts ten-year plan. What followed was a deluge of arguments in defense of each participant’s project. My favorite was the señor who, with complete disregard to the question at hand gave a detailed and heated explanation of why his community needs an improved road. To make it even more entertaining, the guy had a bulky sidekick who added no useful commentary but rather added frequent grunts in support of his friend’s diatribe. Attempts by the speaker to return to the subject at hand failed until the guy got on a random tangent in which he decided that what the district really needs is a museum. When Susan and I showed up to the third meeting, we arrived to find that the actual mayor, who is currently suspended for impregnating a 17 year old girl, had made an attempt to enter the municipality to resume his duties. Thus, the process was suspended until further notice.

Friends in site

Recently, my host-mom gave me an unprovoked lecture about the shady characters I have chosen as friends. In my defense, they also happen to make up the local environmental group. Hence, I feel somewhat obligated to participate in their weekly meetings given that, after all, I am an environmental volunteer. That said she does have a point. It so happens that they don’t boast the strongest moral record. One of them, the adulteress, I discussed in an earlier entry. The other one is estranged from her mother, ruined her daughter’s first marriage and gravely insulted my host-mom. They were both referred to as unas tremendas, or pieces-of-work, by my host-mother. My personal favorite is the president of the group, who perhaps I’ve discussed before because he also happens to be my counterpart. God only knows how he got through Peace Corps security checks because, as my mom put it, he is a terrorist. A former member of the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path)* and just released from prison two years ago, my counterpart is still on parole. This I believe as he boasts the nicknames, condenado (condemned) and preso (prisoner). However, my mom is convinced that my counterpart murdered while I prefer to think that he meddled in the more idealistic side of the ordeal.

*The Sendero Luminoso was a Maoist movement that began in 1980 and continued into the 1990s. While it was founded on the basis of idealistic goals, it led to the death and disappearance of 40,000 to 60,000 innocent people.

Friends from home

This past weekend I received my first visit from people from home, three friends from college—Leslie Morrison, Lauren McCurdy, and Kristin Kopf. Before greeting them at the bus station I actually got a little nervous, wondering what it would be like to see people from home after not seeing anyone for over nine months. As soon as I saw them I realized that worrying was futile because it felt like I’d just seen them a week ago.

They could only stay for around two days, but the visit was still very enjoyable, if not entertaining. I was sad to see them go. They handled the trip to my site, including the moto-taxi with no problem and in my site they were excellent guests. I’m sure they were thrilled by the only knowledge I could really provide them about my site, which besides random stories about people, consisted of plant names, both of local species and of crops. I didn’t realize until I’d pretty much pointed out every plant that they probably didn’t think it was that interesting.

The people of Huaca Rivera were intrigued by seeing three new gringas and were extra exuberant with their greetings. More than one person gave them guava, a sweet white cotton-like fruit that grows in a long green pod and the only fruit still in season. [note: It is not the same as the fruit known as guava in English. In Spanish, guava is called guayaba.] I was relieved that the people in my town were not uncomfortable with them.

However, all of my friends were unexpectedly uncomfortable with my latrine, a smallish hole in the ground housed in a tin shack. I’ve never had issues but as soon as Kristin entered and shrieks of laughter followed I realized that I’m apparently gifted. Basically, it requires the ability to squat without moving around, a talent lacking in my friends. Nonetheless only Kristin couldn’t make it into the hole. Despite Leslie’s ridiculous inability to bend her knees beyond a 10 degree angle, she somehow managed to make it into the hole.

On the second day in my site, we took a walk to visit El Santuario Histórico Bosque de Pomac, the dry forest reserve bordering my site. It was really nice and they were more impressed than I expected by the pyramid we visited, which basically looks like a mud hill. The vista from the top does provide a pretty overview of the park. However, the highlight of the walk occurred in route when a moto-taxi overloaded with around 8 male university students from Lambayeque who I had never seen stopped a few feet in front of us. In true police fashion, they rapidly filed out of the moto. I noticed one of them had a camera and so I immediately knew that they wanted a picture either of us or with us. I was hesitant but Kristin apparently thought I knew them and so enthusiastically agreed. Thus, a picture of the four of us surrounded by 8 random guys was taken. The picture was taken before any greetings were exchanged and within about a minute of taking the picture they were back in the moto and heading down the road. Leslie pointed out that the four of us looked like hell, un-bathed and sporting t-shirts, and that if any of them proudly showed that picture to another gringo, the gringo would be highly unimpressed. Nonetheless, it will surely be a highly prized possession.