Thursday, October 30, 2008

Spiders in Compost / Surprise, the Host-Sister is Back!

Yesterday, while making compost with the female park guards, I ended up in a 1 m³ hole in the ground with a tarantula the size of my fist and, miraculously, I didn’t freak out. I calmly scooped it up with my shovel and removed it from the hole, at which point the women quickly smashed it. Given my previous sentiments towards the entire arachnid family, barring daddy long-legs, I was pretty impressed with myself. At one point in my life, anything with eight legs over the size of a dime was too much for me to handle with any kind of reasonable behavior. However, after being lectured by the women about how poisonous they are, and about how I was lucky it hadn’t attached itself to my leg, I promptly removed myself from the hole.

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Speaking of compost, I’ve been making a lot of it lately. As the price of urea, a nitrogen fertilizer, has skyrocketed in the past year due to rising petroleum prices, people are starting to take an interest in organic alternatives. In the last month I’ve given several compost talks. Susan and I even got together to give a joint lesson in Pacora. We posted signs all over town and in our communities. In the end, there were over 20 people there, most of them male farmers from the district. I was surprised that so many interested people showed up. I’m sure they were surprised to find that the event was being hosted by two young girls from the U.S. Some of them had ridiculously specific questions like, “Exactly how many kilos of compost should I apply to one hectare if I am going to plant yellow corn?” In general, I was really impressed with how interactive the participants were and I think they might actually apply what they learned. In the upcoming weeks we are going to teach them how to make biol, a liquid fertilizer, and humus.

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The presupesto participativo is finally really over. Knock on wood. I don’t actually believe it. They say that next year I will have S/.5000 to construct improved cooking stoves in Huaca Rivera. That’s half of what they allotted me the first time, but just about perfect for the number of people that are signed up, exactly 25. I had a meeting with the participants to let them know that the project was approved and that they should begin making the necessary adobe. One woman complained about not wanting to make the adobe and I was relieved when the rest of the people didn’t take her side.

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On Saturday morning, I heard a familiar voice coming from the next room, my old host-sister from Lima. Apparently, she’s back, for good. No one told me she was coming back. It really threw me for a loop because I knew my boss was coming on Monday to talk with my host-mother about me changing houses. Well, he did come, but by the time he got here I was even more thoroughly confused about whether or not I should move. For now I’ve decided to stay in my current house for a couple of weeks to see how it goes with my host-sister back. But I don’t know if, in the long run, I will be happy with that decision.

Friday, October 24, 2008

La fiesta de San Francisco

The parents have now come and gone. Despite the fact that I did not go out of my way to make them comfortable, they handled every situation with grace and thoughtfulness for the culture. They never once complained. Well, my Dad did look pretty irritated when he, the largest of all the roughly 23 people crammed into a combi the size of an Astro van, was forced to sit, not on a seat like the rest of us, but on a TINY stool less than a foot wide in all directions. They braved the latrine, the chicha, the public transportation system, and, most impressively, my site during its one-and-only annual festival.

As soon as we arrived in my site on Saturday morning—day one of my community’s celebration of San Francisco, the patron saint—I knew my parents would be in for an unusual experience of my site. While it was nothing close to the reality of everyday life, I do feel like it provided them with an extreme, condensed version of my experience in Perú, minus the tranquility which admittedly dominates most of the time. The festival was entertaining, hilarious and absurd, enjoyable, full of generosity and drunken people, unreasonably loud, and involved plenty of Catholic ritual and beer.

I unnecessarily explained to my parents that, indeed, it was not normal to have a band repeatedly march by my house. We ended up following the same band to the church where we attended the mass. My mom and I were asked to walk a banner up the aisle in front of the packed congregation. Thankfully the priest only asked my mom one question, “¿Cuál es tu nombre?” and it couldn’t have been clearer. Following the mass we were invited to stay and eat with the donors, volunteers, and organizers of the event. I ended up sitting separately from my parents, which created a bit of a difficult situation, because, regardless of how many times I told them, people just didn’t seem to understand that they didn’t understand Spanish.

In the afternoon, we watched a dance competition and a soccer match, both of which ended in fights. The dance competition ended with a discontent crowd and a pissed-off judge who decided to speak her mind in a not-so-friendly way. The soccer game literally ended in a brawl.

By the evening we were all fairly drowsy so we settled down in front of my house with the rest of my family to watch the passing activity. My host-mom mentioned something about watching the image of the saint pass by later in a procession so I told her we would like to see it also. Well, I should have known that watching the saint pass by would turn into participating in the procession along with everyone else from my town. The total distance we covered was approximately the size of four city blocks but, as we walked it at a pace slower than what I previously thought possible, it took more than two hours to complete.

Day two consisted of more of the same. We awoke to fireworks blasting and the blaring marching band. In the morning we did manage to escape for a lengthy walk in the dry forest reserve bordering my community. We walked until we reached the pyramids from the pre-Incan Sicán culture which are currently under excavation. Even though it was a Sunday we got a tour from the guard. As expected he knew Rob, the volunteer I replaced.

In the afternoon we got to spend time with one of my closer friends from site and her family. “El Chino,” another favorite and my friend’s uncle, was passed out in the corner when we arrived. Part way through our visit he awoke; his awakening was classic. To start with he had been passed out with his head down and covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat. As he came to he slowly and painfully opened each eye, one at a time and with much squinting and great effort. As he turned his head in my direction he noticed my mother first. By the time he saw me he was fully alert and in the process of whipping off his hat and barreling over to greet us. Fully alert is probably an inaccurate description of his state since he conveyed his entire greeting to my mother with over-zealous hand movements. The greeting consisted of pounding his chest with both hands and making some kind of Italianesque kissing motion. My poor dad was sitting by him and had to deal with the hand movements for a good hour. The guy was oblivious to the fact that my Dad would never understand his Spanish. The funny thing was that my dad kept turning to me to translate and every time the guy had said the same thing, that I am well loved here. At one point the guy turned to talk to me and just pointed to my dad and then thrust his hand above his head indicating that my dad was very tall. My mom was seated by “La Gorda” who kept calling my dad Gordo instead of Gordon. No one could figure out my dad’s name.

Probably my favorite incident from the entire 48 hours occurred as we arrived back at my house. My host-mom’s over-sixty brother was there with a friend and an empty crate of beer which they had polished off in our absence. The friend, a talker, started into a rambling and haphazard conversation with me and my parents. At one point he asked their ages which for some reason piqued his interest. This led straight into the question for my father which was “Do you still blow?” I, befuddled and translating directly, turned to my parents and said with a really perplexed look on my face, “He just said, “Do you still blow???” Then, he unfortunately elaborated, accompanying his question, “Yeah, does he still blow?” with painfully obvious jerking motions. The other one joined in, completely interested in the response, “Does he still make love to your mother?” Why I translated that statement is probably the better question. Neither one of the men seemed to think that, just maybe, this was an inappropriate topic.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Los Padres

For the last week I've been with my actual parents from the U.S. They arrived in Lima on the 29th and since then I've been showing them the more realisitic side of life in Peru. We started off in Miraflores, the not-so-realistic side of Peru. An affluent, costal neighborhood of Lima, Miraflores is packed with tourists, hotels, and expensive restaurants. I almost went into shock when I emerged from the taxi in Miraflores to see two separate people walking healthy dogs on leashes!

From Lima we continued up the coast to Trujillo, where we stayed in the coastal town of Huanchaco and visited Chan Chan and Huaca de la Luna (pre-Incan ruins). My parents were highly impressed by the $4 breakfast we purchased which included organic coffee and cream, a fruit salad with natural yogurt and honey, fresh juice, a pancake, and an ocean view. Of course a $4 breakfast is ridiculously expensive when you are thinking in soles, the local currency, but it was delicious.

The last couple of days we spent in my site, which happened to conincide with my community´s annual festival. Not surprisingly, I have much more to say about that but it deserves a separate entry.

Currently we are killing time in Chiclayo, waiting for more information on an indigenous strike which, as of last night, was blocking the road to Chachapoyas, our next destination. Hopefully the strike lifts and we can continue on our way. If not, it looks as if we will have to rethink our plans.