Saturday, April 25, 2009

New Photos

To view pictures of my trip to Ica, follow this link:
http://picasaweb.google.es/karen.b.petersen.
Huacachina Sand Dunes, Ica

Huacachina, Ica

Islas Ballestas, Paracas

Monday, April 20, 2009

Happy Feet

Since 80% of the Peruvian population is catholic, Holy Week is one of the largest national holidays of the year. I ended up spending Holy Week in Ica, a coastal department south of Lima, with a few other volunteers. Amazingly, Ica is actually drier than my site but has a similar appearance. Algorrobo trees also dot the landscape; however, in Ica these trees are called huarango. Ica is known for its wineries and as the hub of the small Afro-peruvian population. It was also the epicenter of the 2007 earthquake which struck shortly before I arrived in Perú.

My vacation in Ica included stops in Chincha, Ica, Huacachina, Pisco, and Paracas. Chincha turned out to be a typical Peruvian coastal town, not very noteworthy and not a tourist destination. We attempted to visit an old hacienda there but after a S/.30 taxi ride we discovered it was still closed due to the earthquake.

In Ica we stayed at Huacachina, an odd but pretty oasis in the midst of sand dunes. It’s overrun by tourists but worth a visit nonetheless. Once a ritzy resort for wealthy Limeños, Huacachina is now popular for its dunebuggy rides and sandboarding. While this activity sounds innocent enough it’s really somewhat dangerous. I should have known better as soon as we boarded the dunebuggy with our driver, a Jean Claude Van Damme type who didn’t bother to acknowledge our existence, filled the gas tank while lighting a cigarette, nearly ran into someone before leaving the parking lot, and didn’t wear his seatbelt. Regardless, the dunebuggy portion of our trip turned out to be the safest part. The sandboarding, which is like snowboarding but on sand, was not. Proof in point, I nearly made it down the final hill standing up but terminated my run spiraling around and slamming my head into the ground, hurting my neck in the process. Jean Claude did not ask me how I was but rather commented that everyone breaks their clavicle that way. I’m still not sure how I would have broken my clavicle but who am I to say. Later that night I saw him drinking at our hostal. He mumbled some gibberish to me which must have meant, “How’s your neck?” and then hit me on the back of my neck. Literally, he hit me.

While in Ica we also visited a couple of wineries and an excellent chocolate factory (Helena’s.) Rather than opting for the hostal’s package tour we did this on our own which cost less than half as much. We spent the savings on chocolate.

The final stop of our trip was Pisco where we stayed in the room of a fellow volunteer, Aaron, who has the good fortune to step out his front door to a beautiful ocean view. Pisco was hit hard by the 2007 earthquake and, approaching two years later, the effects can still be seen. On the outskirts of the town the shantytowns are much larger than I expected. Adobe houses which were left standing are mixed with a smattering of temporary housing.

From Pisco we visited the Islas Ballestas on a boat tour. The islands are part of Paracas National Park, a coastal desert ecosystem preserved for the large amount of coastal wildlife it protects. Called the “Poor Man’s Galapagos” in Lonely Planet, the islands don’t really compare to the Galapagos but are home to an incredible number of birds including penguins. A secluded nesting beach overflowing with hundreds, maybe thousands, of sea lions and their cubs, reminded me of a scene typical of National Geographic.
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I wear a seatbelt so infrequently in Perú that I don’t think twice about riding in a vehicle without one. More than once I have had a seatbelt available to me which I didn’t even wear because encountering one here is such a rarity that I no longer bother to check. Moto-taxis clearly don’t have seatbelts but I’ve always just assumed that they were a safe form of transport. On the moto-taxi back to my site after vacation I was feeling particularly safe, especially in comparison to my recent dunebuggy ride. Then, rounding a curve near my community, the moto-taxi I was on collided with an oncoming moto-taxi propelling the driver of my moto-taxi through the air. The moto-taxi almost landed on top of me but, luckily, we were going slowly and I only bruised my arm. The driver of the other moto-taxi started yelling at the poor kid who went flying through the air before he was even standing. Seriously though, the accident was absurd. Both of them were driving on the wrong side of the road. My moto-taxi driver decided to move to the correct side while the other driver decided to do nothing. As we were approaching the other moto-taxi I recall thinking that surely one of them was going to stop or move out of the way. Instead they just ran right into each other. Just kept going straight ahead as if there were no other option. To top it off, they decided to settle the matter somewhere else and drove off without a word, leaving me and the other passenger, an old farmer, standing on the side of the road to wait for another moto-taxi.

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Happy Feet was on television last Sunday. My little brother could hardly contain his excitment. Halfway through the movie he turned to me and declared matter-of-factly that all those penguins weren’t actually real but rather they were humans dressed up in penguin costumes. He sounded so proud that he had figured out the trick that I felt bad informing him that it was actually a cartoon.

During the movie my host-mom also told me that for two years while she lived in Lima, she had a pet penguin which they had discovered one day in the Río Rimac, the major river which runs through the city. His name was Juan. Just to clarify, penguins are NOT natural inhabitants of Lima.

Issues

In the past month I have started at least five different blogs on random topics and I haven’t finished a single one. Rather than continue on this path of complete unproductiveness I realized that I could probably write one blog and convey the same thing. It’s surely for the better because I can’t imagine many readers would have survived five such blogs.

Education:
In Perú, the education system is abysmal. Really horrible. My 15 year old brother didn’t know what an island was. He couldn’t even locate Perú on the map. Believe it or not, he is actually intelligent; however, he has been subjected to one of the worst education systems in the Western hemisphere, second worst only to Haiti. Not only is the teaching method antiquated and devoid of creativity but the schools lack resources and teachers. Futhermore, of those teachers that are teaching, the rare few are outstanding. It is not unheard of for teachers to arrive at school drunk or just not arrive. It is also common for students to pay teachers to pass them.

Asistencialismo:
Asistencialismo is a word that doesn’t even exist in English, at least I can’t find it in my Spanish-English dictionary. Asistencialismo is a dependence on government handouts, welfare, and outside assistance. In Perú this phenomenon has been inculcated by its own government. During the rule of Fujimori, or “El Chino” as Peruvians call him, a huge number of social welfare programs were created. People became accustomed to free government handouts and now they expect them. Despite Fujimori’s highly questionable human rights record, many Peruvians love him. El Chino gave them free tin rooves and abundant food to cook in the local comedores populares, soup kitchens. What happens when the government has no more to give? Well, what has happened on the rural Peruvian coast is that people got so used to government assistance that they now take little responsibility for getting things done themselves. If they don’t get something free, such as a kilo of rice, they don’t participate.

Corruption:
The Peruvian government is corrupt. Peruvian police are corrupt. Even the teachers are corrupt. Money moves under the table and everyone knows it. Not everyone participates directly in the corruption, but it is an accepted part of life. For example, the mayor of Pacora spent S/.6.000 ($2,000) on his birthday party using local funds which must have involved some shady maneuvers. No one did anything. Nothing. Now the municipality claims to have no money. Until someone does something nothing will change. To quote a Calle 13 song, “Aprendí que mi pueblo todavía reza porque las fucking autoridades y la puta realeza todavía se mueven por debajo de la mesa.” (I learned that my town still prays because the fucking authorities and the bitch royalty still deals under the table.)

La hora peruana:
I’ve mentioned la hora peruana before. It is basically the widely accepted idea that Peruvians operate on their own time, which is an hour behind real time. For example, when scheduling a meeting, you will be told to schedule it at 3:00 so that people will get there by 3:30 but they will actually arrive at 4:00. While most people from the States literally could not handle this lackadaisical concept of time, la hora peruana is not the end of the world. If everyone knows and accepts that things will actually happen an hour after they are supposed to, well, I guess that is okay. However, if you actually want to get something done, la hora peruana can be exasperating. In the last year, every single meeting I have ever had has made me feel awkward because I feel badly for the few people who arrive on time but have to wait up to an hour for the meeting to start. I never know when to start the meeting, asking every five minutes if we should start yet, always told patiently that there is no rush. Inevitably the meetings always end up being less productive than they should be because people continue to arrive after they have already started and those people who arrived on time lose interest. Interestingly enough, la hora peruana bothers me more now than it did initially. I’ve arrived at the conclusion that punctuality is actually important when attempting to get things done. And, clearly, there is no shortage of things to be done.