Arriving and First Week in Peru

Here it is, my first blog from Peru. Enjoy!

 

Well, I have arrived! We came to Lima on Friday and now on Sunday I am finishing my first day with my new host family; it went very well. We met this afternoon when they came up to the training center to pick me up, and have spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other.

 

In my Peruvian family there are five of us including me. My host-father, Maximo; my host-mother, Cecilia; my host-sister, Joanna, who is twenty-six; and my host-brother Antonio, who is twenty-three. I have one more host-brother – Dante, who is twenty-four – but he works in Tumbas, fourteen hours North near the border with Ecuador. Tumbas is where my host-family is originally from.

 

As best as I can tell right now, my family is very kind. Maximo, the father, is a little bit older, sixty-one, and is the most difficult to understand, but after dinner today I talked with him for close to an hour. His wife Cecilia, who is forty-seven, is also very nice and although I didn’t talk as much to her, I believe I am going to like her a lot. Joanna, who showed me around today, is the most energetic. She is talkative and when she gets excited about something she talks extremely fast and is difficult to understand (sound familiar?). My brother Antonio is a student and plays soccer so he is already helping me get involved with local sports. Antonio’s girlfriend also spends a lot of time with us and she is eight-months pregnant which means that soon I’ll be a host-uncle.

 

The community where I am staying is called Chacrasana. It is different than I was expecting and absolutely wonderful as far as I’ve seen. I’m not sure quite how to describe it, so I will post pictures, but what the pictures cannot show that I will mention here is there there is a very strong sense of community. After arrival I went out for a walk with my host-sister and we visited the homes where other Peace Corps Volunteers (PCVs) are staying. Everyone was very friendly and we soon had an entourage of people, volunteers and host family members, walking through the community. Everyone seems to know each other and when I asked my parents if this were true, they said yes, they pretty much know everyone around here. I also got to watch students at the local school practicing a dance for the National Song of Peru. If I can catch them in another performance I’ll try to take a video.

 

Now, working backwards, I’ll talk about the Peace Corps itself and how I feel about everything so far, starting  from day one, now so long ago.

 

Staging:

 

I left Maryville on Wednesday, September 10 at 10:30 in the morning and arrived in Washington D.C. around noon, meeting up with two other volunteers before heading to the Holiday Inn in Georgetown where the staging was to take place. Upon arrival everybody began introducing themselves and we got to know each other as we finished last minute paperwork and played ice-breaker games. Then, we began staging itself at 3:00 and stayed in the conference room until 7:00, still getting to know each other and beginning to learn about how the Peace Corps works and what was to be expected of us.

 

Later, that evening, we went out to dinner and then I met up with my old roommate John Hultquist. He picked myself and some other volunteers up and we drove to a club called the Black Cat to check a concert by the Monotonics and the Silver Jews. Overall the night went well and it was good seeing old friends before heading out.

 

The next day we did a lot more of the same, more overviews of the Peace Corps mission and safety regulations and more getting to know everyone. That night I met up with another friend, Katie Bugosh, and we had dinner with another volunteer, Ryan O’Hare, before heading to a club to meet other volunteers and spending our last night in the U.S. the right way.

 

The next day we woke up early, had our breakfast at Einstein Bagels, and went off to the airport. We arrived very early and after checking in we still had a few hours to spare so we hung out playing games, reading, talking, and exploring. Then our plane was delayed so we had even more time to kill but eventually we left and caught our connection flight to Miami. The flight was mostly uneventful, we watched the movie Leatherhead and as I didn’t have any other volunteers very close nearby on the flight I talked with the guy sitting next to me who was from Miami and going to visit his mother in Peru.

 

Arriving in Peru:

 

And we did it! We arrived in Peru around 10:00pm on Friday, the 12^th, and after waiting in line to go through customs we met up with the Peace Corps staff including Michael Hersch who is the Peace Corps Country Director (PCCD) for Peru. We all packed onto a bus and went to a retreat center where we spent the next two days getting to know the Peace Corps staff, learning about our future job assignments, going through various placement interviews, and playing lots of frisbee and hackysack. We also had a bonfire and went to a rocking ‘discotech’ where we had our first Peruvian beers and attempted salsa/merengue/cumbia dancing.

 

The next day we got up early (always early) and walked to the Training Center will be our ‘school’ during training. The Training Center is in downtown Chaclacayo and is a beautiful house that has been converted for training purposes. We picked up our luggage in the garage and then had more orientation meetings before hanging out in the gardens outside where we waited to meet our families, which is where I began this blog.

 

And so that’s the general overview. Obviously lots more happened but I’m writing two weeks into the past so I’m just trying to pick up on highlights and give a general idea of what has been going on. I’ve already been living here with my host family and going to classes for a full week but that is another blog so now I want to share a few of my thoughts on all of this and put down my computer with my first blog completed.

 

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So, wow. Time flies. Time slows. I feel like I’ve been here forever at the same time that I feel like it was just yesterday I was leaving Maryville. One refrain stands out though, I can’t imagine being anywhere else right now. During orientation we talked about the goals of the Peace Corps and the strength of the program continues to impress me. The training so far has been very thorough and it is obvious that our safety and health are top priorities for the Peace Corps staff. Our trainers are great and I absolutely love everybody else in the program. And I’m still in the ‘this is awesome’ stage of culture shock if you can’t tell.

 

Anyway, right now I just feel very content. I am now comfortable with my host family and enjoying my first full day off since everything has started. Life has been very busy, I get up at 6:00 and have my days structured until about five, but even after that I seem to have very little time to myself. I come home and enjoy an hour or so of solace before dinner and then by the time eating and conversation is over it is time to do homework and after that I am exhausted.

 

That’s not to say it’s all been work and no play though. The days at the training center generally pass well and the trainers are very good at making the process enjoyable. Also, we’ve started a Gringo Soccer Team and are competing in a 10-day tournament in a neighboring barrio. Even more, people have already started organizing for daily running and yoga. Today we are visiting a sick friend and will probably watch one of the many DVDs we bought during our visit to Lima yesterday. We also are going to go dancing and karaoke (I thought I was done with karaoke in Japan!) with some people from the community.

 

In other news, we have recently met many Peace Corps volunteers from Bolivia. Peace Corps decided to leave the country because of many protests and issues with the government of Evo Morales. The U.S. Ambassador was told to leave the country and after that it was not feasible for Peace Corps to remain. Some of the volunteers will now work here in Peru, others in different countries around the world, and some will go home; the decision is theirs.

 

Anyway, I’ll let you be. I’ll try to keep up with this blog better so that I can offer more in the moment  information, but I hope this has worked as a general introduction. I’ll try to talk more about what my living conditions are like, what classes are like, and what Peru in general is like in the next blog. I’ll try blogging by topic rather than chronologically from now on too, I think that will help me present my ideas better.

 

Brian

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You’re Doing What?!

So here is a little introduction into that question, “What exactly is the Peace Corps and what will you be doing?”

First, what is the Peace Corps?

It all started in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was visiting the University of Michigan during his campaigning for the office of the President. He made a brief speech but in it made a very important challenge:

How many of you who are going to be doctors, are willing to spend your days in Ghana? Technicians or engineers, how many of you are willing to work in the Foreign Service and spend your lives traveling around the world? On your willingness to do that, not merely to serve one year or two years in the service, but on your willingness to contribute part of your life to this country, I think will depend the answer whether a free society can compete. I think it can! And I think Americans are willing to contribute. But the effort must be far greater than we have ever made in the past.

Within this challenge were the ideological roots of the Peace Corps, and soon thereafter in 1961 the Peace Corps was it founded as an official organization with the following mission:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

The Peace Corps has since sent close to 190,000 Americans to serve this mission throughout the world. And now, there are 8,079 (soon to be 8,080) volunteers working in such diverse areas as education initiatives, youth development, business promotion, agriculture, health, and information technology.  These volunteers serve in countries ranging from China to Paraguay, and all share this common mission with their communities.

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But where do I fit into all of this? Well for starters, I agree with this mission. I feel an innate desire to use the gifts I have been given to help others, and at the same time I feel as though this experience will help me grow deeply as a person and as a member of the human race. The Peace Corps will allow me to experience what it is like to serve others, and I think it will help me become a better person. I will be more empathetic, more experienced, and have more perspective into my place in the world.

In short, Peace Corps fits me, my ideals, and my ambitions like a glove and I can’t imagine my life without this type of experience being in it. I feel a strong need to directly experience other cultures and other socio-economic classes, and I feel that if I do not do this I will be cheating my intellectual, moral, and personal growth. So here I am, no reservations and taking the only next step in life that makes sense to me.

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But now that I’ve explained what the Peace Corps is and reiterated  my reasons (see my previous post) for wanting to go. What is it exactly that I’ll be doing?

My job will be an Agro-Business Promoter in the Community-Based Environmental Management Program in Peru. I will be leaving on September 10th, and will remain in Peru until at least November 28th, 2010. I will begin by spending two days in Washington, D.C. playing get to know ya games and listening to ‘hey heads up you’re about to leave’ talks with the other volunteers going to Peru, and then on the 12th I’m off. No turning back. Gone.

I will spend the next 11 weeks in Lima training for my job assignment. I will study more Spanish, take classes in inter-cultural communications, and receive specific job training for my post. This will last until November 28th and will be very intensive. Then, I’m off. I’ll probably ride some sputtering truck out into the country-side and begin the real adventure, my service with my community.

But what will I do  there? The following comes straight from my information packet:

“As a Volunteer, you will concentrate on using a variety of education and outreach techniques to increase Peruvians’ knowledge of environmental issues, to increase their capacity to implement sustainable management and income-generating practices, and to improve their quality of life.”

“You will have a specific assignment with defined objectives. Your assignment responds to the overall goals for Peace Corps/Peru’s Community-Based Environmental Management project whose stated overall purpose is: Peruvian communities will improve their quality of life and minimize their environmental impact through the development of environmental stewardship and through the sustainable management of natural resources.”

Cool. General specifics include the possibility of educating my community on natural resource management projects, waste management projects, assisting small enterprises, and helping create income-generating activities. Specific specifics include establishing and maintaining home gardens, helping authorities assess their environmental challenges, developing public education activities, developing eco-tourism circuits, and developing local leadership.

I’m so into this.

Official service after training, as I said, begins November 28th. Then I’ll have two years to accomplish as much as I can. I’ll have limited immediate oversight, and so I’ll be personally responsible and in charge of every project I initiate. I’ll work within the Peace Corps’ mission and framework but I will have an incredible amount of personal flexibility to accomplish my goals, while still having administrative and technical support when I need it. Add to this the motivation of knowing that every success and failure is my own, and I find myself very excited for the future (and slightly cautious as well, I want to have realistic expectations of what can be accomplished).

So how’s that? This has been a long post but I feel that I’ve thoroughly covered all the essential questions of why and what. Hope the post reads well. I apologize if not, I’m still getting used to organizing my ideas with blogs. Hopefully this will improve.

Cheers,

BGP

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