So Creative

Here’s the latest music video to come out of Peru 12:

Who Knew – From Tumbes

This was made by three volunteers working in the department of Tumbes, right next to Ecuador and  a completely different world than Ancash. While we are cold here they are burning alive and fighting malaria. Poor kids. At least they have the ocean. Also represented in this video is our beloved Sarita, the oldest volunteer currently serving in Peru at ** years of age (I wouldn’t tell!). She still looks great ; )

Also, here is a video I never put up on the blog but that was made by some other Peru 12ers towards the end of training. As a brief introduction, Ghost Ride the Whip is basically a trend that involves ‘Ghost Riding’ or letting your car travel without being in it. Peru 12 took it to the extreme by using a moto-taxi (motorcycle taxi) instead of a car.

Ghost Ride the Whip – PC Peru 12

Enjoy!

Brian

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Crazy Tree Parties and Cross Parades

Hey friends!

Lots to say so here goes : )

Where to start… In my last blog I talked a bit about some daily life. Not much of that has changed but what has been going on lately are lots and lots of parties in my community.

Last week, I went to parties. It all started on Saturday morning with the festival of crosses. In some sort of pre-Lent celebration whose religious significance I still fail to grasp (especially after all the cases of beer), the community has a parade of crosses. What does this mean? Basically, above the communities way up high on the hills are crosses that stand year round. From far away they look small but once a year the community goes and retrieves these crosses, parading them through the town center with a marching band and the enthusiasm that comes from escaping day to day life and doing something different. These crosses come in all shapes and sizes and are generally covered with flowers (not real) and an image of Jesus in the center. The crosses are proudly paraded from their lonely mountaintop homes to the church where they are blessed by the priest and then as the mass ends they are paraded outwards in the community. Then, there is a dance with the crosses where men wanting to prove how strong they are dance while carrying the gigantic crosses, and then more parading as they are paraded back from whence they came to stand guarding and blessing the community until next year. This is accompanied and followed by many cases of beer. And since my powers of description and my understanding of this part of the festival escapes me, let me refer you to the pictures as well.

Next, comes a party I understand a little better although the religious significance of it still escapes me. Next, comes the Cortamonti. A name that comes from a mix of Spanish (Corta coming from cortar which means ‘to cut’) and Quechua (Monti meaning ‘tree’ in Quechua). As the name implies, this festival involves cutting a tree. Here is how it works:

This festival, which is very popular in the Peruvian department of Cajamarca and apparently here in Ancash as well, involves… a tree. I’m not sure how the tradition started or when, but what happens is that an individual selects a tree from someone’s property. This individual is the ‘cortador’, or the cutter. He has the responsibility of selecting the tree because he was the one who cut down the tree the year before, we’ll get to that. So, the cortador brings this tree to a central location, usually in the center of one of the communities. Here, a big hole is dug and the tree is replanted by the community. They then climb into the tree and fill it with all kinds of goodies such as blankets, clothing, fruits, beer, balloons, anything good that you could want. All these goodies are bought by the cortador. Then comes the music and the beer. The tree is planted around noon usually, the party then begins and people start dancing around the tree to Huayno music. This continues all throughout the afternoon, evening, and night; and during this time the cortador is responsible for feeding everyone. Usually this means lots of potaotes, possibly a few sheep, and several cuyes (guinea pigs). Then, finally, usually very late around four of five in the morning when everyone is nice and toasty (or in my case incredibly cold from the night air), people take turns cutting the tree with an axe. Yes, drunk people cutting trees with axes. So, people will take turns cutting the tree. This part is kind of like Jenga. You want to cut the tree, but you don’t want to make it fall down. Why? Because if you are the one that cuts the tree down, you are responsible for throwing the party next year. This means you bring the tree, the food, and all the presents to put in the tree, not to mention the beer. To give an idea of what that means financially, my host dad once cut the tree down and spent three months wages the next year to throw the party. No wonder everyone tried to convince James and I to cut the tree down.

So, when someone finally cuts the tree down, everyone goes crazy. Why? Because all the gifts that have been so temptingly living in the trees branches are now free for the taking. First come, first serve. Then, the person who cut the tree is given a couple consolatory cuyes to ease the pain, and the cycle continues the next year.

I went to four of these parties. Three in a row beginning one Saturday and then another the following Saturday. My shameful confession. I never made it all the way to four in the morning to see the actual tree fall. Usually around one or two the tiredness and the cold overtook me and I went home. The one night I tried (with James who was at every party with me) to set an alarm and go back to see the tree fall, was the one night they cut it early so we missed that too. I did get to see a tree fall when my school had their own mini alcohol free cortamonti for the end of summer school though so I don’t feel too bad.

Anyway I hope my babbling made some sense. Strange cross festival followed by dancing, drinking, and tree cutting where the tree cutter has to throw the party next year. Lots of fun and long nights. I’ll post pictures of the actual cortamonti soon; the pictures I linked to above are from the cross festival. I was also going to dive into some personal thoughts on life in general in the Peace Corps but this post is so long already that I’ll save that for next time.

Best!

Brian

p.s. Take note of the new photos tab at the top of this page. This simply contains the link to where my photos are located so you can access them more easily.

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Catching Up: January

Hey friends,

It’s early and I’m not feeling terribly inspired right now but here is a quick update of what I’ve been doing this past month.

So, having been in site now for almost two months I have no idea if I’ve been productive or not. December was a black hole as far as I’m concerned. The first two weeks were spent trying to get my life straight and after that the holidays were fast upon us and that managed to eat the rest of my time. I see that as a good thing though, it was nice having some extra time to adjust and the holidays meant time to spend getting to know people in site. As January arrived, however, I was ready to start ‘working’ which at this point meant getting to know my community in a deeper more nuanced way as part of my diagnostic studies. Getting to know the ins and outs of the way my community thinks will be a key element in the implementation of successful projects.

Unfortunately, the month of January disappeared in just the way December did. I stayed busy and did not spend too much time with the major Peace Corps time-killers (books and movies) but looking back I have mixed feelings about my accomplishments, but here they are anyway.

Working with the schools:

My biggest most time-consuming activity this month was teaching classes during ‘vacaciones utiles’ which are basically summer classes (the school year here is March – December). The classes during this time are meant to reinforce what students have learned during the year and also give them an opportunity to do some more fun classes like dancing or art. Unfortunately for the students at my school they are not doing the fun classes but have to study mathematics and language arts. Poor kids.

Luckily for them though, the school director asked me to teach some classes for ‘vacaciones utiles’ and so I’ve been working with the kids on the themes of the environment and English. So, every week, three times a week, I teach. The students are organized in six grades of primary school and six grades of secondary here and I am working with primary because secondary doesn’t do summer classes. This means the age group of students with whom I am working have ages between 5-12. I quickly realized though that the younger kids did not understand anything I taught since they speak more Quechua than Spanish and so I dropped the first two grades leaving my youngest kids about 8 years old now. This has been much better.

So I won’t go into detail about what I’m teaching but I feel the lessons have gone as well as I could have imagined. I’ve never had any teaching experience before so it is definitely different but the kids seem amused that a big tall white guy is teaching their classes and enjoy it just for that. More than anything though this is an opportunity to get to know the children and practice teaching so that I’ll be a little more experienced once the real school year comes around.

This has gone well for me but has been a huge time drain. Having not taught before and not having materials I have found myself spending a bit too much time preparing lessons and thinking about school. The between days when I don’t have classes, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ve spent in the capital where I have internet trying to figure out what I’ll be teaching the students the next day and the days I actually teach, when I am done I feel accomplished and don’t spend the afternoons and evenings trying to meet more people or do ‘diagnostic work’.

Sundays I play soccer and random other events seem to pop up that take up all of my time (various meetings mostly that I don’t understand) and there went the month of January. Not too much closer to my diagnostic but not sure that I just did nothing either.

Still, that leaves me in an interesting situation which is that I now have only about three and a half weeks to really finish the diagnostic. We’ve spent this first week of February here in Huaraz with all the other volunteers taking Quechua classes which has been an awesome vacation. We had lodging covered every night and got $10/day for food which basically means we were living the high life. It was a good week. We’ll have one more week of Quechua classes the first week in March so I’m already looking forward to that, although that is another big chunk of time away from doing work in site. Truthfully, at this point after being away for a little while, most of us are ready to go back, not too ready, but ready. I imagine this feeling that our sites are our new homes will grow over time. For example, a volunteer here that was just in Florida for a week to take his MCAT and he said getting back to his site felt like returning home. It’s something to look forward too.

Anyway, that is a rough glance at my life during January. Teaching classes, going to a few meetings, an taking Quechua classes. The time is flying. My goals for February are a wrap-up of my diagnostic. I’ve already started doing a few interviews and I want to keep these up as well as having a brainstorming day with some of the more active members of the community (working on a SWOT analysis, community mapping, needs assessment, etc.). I’ll also continue teaching but I’m getting better at lesson plans so hopefully that won’t be such a time drain. We’ll see.

Best!

Brian

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