Though I've heard mixed reviews, from my perspective Reconnect was a wonderful opportunity to share ideas with the greater Peru 11 community. Many of the people, I hadn't talked to in 3 months, which is in stark contrast to the Cajamarca 11 volunteers which could be described as a tightly knit gang. Pretty much if you're not in Cajamarca, you're off my radar screen. I only knew these people for 11 weeks, and its such a diverse group of Americans that its hard to form cliques or even real friends. Especially when staring down the barrel of like 750 days of almost pure isolation. People react to it differently, some cling to each other and form these impenetrable bonds of situational friendship. Others recognized that you can't make new best friends in 11 weeks, and so acted accordingly. Still others tried to strike a balance. Especially considering how isolated my site is compared to the average Peru volunteer, I'm glad I don't have 35 new best friends. New friendships need to be maintained and groomed. I don't have the accessibility for that, and besides I didn't join the Peace Corps to have a phone. I'm kind of upset actually that I have a phone. I never use it, have horrible horrible service in my site, have trouble keeping it charged (finding outlets), and often don't even get voice messages that people leave me. This costs me 10 dollars a month (expensive when you make around 350 depending on exchange rates). You might say, well its a safety feature, but the majority of the time there is no cell phone access, and where there is cell phone access there's almost always also satellite phone access, which, for the quick check up calls that I actually do make, would on average cost me less than 5 dollars a month. Then I have to worry about losing it, getting it wet, having it stolen, etc. Its also a leash, so that Peace Corps administration can find me at all times... right I know, safety first. The only time I find it useful is when I'm in the city and want to meet up with friends for a beer. Anyway, back to Reconnect. When were training, Business and Youth split up (Peru 11 is Business and Youth Volunteers) so even now I don't know exactly what it is they do. Every business volunteer was required to make a presentation on their communities to the group. From these I drew some conclusions. 1) Though I wouldn't trade LLapa for any coast site, there is clearly more work opportunity on the coast. 2) Finding strong community partners to work with is the only way to be effective. 3) Almost everyone is frustrated with the slow and resistant to change way that business is conducted in Peru and has begun some other sort of project to keep them busy 4) The volunteers in Provincial capitals have unlimited work in comparison to the people in district capitals or caserillos 5) not one volunteer stood up and said, "you know group, in my wildest dreams I never would have thought I'd be doing such effective, sustainable, and rewarding projects so early into my service". Volunteers had drastically different living conditions, from Nate, who has a balcony overlooking a lake, a site that rarely rains, lives in a mansion and has been handed a group of artisans that had already had training with an NGO that streamlined them to a quality product and marketing knowhow to JP who lives in a site without electricity high in the Jungle of Piurra without cell phone access or regular/easy access to his capital city. Every volunteer has some tradeoff or another. I have a wonderful site to live in in that I have cellphone service, hot water, electricity, and from time to time internet access, but I also have a tough gig in terms of finding work opportunities. My artisans are largely dysfunctional, there's an intellectual brain drain because students flee LLapa as soon as they're old enough to find work on the coast, and the few people that remain are older and set in their ways. Other volunteers lack in the comforts department, but have work to do all day and all night. Now that I can speak Spanish, I envy that. But then again, they envy me. The volunteers in Arequipa, way to the south, live completely different lives from the rest of us. Whereas here everything is made of adobe, everything is made of stone there, and pictures of their sites appear to be medieval. It seemed to me to be a whole different country. Overall, if you're reading this and you're slated to come to Peru at some later date as a volunteer, I would say no matter how bad you think you got it, make it to Reconnect, and you will find out that everyone is in the same boat and that it is completely normal to feel everything that you are feeling. Changing the subject, we also took time at Reconnect to address our issues with the administration's forced resignation of Leanna. I knew that I was angry about it, but I had no idea that everyone else was too. I don't know what Leanna did, there's no transparency on the issue, but I do know that administration handled it incorrectly in that they bought her plane ticket home before letting her present a defense and in telling her to pack her things and leave her community for Lima without knowing why, which deprives her community of the answers they surely needed. If this situation happened to me, I know it would affect LLapa's desire to have a Peace Corps volunteer for a generation. Enough on that subject. I also used the opportunity of being in Trujillo to buy my family its Christmas present, which is the cheapest digital camera I could find, which I'm happy about because it ended up being a AA powered Canon. I also bought a chess board and Monopoly, which I'm going to use it to teach basic math, budgeting, and the concept of investment. I also plan on winning every time at Monopoly, though I've encountered some crafty little kids in the chess arena. I would advise anybody packing for the Peace Corps to bring some amount of games, a deck of cards, a chess board, whatever, you will have the time, I promise. I hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. Send me an email any time, I'm not shy.
Mateo
