when I was born, they looked at me and said...

My father says I need to write more blogs.  He claims I'm losing track of time, which probably is true, and if true would be a welcome addition to my stay here in Peru.  He's under the illusion that people read the blog.  I have no such delusions of grandeur.  Anyway, since I'm a good son, and do everything my father tells me to, minus joining the Peace Corps, I figure why not.  Christmas time.  Since I've elected to be Christian for the next two years rather than explaining to the people here my lose blood based history with Judas, which I'd like to point out I also share with Jesus (at least the half of him that is acknowledged as mortal), I got to celebrate Christmas for effectively my first time.  I want to say this as clearly as possible.  I LOVE Christmas.  No, not your Christmas.  Not your, Best-Buy-coupon-infused-Santa-on-the-Coke-bottles Christmas.  I love my Christmas.  Which consists of mass, a fiery sermon in Spanish about going out to meet Jesus when he comes to meet you, and a 24 hour beer-binge with plenty of meat.  That's right, real meat.  Not a piece of chicken.  Not the feet of the slaughtered cow that you sold the rest to your extended family.  Meat.  Meat whose sole purpose is to be eaten.  It wasn't boiled in a soup first, and then served as meat.  It's just meat, and its for you... to eat.  I love Christmas.  Its way better than Yom Kippur.  The odd thing is, though I don't have a "personal relationship" with the Jesus, I absolutely have a better theological understanding of Christianity than just about anyone except the priest.  I guess there's magic in the mystery, although I sense the people come because they serve a little food at the end of church.  The O'negh is more enticing when food is scarcer, kinda like college students and free pizza at student government elections.  Also, I love nativity scenes here, which have added the third dimension of height to the equation, as we are the mountain people.  I had this funny little moment with the priest, who is my buddy, where I elucidated, "you know, father, Nazareth was in a desert, there's no way there was all this jungle surrounding the baby Jesus."  He responded that that was crazy talk.

I really don't think I can say enough about Christmas this year.  My family had a huge party, and I'm glad they're putting my rent money to good use.  The party started after mass on the evening of the 24th and it ended when the beer ran out at about 10pm on the 25th.  I was talking on skype to my parents at the time and I was like, "shhh... a christmas miracle, the music stopped!"  And heaven shone its bright light on me, and everyone left and I finally had some peace.  I even managed to skip mass on Christmas day, due to having imbibed a bizarre concoction of Peruvian wine, which they absolutely do not offer in any respectable wine tasting class, and cerveza the night before.  I've explained paso-el-vaso before, which is how we do our drinking here.  Basically, no one gets their own beer here.  That would be ridiculous because these are big beer bottles, at least two 12oz beers are contained in every one, probably more.  Anyway we all drink in a circle, teachers with students, children with town officials, etc.  The bottle gets passed around and everyone gets hammered.  Its really tough for me to keep up with this system, not because I can't drink, but because of two factors.  One) It's rough drinking at altitude.  I'm at 10500 feet.  I've got to nurse any alcohol I do drink, chugging is a really bad idea.  Two) I hate drinking in front of children.  No one in town cares about being drunk in front of children except me, so I'm faced with this horrible catch 22 which is, I can't say, "I'm sorry I don't want to drink now, there are children here and I would be setting a poor example" because what message does that say about how I feel about their parenting.  If I do that how will those same people, people whom the next morning I am charged with capacitating in some form or another, think I view them.  Condescension is a bad idea.  I'm not a youth volunteer, something I'm kinda sad about because I'm actually great with the little ones and there seems to be much more work to do in that department than in mine.  Also while no one can make me have a drink, I don't think its a good idea to not drink on principle.  It's part of being part of the community here.  There's no such thing as pledging your Peace Corps community dry, at least for men.  I actually sometimes play to their Peruvian sensibilities.  They'll smile if I agree to have a beer with one of them, and I'll say, "what... did you think I was evangelical?" and we'll all have a good laugh at those crazy foreign evangelicals that come to prosteletyze the gente.  In their eyes, they're like "ha, he's actually one of us!", and in my eyes, I'm laughing because while I'm not evangelical, I'm certainly not Catholic.  Also, except for the many gifts that I gave to the children in my extended family and the camera, which went over well, there was no gift exchange for Christmas.  Such a different take on the holiday.  Although, I think economic situation dictates the celebration as I was talking to Sal and he said everyone went to work on Christmas at his site.  He's also recovered from his surgery just fine and has made it back to site.  

Efrain, the 6 year old from my first host family from Yanacoto cried when I called and told them I that I wouldn't be coming to Christmas at their house this year, so I promised to do it at their house next year.  

If you haven't already, check out my Facebook picture, I bought a straw hat and poncho, the real stuff, not the tourist stuff.  Walking around Cajamarca, I got a lot of giggles, and got self-concious about it.  In site though, where they know I'm not just a tourist like I instantly appear to the random stranger in Cajamarca, everyone loves it.  Its a lifestyle.  

Hope everything is going well.

Sometimes I hear from people who are thinking about joining the Peace Corps, both old friends and strangers.  Most of them say things like, I need to decide this or that.  "Well have you started applying?"  Usually the answer is no.  Look, you don't have to say "book my flight, but all i wanna know is who's comin' with me" until after they tell you what country you'll be going to.  It takes about 8 months from filling out the first application section until you get on a plane, and for many it takes longer.  My point is, if you're not sure, just start applying. It takes so long to apply that you might as well start, and decide along the way.  I wouldn't tell anyone you're joining until you've absolutely made up you're mind though, but that's just me.  

Redundant plea for email contact,

Mateo  

A Nightmare, An Analogy, and Saludos

One Peace Corps nightmare scenario took place last Thursday evening.  Sal didn't feel to well up in his site near Chota.  It's not abnormal to not feel well, so he waited it out for awhile.  After a little time of running down checklists, diarrhea, nope, vomitting, nah, just really bloated and in stomach pain... he calls up Suni, our Peace Corps doctor in Lima, and she tells him to buy some specific medication and if it still hurts in the morning to call her.  "Ok, well, Suni, there's no pharmacy here".  Try to sleep it off.  Ok, he goes to bed.  Starts moaning, the pain's getting worse, his host family is alarmed.  So he calls up Suni, "I'm not waiting, I'm going to the hospital in Chota."  After looking for a car, which apparently wasn't easy, he goes to the Hospital in Chota, which is a semi-large town closer to his cite than Cajamarca.  They run some tests on him.  You have appendicidis, and we need to operate.  Hold on, let me call my doctor.  "They can't operate on you, we don't know/trust those doctors, you have to get to Cajamarca."  Sal calls up Jose, our regional co-ordinator, I have to get to Cajamarca, its an emergency my appendix is going to burst and Peace Corps wont let me have the operation in Chota.  It's now 3 in the morning.  Somehow, Jose gets to Chota by like 5, fills out all of Sal's paperwork and speeds over dirt roads to Cajamarca, and hes there by 8 where they run all the tests again, and say, "Yep, if we don't operate very soon, you could be looking at .... death."  Fantastic.  So he finally gets operated on, a full 24 hours after the symptoms started showing.  The doctors told him it was the biggest appendix they had ever seen in their careers.  That's what we call a Peace Corps nightmare.

Also I thought of a good analogy for what my primary project seems to be.  Since I like to play instruments, you can tailor it to youre own hobby.  So its as if I had a band, and twice a month we got together to jam out, and then all of a sudden this dude from England came and he was like, "yo, that was awesome, we gotta get you guys signed, you should start gigging every Thursday at this bar I know down the street".  I'd be like, "hell yeah, I want to be musician, sure, lets do it"  I'd start working harder at my music, maybe, but I sure as hell wouldn't quit my day job, my real income source.  You know what, when it really came down to it, I dunno, its not really for me, its too much work, I don't want to give up my Thursdays every week, and there's so much I don't know about the music business.  It was a nice idea, but now that we've thought about it, we just... we just like playing music we don't really do it for the money, never really looked at it as a way to earn money, you can't be in the music business for the money!  Well, who in their right mind is in the synthetic goods knitting business for the money.  Exactly.

Hey I mean, I still give presentations on marketing, accounting, and business organization.  I just hope they take what I teach them, and start applying it in other places and coming up with new ideas, thats the real ticket.  It's really just a woman's empowerment project, none of the men ever bothered to teach these women anything, just by being here I'm setting the example that these women's lives are worth something to someone. 

Keep in touch, seriously, I hear from the same 5 people all the time, if you're a friend that I don't hear from that often, it's the holidays, its time.

Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah,

Mateo

Band Instruments

Has anyone ever heard of an NGO/charity that gets used band instruments to kids in developing countries?  Seriously...

life in the slow lane, surely make you lose your mind

Sunday night, sorry to the some of my friends have heard this, but I had my first real awkward moment with my host family.  It all comes down to the central point, that sarcasm does not translate.  So I go to my family's tienda, where they serve me dinner everyday (which is pre-paid for by me).  After sitting there for an hour playing chess with the neighborhood children, which is one of my favorite ways to kill time since buying the set for 4 dollars, and watching other customers get served their dinner, I stroll on back at around 8:30 and notice there is no food being prepared.  I ask them, what they're going to do for me for dinner, and my host mother responds that all the food is gone.  Bothered and worried that I wasn't going to eat, I ask her why she didn't save any food for me to which she responds that I came too late.  I respond quickly that I have been waiting for an hour, and that several patrons had arrived after me and received full plates of food.  I then tell her, that in my believe if she's worried about running out of food, I should take preference because of how much more difficult it would be for me to find food on my own than it is for the other patrons, who likely can go to some other friend's house and ask for a plate of food (which is common practice).  My host mother doesn't really respond to this, actually sort of agrees with me and promises it wont happen in the future.  I go home hungry.  10 minutes later, the 13 year old girl that works for my family, comes to my room and tells me my foods ready and that they were just kidding.  Floored, I go and eat my food.  Now, sarcasm is very hard to pick out, and I still don't know whether or not my host family scrambled having seen my reaction and prepared something on the spot or if they were actually kidding.  I also don't see how that would be funny, but anyway, that's my story.

Monday morning was either a Catholic holiday or a Peruvian national holiday with Catholic overtones.  I woke up at 7 in the morning, and prepared for what I was told was a 3-hour-walk up and around our mountain.  What a beautiful walk, difficult, in need of a ski-lift, but beautiful.  I had never walked that far into the wilderness around where I live, walking past cows and one room adobe homes, probably at over 3,600 meters, looking down at clouds, its hard to explain where I live but its a trip.  Making it even better, it didn't rain, which can make you smile at any point in the day during the rainy season here.  So I walk and walk and walk and finally I get to a little town right out of the old west, called Rodeopampa.  Then I find out why I'm there, everyone from LLapa, which though tiny, is the Millbrook to Rodeopampa's Minehill, or the Midtown to Rodeopampa's Southstreet Seaport (out of the way but the same city), was to go to their little  candle-lit-church for a few hours.  I'd never walked so far to go to church.  As respectfully as possible, I truly don't understand, coming from my perspective, how you can have the 10 commandments hanging up on the wall (the second commandment says no graven images) and yet there is a statue of both Jesus and the Virgin Mary the latter of which seems to get prayed to directly, candles lit at her feet, and then carried around the "town" center on a float whilst the community sings songs.  I truly  can't resolve what to me seems like a huge contradiction in theological philosophy and welcome anyone to email me explaining how Catholics resolve the issue for themselves.  Until then, I conclude that at least Peruvian Andean Catholicism flirts with idolatry.  I'm not a religious bigot, so, hey whatever floats their boat, I just know that they'd tar and feather me if I ever shared this conclusion with them so I want to know how it is they themselves can solve the paradox.

I was talking to Matt Trokan, my longtime friend whose currently getting his Masters in Latin American History at Florida, about the attitudes of the Peruvian Andean poor, particularly the men.  I explained to him my take on the political roots here, that being poor and uneducated, it was easy for them to be leftists.  It's easy for them to look to Lima and say, "look how well they're doing," even though in a global sense Lima lags far behind.  It is easy for them to think, "they should be helping us here in the mountains, after all we are the cultural roots of all Peru, they need us too".  Its easy for them to want higher taxes on their urban countrymen, and here in the mountains we have become accustomed to relying on government redistributive or NGO handouts to sustain what are essentially non-sustainable communities.  Seeing that we don't make anything here, other than non-added value agricultural products, which in reality, even though labor is essentially nothing, are still produced at much higher cost than by big-agro in other parts of the world.  I see this region as having little economic competitive advantage in any of the products we make.  We are not equipped for the global marketplace.  The politics here is often described to me as the cities of Lima, Trujillo, and Arequipa vs. everyone else.  With all the political candidates being some version of leftist, the real difference between the candidates isn't their ideology, but rather who it is that they are looking to put that ideology to work for, which means identity politics and generally, populist candidates.  And yet, the communities here strive to join the international economic community, and indeed are forced to, considering that Lima signed a free trade agreement with the United States and others in 2006.  We are nowhere near ready.  I've spoken before about the intellectual drain that my community faces with its young population.  Anyone that's remotely educated flees LLapa for the coastal cities, if not to university, as it is NOT easy to get into the universities, then simply as general labor.  The only careers here that actually pay are the miners (Cajamarca is home to the 5th largest Gold Mine in the world, Chan Chan) or the vendors, who are not producing, but selling to the general community.  I am therefore left to work with the older community members, trying to teach the ones left, business insights such as vision.  I think that you can teach vision to a general population, in any group the numbers say that there will be a certain number that have vision and a certain number that don't.  My problem though is that up here in the mountains, the people that naturally had vision, all left for the coast, and I'm stuck trying to artificially teach it to the people that lacked it to begin with.  It's not the same as finding those people that have it naturally and turning on the switch, its taking the people that don't have it naturally, and trying to force it into them.   It would be against my Peace Corps mission of improving the community of LLapa to tell the people left, "hey what you guys seem to need to actually improve your lives is a little reinvestment in skills education and some cheap housing on the coast, ya'll need to just pack it up and move".  And yet, those left up here are the old and stubborn, the one's that couldn't, for a million reasons, embrace change and urbanization to begin with, and I'm stuck trying to help them, when all along they were the ones that could never plan for their futures.  And they're so accustomed to receiving government and NGO help, they want me to bring them the global market.  They want me to sell their products for them, believing that their products and marketing aren't the problem, it's simply their location.  If only someone could bridge that one gap, their entire business would turn around.  Note for a moment, that we struggle mightily simply selling our products to other Peruvians.  Ignoring for a second the fact that I've been out of college for 6 months, all of which I've spent in Peru and have no legitimate business contacts, their leftist "how can you help me" attitude is the wrong one.  The world is flat, and they need to go to the global markets, no one's going to come to them, and no one that doesn't own a Peruvian boutique shop in SoHo is capable of bringing it to them.  Thomas Freidman writes that if you have an idea and you don't do do, don't despair just wait for it to be realized on someone else's watch for their profit.  He is right, and if my artisans don't change their thinking, their campo tranquilo attitude to life, the free trade agreement Peru just signed is on the verge of drowning them.  

  

So I said this, or some version more hastily put together, and Trokan thought for a minute and said, so are you disillusioned then with the prospect of helping these people?  I responded no, that I knew what I was getting into when I signed up for this.  Again he thought for a second and he said pensively, that he felt similarly during a stint as an urban school teacher in Trenton.  The kids weren't ready systemically, and didn't have the skills set.  They weren't "college bound" and yet that's what they wanted to be and that's what they expected him to bring them towards.   He knew what he was getting into when he signed up for it.  I guess the moral is, the size and complexity of the challenge doesn't mean there's no value in trying, every little bit helps.  My father says, "its a waste of time".  

Yesterday, I took a trip to Chilete with 2 of my artisans for a series of lectures provided by the government concerning how they were going to dole out money this year.  While I didn't hear the lectures because the artisans had set out a table at a fair, and we're deathly afraid of them being stolen, I got the gist from their report.  They want more government money than last year and so they have to show up to these meetings more often because its all politics.   As I sat by the table talking up our products and our artisan group to passers-by, I couldn't help think that this was a perfect example of what I have just talked about, you sell our products Mateo and well look for ways to play the system for more handouts rather than work.  I had to wake up at 5 to do this, and it was early in the day so I got to drive down from the mountain, through the fog and clouds that would eventually make its way up the mountain to LLapa in the afternoon.  Its absolutely surreal how the clouds do this.  The clouds, perfectly horizontal, and the moutain peaks breaking though the fog as volcanic islands jut from the sea.

Class ended today, there is no more school until March, my host sister goes to Trujillo where she will work for the off period, only coming back for Christmas and Carnival.  I get the feeling that Christmas goes something like this (as all the rest of the holidays have so far):  Yay, wahoo, our Lord is born, lets drink!

Over and Out,

Mateo

not according to plan

i just got destroyed in monopoly.

i dont want to talk about it.

and yes im feeling better.

mateo

illiteracy and sickness

I woke up this morning at 3 in the morning clutching my stomach like I was in Alien and I was about to have a living creature bust out of my stomach.  Its cool, I made it to the bathroom.  It was one of those moments where I thank the good lord that I HAVE a bathroom, because if I had a latrine instead, I would have rather gone off my balcony.  Good story I know.  Anyway, I don't know what's going on right now because Immodium isn't even considering working.  I ran out of Pepto-type-Pills and if it doesn't stop I'm going to personally kill a goat and sacrifice it on an alter as a burnt offering, whose smell is pleasing to the Lord (thats some Exodus for you).  My host family gets mad when I get sick because they think I blame their cooking, and I mean, I don't blame them because I very much do blame their cooking but the fact is theyre not sick so I blame my gringo genes.  I never get sick in the states, which I attribute to having attended public school, but oh man, when you get sick here, you get sick.  I fear for the lives of any visitors I have, I at least had three months in Lima to quasi-adjust.

My artisans finally elected a President.  Despite all of my effort to not be politicized, they elected my host mother.  Thats a wrinkle I'll be dealing with for quite some time.  

Nothing makes me madder than Illiteracy.  Especially women's illiteracy.  The self esteem implications are insurmountable.  How can you raise a child and not teach him or her to read.  

How do you teach people business practices that can't read, when you're not perfectly fluent in their language?  How is it acceptable to town leaders that there's a 20% illiteracy rate among grown women?  Why isn't there class every day at the municipality to teach illiterate people how to read?  How is this not a priority?  What am I missing?  Should I start teaching literacy classes, can that possibly be my responsibility?

ayupdate

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