One month at site!

What have I been doing since arriving to Pambarume one month ago?

I teach computer classes.

I help run the library 4 days a week.

I am padrino to a sports team

I participate once or twice a week in street meetings

I attend other meetings in the municipality.

I’ve gone on several field trips.

All the environmental volunteers from group 10 came to my site.

Michael Hirsch came to my site.

I helped build a bridge.

I helped weed Barrio Alto (neighborhood where I live)

I talk to tons of people in town trying to learn what programs I can do.

Now some details!

Computer class is intense, and tough. My Spanish is not at an adequate level to run a classroom, that’s for sure. I teach students from the Secundaria Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9-11. I teach students from the Primaria Monday through Friday 12-1. This weekend, I’m going to buy some supplies to make visuals so that I can explain things better. Since my Spanish isn’t that great, hopefully visuals will be more helpeful! It’s a great project, I get to meet all the kids in the schools, I practice my Spanish, it gives me something to do during the day, and the kids really will benefit from having basic computer skills.

The library was Hana’s project. I replaced Hana. She founded the library and I was placed here to continue with the project and I’m looking forward to doing that. The library has hours on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from 4-6 in the afternoon. I like to go in and check and see how things are going and they are going really well. In time, I’ll take a more aggressive approach to the library project and hopefully relocate it from its tiny home to a larger space. And then hopefully expand it! It’s another great project that I’m glad to be a part of.

Every Wednesday from 1-3 the students from the Secundaria plays either volleyball or futbol (soccer). A team of girls, one of which is my host sister, asked me to be the padrino (god father) of their team. I don’t really have to do anything but cheer for them when they are playing sports. Haha…not really work, I basically watch sports for 2 hours!

My street (calle Piura) has regular meetings, at least once a week. I always go to these even though I barely understand what’s going on. They are late at night and I’m usually exhausted by that point and it’s hard to focus on Spanish. But one time, they planned a drama to be performed at the town fiesta in October. I may or may not be involved, I can’t tell. They had a self esteem discussion at the last meeting. So, I’m not really sure the point of the meetings, but it’s good to be an active community member even though if at this point, I don’t contribute much.

The municipality is non-functioning. There is a mayor and some other staff but as I’ve been told, they don’t do anything. The municipality is a one room building where all other town meetings are held. These usually focus on environmentalism and are run by my counterpart, don Berto. He brings in representatives from NGO’s in Piura and they give lectures. One really interesting one was about climate change and things people can do to prevent it. I understood the entire thing except for a few vocab words which he explained in further depth. Words I do not know in Spanish: Aerosol, Green House effect, etc.

The people in my town are field trip fiends. I’ve only gone on two, but there have been 5 or 6 since I’ve been here. I went to a dam along the border of Ecuador 5 hours from my site. It was really cool, apparently they collect the water in the reservoir during the rainy season and it supplies Piura (the city) with water. I also went to Chalaco and this town which was called Confeccionarios. It was freezing there; it was 3000 meters above sea level. It was really cool because we went somewhere nearby where there is a large reforestation project. My town loves reforestation projects and actually have several of them around my site. I visited one the other day and it’s pretty impressive.

The Peru 10 volunteers have been in country for about a year. That means it’s time for In Service Training. The environmental volunteers apparently expressed interest in library projects so during their IST, they dropped by my site to hear a bit about it and take a look at it. It was pretty cool, but it’d be nice if someone had told me more than an hour before they were coming!

Michael Hirsch came on Thursday. He’s the Direct of Peace Corps in Peru. He was present at counter part day during our site visits and my counter part sure enough pressured him into coming to my site for a day. He was happy to come and visited a few other sites in Alto Piura. It was nice to see him and Wilfredo. It was cool because he doesn’t usually visit very many people’s sites!

I helped build a bridge. Sort of. There is a river about a 20 minute hike down a really steep hillside. There are two caserios (little towns that have to come into my town to do everything; school, health post, etc.) that are on the opposite side of the river. Right now, they use a flimsy bridge made of Bamboo. During the rainy season, this bridge gets destroyed by the water and the kids have to walk around, which if I understood correctly makes their hike to school go from one hour each way to two hours each way. So, my town received funding to build a really big bridge to span the river. One of the days, the kids from the Secundaria went to the bridge to help move sand and stones and such. I went with them to see the project. It should be done in November.

My town, Pambarumbe, has 2 neighborhoods, I think. Barrio Alto (which means the high neighborhood) and Barrio Bajo (I don’t actually know if this is its name, but it probably is and it means the low neighborhood). My neighborhood is as you may have guessed, higher up on the hill than the other one. Well, on Sundays, they have been doing beautification projects to make the ‘hood look nicer. So, I worked all day last Sunday (maybe not all day…5 hours) weeding the whole road and a bunch of the hillside. It’s a good way to become part of the community…helping out with their projects.

And lastly, I talk to as many people as possible about what projects I can do, about Pambarumbe, about everything. There’s been a big interest in a small business project. I have never taken a business course and am business-challenged. So, I’ve been reading up on a bit of things and Michael Hirsch had made some recommendations, too. So, it’s something I’m looking forward to. It’ll be a challenge but a good challenge and I think it will be primarily with the younger guys in the community since they seem not to participate in too many community activities.

Crazy questions/stories:

I went on a mini-hike to the cemetery with one of the kids from my town and he told me the Incans that lived in this area died because they were eaten by lions that live on the mountains. I don’t think there are lions anywhere near my site.

The other day, a lady asked me if we have stars in the United States. It was night time and she pointed to the stars and asked if I liked them. I said yeah and she just asked if there were stars in my state…

One of the field trips we went on, to Chalaco and Confeccionarios, we left at 4 in the morning. It was freezing cold (my blood has thinned and now 50 degrees is freezing cold) and there were about 35 people going on the field trip. The transportation for the trip? Two trucks. It worked but it sucked for the people who sat in the truck bed because it just got colder the further up the mountains we went. And it started raining.

I have doors in my room now. I used to just have a cloth but I came back a yesterday and there was a door. It was pretty awesome. Sometimes the small things make me happy…haha.