Happy Winter Solstice

It has been a long but very productive time since I’ve last written. Life has been moving REALLY fast; it is hard to believe that I only have 5 more months as a PCV and only 5 more months with my town and family that I love here in Peru. Yikes.

The last few months I’ve been focusing on trash management here in Tomas. The biggest thing was to write a project for the annual (and mandatory) municipal participation budget. Every year local municipalities are required by law to spend about %60 percent of their budget on projects that community groups, members or organizations propose, for the benefit of the entire town. This is part of a national government initiative to de-centralize a government that has been run strictly from Lima for a few centuries. So, with my Community natural resource committee, we took advantage and propose the “Trash system implementation and management for the district of Tomas”. Our project was well received by the municipality as a project that generates work for a few community members and gives benefits to all. So, we were awarded the top priority project for 2011, and granted a budget of 92,000 soles, or about $30,000. This is a huge deal, and the PCV that replaces me here in Tomas is going to have a great start by working with this large fund strictly for waste management. It is also a huge development for the community, as they will have a fully funded, complete waste management program, helping public health and the environment.

We’ve also encouraged the municipality to fund the construction of a provisional micro landfill and hire a worker to collect trash twice a week. Constructing the provisional landfill is a great start, although it does not use technical, sanitary techniques such as a ventilation chimney and tubes to extract the liquid wastes. Therefore, it is essentially just a large hole were we’ll bury our garbage. But that is much better that directly throwing trash in the river or burning it. The landfill should be done today (I’ve been given the responsibility to oversee the digging) and on either Thursday or next Monday we’ll begin the collection. I’m terrified that something will go wrong or not work out, but that is part of the learning experience.

In other activities, my under 14-year-old soccer team (that I coach) had a little winning streak. We won the North Yauyos tournament (all local teams) then the Yauyos provincial tournament, against a much larger a better group of teams. Sadly, my boys lost the final in the all department tournament (equivalent to a state tournament), but it was a fun streak nonetheless. It will be nice now that we are done with soccer to get back to some more PC oriented activities, like finishing my world map and getting back to English club. Also, coaching 12, 13, and 14 year olds is often a test of my patience; so not coaching means a little less stress.

Like I said, life is moving really fast. I’m excited to see how much I can get done in my town as far as waste management goes and I’ll be soaking up as much of the Peruvian lifestyle as possible as my time here winds down.

And now, not the most interesting pictures, but something to look at for sure.

My Environmental Committee cleaning up our site for making compost.

Horseback riding, preparing to swim in the glacial fed lake down below.

My buddy Brad on his horse, looking like a pro (but really a first time rider).

Environmental PCVs at an abandoned village in Yauyos.

My U-14 soccer team, taking a march with all the other teams before the tournament started (this is one that we won).

A hike up to Lake Churup in Ancash, which is a glacial lake that we also swam in. This picture with my buddies from Yauyos, Mark and Brad, and Alex from Ancash.

Random things that make my life awesome!

In the month and a half since I’ve last written a few cool things have happened. I’ve met a very important person, made some new things, been called a few new names, learned some interesting things about the Spanish language, and seen things that will make you lose your head (or at least boggle your mind)!

First, my host dad and I started a project that I never would have expected when I started with the PC over 20 months ago. We make yogurt! Seriously, we make a small amount of yogurt each week (usually 10 to 12 liters) that we sell to anyone who comes looking for it. We’ve made pineapple, lucuma (a Peruvian fruit that doesn’t have an English name) and unflavored. We sell it for 3.50 soles per bottle, which after cost of production earns about 2.50 soles. The 2.50 soles per liter of milk profit is great, considering that selling fresh cheese (which we also do) only earns about 1.00 sol per liter of milk. Yogurt takes a little more time, but it is worth it and after only about 3 weeks of production we’ve developed a pretty steady demand. The quality is high and it is all natural. It is a great income generating project. I’ve helped to get the initial materials, my host dad has used great initiative to have a sticker made so our product looks professional, and we’ve done the actual production (which takes about 3 hours of work and 5 hours of incubation) together. It is fun and I enjoy being “paid” in fresh yogurt.

Second, the Reserva Paisajística Nor Yauyos Cochas (RPNYC), the protected area where I live, celebrated its anniversary. To celebrate, the minister of the Ministry of Environment, Antonio Brack Egg (that is his real name) made a visit. The Minister knows about Peace Corps because PC has a contract with Peruvian protected areas, but it was fun to share lunch with him nonetheless. He is in the top 15 in terms of power rank in Peruvian government, so he’s kind of a big deal.

Thirdly, the annual Tomas horse race and duck pull (Jale Pato) happened. The horse race is exactly what it sounds like, people bring teams of 4 horses and there is a round robin style contest of a 300 meter sprint race. It is really fun to watch, the entire town is sitting in the hills watching, there is lots of food for sale, and it ends with the Duck Pull.

This, unfortunately, is also exactly what is sounds like. To decide who is the padrino, or sponsor of the next years race, they pull the head off of a duck. Besides the question of why, you might ask yourself how do you pull the head off of a duck. The answer is simple, tie a duck by a rope between tow large poles, then ride underneath the duck on your horses and pull on the head. If you pull hard enough or after enough tries, someone will eventually get the head. To make things more interesting, many people who were watching the races all day drinking get on horses to have a pull at this event. It is completely chaotic and looks like it could be right out of the wild west, except (thank God) without guns. It is a little cruel, but in the Peruvian highlands certainly not unusual. In many places they are adopting new ways to decide who is the Padrino without killing a duck, but for now it was at least a sight to see for this American.

Besides those things, I’m co-coaching under 14 soccer with the Priest, I’ve been working to keep up the tree nursery, SLOWLY making progress with the municipality to start having municipal trash collection, and I’ve been helping with the harvest, which is back breaking work that started last week. Life is good!

Now, enjoy the view from Peru!

My host brother, Dany, gathering a tuber called Oka during the harvest.

My sunburn from the harvest. I was fully sunscreened, although little did I know that being hunched over for hours could leave a small part of skin exposed...

The cup next to me is fresh aloe, thanks to my neighbor lady.

Yauyos "family" dinner of spaghetti and honey wine. The original 4, Brad, Sarah, Kate and I

After a pole holding the duck fell down, they used the community truck to hold the duck up so the riders could pull its head off.

Sarah, Sasha, Antonio Brack Egg, and Myself at the anniversary of the Reserva Paisajistica Nor Yauyos Cochas.

Proudly holding our yogurt bottles, my host dad and I.

Eating the remains of the yogurt...delicious.

My host dad proudly putting the stickers on our yogurt bottles.

Pasteurizing the milk before making the yogurt. Although it looks sketchy, we practice very good hygiene.

Life has been moving quickly. Trees have been planted, school has started and all the students are back, world map painting has begun, we are making advances in our community landfill project, and many educational activities are being prepared! Overall, life in Tomas is busy and that is a good thing. Apart from my life here, I recently had the experience to work with a group of 16 PCVs and the Connecticut based NGO Builders Beyond Borders. Let me tell you a little more about that experience.

Builders Beyond Borders (B3) is an NGO that runs work-based service trips during spring break for Connecticut high school students. The students raise all the funds, provide most of the materials, and then do much of the labor themselves. The concept is great and is an opportunity for well off students to see different, and much poorer, parts of the world. This year B3 came to Peru. In Peru they coordinated with a 3 different PCVs on the coast to help organize their project. I was asked by the Peace Corps to help during one of these projects, translating, organizing a small work group, and just doing whatever was needed to help things go smoothly. So, last week I worked in the costal department of Ica, helping to build 15 pour flush toilets. Things went well and I learned a lot.

Working with Builders Beyond Borders was a really good experience for me. Not only did I learn a lot about construction, as in laying bricks, installing PVC tubing, building doors and corrugated metal roofs and other basics, but I saw a whole new interaction between Americans and Peruvians.

The interactions between the students and the families were very interesting because the students come in with almost no cultural sensitivity. They wear short shorts, are loud, rarely say good morning or another greeting that is important in Peruvian culture, and they just generally act as they always would without much consideration to the families. Yet despite this lack of cultural sensitivity the families were very excited and happy to have the American students in their town. It wasn’t so much about the bathrooms they received or the materials they brought, although those things were much appreciated. Mostly, the town was really excited about all the excitement that the students brought with their energy. The town had new things to talk about, new people to watch, and everything was different from the daily drone of working in the asparagus fields that surround their town. It made me realize the importance of presence. The presence of the students was more important than the work that they did.

Seeing this gave me a great feeling of pride, knowing that here in Tomas my service is much more than the technical and environmental advances that we are making. In Tomas the people appreciate the improvements, but I think it is my friendship and presence in their lives that makes my time here so important. Knowing that I’m making a difference in so many lives has a large effect on me personally and my perception of service work. Service work is showing people care and love, and that can be done in so many different ways. It can be done with the excitement of a group of high school kids or by developing relationships on a personal level. That difference is certainly worth my time here in Peru.

Now, some pictures to please your eyes!

My work crew at B3.

Some B3 students and our Peruvian bricklayers.

Putting a cement top on a small septic tank. That's not light work.

Building the outhouse.

The welcome parade the evening the students arrived. Pictured is fellow PCV sarah.

A beautiful night for the welcome parade.

A change of subject, some students in Tomas cleaning the wall to paint a world map.

Planting trees in Tomas. Running total for this year: 1473 trees!

Plant with care!

The 3rd annual cleanup campaign in the Reserva Paisajistica Nor Yauyos Cochas, were I live.

Rainy Season Fun

These last few weeks since my last update haven’t been overly eventful. It is the rainy season, of course, which completely changes my town’s makeup. Some important things have happened though, and we have made some great advances with some of my main Peace Corps goals.Mostly I’ve had a pretty relaxed last month with time to prepare for school, which officially starts on March 1 (unofficially starts around March 15, thanks to teachers and students that are used to classes starting at the end of March).

The biggest, or most important I should say, thing I’ve done this February is finish our community trash composition study. That sounds exactly like what it is, we studied the type, weight and volume of garbage production per capita in my town of Tomas. With this study done, which entailed going to a select number of houses (or in our case, as many houses as had people in them) and collecting their trash and separating and measuring it, we know what size of micro sanitary landfill to build. It turns out that to build a landfill that will last at least 5 years it will have to be about 25 x 15 x 6 meters in size. This seems really big, but it isn’t too bad considering it is for my town and the town just up the road. Construction starts in April and will be done by June. The next step (besides making sure that the construction happens) is to start educating the people on garbage management in their homes!

Besides that, we’ve been going forward with tree planting. So far, 293 eucalyptus, 30 tara, and 25 queñuales, for a grand total of 348 trees! That may sound like a lot of trees (or maybe only a few?), but I’m still short of my PC goal of 1,000 but much more importantly, our tree nursery still has over 3,000 trees ready to plant this year. I’m not too worried though because March 3 is our big day. We have a community work day, called a faena, which means that all community members have to come and help plant the trees. We won’t plant all 3,000+ trees, but we should make a pretty good dent with over 1,000. That leaves me with about 2,000 trees to go. Yeah…I’ll let you know what happens. I have faith that they’ll make it into the ground. Things here kind of seem to work out, with enough pushing.

Besides my community projects, I’ve been travelling to new parts of my district (called Tomas, which entails my town and lots of surrounding land only accessible on foot) and of my province (called Yauyos, which is kind like the county I live in.). I’ve been to a community called Tupe that has its own language, Jaqaru. Tupe also has its own very unique dress, which they still use today. This community still exists because they have a sling-like leather piece that they used to throw rocks and defend themselves from first the Incas and then the Spanish. That sounds ridiculous, but when you see the pictures of where this place is, you might realize that just getting there is difficult, let alone if someone is hurling rocks at you.

I’ve also confirmed what I already knew regarding the District of Tomas (which you can Wikipedia, “Tomas, Yauyos”), that we have some INCREDIBLE natural surroundings. I’ve seen waterfalls, mountains, and animals that would make most any tourist willing to test their lungs at the high altitude just to see them.

Life is going well but school starting will be a welcomed change from the relaxing, slow paced, quiet life that takes place during the rainy season. And now some pictures…

The mountain called Cajarreal, the Sacred Mountain of my town of Tomas. A very prominent peak.

Some alpacas running from our community truck.

A waterfall that i've never seen before, since it is about a 5 hour walk from my town. Thanks to a community pasture planting event, i was forced (luckily!) to make the journey.

My family's new dog, Oso, and my friend Luis (age 9) in front of some of the newly planted pastures.

A landslide blocking the road up to my community's cow farm. Some heavy rains are the cause of this.

The little girl is wearing the traditional "Tupe" clothing, including the head wrap. All the women and girls wore this style of clothing.

A view of the valley that eventually heads to my town. My town is about a 3 hour drive up the valley from here, so it is a VERY different climate where I live (colder and wetter).

My boss, Diego, head of the Community-Based Environmental Management program during his visit to my site. We're on the short hiking trail that passes through some pre-Incan ruins, with my town of Tomas is the background.

Makin´ it happen.

As a part of my New Year’s resolution to write more to my friends and family at home, here it is, an unprecedented second updated within the month of January.

Since being back, things during this rainy season have been going great. There have been more people than I’ve expected, or at least this year I know who is willing to work with me of the people who are here. We’ve been hitting the theme of garbage management hard, and it looks like it is going to pay off. What does that mean, to hit the theme of garbage management? Let me tell you.

As you know, I live within the boundaries of the Reserva Paisijística Nor Yauyos Cochas. This is a protected landscape reserve, which according to Peruvian law means that people still live within the area in harmony with nature. The RPNYC was created in October of 2005 and each year it makes many advances to achieve this goal of harmony between man and nature. This year the push with the park service (SERNANP) is to build sanitary landfills in each of the nine districts of the park. That is where Peace Corps and I come in handy.

Since the first of January, we’ve located a place in my town to build the landfill (a challenge to find a flat space 50 meters from the river), we’ve had a solid waste engineer come do a site evaluation, and we are in the process of studying the garbage that we produce each day per capita so we know what size of landfill we need. We have the support of the Municipality (very important, since they have the funding), SERNANP, a local NGO called Instituto Rural Valle Grande, and the conservation committee of Tomas. All these players are helping, and I am specifically working with organizing all of these and helping with the logistics of moving a project like this forward.

The plan is to have all 9 districts of the RPNYC have a sanitary landfill before July of this year. This is an ambitious goal but with the right amount of push from many players, it is possible. Tomas is in a great spot since we have already acquired most of the resources that we need to get this project done. I’ll keep you updated. It is exciting.

Besides this ambitious garbage project, we are slowly moving with forward with planting the 4,000 eucalyptus trees we have. We are having weekly showings of the series Planet Earth by the BBC as a part of environmental education on the community level. I have 2 English classes each week, and a few other small projects always seem to be popping up here and there (such as restoring Andean Terraces). I’ve been busy, and except for the Vikings NFC Championship game loss on Sunday and a depressing amount of rain, I’m really happy with my time here. I’d love to hear from you all in emails or whatever form you choose!

And now some pictures for you viewing enjoyment…

My family coming home from the cows one day. Notice the shoes of my cousin Angie (blue pants), she stepped a little deep in the mud.

A meeting with all the Mayors of the RPNYC and the park service (SERNANP). Makin´it happen.

My dog, Oso. He´s grown quite a bit since the last picture.

One of the two rivers in my town. This is the same afternoon that further up the mountain there was a large landslide, which turned the water the color of hot chocolate.

Notice that little white oven on behind Brad? That allows for such bonding times as cookie baking here in Yauyos. I can almost guarantee those were the first M&M cookies baked in the region. MMMMMM, delicious dough, too.

My host borther, Dany, crossing a small landslide on a small road. Lots of landslides make things a little dangerous.

Some Andean Terraces up the hill that we are restoring. To make the restoration complete we need to plant something...

Fellow Yauyos PCV, Sarah, posing with a model of trash recepticales that her town´s schools are getting.

My first and only trout caught in Yauyos. Fishing in a lake is much different than the river. My host brother caught 11 and my host dad 9...i just need a little more practice.

Working with my community on the Terrace restoration.

Happy New Decade!

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…

After a three-month hiatus from blogging, I’ve re-entered the blogosphere from the Southern Hemisphere. MUCH has happened during this time, much more than I’ll be able to say in this blog. I’ll put some highlights up here and I promise (maybe I should have made this a new year’s resolution?) to update this my blog often.

1. On November 28 I completed one year as a Peace Corps Volunteer! This is a big milestone for many reasons, including the fact that I’m over halfway done in Peru. It is scary and exciting because now I’m counting down days instead of up, but I fear that I won’t have time to accomplish all that I want to here in Tomas.

2. The Peruvian school year ended. Surprisingly, that was not my doing, but it does mean that I made it through an entire school year of English club, helping with science classes when teachers weren’t around (essential I am my town’s substitute teacher), and doing a few other projects such as making micro landfills and working with students in our tree nursery.

3. I’m a Padrino! No, I didn’t agree to take responsibility of a Peruvian child as their godfather (although I am asked to do that a lot). Rather, my niece, Elsa Jean Lee, was baptized on December 27^th, 2009, while I was home visiting over the holidays and I was given the honor of being godfather. In case you’re wondering, she is super cute and a ton of fun. Luckily, she’s more like her mom than her dad…

4. I visited one of my favorite places on Earth, MINNESOTA! (it really was Mjnnesota nice) I was home for 12 days over Christmas and New Year’s, which was a great time. I got to see almost all my family and many friends. The time went REALLY fast, but it was well worth the trip to the States to be back to my own holiday traditions. If you are reading this blog from the USA, remember how fortunate you are to live where you do. Peru is an amazing place that I highly recommend visiting and experiencing for yourself; although we have SO many opportunities and comforts in the states we really are lucky.

Those are the big events, although daily life continues to be busy and always full of adventure. Recently, since there are no classes and it rains every day, this is what I’ve been up to. I’ve been teaching a new set of English classes, this time to anyone who wants to come, not just students.We are working of planting some 4,000 trees, which involves finding places to plant and people to do the work. We are starting compost piles with a few individual families, and I’m even learning the tricks to cultivating potatoes (hard work, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise!)

I promise it won’t be another three months in between blog updates! Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Peace and Happy New Decade, Jared

And for you viewing enjoyment...

This is my families dog, King Kong, climbing into the sink to look for food scraps. He only goes in there when he thinks nobody is looking. Unfortunately for him, I caught him from my balcony.

Heather and I on our first official date. Ice skating in Rice Park, St. Paul.

Who's excited about being and Uncle/Godfather? This guy!

A teacher in my town: "Yared, can you be Santa to pass out these gifts?"

Me: "why don't we have a fat person play Santa?"

Teacher: "Because Santa is white."

Honestly, how can I go against that logic?

My family's new puppy, Oso (means bear), which I convinced my family to keep because he is SO cute.

Some other PCVs and I on top of Volcan Misit, a volcano 19,119 feet above sea level, which we climbed the day after Thanksgiving. It was tough, but a worth it.

This picture is the kindergarten graduation. I took their pictures. For some reason, if you put gowns on a 5 year olds, they behave like little angels!

The primary school kids took formation for Tomas' anniversary party on October 16th.