Reality is how you percieve it

Since our first volunteer for this year arrived yesterday, and seeing his reactions to everything he saw, I've been realising how much reality is what we perceive.

As the main idea of the volunteer project is cultural exchange, Maria and I decided to take Simone to have a typical Peruvian breakfast. We went to the famous restaurant "Elmer", El Mercado (The Market), to eat caldo de cabeza and caldo de panza, i.e. a broth containing either a cow's stomach or a goat's head. Other options are with chicken of pork feet. I must admit it's not (yet) my favourite food, but I can eat it without cringing. Obviously the poor guy was horrified and took tons of pictures but didn't even taste the food.

We then drove from Cusco to Huycho, the community where he is living and volunteering. While driving away from Cusco there is a view of the city and surrounding mountains which--to me--is gorgeous. So of course I froze when Simone said Cusco is built with no order and looks like a shanty town (un buon torinese abituato a una citta' perfettamente quadrata...). What is he going to think about Pilcopata, which actually does look like a slum, with most houses made of tin or wood and no paved roads at all? I was a bit worried, but today I talked on the phone with a friend who's worked in Africa twice, and she said to me: "It's his first experience, he's supposed to hate it! Or at least let his first week be hard, or he'll go back talking about all the virtues of poverty" (like so many people who clearly have never experienced it do!). She's right.

In a way he reminds me of myself the first time I arrived in Nicaragua, when I was 19 and absolutely shocked to realise that most people don't have their own bed, that in most houses there aren't enough chairs, or clothes, or food. Again I wander if I've become numb to poverty, because I think Simone's host family is well-off. The house is 2 floors and partly made of bricks, they have a bathroom with shower and hot water, and a little shop attached to the house. They have pigs, chickens and cuys, and three kids in (extremely cheap) private schools... And part of the house is made of mud bricks, the two youngest kids share the same bed and the oldest daughter's bed has no mattress. They have few chairs so they have to sit on old wooden stools or cut tree trunks, the paint is coming off the walls and I'm absolutely not sure they actually use their bathroom (water is expensive). And the father can't work because of a horrible car accident he had a few months ago. I hope Simone will realise his help working in their house and fields is really useful.

When I was in Nicaragua everything shocked me, I had a journal where I used to write down everything, all the details I don't even notice now, about people's houses, jobs, clothes, habits. On the Friday of my first week of work at Las Hormiguitas, the crentre for children street vendors in Matagalpa, I walked a little girl home. As I walked on the dirt road up to her house I kept thinking "I don't think I'm ready for what I'm about to see", and I wasn't. I was shocked to see their house. A solid brick house with a patio, matresses to sleep on, a table and TV. What was so shocking to me about the woman living there with her 6 kids and one grandkid? Now I can't place my finger on it, nor I can explain why I started crying when a few days earlier I had seen one of her sons split my sandwich in half to share it with his brother. Those experiences marked me so deeply I still remember all the details after 4 years. So how come I thought nothing of Alicia's wooden house with 2 beds for 4 people in Pilcopata? Maybe I have developed a sort of sarcastic coping attitude, or I've simply realised I'm not gonna change the world, maybe my parents were right insisting I get my masters before dedicating my life to starving kids in Nicaragua. Does education bring detatchement?

Everything was new then, and I adapted incredibly well, so much that I ended up losing touch with "my" reality, thinking I could live there for the rest of my life, showering out of a bucket and dating an illitterate guy who's job with the truck delivering water to houses doesn't even exist in my world. In the past 4 years I've changed enough to know that I am just about as spoiled as you can get, and I can do this kind of work because I live in a gorgeous house in the centre of Cusco with all conforts. I understand the reality surrounding me more than I did in Nicaragua (or in Tanzania--where I wondered around cluelessly for 3 months understanding absolutely nothing), and I have a better idea of what I want in my work and life. This keeps me from the dangers of bricheros or of wanting to live the life of the priest in the City of Joy, but for the same reasons it gets much more lonely than it did in Nicaragua.

Tonight there is reason to celebrate...another organization responded and is interested in forming a partnership (that makes a total of 4, which if they work out would bring us lots of volunteers!), and the English version of our website is ready. Check it out (and let me know what you think)!
www.comunidades-unidas.org

Live cuys and potatoes

As I waslked over the bridge leading to the community of Huycho, carring a bag containing 5 live cuys in each hand, a woman wearing the traditional Andean top hat and blue skirt stopped me to ask if I'd bought cuys. It must be a funny sight, a gringa carrying live cuyes. I told her--no, the cuys are Rosa's--my host the previous night. I had accompanied her to the market and now I was helping her carry her things up to her house. The woman asked me what I was doing there, and I told her about our volunteer project. She asked me if we could send volunteers to her community, and I told her our project is just starting, but if we get more volunteers we'll expand. I walked up to Rosa's house with the cuys, back with an empty wheelbarrow and up again carrying carrots, beans, chicken feet, and chicha (a drink made fermenting different vegetables).

Later, as I was having lunch, Rosa's daughter Amelie came to say there was a woman looking for me. I went to the door and Asunta, the woman from the bridge, was there with her daughter. I was going to tell her I can't do anything for her, when I had an idea. She told me she is part of a cooperative making crafts, so I thought volunteers can visit her community over a weekend, spend the night there (they said they can have a bonfire) and learn about Andean craft-making traditions, and buy their products as gifts to bring back home. I need to go and visit her community first, but I think it would be interesting for volunteers, and maybe we can sell their products on our website too!

Together with the volunteer project, we are working on a development project for women in the district of Huayllabamba. There are abandoned houses on the road of the Valley circuit, where about every tourist who comes to Peru passes. The previous Mayor of Huayllabamba had built them for a craft market, which failed because there are other internationally renouned artesan markets on the circuit. Now the houses are abandoned but still in good conditions. Maria's idea is to have an Andean product tasting market. Local women would be given microcredit loans and be taught about microfinance, cooking and nutrition by specialists. They would rotate weekly and sell food to tourists: an entrance fee would be charged to go and taste the different types of Andean potato and potato products (cakes, etc), corn and other foods from this region. Food would also be on sale if, say, you tasted a food and wanted to buy more to eat on the spot or take away.

The mayor of Huayllabamba is enthusiastic about the project but expects us to do everything. Yesterday we talked with an economist who specializes in drafting budget plans for all sorts of projects and he told me all the steps we need to go through. Monday I will talk to the Mayor again so we can get the project going and hopefully have it running by the Northern hemisphere summer, the highest tourist season. In March there will be meetings to distribute milk to women in the communities, and before the meetings we'll talk about the project and see what reactions we get.

I don't know how much this is a grassroots project, as the idea is not coming from the village women, but from a wealthy and educated woman from Cusco, and developed by a relatively clueless gringa (that would be me). On the other hand if an individual is very entrepreneurial and rich of initiative s/he is probably not "the poorest", and also it's much easier to have ideas if you're higly educated in education systems encouraging critical thinking, you've travelled the world, talked to different people and been exposed to all sorts of environments, like Maria and myself.

The main problem, as always, is the funding. Apparently (and obviously) Huayllabamba is not considered the poorest area of the Sacred Valley, which will make it harder to obtain funds, but this is the International year of the Potato, as initially suggested by Peru, and I am going to ask for funding from the FAO for a potato project in Peru...

Random thoughts

Sitting in a tiny internet cafe in Yucay, in the Sacred Valley, I am happy I came to Peru, happy the Mayor of the 5 communities in enthusiastic about having volunteers and about setting up a project for women to sell Andean foods to tourists, happy because I am surrounded by beautiful mountains and wonderful people. It's exactly the opposite from what you'd expect: people in the mountains are very friendly, greet me as I walk in the streets, they ask me about what I'm doing here and want to be part of the project. In the jungle when i say hi they simply stare, when I talk about the project they say ok I'll think about it. I am generalising of course, but the different nature of the mountain vs. jungle people is not my personal opinion, or at least it is shared by many Peruvians.

Since I arrived I've been thinking about the amazing women I've lived with during my time in Latin America, and about my friendship with them and with their maids. Karla, my Nica host mom, is an incredibly strong and intelligent woman, who was supporting 3 kids alone, and while the entire country is going to hell is building a huge extension to her house. Mercedes, her maid and my best friend in Nicaragua, is now pregnant and living in Costa Rica illegally, with her husband who is working in a flower plantation.
Maricarmen is another brilliant woman, who was lucky enough to marry a man who coud finance her project, and now is managing a travel agency, an NGO, and a number of construction projects and pieces of land. Her maid in Cusco, Anna, lived in Italy for 3 years illegally, working as a maid, and then came back out of desperation for her son she'd left here. With the money she'd earned there she built her house here, where she lives now with her mom, her husband, her son, and a daughter they had after she came back. Maria's maid in Pilcopata, Alicia, ran away from her home in Paucartambo (3 hours from Pilco during the dry season) after her brother beat her up for the last time, and escaped to Pilcopata. She was 17 and had barely been out of her house and never out of her parents' sight. She went to Pilco with a friend, began to work in the fields (as she'd been doing her whole life) and now has two daughters of 7 and 5.

I need to go meet my hosts for the night, they are going to kill and roast a cuy for me tonight! (cuy=cavia peruviana). But a note about my real reason for coming to Peru, as Stefano suggests--it's not worth it: coca leaves taste disgusting! I tried to chew a few the other day and I had to spit them out immediately...plus they make your mouth numb! Also, I heard rumors about leaf-smuggling aborad from a community near the ones where we work. Apparently most men in the area have been offered multiple times to carry leaves, and when I asked how much they would get paid for it I got a vague answer of--depends on what you do. Scary. Watch "Maria llena de gracia" (Maria full of grade), it's one of my favorite movies, about smuggling cocaine into the US.

Jungle memories and work plans

After the ordeal of a 13-hour bus ride back to Cusco (with 2 flat tires, a broken piece of bus, and 3 stretches on foot because the road was full of landslides and rivers) I am back! Back in a chilly office, wearing a sweater and poncho on top, drinking hot tea to keep warm...and I love it! I love clean feet and no insects, nice hair not curled by the humidity, and the lack of small-town drama which permeates everything in Pilcopata--I am hopelessly a city/mountain girl. It's interesting how adaptable humans are, and yet how we love what we know.

I have lots of work to do, 2 partnerships working out with English organizations, going to the Valley for 3 days tomorrow, Simone (my first volunteer) coming Sunday, all the info to prepare for the NGO website in 3 languages--it's almost ready :)

Great live news: one of the project's we're going to partner with is an English organization linking volunteers to 3 NGOs, one in Cambodia, one in South Africa, and one in Bolivia (and hopefully us). The coordinator of the Bolivia project just emailed me and she turns out to be Italian! She's going to visit us at the end of March, see the project in the Sacred Valley, and travel to Pilcopata with me and Simone on April 4 to see the projects in the jungle...exciting!

Here are some pictures, and hopefully I'll have some time later for some stories from the jungle...

The Jungle

My jungle baptism

Yesterday I came back from the most amazing trip. Monday morning Maricarmen, her son Noicolay, myself, a guide Miguel, and a local family who works for Maria (Americo, Alicia and their daughters Kaitlyn and Vivanda) left Pilcopata in Maria's wooden motorboat--all pictures coming on Sunday, when I'll be back in Cusco. We went down the river all morning, with gorgeous jungle landscapes on the river banks, and thankfully Americo and Miguel who knew the ways 'cos otherwise it's impossible to tell one river from the next. At times we had to get off the boat and push it because the rivers are very shallow (they are not navigable dwith such big boats during the dry season). The boat ride there is dedicated to Lorenzo (he knows why--and his technique was not applied, but almost!)

We reached Palotoa, an indigenous Machichenga community, around 1 pm, and they offered us their school to sleep and cook. In my infinite naivity at first I could hardly imagine how the native must feel, living in their wooden houses, with no electricity, getting water from the river, and living in the middle of the jungle. After spending a few hours there, eating lunch, making juice with the coconas (fruits that look like kakis and taste like lemons) they gave me, swimming in the river, and watching the boys playing soccer, I was wandering what better childhood can a child have. Most people in Palotoa have studies and have been to Lima and Cusco many times, but about 80% return. Understandably.

That night we slept in the school, and it poured rain like I've never seen. The next morning we went upstream by boat for another hour and reached a hotel they build with funds from Manu National Park for sustainable "pro-poor tourism" (this is the politically correct name these days for locally-run tourism benefiting local communities). The hotel is beautiful and so is the place. The natives went fishing and caught 12 huge fish, with which we made a soup for lunch. In the soup you boil the head and tail--and for all the Americans disgusted at teh sight of a fish's head: they made me eat it, saying it's the best part, and I have to admit it tastes good.
In the afternoon we went for a walk in the jungle and we saw two red birds with long tails dancing; then we bathed in the river. At night we ate the fish's bodies: the best I've had in my life, with local yucca (a type of potato). As I provide the western tourist's point of view I got to go on all the the jungle walks, and talk to all the community leaders with Maricarmen, to give them suggestions on how to operate their sustainable tours. And for the advice I was able to give I can only thank my parents for all the travelling I've done, hotels I've seen and tours I've been on.

Yesterday morning we walked in the jungle from the hotel back to Palotoa (a 2 hour walk), on which I saw all sorts of gorgeus plants, flowers, and huge butterflies with eyes on their wings (I didn't think they really existed...). Then we came back to Pilcopata by boat and I could not believe my luck in landing this job (it will cost tourists over $100/day to travel to Palotoa). I was lying on the boat in the sun, enjoying the landscape, and talking to Maricarmen about how I could live this jungle life for a while, completely removed from the world, fishing, growing yucca, bathing in the river. She told me about how she worked in communities in the jungle with the priest from Pilcopata for 4 years, she wanted to go and live the easy life in the jungle and the father told her that couldn't be her life, she'd have to work hard during her life, for herself and others. I think the same is true for me. On our way we stopped at an island in the middle of the river, where bananas were growing, and picked 2 bunches (about 200 bananas), then we stopped to try to fish with dynamite in a lagoon (you make the explosive go off under water and it kills the fish around it), but they caught no fish.

We got back to Pilcopata last night, and I don't like it. It will be interesting to work here, but it's not city and it's not jungle--and the bugs are eating me alive. Back to Cusco on Saturday!

200 Km to a different world

Yesterday morning Maricarmen, Nicolay and I took the bus to Pilcopata, our jungle headquarters, capital of the district of Kosñipata, and one of the main doorways to Manu national park. Most of Maria's family lives here: her parents, 2 brothers with wives and kids, aunts, ouncles, etc.
The distance between Cusco and Pilco il 200 km, or 9 hours by bus (because we were lucky). We left at 9 am and by 10:30 I was seriously worried for my life. The landscape is beautiful but the road makes Tanzanian country roads look like highways: entirely unpaved, narrow, windy, carved in the mountain, which during the rain season means you cross a number of rivers and ponds, and pray you don't meet too many trucks coming the other way. At one point we all had to get off the bus for safety because we were crossing a huge muddy pond. Maricarmen was telling me about how once she came with a group of Spanish tourists who were literally crying the entire way. Finally I relaxed and fell asleep, only to be awaken by people shouting "Está cayendo!" (It's falling!)--the mountain, clearly. Some people wanted to get off the bus, but the majority convinced the driver to pass quickly before too much of the mountain fell and blocked our way. And my favourite part of the drive was when a waterfall had formed crossing the road and we drove under it, with the driver tellnig everyone to sit on the left side of the bus to balance it out.
(Now that my parents are probably about to pass out picturing me in that bus, I can tell you I won't be taking that road again during the rain season, so by next time I come to Pilcopata it should have improved significantly).

The jungle is goprgeous, the vegetation amazing. It is significantly poorer that the Valley, mainly because here they only produce fruit and have to import everything else, while there they produce food staples like potatoes and corn. Maria has this brilliant idea, and here's what we are planning to do (if there is local interest and funding): work with the poorest women in the jungle communities and give them microcredit loans to set up a fruit market in the main square of Pilcopata. Most tourists going to Manu national park stop by here, so it would be great to have stalls with all the different fruits with names and all (since you've never seen most of them), and sell juices, jams, fruit cakes, and the fruits themselves. We're planning to do something similar in the Valley with Andean products.

There is a coulpe, Alicia and Americo, who work closely with Maria here, taking care of her house and building the volunteer housing--which is looking great and hopefully it will be ready by April when 4 volunteers will be here. Americo took me by motorcycle to meet some people who live deep in the jungle in wooden houses (one room for people, animals, cooking, sleeping and washing, the river to bathe), to see if they would be suitable for volunteers. It would be interesting if the volunteers worked with them on the farm, but if I plan for the volunteers to survive I don't think they can live there...

We also met the priest, the guy in the shorts and baseball cap. Very different from the Italian idea of a priest. He's quite young and has just arrived here a couple month ago, and he is very active and interested in working with us on the project for women and in setting up an after-school program for kids. He'll start telling people about the project so when we come in April we can start.

In the afternoon I went with Maricarmen by motorcycle to Patria, 8 km from here. We visited her aunt, a little old lady with only one hand, who raised all her grandkids because her kids lived in Japan. She grows coca and was drying some to sell, and showed me her orchard. Her niece thought the automatic association between the coca plant and cocaine hilarious. Most people in these communities grow coca, it's a small plant about 1 m tall, and the leaves need to be handpicked and dried in the sun the next day. If they are not dried properly they become black and cannot be sold. It is then used for tea and as a medicinal plant. It takes various kilos of coca leaves to make 1 gram of cocaine. If you try to fly to the US or Europe with coca leaves you'll be stopped immediately, but if it weren't for cocaine it would be one of the most effective and widely used medicinal plants.

It's going to be harder to work in the jungle than in the Valley, because people are less organised and less eager to receive volunteers. Possibly because in the Valley they've seen tons of volunteers and NGO projects while here there are none.

I like it here but I had sensed right when I thought I wouldn't come to Peru to spend a year in Pilco: mountains, cold weather, and the city of Cusco are more for me. I'll download pictures as soon as I can (today my bag fell in the river and the camera got soaked, thankfully it still works!)

PRA: Making Dr. Hall Proud

If you'd asked me 6 months ago I would have told you rural development was not my thing. Obsessive city girl as I am (who wouldn't be after 4 years in NH...), I recognized that many of the urban development issues wouldn't exist if rural areas had basic infrastructure and services, but I wouldn't have wanted to (live) work in a rural area. Maybe I found the perfect solution: living in Cusco, and working in the Valley, reaching out to the heart of Peru, communities where no NGO or project exists, and where the reputation of drunks and troublemakers is not (yet) attached to volunteers.

Today I went to 3 communities in the Valley where we work: Huycho, Huayocari and Huayllabamba. I went alone by bus and I walked I don't know how many kilometers but my legs are hurting like hell (and now I've been sitting for 3 hours).

I went with 2 things in mind, 1) Maricarmen's advice: talk to people, because if you do they are friendly and if you don't they'll think you're a weird foreigner; and

2) Dr. Hall's drillings on Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) techniques for rural development. They like to make us think "development" is a "discipline", so they come up with names, and of course acronymes 'cos the anglophones can't live without, for things that are quite obvious to any illitterate farmer (but for some reason not to the plurigraduated foreigners trying to "develop them"). But I digress... PRA basically means: go to the rural communities, ask the people (not the local authorities) what they need, and have them do it. Try to figure out if they're telling you what they really want and not what they think you want to hear, and try to hear the voices of the most marginilised (i.e. women, minorities, the poorets, etc).

Maricarmen woke me up at 5:40 am and I still don't have it in me to get up that early, but I'm gonna have to get used to it. She took me to the bus station and I got on a bus to Huycho.

I walked to Simone's future host family talking to everyone on the way to see their house better and tell them more about hosting a volunteer, and to get to know the community a bit. With the excuse to ask for directions I started chatting and introduced myself and the project to lots of people. The woman of the house, Rosita, was in Cusco today so we didn't meet, but her husband let me in an dshowed me the house, and their 2 youngest kids Alexandra and Fernan showed me around the community. We went to their grandma's house--too bad I couldn't communicate with her 'cos we don't have a common language...I really need to learn some Quechua! Simone will be working in the fields there and in construction in the neighbouring community of Huayocari--there's is a ton of work to do.

Then I walked to Huayocari and my impression this time was much better, I think we can place volunteers there too. Right now there is no school because of vacation in Peru, but as I walked into Huayocari's primary school a class of kids without teacher starte pointing and yelling at me "Profe, profe!"...which quickly changed to "gringuita" as they took a closer look at me! I asked them where the director was and they pointed to another room across the courtyard. I introduced myself to the director and a few teachers, and they are all enthusiastic about receiving volunteers and they'll also help me find host famlies. The kids were incredibly friendly and excited to have me take their picture.

I walked up to Maria's land and there found Freddy and Onorio working, and Onorio's wife Julia and their 5 kids. Cute, dirty, ragged, shy, sweet, whose growth has been stunned by eating barely potatoes and hiking 1 hour up and down from their house to school every day.
On my way back down to the highway I socialised with a man carrying a huge bag of grass (?) on his back and a woman with two donkeys. I told them I'm going to be working there with volunteers, and my personal version of PRA practiced over and over today: I've only been in Peru for two weeks, so I don't know what projects the volunteers should be doing, you people need to tell me what you want them to do. The woman's name is Lucia, she is 32 and looks 55, lives up the mountain higher than Onorio's house, and wants me to visit her (let me gather my energies...). She has 5 daughers and 1 son between the ages of 15 and 2. How about a volunteer teaching about birth control? Clearly me imposing my western mentality, but probably the idea deserves at least a thought...

I walked to Huayllabamba and was honored to have every single bus and truck driver honk at me. Huayllabamba is definitely richer and bigger than the other communities, paved roads and all. There is the town hall for all 5 communities we work with and others, and the shared priest is ofter there as well. I talked to the mayor's secretary, Miriam, who is about my age and very helpful. She'll help me find host families and set up a meeting with all the community presidents and school directors so I can tell them about the project. Of course as I arrived back in Cusco and told Maricarmen about this she said--no way you'll talk to the community presidents, they'll just try to get money from you and involve you in their dirty politics. She clearly knows PRA without being taught.
The priest is only there from 3 to 5 pm evey day and I didn't want to wait 2 hours for him, so I came back. I took a bus to Urubamba, the distric capital, and on the bus started talking to people again about what they'd want the volunteers to do (with the excuse of askign where the priest lives).

The beginning is easy 'cos as a foreigner I attract people's interest-- but I'm happy I'm not blonde, that would be too much interest! This is the job for me...and it's going really well on the volunteer recruitment side as well: we are forming a partnership with an English org http://www.voluntaryprojectsoverseas.org/ and hopefully with the Italian (now huge and global) org WEP. Also single volunteers are contacting me because they hear about the project through word of mouth...and we are officially an NGO! Our name is Comunidades Unidas / Joint Communities--website coming soon!