Although I´m in an internet cafe in Ayabaca, I cannot seem to login to my email account. Hotmail is experiencing difficulties. I don´t think it´s the computers because Brian can get into his. Thus, I sadly cannot contact any of you. I´ll have to wait until we go to Piura.
Also, some wonderful soul tried to call us in Sicchez this week, but was not able to get through for the second call-back. If it is cloudy all day, the phone line usually goes out as it´s powered by a solar battery. Thus, we waited for the call-back to no avail. But thanks for trying!!!
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thanks, mudslide!!
So here´s the story of the day....
It´s the rainy season as we all know. On Tuesday, Brian and I tried to take a two-hour bus ride to the nearest town to shop for veggies and use the internet. Attempt one failed ultimately because of a strike - it never showed up. No prob, we stayed home for the day and popped in a movie. Attempt two, today, started out hopeful. We made it about 40 min on the bus before a large mud slide blocked us from continuing. Turning around (PROPS to the very safe and accomplished bus driver), we head back to Sicchez only to find ourselves blocked again by a large tree that had just fallen onto the road. So, out we go and walk back to Sicchez (not far). Determined to contact our loved ones, we decide to go to a different town. We walk the 5 hour unrelenting steep trail up to Ayabaca, drizzling rain, clothes drenched (although not cold) and here we finally are, satiated and happily typing away. But, thanks to the mud slide we have decided that the exercise up to Ayabaca is great and we´re never going to take the bus for a day trip again. It´s Ayabaca from here on out. And in the dry season we can ride our bikes up! Happy endings all around!
Thanks for your comments, it´s great to know you´re all reading the blog.
In response to one of the comments...We are excited to hear that some RPCV´s are going to come up to our neck of the woods, especially a couple! We would love if you two could come visit us in Sicchez!!!!!
It´s the rainy season as we all know. On Tuesday, Brian and I tried to take a two-hour bus ride to the nearest town to shop for veggies and use the internet. Attempt one failed ultimately because of a strike - it never showed up. No prob, we stayed home for the day and popped in a movie. Attempt two, today, started out hopeful. We made it about 40 min on the bus before a large mud slide blocked us from continuing. Turning around (PROPS to the very safe and accomplished bus driver), we head back to Sicchez only to find ourselves blocked again by a large tree that had just fallen onto the road. So, out we go and walk back to Sicchez (not far). Determined to contact our loved ones, we decide to go to a different town. We walk the 5 hour unrelenting steep trail up to Ayabaca, drizzling rain, clothes drenched (although not cold) and here we finally are, satiated and happily typing away. But, thanks to the mud slide we have decided that the exercise up to Ayabaca is great and we´re never going to take the bus for a day trip again. It´s Ayabaca from here on out. And in the dry season we can ride our bikes up! Happy endings all around!
Thanks for your comments, it´s great to know you´re all reading the blog.
In response to one of the comments...We are excited to hear that some RPCV´s are going to come up to our neck of the woods, especially a couple! We would love if you two could come visit us in Sicchez!!!!!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Pics---Wheeee!!!
Our compost pile... and those stylish mud-barrier boots that I wear everyday. Brian isn´t ready to take on this fashion statement yet. Don´t worry Karen, I think this style will hit the U.S. next year.
Brian giving a training on how to properly dispose of vaccination needles (no, throwing them in a 2-ft. hole out back probably isn´t the best recourse).
Eating dinner with people from the health center.
The tree nursery in Sicchez (a reforestation project).
Can you find our town?? Carmen SanDiego isn´t there.
How we dry our socks.
Mommies and babies at one of our classes at the health center.
The nurse, Brian, and I giving a class to the mommies about balanced diets. I´m cooking, Brian´s doing the talking.Month Number 2 and Kickin´
Greetings lovely friends and family!! From the sporadic communication we’re able to have with you, it sounds like the world up in the Northern Hemisphere is chiming along. In spite of frequent bouts of homesickness, Brian and I are chiming along too. We have lots of laughs and are grateful to be sharing this experience together. Life down here generally pulses at a much slower rate (especially in the rainy season), so we have to be a lot more patient with what we consider ¨progress¨. This is both beautiful and difficult for a person from the U.S. who is used to pounding out tasks one after the other. A good analogy would be to take 2 full hours to continually eat just one apple. There is a lot to be savored, and even a kind of meditation to slowing life down so much, but it takes a lot of discipline to change in such a way. For well-adjusted and happy people, we sure are learning a lot about things we thought we had already figured out about ourselves!
Here´s the skinny on some aspects of our unfolding life in Sicchez:
Rainy Season: Yeah, wet, wet, wet. Sometimes I have to try and convince myself that I´m still on the same planet, and when I do believe that, I marvel at the diversity that our beautiful Earth supports. Technically, we are in a semi- tropical cloud forest (a sub-tropical dry forest is below us). Right now, it mostly rains in the afternoons and through the night. Most mornings are cloudy and sometimes the sun peeks through for a few hours. They say in Feb/March the rain goes pretty much all day with more force. I have to admit, clouds and rain make things very peaceful. Our laundry takes about 5 days to dry (no exaggeration), which necessitated a ¨Laundry Strategy Plan¨ in which we wash little by little every few days so that there is always something dry. Even when clothes are dry, they have this wet feeling to them. One day, after a very graceful fall in the mud, Brian hung his backpack up to dry after washing it. The next day it had algae growing on it. And paper doesn´t ¨crumble¨ when you roll it up, it ¨whispers¨. If I don´t guard the Orbitz gum my dear mother so dutifully sends me in a double-plastic-protection set-up, it gets gooey and gummy in the wrapper. And mud!! Lots and lots of mud, as the soil here is pure clay. We wear these golashes everywhere with our pants tucked into them. To my surprise and amusement, Brian is actually very fashion conscious about wearing his boots. He won´t wear them much around town because he says he looks like he´s about to go fishing. I wear mine everywhere with Siccheñan pride.
Home:
We finally laid concrete in our room (good-bye fleas!!!!!!) and, not surprisingly, are waiting for it to dry. It´s been a week. Family situation´s great – we love them lots. We are rearing to go out into the fields and help the men of the family work. Right now they´re doing a lot of planting because the seeds germinate well in the rain (banana, coffee, yucca, corn, and grass for the cows). I´ve been repeatedly told that I just CAN´T do the work because I´m a woman. And they don´t say it in a demeaning way, it´s like they´re telling me that I have brown hair. They just really don´t think I can do it. So one day we went to help them build a fence around one of their fields and I pretty much just watched. I figure that each time I go out, I´ll do a little bit more work. Hopefully, by the end of two years, they´ll be letting me dig, plant, haul, and harvest. I understand that letting a woman do these things is a huge cultural adjustment for them – something which I now understand is very, very difficult to change.
Work:
We are incredibly lucky to be living in a pueblo with visionary leadership. They want their town to become a center of organic agriculture of fruit, coffee, and sugar. The mayor is very adamant that we work with the environmental techs at the municipality on environmental consciousness and education not only for youth but for adults as well. This includes soil conservation, environmental management, biodiversity, and reforestation. Although the town is headed in the right direction, we still see a lot of harmful land use practices and contradictions. There isn´t always good communication between the leaders in the community and the general population. Hence our job! The techs are also excited for Brian and I to start on a municipal and community solid waste management program. Right now they burn or just throw their trash wherever. We´ll help them to construct mini-landfills, start composting their organic waste (80% of their trash), and hopefully set up a recycling system. When school starts again (March), we want to start clean-up campaigns and contests with the kiddos to start getting people aware of the issue.
On the health side we will mostly be working on nutrition. Chronic malnutrition is a real problem here – over half of the child population. Right now, we give monthly classes to mothers who come to the health center about balanced diets. Behind the health center we are starting a garden and have a few compost piles going. Six months from now we hope to use the garden to teach about nutrition. A little further down the road, if our garden is successful, we’re going to start a family garden project. Interested families will attend a series of classes about gardening and nutrition. At the end of the classes, we will help them to start their own with seeds donated by Cuerpo de Paz.
Other than that, we’ve started teaching two English classes – one for youth and one for adults. We’re going to start an adult computation class in Feb. to help catch them up on basic computer skills. As you’ve noticed, Sicchez is in desperate need of a major technology update. The classes are a good way to get to know people and – little do they know – a great way to subliminally, or liminally, hook them into our projects. Actually, the kiddos love the class (we have 28) and are very well behaved. It feels really good to interact with them and get some good fresh ¨teaching moments¨.
If you´ve persevered through this, thank you!! Once a month updates are hard to condense. We love you all lots!!!
Here´s the skinny on some aspects of our unfolding life in Sicchez:
Rainy Season: Yeah, wet, wet, wet. Sometimes I have to try and convince myself that I´m still on the same planet, and when I do believe that, I marvel at the diversity that our beautiful Earth supports. Technically, we are in a semi- tropical cloud forest (a sub-tropical dry forest is below us). Right now, it mostly rains in the afternoons and through the night. Most mornings are cloudy and sometimes the sun peeks through for a few hours. They say in Feb/March the rain goes pretty much all day with more force. I have to admit, clouds and rain make things very peaceful. Our laundry takes about 5 days to dry (no exaggeration), which necessitated a ¨Laundry Strategy Plan¨ in which we wash little by little every few days so that there is always something dry. Even when clothes are dry, they have this wet feeling to them. One day, after a very graceful fall in the mud, Brian hung his backpack up to dry after washing it. The next day it had algae growing on it. And paper doesn´t ¨crumble¨ when you roll it up, it ¨whispers¨. If I don´t guard the Orbitz gum my dear mother so dutifully sends me in a double-plastic-protection set-up, it gets gooey and gummy in the wrapper. And mud!! Lots and lots of mud, as the soil here is pure clay. We wear these golashes everywhere with our pants tucked into them. To my surprise and amusement, Brian is actually very fashion conscious about wearing his boots. He won´t wear them much around town because he says he looks like he´s about to go fishing. I wear mine everywhere with Siccheñan pride.
Home:
We finally laid concrete in our room (good-bye fleas!!!!!!) and, not surprisingly, are waiting for it to dry. It´s been a week. Family situation´s great – we love them lots. We are rearing to go out into the fields and help the men of the family work. Right now they´re doing a lot of planting because the seeds germinate well in the rain (banana, coffee, yucca, corn, and grass for the cows). I´ve been repeatedly told that I just CAN´T do the work because I´m a woman. And they don´t say it in a demeaning way, it´s like they´re telling me that I have brown hair. They just really don´t think I can do it. So one day we went to help them build a fence around one of their fields and I pretty much just watched. I figure that each time I go out, I´ll do a little bit more work. Hopefully, by the end of two years, they´ll be letting me dig, plant, haul, and harvest. I understand that letting a woman do these things is a huge cultural adjustment for them – something which I now understand is very, very difficult to change.
Work:
We are incredibly lucky to be living in a pueblo with visionary leadership. They want their town to become a center of organic agriculture of fruit, coffee, and sugar. The mayor is very adamant that we work with the environmental techs at the municipality on environmental consciousness and education not only for youth but for adults as well. This includes soil conservation, environmental management, biodiversity, and reforestation. Although the town is headed in the right direction, we still see a lot of harmful land use practices and contradictions. There isn´t always good communication between the leaders in the community and the general population. Hence our job! The techs are also excited for Brian and I to start on a municipal and community solid waste management program. Right now they burn or just throw their trash wherever. We´ll help them to construct mini-landfills, start composting their organic waste (80% of their trash), and hopefully set up a recycling system. When school starts again (March), we want to start clean-up campaigns and contests with the kiddos to start getting people aware of the issue.
On the health side we will mostly be working on nutrition. Chronic malnutrition is a real problem here – over half of the child population. Right now, we give monthly classes to mothers who come to the health center about balanced diets. Behind the health center we are starting a garden and have a few compost piles going. Six months from now we hope to use the garden to teach about nutrition. A little further down the road, if our garden is successful, we’re going to start a family garden project. Interested families will attend a series of classes about gardening and nutrition. At the end of the classes, we will help them to start their own with seeds donated by Cuerpo de Paz.
Other than that, we’ve started teaching two English classes – one for youth and one for adults. We’re going to start an adult computation class in Feb. to help catch them up on basic computer skills. As you’ve noticed, Sicchez is in desperate need of a major technology update. The classes are a good way to get to know people and – little do they know – a great way to subliminally, or liminally, hook them into our projects. Actually, the kiddos love the class (we have 28) and are very well behaved. It feels really good to interact with them and get some good fresh ¨teaching moments¨.
If you´ve persevered through this, thank you!! Once a month updates are hard to condense. We love you all lots!!!
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