¡¡¡Tamales, Tamales, Tamales!!!

It´s harvest time for corn. Here´s a little tamale-making lesson you can try at home....


We peel and pop out the grains one-by-one. They think it´s hilarious that I take so long to pop out corn kernals. But I don´t tell them how many words per minute I can type...

Then they pass the grains through a molina to make a liquidy-dough. That wonderful gentleman lives with us.

Then they mix it with vegetable fat (like crisco), some cilantro, and salt. We live with this beautiful woman as well. She takes such good care of the whole family.

Fill ´em up (no strings to tie them, just folded).

Happy chamba. When the tamales are ready, they steam them for an hour or so. Then the finger lickin begins. Mmmmmmmm....

A little dance at a mother´s day celebration at the kindergarten that Elvia (part of our host family) teaches at. Elvia´s wearing my skirt, I´m so proud!!!

We´re still working on our demonstrative garden behind the health center. We´re making this bamboo fence all by ourselves!! Well, Brian definately does the hardest work. We bought some of the bamboo, but the local mommies and some other community members are donating the rest out of the kindness of the hearts so that we can finish the fence and plant sometime within the next two years. We can´t plant until the fence is up because chickens will get in and eat up all the delicious little plants. Next step is to fertilze the soil (naturally of course!!) and make the beds.

We felt so loved, the local mommies at the preschool were bored of sitting around while their kids were in class. So they asked Brian and I to do activities related to exercise and nurtition with them. This little gal is washing her hands getting ready to prepare some balanced meals at one of our classes. There are also three kindergartens within the district that have asked our help in starting school gardens! Yay!!

I can´t figure out who´s cuter, Brian or Nene the dog.

We went out to the fields to watch our family brand their cows. Definately not something I need to see ever again. They heat up the iron over fire, tie up the cows, pull them down and stick ´em. I had to try really hard to mask my sympathy for the cows.

Brian juggling a fresh-picked lime.

That´s me, Mom!!

So we are officially in the season of corn and oranges. Harvest time!! The season of mangoes, chirimoyas (an extremely delicious fruit native to the cloud forests), and other fruits is a distant memory. Here, an agricultural community isolated from markets and general commerce, we basically eat with the seasons (with the unfortunate exception of rice, which seems to make it here no matter what!!) It´s an interesting endeavor, as we begin to experience the incantations of ¨feast or famine¨. Either you are eating something so much that it comes out of your ears, of you have absolutely none of it at all. Tamales, corn-on-the-cob, corn puree, oranges, orange juice, tamales, orange juice, corn puree, oranges, corn-on-the-cob….. Don´t get me wrong, it´s deeeeelicious to eat such fresh, organic food… but without proper planning (storage of harvests and proper growing techniques to maximize harvest in a sustainable manner) and a veggie garden to boot, there can be severe nutritional issues with this type of alimentation. Brian and I cheat, as we haul up food from the city. But that´s a rarity here. And it´s definitely a far cry from the 10-serving spinach salad I used to eat every day (sob!!) A more serious consequence of eating with the seasons is malnutrition. Over 40% of the children under 5 in Sícchez suffer from malnutrition. Hence, Brian´s grand family garden project.

Not surprisingly, we´ve been busy – classic Brian and Angela style. In May, we continued giving nutrition classes to the mommies that come to the health center, teaching environmental ed the elementary and secondary schools, working with two youth groups, teaching two computation classes, working on our demonstration garden, and other odds and ends. But, a lot of it is just kind of more like preliminary work. A way to begin planting mental seeds and getting to know the community. Many of these initial activities will have to give way to our formal projects.

On the subject of formal projects, we just got back from a three-day Peace Corps workshop in Chiclayo which we attended with two people from our community: an agro-tech from the municipality and the nurse from the health center. It was pretty useful, as we now have concrete project plans that we´ll take back to the community to carry out. My counterpart and I developed a plan that focuses on solid waste management and reforestation. Specifically, we are going to train ten families and two authorities in each of the 5 chosen villages to make sanitary mini-landfills and execute local clean-up campaigns with the kids (in 2008). The families must show that they can use landfills correctly and the authorities will be obligated to organize clean-ups on a monthly basis in their respective villages. At this point, the villages don´t have anywhere to throw their trash but in the fields, and there´s a lot of it in every direction (they´re all considered ¨rural¨ which means you get there on food and there are no services). The hope is that in the long-term, local clean-ups will become a habit and that the initial 10 families will be future trainers for other families. I won´t bore you with too many more details, but our plans include monitoring, evaluation, and ways to offer incentives and hold people accountable. In 2009, our work with focus on encouraging people to separate the organics out from their trash and use the resulting compost in their fields. Probably with the same families – or at least the ones who show the most enthusiasm. And if the world continues to turn perfectly, we´ll work with the municipality to formalize a solid waste management plan. An underlying theme within all of the plans is to find leadership within the local youth to monitor and head-up the projects. With respect to reforestation, the idea is to get the local community members more involved in the municipal project that already exists. Ummmm, well, we still have to develop that part of the plan.

Brian´s project is of course family gardens and nutrition with pregnant moms and families with kids under 3 years old. His goal is to intstall 90 by the end of his service, along with accompanying nutritional classes. He´ll also monitor the growth of the babies and kiddos with the families so that they can ensure the little ones are well-fed. (Sorry his section is shorter, but well, he´s not so much into the blog entry thing!)

The numbers and goals seem might small at first glance, but it is foolhardy to think you can incite far-reaching change - especially changes of habit and lifestyle – with everyone. But I´m also one of those who believes that creating peace in even one person reverberates throughout all. And from what I can tell, we are pretty appreciated down here in Sícchez. People respect the outside perspective that we bring, and are eager to see what people from the outside have to offer them. The real challenge is inciting the Sicchenans themselves to become the agents of change within their own community. To abolish the learned helplessness and praternalism that history and human nature have spawned in my community and so many others like it. My true hope is that they will eventually seek what they need on their own, that they´ll innovate and advocate from within.

Foxes, Earth Day, and Peanuts

So, we have this plastic covering on the ceiling of our room so that mud doesn´t fall down from the adobe roof. There´s lots of little animals that like to scurry around on top of the plastic. For about two days, I heard this wierd sound somewhere on the floor of our room. I found this little one. S/he apparently fell from the plastic, because it could barely move. I felt so bad for the little thing, so I moved it into the bushes outside hoping the mommy would find it. When my family found out, they killed it because apparently they like to eat little chickens. They called it a ¨zorro¨, but it is clearly not a fox. So, we have no idea what it is. R.I.P. little one!!

By far the coolest thing to happen in the month of April here in Sicchez, Peru...hearing ¨The Never Ending Story¨ playing over the radio while preparing dinner one fine evening. I know I don´t need to explain how cool that was! We get one Peruvian and one Ecuadorian radio station in Sicchez. Up here in the northern sierra of Peru, there is a very distinct local music, not what most of you would consider ¨Latin American¨ music with rich African beats and horn sections. It´s more like a cross between cumbia and wayno (a type of music very common in the northern and central Peruvian sierra, and no, not the Andean flute genre we generally associate with the Andes). Compared to Central American countries, Peruvian music and dance – especially in the sierra – lacks the soultry, fluid, hip-swiveling qualities. It´s more of an upper-body-stiff, move back and forth, stomp the feet in a complex pattern kind of thing. Locals don´t like salsa or merengue all that much. The best way to describe wayno, as heard by my foriegn ears, is like opening a child´s music box and hearing a high-pitched voice singing along with the music. Okay, maybe a more objective way for you to understand would be to search some sound bytes on the internet. Actually, I´ve gotten pretty good at dancing wayno, and am learning to appreciate the subtle fluctuations in the music.

We taught some Sicchenans how to play charades (spelling??). It was a hoot!! We stayed up until 5 am drinking and dancing, the classic northern sierra style of course!!

Earth Day
We organized an Earth Day celebration with the local kinder, primary and secondary schools. What to say.....we gained a lot of insights and revelations. To start, we held meetings with local authorities (principals, agro-tech for the municipality, govenor, mayor, head of the health center, and others who did not show up) to delegate tasks to help prepare for the event. I held environmental education classes with every grade in both schools for a month leading up to Earth Day to teach the kids about trash, contamination, the ¨network¨of nature, etc. We made signs to carry in a parade with the kiddos and secured donations from the local stores for prizes for a clean-up contest. The day started with a parade around town with all the school kids, their signs, and their modest band. We ended in the main plaza where I gave a broken-language talk on Earth Day and how the kids have the power to affect change, etc, ¿¿what did she say?? Then each grade was assigned a sector of the caserio to pick up trash on the street. Met with great enthusiasm, kids went everywhere – literally everywhere...even the town dump!!! – to collect the most trash in order to win the contest. Selected seniors from the high school (actually, they only go up to 11th grade in Peru) weighed the trash from each grade and selected the winner. We were going to plant lettuce seeds with each class after, but by then the school day was over. Lots of kids stayed around to play volleyball and soccer. I planted seeds with every class during the next couple of days.
The positive aspects of the event: the community knows about Earth Day, some kids are now really motivated to have an environmental club, the streets lookd clean (if at least for a day), the kids are more aware of the trash situation in Sicchez, and Brian and I now know all of the kiddos (who are by far the most fun to work with).


The kindergarten at our Earth Day parade!! So CUTE!

All the kiddos marching around town.

Kiddos waiting to start the cleam-up contest in the Plaza de Armas.

Dedicated youth!!

Sorry for all the pics, I just love these kiddos!

Very proud of thier creative trach-collecting techniques (these guys went to the dump to collect it), some boys pose with their plethora of solid waste.

My host sister is in the pink hat.

One great plesure of Sícchez - making home-made peanut butter from fresh-roasted peanuts grown in a local village. We toast the peanuts in a pan (collecting pools of saliva beneath my mouth as the smell inundates my senses) and put them through a molina to grind them up. Add a tiny bit of oil and salt and the joy begins.

Yes, still rainy. This mud slide occurred about 3 days ago on our way back from visiting another volunteer the next county over (about a 2 hr bus ride). Brian got out and helped them shovel the heavy liquidy mud. It took about 2 hours to make a path big enough for the bus to get by.

The manifestation of love. They have no idea we´re gonna eat ´em.

Last Part, I Swear:

We also completed –YAY!!! – our community diagnostic and presented the data and accompanying conclusions to the authorities. It was really great. We shared a lot of data about health, trash, deforestation, nutrition, living conditions, etc. For example, I did a calculation estimating how many trees Sicchenans cut down every year in the district to frame the problems they have with deforestation. Even the authorities are not accustomed to thinking in quantitative terms, and were taken aback by the numbers. They know there are problems, but don´t really apply the same analytic skills as Westerners tend to use in the problem-solving process. In the end, a lot of people were (are) motivated to work with us to help improve the community.
Some things we learned during the meeting: based upon the skills demonstrated by community members with respect to being proactive in their own development, the purpose of our work here leads to a more hidden realm. If we are to really be of service, we must help develop leadership within the youth, help the local leaders develop systems of accountability, and teach the community how to find and utilize local resources to support projects. They don´t need resources or other people to do things for them. They need to develop their own self-sufficiency. Forever the idealist, I can´t really tell you how Brian and I will actually work in this regard. It´s a lot more ephemeral and harder to define. Part of our answer lies in defining success in smaller bits. If I can create a community-based trash committee that continues to function after I´m gone, and nothing else, I´d be extremely successful. If Brian gets three families with pregnant moms to have functioning, sustainable gardens who eat their vegetables – and the babies are not malnutritioned after three years – he will have acheieved success.

Anyway, if you´re looking for funny stories, lobby Brian to add to the blog. He´s got lots of them and is a hell of a lot funnier person than I am. As you all know, I tend to think too much and as a result you get to read more boring Angela entries. If you really want a funny story, ask Brian about how two roosters outsmarted him! Classic!!