Where Amigo, you go! : I Survived Project Survey!

It is hard to believe that I have already been in Perú for more than two weeks. I have been so insanely busy, now is the first time that I have been able to sit down and blog in ten days!

Last week, from Tuesday to Saturday I was on project survey. During that time I went to my four host communities and spent the night in each in order to get to know the host families and collect information for my volunteers. Some example information that we collect is emergency contact information, community details, information about the schools, etc. My first two communities are out in the San Marcos region, which is about an hour and a half combi (15 passenger van) ride. Once I got to San Marcos I then had to walk about 3 hours uphill to reach my first community. I will be doing this walk weekly from here on out. The views make the walk worth it, but the blisters were rough. I have never seen mountains and rolling hills so vast before. My first community is called Illuca. There are two host families in this community. The first one owns a little store and has 7 kids. That Vol is in for a lot of soccer and games with all the little kids. The second host family is a woman, her husband and their two little girls. They are absolutely adorable.

After spending a night in Illuca, I made my way back down the hill to my second community, La Manzanilla. In La Manzanilla, there are also two host families. Both families have 16 year old girls that will hopefully be very involved this summer. That night in La Manzanilla the community had a small mass and celebration to mark the building of their high school. After mass they served coffee and tamales. I think the coffee had more sugar than coffee in it, but the tamales were absolutely amazing! The other thing that was absolutely amazing were the stars! They are by far my favorite part of the campo. Since there are no city lights, it seems like you can see every star in the sky!

The next morning I woke up early to start heading back to my staff house city, Cajamarca. However, as I was walking to the bus stop, I got a phone call from my project director saying that I wasn’t allowed to come back to the city because there were peaceful protests. In the Cajamarca region of Peru there is a controversy on mining. A large mining company has been present in Peru since the mid 90’s. The issue is very complex but a lot of Peruvians do not like the mines because they are contaminating water and the environment. Instead of heading back to Cajamarca I instead went into San Marcos for a few hours and waited at our partner agencies office until I was cleared to come back into the city.

Once back in Cajamarca, I did a quick hour turn around and got back on a Combi to the San Pablo region, where my last two communities are. I stayed in a hotel that night with two members of senior staff because it was dark by the time I got there. The following morning I made my way out to Chorro Blanco, my third community. This community is very based in agriculture and when I arrived, everyone was in the fields harvesting their goldenberries. I went tromping through the fields in order to find my host families and have them sign their contracts. I really like Chorro Blanco, it actually might be one of my favorite communities so far!

After spending a few hours in Chorro Blanco, I made my way to a neighboring community where there is a health clinic that I wanted to go visit. The clinic was closed, so I waited there for a few hours while my assistant project director came to pick me up in a cab in order to get to my next community. When she showed up, she was in a little mototaxi, which is essentially a little cart with a motorcycle as its engine. It was quite a bumpy hour ride to my community, and my cot even fell out once. Ahhhhh!!!

Unfortunately, San Ignasio, which is my last community didn’t get set up completely because no one showed up to our meeting when we were supposed to be establishing host families. Therefore, I made my way back to Chorro Blanco where I spent the night. While I was there I learned how to spin yarn out of sheep’s wool. I was really horrible at it but the old lady who taught me was very patient.

The next morning I made my way back to Cajamarca early in the day and then we had a training with Enseña Peru that day. They taught us about lesson planning and we went over our community based initiative projects with them.

Since then I have been spending most of my time working on paperwork and trying to rest up after survey! It is hard to believe that the little volunteers arrive tomorrow and we start briefing!