Abejas, Fuegos, y Fotos

My dearest friends and family,

A side note first--some of your emails weren´t working before (because I entered them incorrectly) and some I just added. For those of you who are interested, I´ll be posting the old emails and the new ones on my blog: http://saminperu.blogspot.com/

I always worry that I won´t have enough to write to you, and then the strangest and most interesting things happen. Such is the life of a Peace Corps trainee! This week was especially lovely, since we had a ¨feriado¨(holiday) on Wednesday. The night before, we celebrated the birthday of another PCV with the community. His host family decorated a ¨house in progress¨ just down the hill. We decided to have a ¨graffiti party¨ so that we would all have a souvenir from training, so everyone bought white T-Shirts and Sharpies. By the end of the night, we had all learned quite a few new phrases in both English and Spanish...very educational. :-) The Peruvians made fun of us bcause we only lasted until 1 or 2 in the morning, and their parties NEVER end before dawn. However, they aren´t in PC training!

Wednesday, I slept the latest I ever have here, until 8AM! I had my mid-point Spanish interview, and am happy to report that I moved up two levels to intermediate-advanced. I am now where I need to be to begin service, and will be spending the rest of language training fine-tuning my accuracy and pronunciation. It´s so exciting to be able to have real conversations with my host family, or even to understand the small talk on the street. Learning a new language is so empowering, and even though it is also one of the most frustrating things I´ve ever done, it is also one of the most fun. For those of you unfamiliar with PC training, we have four hours of language and culture nearly every day. The afternoon is spent getting vacinated, working in our technical groups, and listening to medical sessions on safety and health. Not all of our time is spent at the training center--some of our language sessions take place in our communities, and we are frequently asked to conduct interviews with the locals. For health, we have begun to work at the health posts, learning about government efforts and how to work with limited resources. I´ll wirte more about the health posts next week.

It´s been especially fascinating to learn about health in Peru. (For those of you who disagree, you can skip to the next paragraph.) For example, it´s a common joke here for Peruvians to ask Americans, ¨What do they feed you over there to make you so tall?¨ While I´m considered short-average in the states at 5ft 4in, I´m actually quite tall here. This has been great for concerts and large crowds, however, as the health volunteers have come to understand, very little if any of the height difference can be contributed to genetics. In some departments (states) malnutrition is responsible for the stunting of over 60% of the population. One village reported stunting in every 8 out of 10 children. The malnutrition is not due ot a lack of food, but rather a lack of nutrient rich food. Rice and potatoes are served LITERALLY at every meal. They are served to curb appetite rather than for nutritional value. Peru exports nearly all of its quality produce, leaving very little for the people. Peru may be famous for its fruit and potatoes, but the fruit we eat from Peru is not what the people are eating here. This is definitely an area I hope to address in my permanent site.

Continuing on (how could I have been worried about not having enough to write?!) this weekend was full of uniquely Peruvian experiences. Saturday, we traveled once again to La Agraria, where we learned how to salvage seeds from vegetables, farm cuy, and create bee colonies. (Yes, ¨cuy¨ are guinea pigs, and they are commonly eaten here. They are even included in the fod pyramid. I have so far evaded having to try one.) For the bee session, we were up close and personal with the bee colony. They gave us the special netted hats, and then proceeded to open the colmena (structure/hive) of 8,000 bees. We tasted honey straight from the comb and learned how lucrative and beneficial the bee farming industry can be. It was both fascinating and delicious!

Afterwards, a small group of us went to a deli for lunch, where I had my first turkey sandwich in a month. It was so good I don´t think I can even describe it in words. After our first meal in a while without rice or potatoes and a brief 2 mile walk, we arrived at El Museo de la Nación. While their exhibit was limited due to construction, it was also free! The art was incredible, some of it dating as far back as 1170 B.C. The gallery upstairs featured a photo timeline of the terrorist era in Peru. Keep in mind, this was barely 20 years ago. The images continu to haunt me, the atrocity is hard to describe but the photos truly say it all. Women and children in small rural communities were brutally masacred by terorists and police forces alike, all the while having no idea why the fighting was taking place. I encourage anyone unfamiliar with the reign of the Shining Path in Peru to read up on the matter, it explains so much about the political and economical problems here today.

One last story for you in this email, and then I´ll save the rest for next time. This Saturday was the anniversary of the large city, of which my community is a subdivision. There was a huge fiesta/concert to commemorate the 114th birthday of Chosica, so naturally all of us decided to go. It was a little strange being the only Americans in a crowd of 5,000 Peruvians, but the music was fantastic. One of the groups was definitely the Peruvian incarnation of the backstreet boys, complete with matching outfits and choreography. We ended up leaving around 1AM, again, very early by Peruvian standards.

As we were climbing up the hill, we noticed a small fire burning. This isn´t particularly unusual, since a lot of people burn their trash, but it was 1 in the morning, the brush was very dry, and it was in an odd location. We decided to throw a little dirt on it, just to be safe. For good measure, one of the other volunteers decided to, shall we say, relieve himself on the fire as well. However, for whatever reason, the flame got bigger. At this point, I decided we needed help, so I ran to the nearest house. When no one answered, I grabbed a few buckets from the courtyard and we began filling them from a nearby stream. Some of the moto taxi drivers noticed our efforts and joined in. At last, the fire was out and we were able to go home. PC volunteers, saving the world one small fire at a time!

Finally, I am happy to report that at last, I was able to upload a few pictures! It was a very involved process to find a flash drive, a computer with a USB port, and a locutorio with internet fast enough to upload them, but at last I can share a bit of my life here with you in a visual sense. I have more, but kep in mind that it took 2 hours just to upload these :-S

To view the photos, visit: http://s431.photobucket.com/albums/qq34/sjkerr08/

I don´t think you have to subscribe to photobucket, but let me know if you have any problems.

Again, thanks so much for the love and support. I miss you all terribly, but I´m having the time of my life here and can´t wait to share more with you. Feel free to email any time!

Love Always,
-Sam