The cold hard truth

This blog entry includes a little bit of everything, my thoughts on training, insights and also  I try to illustrate and compare my experience to other volunteers to show you that Peace Corps is so different for every single person, we do not experience all the same things, we do not live in the same kind of homes; but we are a united bunch who strive to figure just exactly is our purpose in each of our communities. This question-what am I doing here?- goes through all our minds as volunteers. This is a question we try to figure out in our first three months in site and one that we struggle with continuously and try to fit it into a document that analyzes what we have found out about our own communities and what we can do with our counterparts to better the community. This document is called the "Community Diagnostic"-this is a daunting task to find out what problems exist and who is willing to work with us that is due at early in service training (EIST). Through interviews, surveys, and just my own observations, I discovered a plethora of problems: teen pregnancy, delinquency, gangs, lack of knowledge about sexual health, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, machismo, not to mention the amount of trash that litters the beach and nearly every street.  A few nights of staying awake until the rooster cawed, eleven pages and 9 annexes of graphs later there is still a lot of questions to be answered- Now that I know what problems exist, where do I start? Who is going to work with me? Will my project be sustainable? What happens if nothing changes after two years of working?  Am I going to make a difference? These internal challenges are what makes Peace Corps hard not lack of running water or weird food. 

As volunteers we can't change all these problems we find; this is probably one of the hardest parts in the beginning; it's realizing we need to focus on one or two things and that we need to start small. I knew when I arrived 6 months ago that I wanted to focus on sexual health and teen pregnancy and I just wanted to jump right into it but first I had to find out if that was something my community needed (it is) and I have to start small- I need to teach the young women about self-esteem and empower them, helping them discover their own interests and how to think for themselves because if they don't have respect for their bodies in the first place they aren't going to listen to me when I tell them how important it is use condoms or to abstain from sex.  Side note-I am very excited about a project that I will hopefully be starting in January with the obstetrician, we will be working with a group of adolescent mothers to improve their self-esteem, teach them nutrition, communication skills and other personal health topics to empower them to be better women, mothers, and wives. This was a project that was successfully realized by a volunteer in Piura. Even though Peace Corps isn't an organization that has money to give to our communities we do have an abundance of training resources including manuals written by previous volunteers who have successfully completed projects. The great thing about PC is that I'm not expected to come up with all new ideas; I can take project ideas that have been done in other communities and tweak them to fit the needs of Pimentel- the only thing I need to do and probably one of the hardest is to find community members who are motivated to help facilitate projects because if I do it all on my own it's not sustainable and that's kinda why I'm here, no? 

The first 4 days of early in-service training took place in Chaclacayo, Lima where I had my first 10 weeks of training prior to swearing-in. Going back there was so eye-opening and made me realize how far I had come however it also left me feeling that I still have so much ahead of me. 

6 months ago when I arrived to my Huascaran; I remember looking at the houses, so desolate with the crumbling infrastructure, dirt roads, lack of street lights and being so shocked. What was also shocking was that the training center is located in a community where the houses are bigger, well maintained with high security fences and just a few blocks down you walk through a hole in the wall and there is Huascaran-  6 months ago when I arrived it appeared to me to be like a war zone. When I went back to Huascaran a little over a week ago, I realized how Huascaran is just like the rest of Peru and actually the hole in the wall separating the communities more reflects how it is in America more than it does in the rest of Peru. My friend Sam lives in a town where there is a 5 story beautiful glass house, and right next to it is a tiny-charred house with a tin roof. I've seen a lot of this in my community and other communities-the rich living among the poor, not living on "the other side of the tracks". 

Site envy. This is something that is so hard not to do but I think at some point it probably happens to all volunteers. The grass is always greener, no? My best friend Brittany lives in up in the mountains,6 hours from the capitol city, freezing cold nights, feasting on chicken feet and I still envy her; she gets the "real" Peace Corps experience. Let me explain. At first when I arrived in my beautiful town of Pimentel, not 45 minutes from the capitol city I was elated. I have tutoring classes  once a week and I can escape to Chiclayo to feast on Pizza Hut, McDonald's,  and Starbucks but is this to my detriment? Am I missing out on the true Peace Corps experience because when I'm eating McDonald's french fries I'm not in my house eating desayuno/almuerzo/lunche with my family. This is where one of the times I have to step back and look at our situations; Brittany does live 6 hours from the capitol city but she still goes there; and her capitol, Trujilo, is the 3rd biggest city in Peru and has access to even more luxuries, Papa John's, PinkBerry, TGIF and she has to take a combi or taxi to get most places, where in my capitol city I can pretty much walk anywhere. So then I feel the envy lessen. 

But then... When I walk down the streets very few people know who I am; due to my Latina features I am just a Peruvian face. One of my fellow volunteers suggested I run around the town with an American flag wrapped around me, I seriously considered it. How am I supposed to impact my town if no one knows who I am. My other friend Morgan lives in a town of 300 people, everyone knows who she is, hangs on her every word and I'm in a town of 30,000 how am I supposed to impact 30,000 people? Again, I step back. Yes everyone knows Morgan, but this means she can't ever go anywhere in peace, without gaggles of people all around her and she lacks privacy. I would love to be more noticed in my community and I have to remember that in time I will be; I have a rather large extended host family and so it is rare that I don't see one of the family on the street and after school hours I run into students who wave and smile, shouting out " Hello Ms.Ali!"  I also have to remind myself that I am not expected to impact 30,000; the point of Peace Corps is to make a difference, an impact yes- but I've come to realize that my experience in Peace Corps will and already has, impacted me, changed me and how I see the world and more importantly how I see myself. I am already a different person than I was 6 months ago. I have spent a lot of my life passive, sitting at the side of the action, now I make myself heard. An example:  I was walking by a car full of men and they were whistling and hollering at me and I walked right up to the car and said "that's offensive and I don't like it." They just stared at me blankly so I walked away but if in the future they think twice about whistling at another girl then that's a small victory for me because I instead of just mentally flipping them off (I do this a lot and if I'm not in Pimentel I often just flat out do it) I took action and possibly changed, even if it was for just a second, their perception of a woman as someone who is supposed to passively accept the cat-calling.  I look up to my fellow Lambayeque volunteer, Betty who has taken to saying the following  things in hopes to change the actions of people in her community:

• ‘Sir, that is not a bathroom. Please don’t pee there’
• ‘Ma’m, did you know burning trash is toxic for the lungs?’
• ‘Sir, please do not smoke with your two-month-old baby in the house’
• ‘Little girl, don’t kick that puppy.’
• ‘Sir, cat-calling is disrespectful and it makes me uncomfortable’
• ‘Ma’m, pick up your trash and throw it in the garbage can that is right there, literally two steps away’

As volunteers we are told to be sensitive to the cultural differences in Peru and were told that sometimes we have to keep our mouths shut if we want to be accepted and integrated into our communities. Here is what Betty says to that and I completely agree: 

"I cannot pretend to support and accept everything I witness for fear of being shunned or standing out.  The reason I am here is to make a community more conscious of the things they need to improve and then help them work on it. I can’t accomplish that by being a passive observer.  I have learned to speak up and point out ‘HEY, that’s not ok.; ...Being able to point these things out makes me feel accomplished. These tiny drops of awareness are a part of my contribution."

I just love that girl, she is a wise wise woman. 

Ok so back to EIST. It was so wonderful going back to my Lima host family. Up north where I live now, Peruvians tend to talk much faster and many don't enunciate their words. Going down to Lima was a breath of fresh air, I was able to talk to my host sister on a level I hadn't been able to before. Before I left for Pimentel, 3 months ago I still hadn't really understood anything my Lima host brother had said to me but when I went back I understood pretty much everything he said except I thought he said pescado but he really said plato and we had a very confusing conversation until my host sister clarified for me, so I'm not advanced yet but 6 months ago I was at a novice-mid and now I'm at intermediate-high bastante fuerte. Yes I'll take that thank you. 

It was also soooo great to see the other youth volunteers from my training group. Save the 19ers in Lambayeque I hadn't seen any of them in 3 months and it was exciting to hear all the different stories. We all have such different experiences but at the same time we are all going through the same kinds of things, it's hard to explain but it's like yes we all live in different communities, different houses, with different kinds of families, but there is a commonality between us that makes the Peace Corps family so special. We are all here trying to figure the world out and we take our different steps but we're in the end we are really all here together. Great, now I sound like a hippie. 

 The last two days of EIST we were split up-half went to Ica and half went to Trujilo. I was a little bummed I was sent to Trujilo since I had field based training there but we were busy anyways so I wouldn't have been able to really explore Ica and now it's just another excuse to go see Morgan, Carla, and Mike.  In a town about 45 minutes out of Trujilo we gave charlas about the prevention of HIV/AIDS because Dec 1 was World Aid's Day and the following day we went to Sue 's site in San Pedro and had a volleyball tournament (no I didn't play are you kidding? I did do some cheers though- D-E-F-E-N-SE what does that spell? CONDOMS!! WOOOO. Haha yup that's what I get being best friends with a former cheerleader. 

EIST was exactly what I needed to rejuvenate, to back pedal and take a look and see what I had accomplished and be proud of what I had done and build an excitement, a fire inside,  that needed rekindled. Now that I've been back in Pimentel for a week, I can't lie to you and say I jumped right back into everything ready to take on the world like I had imagined my last day of training. I've slowly been easing back into it all, I felt a little over-whelmed after being surrounded by other volunteers for a week and half and then returning to my house alone. However I'm so glad to be back and I'm so excited for everything that is going to come. Thank you friends for all your support, it means so much to me!!! Also Christmas present idea? LETTERS!!!! also there is a list  in my "about me" section :p just saying...but really I can't let you all think I'm a completely self-sacrificing person now can I?