Wanted: Candy and Art Supplies

Dear family and friends,

If you feel like sending American candies, art supplies (such as crayons, colored pencils, and markers), educational computer games (think Math Blasters or Spanish reading comprehension), and a book of how-to origami (or other easy and material light craft ideas) to the town of Huantar, I know of a good many children who would be appreciative.

Just throwing it out there.

Much love and besos!

Cellpocalypse 2014

On Friday, March 28^th I had a wicked case of gripe (the cold).  I stayed home from the parade to fight tuberculosis (didn’t want to send mixed messages) and settled in for a day in bed.  Boredom soon set in and I texted my parents the following message: Call your sick daughter.

And with that ominous message sent, the cell service in the valley promptly cut out…for five long, long days. 

By day two I figured that my parents might be mildly concerned, and so I began to ask around town, did anyone know why the service was down? Did anyone know when it was coming back? Could it be found in any corner of this earth?  Rumor and hearsay soon brought the following information forward: The service was out because there was a storm that knocked it out; no one knew when it was coming back (the general sentiment was, “Hopefully soon”) and apparently no one is in charge of communication; and there was tell of pockets of service higher up the mountain.

So Sunday, with mucus pouring out of my nose as if a dam had been breached and a hacking cough warning all life within a seven mile radius that I was exerting physical energy, I began to climb.  After about twenty-five minutes I came across a fallen tree, I paused there, setting down my waterbottle to catch my breath.  I looked upward, dreading the continuing trek.  With a resigned sigh, I looked down towards my belongings and gasped in shock—there on the backlit screen were three bars.  SERVICE! HUMAN COMMUNICATION WAS WITHIN MY GRASP!

I wrote a quick message to my parents, telling them I was fine, there was just no service, but they could call now if they wanted, only to discover that I was out of saldo, aka credit.  Thank goodness for RPM, aka free minutes between volunteers.  Several calls later I found someone with credit on their phone and my parents were informed that I had not succumbed to an undisclosed plague.  How worried were they?  Well, there were 17 unheard voicemails in my inbox, so I figured they were mildly concerned.

For the rest of Cellpocalypse I hiked up to my spot daily.  It turns out I’m mildly dependent on my cell phone.  I really like to talk to people in English and y new reality of inconveniently distant cell service forced me to reconsider my place in the world.  I, along with the rest of the town, began to make contingency plans for the rest of time.  Would the service ever return?  Were we to be banished to the 1950s?  If the service was gone, what was next?  Electricity, running water, civilization?  The madness set in.

But then, one night as I sat eating my dinner, I heard a sound.  It was so familiar, and I felt my heart race as my mind struggled to place it.  Yes, there had once been a time, so long ago, when I had heard ringing tones to indicate that someone wished to communicate me.  I instinctively reached down to my pocket, gripped the small box located there, and it all came rushing back to me—my cell phone was ringing.  Another volunteer who had been affected by the service kidnapping was calling me.  Word on the street, now that people had the means to pass along information, was that the storm was not to blame for all that had passed.  Some little shit had stolen a piece of the antenna.  My joy at being in communication again lent me the power to forgive, and to move on.  There were important things to discuss—like TV shows watched, socios who had blown us off, and weird foods we had eaten.

Besos!

And They’re Off Said the Monkey as He Stuck His Toes in the Lawnmower*

This April 9th, 2014, I’m off on a much-anticipated vacation.  I get to see my older sister, brother-in-law, and niece in the thus far unexplored country of Colombia.  I’ll be out of site for about two weeks thanks to the fortuitous placement of the Peruvian holiday of Semana Santa (thank you early church authorities for deciding the crucifixion of Christ coincided with spring fertility ceremonies), and at some point I hope to eat a dozen doughnuts on the beach. 

As the head of my health post said, “Provecho,” and I need no further blessing.

Besos!

Last time I left site for a significant period of time, people assumed I had just disappeared, possibly via kidnapping, despite me telling them all I was going to a training and would be back in a week.  This is my attempt to stop that from happening again.  You're looking at my front door:

*A frequently uttered phrase of my childhood.  

No, I don’t have any new games (or candies)

Well, I’m old news.  For the past three months or so, several of the boys in town have been coming to my room in the afternoons to play games on my laptop, cut out snowflakes, play cards, and, at the end, have an American candy.  For the last two weeks or so, every visit is marked by the following questions, repeated over and over:

·         Do you know any new card games?

·         You still don’t have any new computer games?

·         Do you have any new candies?

Such is life that what was new, exciting, and utterly undreamt of mere months ago is now old news, taken for granted, and unstimulating. 

And unfortunately for the town children I fear the answer will for a long while remain,

“No, I don’t have any new games (or candies).”

Besos!

Taking selfies

Playing on my computer

How my wall is decorated these days

Kassel is a Health Educator! (April 5th, 2014)

This weekend my health post had a training session for the ACSs (Agentes Comunitarias de Salud; health promoters essentially), and we’re going to breeze on by the minor criticisms (the fact that it started an hour late, that I was the only health post person who actually sat through the whole thing, the fact that only the doctor and I were the ones who cleaned up), and focus on the really cool part, which is that I got to give one of the sessions!

During EIST (Early In-Service Training), the health volunteers were shown a really good presentation on demonstration on anemia.  It was involved different types of learning and explaining, was interactive, and really emphasized having the participants come up with the answers and direct the flow of the talk.  I was very impressed by it, and decided to use it for my session. I felt that people were paying attention and that while most of the information wasn’t new to them it was reemphasizing and reinforcing details and facts that are often forgotten over time. 

And thanks to a rigorously enforced culture of taking photos to prove that you’ve actually done something, I have evidence!

Health Education in Action!

I’m now going to go into great detail, so get ready for some health education!

You start out by showing these two trees.  You ask the group to describe the differences between them.

Once we’ve established that one tree has more leaves, more roots, a bluer sky and fewer rocks in the soil, you show these two children and ask the group with which tree each child belongs.  What are the differences between the children?

You now introduce the topic of the day which is Anemia!

We now move on to the causes and consequences of anemia.  Ask the group to either raise their hands with what they think are the causes of anemia, or if they-re shy have them write them out in small groups.  The causes of anemia, which you have previously written out, are placed beneath the roots of the unhealthy tree.  The consequences of anemia, the reasons why it’s bad are placed above, near the leaves and fruit of the unhealthy tree.

We then repeat the same activity but this time asking what are the ways to prevent anemia and what are the consequences of an anemia free life.

You now pass out sheets of paper with different foods written out.  Put up a scale of most iron to least iron and ask the group to tape the food they were given where they think it belongs.  Once all of the foods are up, reorganize them until they are in the right order.  Emphasize that sangrecita (cooked blood) is the best food to fight anemia with.  Next is jerky, beef, chicken, and organs, especially liver (mmmm).  The next group is beans, peanuts (surprising, right?), fish (especially the dark parts of the meat found normally along the spine), and the super-cereals native to Perú, quinua, kiwicha, and cañihua. The last group of food with a sizable amount of iron are leafy greens, such as spinach and verros (native to Perú and very tasty).

Look at all the people participating and taping their foods to the wall!

You end with the showstopper, a recipe book for blood.  I can personally attest that this recipe is delicious.  So if you’ve been feeling a bit lethargic, too tired to work, and the Red Cross won’t accept your blood for lack of iron, give this bad boy a try:

1)   Sancochar (english definition: parboil) one cup of blood.  Make sure it is free of feathers and skin.

2)      Blend the blood along with a cup of sugar.  Add 2-3 teaspoons of cinnamon and a dash or so of vanilla.  More if your taste buds so require.

3)      Once this is well-blended, add a packet or two of powdered milk to achieve your desired consistency. 

4)      Serve.  It looks like chocolate pudding and tastes delicious.

You have known completed your first course in Anemia 101.  Wasn’t that fun?

Besos! 

Lost in Chakraland (April 4th, 2014)

Several months ago I texted the following message to a fellow volunteer:

“I should never leave with people from my town if I ever want to get back to my town.”

This last weekend that statement was put to the test and damn if it didn’t hold its own.

Every weekday I stop in my health post to see if there are any new meetings I should know about, or to see if there is anything I can be a general help with.  One morning, Don Aurelio, the head of my health post asks as I’m heading back to lunch if I would like to go to some of the caserios with him at 2:30.  Well, sure, why not?  I ask which ones we’re going to and he mentions, Huarac, the one closest to Huantar.

2:30 rolls around and we very promptly head out.  As we’re walking towards the cars I ask to which caserios exactly we’re going to and what exactly we’re doing.  Don Aurelio nows mentions Olayan, Succha, and Uranchacra, three of the caserios that are the furthest from Huantar.  And as for what we’re doing, all he says is “descapacidades.”* And all I can think is, “Wait, we’re untraining people?”  But I am nothing if not game, so off we go. 

We drive along and pass right by the caserio of Olayan, continuing on towards San Marcos.  Umm, wait, weren’t we planning to…Nope apparently not, apparently we are continuing onto San Marcos.

And now I’m going to rant a little bit about bureaucracy.  We are going to San Marcos, a forty or so minute drive from Huantar, because one of the men in the car has sliced with finger open with an electric saw.  That explains the unexplained blood bandage around his hand.  The specialist he needs to see is in Huari, an hour away from Huantar in the opposite direction.  But we go to San Marcos in order for Don Aurelio to register him for SIS, the Peruvian Medicaid, which he doesn’t have and cannot get treated with without.  And seeing as there hasn’t been internet in Huantar for the past week, they have to travel to San Marcos, closest city to Olayan, in order for him to get his finger stitched up in Hauri, now an hour and twenty minutes away.

Once the man’s insurance is insured (teehee), he heads off to Huari, where he will be treated at some point the next morning.  Don Aurelio and I head to Olayan.  It’s now 4:00 o’clock.  As we clamber up the mud-filled slopes of the shortcut, he explains that two days ago the head of the health network sent him paperwork to list all of the handicapped people in all of Huantar’s caserios.  Since going house to house was impractical (thank god we both on the same page for that one), we were going to search out the community leaders and ask them to help us fill out the sheets. 

Theoretically this is very good idea, but it turns out that locating community leaders can sometimes involve going door to door.  And when said community leader lives up the steepest goat track trail yet encountered by this volunteer, well then time is hardly saved at all. 

Eventually Señor Lucas is found and I gotta say, for being a community leader, the man was awfully useless.  Not knowing people’s DNIs I can understand (I certainly don’t know my neighbors SSN), but last names man, surely you know the last names?  By the time Don Aurelio and I start back down the goat track, and after he’s stopped to talk with just about every Tom, Dick, and Harry we pass on the street, its nigh 6 o’clock. (Although I can’t complain too much, I got to use my one Quechua joke on a group of people.  They asked if I spoke Quechua yet and I responded “Quechuata parlatsu,” aka “I don’t speak Quechua” but I said it in Quechua, so HA).  As we made our way back to the main road I tried to tell Don Aurelio that I didn’t think I could go on to Uranchacra and Succha with him.  Cars going up to Huantar are scarce things after 6 pm, and having not known that I would be wandering the countryside I hadn’t told my host mom that I would be coming home late—and due to the recent Cell-Service-Apocalypse 2014, I had no money to call her and let her know. 

But of course, “No te preocupes, vamos a Uranchacra primero y a Succha segundo para qué es más fácil encontrar carro.” [Don’t worry, we’ll go to Uranchacra first and Succha second so that it’s easier to find a car.]  Yeah, sure.  Whatever you say.  

We get off at Uranchacra as the sun sets and the night settles in.  We begin to walk up the nearest trail and I quickly call one of my fellow volunteers (thank you RPM—aka free minutes) and ask him to text my host mom and let her now that I am with Don Aurelio and will be back later than normal.  Soon after I hang up Don Aurelio points out the moon, a mere crescent this time of the month.

Well that’s just lovely, but I gotta admit that seeing the moon as I’m setting off towards a house I’ve never been to, along a trail that is slowly becoming a not-trail in a caserio a full hour hike down from home is not my prime viewing time.  And if we’re being real honest here, seeing as how dark as coming, I’d prefer a full one.

But my Spanish isn’t at that level yet, and sarcasm is not yet universal, so I stuck with “Si, que bonita.”

The trail soon does become a not trail and pretty soon we’re walking through farm plots and I’m trying to avoid stepping on the freshly sprouted plants with only my cell phone light to guide me.  Twice Don Aurelio doubles back, which does nothing but boost my confidence, and I begin to strategize how I would get us out of here if he slipped and hit his head in the next half hour or so (a helicopter with a rope ladder as the best I could come up with, seeing as how Lassie was nowhere to be found).  Eventually we find our way back to a trail, but even this one involves “shortcuts” to avoid sinking knee deep in mud.

At long last we make our way to house.  Twenty feet before it, now that the dark was fully settled, Don Aurelio turns to me and whispers, “Careful, I’m pretty sure there’s a dog here.”

Great, just great.

This house is in fact the house that we’re looking for, but lo and behold the people who live within in are in Lima—left just yesterday in fact.  No matter, Don Aurelio says, the remaining relatives can help us out.  So with the help of great-uncle and son we manage to get a decent list of the handicapped folk in Uranchacra, and son happily obliges us by “practicing” his father’s signature for the official document. 

We head out by borrowing one of the family’s flashlights and they point us in the direction of a trail to the main road.  We set off, walking on a gloriously wide trail marked by tire tracks—tire tracks, meaning that this trail undoubtedly leads directly to a road because that’s how cars and roads work!  But twenty steps into this trail, Don Aurelio shines his light to the left and sees another godforsaken patch of trodded down grass and suggests we follow it.

UGHHHHH.

We follow the “trail” to a steep drop-off, backtrack a bit and crawl under a barbed wire fence, and wind our way between a corn field and water reservoir, jump over a stream, and walk down a trail that at long last warrants the title of “path.”  It is however now 7:30 and there is a greater chance of hell freezing over than us encontrar-ing a car in Succha to take us up to Huantar.  During the intervals we have cell service, Don Aurelio uses my RPM to call his wife, who is in Huari with the man with the sliced finger, in order to see if she can try to help us arrange a ride.

Spoiler alert: That’d be a no.  No one from Huantar is willing to pick people up in the night.  Allow me a brief tangent.  About a month ago a 6-yr-old girl broke her upper arm in the playground.  They were charged 80 soles (more than my month’s rent) to be driven to the hospital in Huari.  It’s normally eight.

Finally we make it to the main road and what do we spy with our little eyes but a mototaxi.  Mototaxis come in many shapes and sizes and this mototaxi is like a motorcycle with two open-sided sidecars on the side.  After a brief negation on price, where the mototaxi owner didn’t budge because we had no other options and he knew it, we climbed aboard the thrirty sole mototaxi ride. 

As we zip along the pot-holed gravel road, I get a call from the volunteer who’d texted my host mom.  Apparently getting a text from an unknown number claiming that I was fine did not assuage her worries as much as I had hoped it would. She called him, and he in turn was calling to make sure that I had fallen off the side of the mountain.  Not yet I assured him.

I made a brief list as we wove our way up the mountain. Number of times the mototaxi stalled—3. Number of times I almost fell off of my what-can-be-best-described-as-a stool—4.  Number of times I had to remind myself that putting my foot down on the ground while in a moving vehicle was a really bad idea—too numerous to count.  I had an epiphany as we drove up.  Seatbelts are there to stop you from moving forward when the vehicle also stops.  I know this sounds obvious, that it is in fact obvious, but I had never quite realized it before.  Seatbelts protect you, seatbelts are good, wear your seatbelt, etc.  I got all that.  But the actual practical application and use of seatbelt had never before been so well-demonstrated to me before.  I get it now.  They’re really important.

In between the counting and epiphanizing I watched as the moon set behind the rising mountainsides and created a silver sunset.  I could see Orion to the northeast, and I realized that would most likely never quite see this sight ever again.  And it was lovely.

At long last we arrived in Huantar, and as I stepped off the mototaxi, Don Aurelio yelled out that I should meet him tomorrow at his house at 6 am so that we could finish up with the last two caserios.

And so began the new day.

Besos! 

*Spoiler: This means handicapped people, not untrained people.  

Post-script: The next day was largely uneventful but I would be remiss not to mention when Don Aurelio once again forsook the established and well-known trail for the goat trail that involved, and I swear I am not exaggerating, crawling over brambles and climbing up a short span of rock wall.  

I can't do crossed out words in the title so...

Weird Delicious Foods Kassel Has Eaten: Goat Cheese edition

I live pretty exclusively on Peruvian dishes.  I may occasionally toss some balsamic vinegar on my lettuce and every Monday I treat myself to some Peanut M&Ms, but breakfast is punky and bread, lunch is escoviche with jugo de auaymanto, and dinner is reheated lunch.  So imagine my delight when I discovered that every Saturday in Lima, near a picturesque park, there is an organic farmer’s market that has goat cheese.  It among the best goat cheese I have ever tasted in my life and there are some twenty kinds.  It melts in your mouth.  You forget as walk down the stalls that you are leagues and leagues away from the United States.  And sometimes, just sometimes, it is nice to pretend.

Besos!

P.S. Yogurt-covered pretzels are also pretty damn incredible

Motivation (March 20th, 2014)

For a week in March, all of the health volunteers in Peace Corps Peru 22, congregated in Lima and Chaclacayo once again for EIST—Early In-Service Training.  The general consensus was that this one week was far more useful than the ten weeks we’d had when we first arrived.  And it’s true, EIST had many useful sessions and prompted many reflective moments.  None more so than the brief talk about the different ways people are motivated.

You see, throughout the entire week, the Peace Corps staff had been encouraging us to participate by offering premios—suckers, chocolates, and so forth—to those of us who answered and stayed awake.  Guess what?  A sucker doesn’t effing motivate me.  If I’m not answering a question it’s because I don’t know the answer, not because I’m willfully holding back.  And being told that I’ll get a sucker if I try makes me feel patronized and annoyed. 

So now we know.

Besos!

You've Got Mail (March 15th, 2014)

All right, not to brag guys (actually I’m totally bragging and I’m cool with it because I’m bragging about what great friends and family I’ve got.  I’m bragging about you!), but I’ve got a pretty sweet P.O. Box situation going on.  Meaning that when I go to it, I’ve usually got something waiting for me. Like this weekend for instance, I had this:

The wealth of long underwear and candy was spread amongst all and I just gotta give my Aunt Judy a shout out, because I basically felt like Christmas had come early.

And a shout out to everyone else who sends me letters and care packages.  It really, really makes my day, and I hope you all know how much I love and appreciate you for your support.

Enough of all this sappy stuff.  Here are pictures of Nicoll and me goofing around.

Besos!

Nicoll trying on my Barefoot-toed shoes.  Big hit.  Biiig hit.

Holding a itty bitty puppy

Making faces for the camera

There's a New Cat in Town

This is the new kitten:

I have decided to love it and so I pick it up and pet it and discreetly feed it scraps from the table.

Her (we’re fairly certain it’s a girl) name is:

1.      Matilda (if you ask Nicoll), named after Matilda from the movie Matilda based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name.  I’m 90% on board with this name (Matilda after all is one of the most voracious readers in literature), but drag my feet because of…

2.      Berlioz (if you ask either me or Lesslye), named after the black kitten in The Aristocats, who in turn was named after the composer.  Nicoll fights this because technically it’s a boy’s name; not that anyone else here in Huantar knows it.

3.      Pelusa, which translates more or less to “Shedder” and which was the name of the last cat and tends to slip out and then kind of stick for an hour or so.

Matilda/Berlioz/Pelusa is the pickiest eater known to catdom and has a rather unique ability to ignore my host mother’s shouts.  But as long as she keeps from eating the baby guinea pigs I think she has a fair chance of making it to middle-age.  Let’s all keep our fingers crossed.

Besos!

Carnaval

I danced, I got floured, I got soaked, I got painted (raincoat still has the blue to prove it), and I had a blast. 

Nicoll, Melly, and Lesslye waiting for the first night of activities to start

The Ayash bears and drag dancers make their appearance.  Ayash and Ishok are the two neighborhoods in town and they compete every year to see who has the most (and best) turnout.  In case you're wondering, I live in neither.  I've smack dab in the middle. 

Lesslye splattered with paint.  A similar fate will befall me in four days time.

BABY BEAR! It was well-agreed to be the cutest things in all Carnavals past and present.

Driving into town only to be stopped by the massive yunsa drive blocking all traffic.  Don't believe I will ever again use the word traffic to describe the ten cars passing through Huantar. 

Though you can't quite tell from the photo, I am soaking wet and very cold.  The morning, while the sun was out, was when Ayash was dancing through the plaza and town.  Got me some morning beer.

The afternoon of Ishok dancers getting floured instead of soaked.

Me post-flouring by one of the health post techs.  Pretty sure its chicha, not beer I'm holding.

The Ishok yunsa tree.  Throughout the day, dancers take an axe to it.  Once it falls, people take all of the presents hung in its branches.  However, if you are the one to strike the final blow, you have to pay for next year's tree.  So I did not touch the axe.

Also, will I was dancing I was repeatedly floured by some of the drunker members of the community, one of whom accidentally pulled by earring out of my ear, which subsequently was stepped upon and broken.  He, not two weeks later, killed himself by consuming poison.  Other memorable interactions with him include the time he drunkenly mistook me for the priest, asked for a door, and when corrected, insisted upon giving me two eggs, kissing my hand, and telling me that mamacita was a term of respect. Moment of silence please. 

Requisite selfie.  In about five days after I shower I will have bread dough caked into my hair and scalp.

Last day of festivities.  The children of Ishok start us out.

The lovely "ladies" of Ishok.  Quite a few of thsoe boys were in my English classes.  

Taking a break from being a menacing paint-throwing bear.

Dancing through the night

Ayash and Ishok groups meet in the plaza.  Apparently every year a brawl breaks out.  I missed the brawl, but was told Ishok won.

Besos!

Just Dance, Cont.

Some of you may recall that I did a blog post a while back about dancing with my host sisters in my room.  Well, now available for your enjoyment is the music video. Enjoy!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EofJcCCNNNA

I’ve also made another video for the video exchange with my most bestest friend Shaina.  See my face, hear me talk, marvel at technology:

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6SzKUrxh4

Besos!