This month has been rather hectic with more travelling than I expected. Everyone jumped on the Compra de Reciclaje train it seems, and SERNANP (the Peruvian Park guards/Forest Service agency) wants to meet with us to establish a more formal working relationship. A Compra de Reciclaje is where the Volunteer advertises that they will be buying recycling at a central location for about 4 hours usually. You need to have a location to store the recycling, big bags to keep them in, a scale, and a ton of change. Then you just sit and wait while the locals bring you their stuff and you pay them by the kilo for it. Then, when you have enough to fill the back of a big hauling truck, you take it to the nearest city and sell it to them for a little bit more. This covers the cost of the transportation and hopefully generates a tiny income fund for something Environmental down the line. I helped with two already this month, and we have another one Thursday. I think I´ll start mine in January to make sure I have everyone well-educated and informed about it, as well as giving them time to collect stuff. Vicco has a major trash problem, and hopefully removing the recycling will start to fix it. However, with all this going to other sites, and Cerro to get settled in, I´ve had to get a good grasp on transportation to and from my site. I think I´ll take this blog as a chance to explain how it is.
First of all, the most important thing to realize is that Vicco is off the main Carretera Central, meaning that not a lot of cars go to and from Vicco. After about 5:30 or 6pm, you likely will not be able to find transportation to Vicco. A car MIGHT or might not leave from Cerro de Pasco as late as 6:30pm, but this is a very bad gamble. So anyways, lets start off with an explanation of how I would get to Junin, Junin to meet up with the main headquarters office of SERNANP. First, about 2 hours ahead of the meeting time, I would head to the Plaza outside of my Centro Comercial in Vicco. There I would get in the one Colectivo (public taxi) that is likely waiting there. Then I would wait for however long it took for 3 other people to also decide they wanted to leave Vicco. It is also possible that there isnt a car because one just recently left, and then you have to wait even longer. After waiting anywhere from one minute to upwards of half an hour, the car will leave Vicco. Generally, they go to Cerro de Pasco which is northwards, while Junin is southwards. So I have to pay an extra S/. 0.50 to get him to make an awkward dip south to the pueblo of Shelby before returning northward. At Shelby, I have to sit and wait until a big touring bus passes by. Again, this can take anywhere from one minute at the luckiest to an hour. I have already waited that long; its not all that fun. When one of those large double decker buses passes by, I flag it down and hop in, hoping there is an empty seat. But usually there isnt because they fill up in Cerro at their real stop, meaning I have to stand in the middle of the aisle while everyone stares at the gringa for about an hour to an hour and a half. When returning to Vicco, I catch a bus to the ¨Cruz de Vicco¨ which is where the Vicco road meets the Carretera Central just after Shelby. Here I´ll stand and wait until a Colectivo heading down from Cerro stops to pick me up. This is fun, because I´m practically gauranteed to have to sit in the back of the hatchback car, or sit ¨b-word¨ as they call it in the front passenger seat with another person. All Colectivos have a nice little rag folded neatly on the center console above the gear shift for just such an occasion.
Transportation is very fun, especially because even if you know the correct price, the money collector will still try to give you the gringo price. You have to debate asking before you get in how much he wants to charge you for where you´re going or just getting in and then giving him without comment the right amount. If you ask beforehand, he will almost always try to say a higher price, which you can dispute, but it´s always risky at the end if he´ll accept the right amount. Or you can just say nothing with confidence, and at the end give him the right price. Generally, this goes very well because you have confidence and just exit the car or bus after paying. However, if they decide to insist that its more money, you´ve already ridden either part or all of the distance, and so you have a lot less room to reject his demands. It´s fun. But so far I really haven´t had any troubles, its just another way of getting around. Once you get ahold of the ropes of it, you´re golden for the most part.
As for the food here, I have still yet to have Cuy, or guinea pig. I just really haven´t been presented the opportunity yet. But I have seen them being raised for slaughter, more than a few people in Vicco have them in their backyards. In fact we have at least one in our shed thing in the backyard. Maybe we´ll eat it eventually. They´re about the size of an Oscar´s burrito, or if you don´t know that reference, they´re the size of Chipoltle´s burritos. Sorry, I can´t think of another size comparision. I really want a burrito right now. The food here isn´t bad, but I very much miss having different cuisines within a week. Here its always rice, usually with potatoes and chicken, but sometimes another type of unidentifiable meat. I usually hope that means its sheep. I miss being able to have a hamburger, the next day burritos, the next day fettichini alfredo, the next day spring rolls and the next sushi. I really could die for some good sushi. Apparently, Lima has a very expensive sushi bar, which I will definitely be finding during my time here. I´m hoping to make veggie rolls in the near future in my site though. I just need to find rice vineager and the seaweed. I think I can likely find that in our regional capital so just have to hold out till the end of January. I´m also planning on making an Apple pie and potato salad for Navidad. Unfortunately, my host mom has assured me that pickles don´t exist here. I´m not sure I´m going to like potato salad without pickles. Hopefully, Huancayo, the regional capital has them in January.
Well, that is enough for now, time to work on typing up some official documents for the Municipality for workshops on recycling and the Recycling Buy itself.
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Vicco-a Virtual Tour
As per the request of my mom, I think now is a good time to describe a little the layout of Vicco. I shall start from where you enter the town. The Carretera Central runs north-northwest through Junin to Cerro de Pasco, but shortly after a small little town (Shelby, which I may end up working in a little), a road breaks off to the southwest. This is my little stretch of road. After about a mile, you enter Vicco. The area is very wide open and flat, surrounded by ¨grassland¨ which is really very stubby, peat-like land. Vicco is mostly made of homes built from adobe, which is mud bricks, with metal sheeting as roofing. The main road takes you directly to the Central Comercial which houses my host mom´s restaurant on the first floor. The upper floors apparently have a hostal and offices, but I haven´t been up there. This Plaza directly connects to the Plaza de Armas on the left, which is a much bigger Plaza with a small green area in the center. The Church is on the corner of this Plaza and the one holding the Centro Comercial, I have a picture on Facebook with that and the Centro Comercial up. On the left side of the Plaza de Armas, from the persepective of the Church, is the Municipality, where I will have to submit lots of official paperwork to get stuff done. Heading right from the Church, or continuing Southwest past the Centro Comercial, you travel 4 blocks south to reach my home (one block east-ish if youre walking from the Centro). This walk is mostly on compact dirt and gravel road. The main streets are paved, but these back streets aren´t which I´m sure to regret the further we get into rainy season. Back at the Centro Comercial, if you head back northeast on the main road in two blocks before turning west, you will find the Escuela (Elementary school). This is a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall. One block further east is the Colegio (High School), which is also a nice large complex housed in a green adobe wall although a part of it actually is brick and mortar. On the road between the Colegio and Escuela, heading north towards Cerro, you´ll find a pretty neat little technical school that teaches loom-weaving, knitting and other such crafts. Briana weaved a blanket there before leaving, and hopefully I´ll get a chance to learn too. Next door to this is my Posta Salud, a tiny little place that provides the only medical care in Vicco. Off further to the west near the Colegio is a stadium, but I´ve only seen this in passing. These are the only buildings I can think of that are of interest to mention. There are little shops all around Vicco, mostly run out of the living rooms of homes, that have an assortment of stationary, general cooking goods, and cleaning supplies. I still find it fascinating walking into these and gazing at the collection of stuff on the 3 walls. I always feel like I´m about to spot some amazing find among the mess that I didn´t know I could buy in Vicco, or didn´t know I needed.
That is my little slice of life right now. From my verbal map of the place, we can tell the most important places to me are the schools, my restaurant, my home, and the Municipality. It´s rather amusing actually, because doing one of these maps with my community is one of my tools to completing my ¨Community Diagnostic¨ that I have to complete in these first three months. I basically just used one of those tools on myself. We´re supposed to be able to learn what areas are important, what thing are missing, what things the locals would like to see improved, etc from this little tool.
The schools really are going to be the most important spots for me in these coming months. I´m currently writing and working on organizing my summer school classes. The paperwork is a big frustration, because nobody seems willing to actually sit down and do it with me or help me figure out how. The language and document style necessary is very formal and rather challenging for one who is falta (lacking) a computer, a template on the necessary paperwork, the language skills, or the understanding. On my numerous visits to both schools, the Director and professors have all been very helpful and nice, very encouraging and excited for my work, but nothings gotten done yet. It´s really starting to frustrate me, seeing as how this coming week is the last week of classes, and the students still haven´t signed up for my summer school yet. However, if and when I get to teach them, I´m very excited for what I´ve planned. I´m going to teach at the Elementary Mondays and Wednesdays, 2-5:30pm, and at the High School Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time block. In the first hour and a half, I´m going to teach a combination Art/Exercise class with very strong Environment themes. Basically, all the art will be either recycled or focused on nature, and the exercise will either reference animal forms or be a game focused on Environment. After a half hour break (maybe, we´ll see how things go), I´ll teach an English class for the remaining hour and a half. I´m going to try to focus this on Environment themes at times too, although initially it will be much more basic. I´m thinking the classes will likely be very similar between the two schools, although with the High school Art/Exercise, I´m planning on doing more hands-on Environmental stuff, like teaching composting, and recycling. The High School is building a green house to have a garden, so its more important for me to start teaching some of the students there how to run this. Hopefully, once the school year starts back up, these kids from my summer school class will help me spread the word and influence to the rest of the kids.
So while planning and carrying out these summer classes, I´ll also be doing that Community Diagnostic to learn about Vicco more specifically. That, in a nut-shell, is going to be the next two and a half months of my life. Of course, I´m still spending time adjusting and learning Spanish in between stressing/working on those. As well as freezing my butt off of course!
As always, please feel free to provide me feedback: comments, questions or advice!
That is my little slice of life right now. From my verbal map of the place, we can tell the most important places to me are the schools, my restaurant, my home, and the Municipality. It´s rather amusing actually, because doing one of these maps with my community is one of my tools to completing my ¨Community Diagnostic¨ that I have to complete in these first three months. I basically just used one of those tools on myself. We´re supposed to be able to learn what areas are important, what thing are missing, what things the locals would like to see improved, etc from this little tool.
The schools really are going to be the most important spots for me in these coming months. I´m currently writing and working on organizing my summer school classes. The paperwork is a big frustration, because nobody seems willing to actually sit down and do it with me or help me figure out how. The language and document style necessary is very formal and rather challenging for one who is falta (lacking) a computer, a template on the necessary paperwork, the language skills, or the understanding. On my numerous visits to both schools, the Director and professors have all been very helpful and nice, very encouraging and excited for my work, but nothings gotten done yet. It´s really starting to frustrate me, seeing as how this coming week is the last week of classes, and the students still haven´t signed up for my summer school yet. However, if and when I get to teach them, I´m very excited for what I´ve planned. I´m going to teach at the Elementary Mondays and Wednesdays, 2-5:30pm, and at the High School Tuesdays and Thursdays in the same time block. In the first hour and a half, I´m going to teach a combination Art/Exercise class with very strong Environment themes. Basically, all the art will be either recycled or focused on nature, and the exercise will either reference animal forms or be a game focused on Environment. After a half hour break (maybe, we´ll see how things go), I´ll teach an English class for the remaining hour and a half. I´m going to try to focus this on Environment themes at times too, although initially it will be much more basic. I´m thinking the classes will likely be very similar between the two schools, although with the High school Art/Exercise, I´m planning on doing more hands-on Environmental stuff, like teaching composting, and recycling. The High School is building a green house to have a garden, so its more important for me to start teaching some of the students there how to run this. Hopefully, once the school year starts back up, these kids from my summer school class will help me spread the word and influence to the rest of the kids.
So while planning and carrying out these summer classes, I´ll also be doing that Community Diagnostic to learn about Vicco more specifically. That, in a nut-shell, is going to be the next two and a half months of my life. Of course, I´m still spending time adjusting and learning Spanish in between stressing/working on those. As well as freezing my butt off of course!
As always, please feel free to provide me feedback: comments, questions or advice!
Friday, December 2, 2011
My first week in Vicco
Well, I survived my first work week in my actual site. But just barely. I´m reminescent of my post about the first week in Peru, and I think that week went a lot better than this one. Mostly because I was very very sick the whole time traveling. Our group arrived in Junin, Junin together Sunday night, and we all planned to stay the night and head to our respective sites Monday. However, I spent the entire night in bed without eating, visiting the bathroom frequently as well as all of Monday doing the same. It was pretty miserable, but by Tuesday morning I had enough wind under my sails to catch some Colectivos (non-private taxis). Transportation to my site is a little interesting, because you have to take a couple different ones to get the whole way there. This means you have a chance of getting stuck at a couple different spots, so I´m not sure how much time to plan for travelling in the future. It can vary so widely.
Anyways, about my site. My room is pretty nice; Briana left me some decent things, including a down blanket. This means that every night I´ve spent here in site so far, I´ve ended up sweaty and overly hot. That could be because I had a fever (I didn´t check so its a possibility), but also that thing is very warm. I like that I´m not going to be miserable while sleeping due to cold at the very least. Once outside of bed, its a very different story. I haven´t spent any length of time out of socks; and I only remove clothes to put on new ones. I need to figure out a system of having drinkable water in my house, because we spend every meal in the restaurant at the Centro Comercial. My host mom didn´t have any gas for the stove, and I´m not quite sure how to manage the water. Not having running water in the house or for all hours of the day is a little sucky. Also, at the Centro Comercial, they don´t have sinks. I have a distinct lack of places or ways to wash my hands. This is another thing I will be working on to make my life comfortable here. Tippy tap here I come! A Tippy tap is a 2 liter bottle thats had the bottom cut off, inverted and cut holes in to be able to string it up. You fill it with water, loosen the cap and viola, sink. You can even use the bottom cut off portion as a soap dispenser. I very much need one, but I fear leaving it outside to become a block of ice. My host grandma works out in the fields (Champa) with her sheep, and apparently the last few days have been ear notching and shearing time. I watched her use a nice big knife to cut massive notches in lambs that were at least a few months old. More than a little bloody and disturbing, but I guess they wait to notch because they don´t know which will survive? I´m not sure, but I was a bit unhappy to watch that. Quite the contrary with the wool shearing though, that was really cool and I hope I'll get a chance to do it in my time here. I also watched a little bit as she spun the wool into thread, and I can´t wait to learn this too. Yesterday, my host sister re-taught me to knit, and I have begun knitting a scarf.
My first few days here I didn´t do much except sleep and unpack, but these last two days I visited the escuela and the colegio (elementary and high school). Today I even sat in on two different English lessons and helped out a bit. That was really nice, and the English professor, Nina, is incredibly awesome. She´s going to be an incredible asset and help to my time here; I can definitely tell. I´m getting my time in the schools now so that I can start Vacaciones utiles in the second week of January. That will probably be my first substantial goal here. But I´ve also helped these last two days with the construction of the organic garden/green house at the high school. I´ll be very excited when that is completed.
Alright, I´m out of time here at the internet cafe. I´ve posted a mailing address to facebook, so I really hope to hear by letters from a couple people soon. Especially considering what month it is right now. Hint...hint. I´m only asking for letters, with maybe some photos tucked in them. Love you all!!
Anyways, about my site. My room is pretty nice; Briana left me some decent things, including a down blanket. This means that every night I´ve spent here in site so far, I´ve ended up sweaty and overly hot. That could be because I had a fever (I didn´t check so its a possibility), but also that thing is very warm. I like that I´m not going to be miserable while sleeping due to cold at the very least. Once outside of bed, its a very different story. I haven´t spent any length of time out of socks; and I only remove clothes to put on new ones. I need to figure out a system of having drinkable water in my house, because we spend every meal in the restaurant at the Centro Comercial. My host mom didn´t have any gas for the stove, and I´m not quite sure how to manage the water. Not having running water in the house or for all hours of the day is a little sucky. Also, at the Centro Comercial, they don´t have sinks. I have a distinct lack of places or ways to wash my hands. This is another thing I will be working on to make my life comfortable here. Tippy tap here I come! A Tippy tap is a 2 liter bottle thats had the bottom cut off, inverted and cut holes in to be able to string it up. You fill it with water, loosen the cap and viola, sink. You can even use the bottom cut off portion as a soap dispenser. I very much need one, but I fear leaving it outside to become a block of ice. My host grandma works out in the fields (Champa) with her sheep, and apparently the last few days have been ear notching and shearing time. I watched her use a nice big knife to cut massive notches in lambs that were at least a few months old. More than a little bloody and disturbing, but I guess they wait to notch because they don´t know which will survive? I´m not sure, but I was a bit unhappy to watch that. Quite the contrary with the wool shearing though, that was really cool and I hope I'll get a chance to do it in my time here. I also watched a little bit as she spun the wool into thread, and I can´t wait to learn this too. Yesterday, my host sister re-taught me to knit, and I have begun knitting a scarf.
My first few days here I didn´t do much except sleep and unpack, but these last two days I visited the escuela and the colegio (elementary and high school). Today I even sat in on two different English lessons and helped out a bit. That was really nice, and the English professor, Nina, is incredibly awesome. She´s going to be an incredible asset and help to my time here; I can definitely tell. I´m getting my time in the schools now so that I can start Vacaciones utiles in the second week of January. That will probably be my first substantial goal here. But I´ve also helped these last two days with the construction of the organic garden/green house at the high school. I´ll be very excited when that is completed.
Alright, I´m out of time here at the internet cafe. I´ve posted a mailing address to facebook, so I really hope to hear by letters from a couple people soon. Especially considering what month it is right now. Hint...hint. I´m only asking for letters, with maybe some photos tucked in them. Love you all!!
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