Peace Corps' Third Goal

It’s interesting how fast I lost interest in writing my blog. I used to write one twice a month at least. In training, I wrote as frequently as I could. I guess it has to do with the fact that I was looking at Peru with fresh eyes, amazed by all the cultural differences. I used to be amazed by their fear of drinking cold water, or of cold at all. I thought it was interesting that Peruvians always, always check their bills of 50 soles or more for being false. Most check even the 20s and 10s. Now I don’t find that stimulating to write about. I don’t feel the need to document every moment of my life here because…well, it’s just that, my life. It’s nothing special anymore. But I still have the Peace Corps Goal 3 of sharing the Peruvian culture and life with the American people. How to do that, when my life here is just my life? I no longer notice things that are “interesting” to share, because all those surface differences I’m now used to.

But this last Saturday, I thought it would be interesting to share my experiences with the reality of Peruvians. Not how they act, but what they do; what they have to do to survive. Saturday, I got up at 7:30am to walk to the family land with my host uncles as soon as they arrived from Huaraz. It was time to harvest the potatoes. Saturday, at daybreak, my host grandma and her grandson went to borrow 4 donkeys to take to the fields. As soon as my host uncles arrived, the rest of us left to meet them. We spent all morning harvesting on a steep hill. Potatoes, if you don’t know, are planted in rows, zigzagging on the side of their hill. Because the rows are mounds raised up, when you harvest (by hand at least), it’s easy to take a pickax-like tool and dig up the whole mounded row. This allows you to get the potatoes without cutting them up as you dig them up. It is rather tough work; especially, when you have the sun beating down and are on such a steep hill. My job ended up being picking the potatoes from the upturned earth after my host “uncle”, who is my age. A surprising amount of them were bad, either putrefying or having insect damage. But still, we harvested 5 large sacks of potatoes in 5 or so hours. At 2pm, we took a break for lunch. Lunch was pretty awesome, honestly. My host grandma built a pyramid/oven using blocks of dirt and then built a fire in it. Once the dirt was sufficiently hot and charred black, she stuffed in 50 or so potatoes that we’d just harvested, and went to their next field over to harvest broad bean pods to put in as well. After a sufficient amount of time covered with loose dirt, they dug it up, and we ate. My host mom had brought aji which is their spicy blended bell-pepper sauce they use with practically everything. Right as we were finishing lunch, a hailstorm rolled in. It is May, which is supposed to be the start of the dry season, but unfortunately, things are changing here in Peru. Thankfully, we had brought along a blue plastic tarp and managed to scramble under that with the sacks of potatoes. It was a tight fit, and the hail was amazingly loud as we all hunched over sitting under the tarp.

Anyway, my point is that here in the mountains of Peru, families still work together every harvest season, harvesting by hand their food and small income. Even though both of my host uncles live in the city, they came in for the weekend to harvest together. It is interesting, and hard to imagine for most of us.