FIN!

Yeah, yeah, I haven’t posted a blog entry in two months. Sorry to keep you all in suspense. I’m sure no one has taken a breath this entire time. My apologies. It’s not just that I have lost some interest in writing this thing, but it takes so long to upload my pics and videos on the ancient technology here. In addition, remember that all the computers in my house are available for rent, so when I spend 2 hours at the computer, that’s S/.4 that y family just lost. All this, and I have been swept up in my “Community Diagnostic.” This is a report required by Peace Corps that is a detailed summary of everything that I have learned about my community, the conclusions I have drawn, and a brief plan for future projects. I created a ton of work for myself by handing out over 225 surveys (among four other data-gathering tools that required evaluation), so Excel has been my best friend and my most-hated enemy for the past two months. I was able to wrap everything up in 29 pages with an 8-page appendix. I turned it in last week at my first post-training training in Chaclacayo (Lima). Yep, just got back home from a fun-filled week of 8-5 classes and practicums. This is a whole blog entry in itself that I may try to get to at some point. Anyway, my Aunt June just had surgery and needs some reading material, so enjoy the next five bloggs I am about to post over the course of the afternoon.

Aaaahhhh, finally, the last week of training. At the time, as always, there were mixed emotions – dread, weariness, fear, excitement, energy, eagerness. It’s so weird. Just about the time that you are starting to get really settled in and comfortable – BOOM! You pack your things and move kilometers away.

Besides preparations for the appreciation party for the host families on Thursday and the grand finale, the swearing in ceremony, on Friday, there was little in the way of training going on at the center. We had our final language interviews (with people other than our language facilitators, which I thought was quite objective of Peace Corps) and we had to take two exams, one over the basic rules and regs of Peace Corps and another over the basics of your program, in my case youth development.

Dylan and I had a different experience than most during the final week of training. On Monday, I left my darn cell phone at the casa. Dylan and I and several others decided to hang out for a couple of hours after training to swap site visit stories. I realized it was getting late, so I called Rebeca (host-mom Rebeca) to let her know that we would be home in a little bit. I HATE talking on the phone in Spanish because there are no non-verbals to give or receive and it is harder to hear. Anyways, all I could figure out from our conversation was something about “the baby” and that she was in Lima. Dylan and I went home to find Trinidad (my host grandma) and Gustavo (my host uncle) in tears sitting in the dark in at the table with candles lit. “The baby” is Valentina. I mentioned her a couple of times before. She is almost two-years-old and my host cousin. She is the daughter of my host dad’s brother. They come over to Trinidad’s house every Sunday to eat lunch and spend time with the family. Valentina was in the hospital in Lima, very sick with who-knows-what. The family kept saying that the doctors said it is a blood infection. She was showing signs of sickness on Sunday, yesterday. Then suddenly she could not walk on Monday. They rushed her to the closest emergency room in Chosica (town close to Chaclacayo with the taco restaurant), but after a couple of hours, they told the mom to take her to specialists in Lima which is over an hour away. By the time they got her to Lima, they put her in an incubator because she was not responding to treatment. There was a medical personnel strike occurring at the time, and my host family believes that this contributed to the lack of superior care. The next day I called Rebeca on our lunch break and Valentina had died.

Dylan and I rushed home. By the time we arrived the living room had already been cleared of all the furniture and was being prepared for the wake. I really don’t want to go into a lot of details, but the process of Peruvian funerals are very different, but the sadness is equally traumatic when it is the funeral of a child. The entire neighborhood and family came over that night, the funeral service provided chairs, and every person brought food for the family (mostly crackers and butter). There were people upstairs, downstairs, on the porch, in the street, everywhere. They brought the body to the house close to 11p.m. I finally went to bed about 2am, but Dylan said that after all the women went to bed, a lot of the men stayed up with the father, crying all through the night. The funeral was the next afternoon. About half the people that attended the wake attended the funeral procession. We began at the house with a brief Catholic service and then two family members carried the casket down the street singing hymns. When we reached the highway, we all loaded up in about a dozen different cars and carried Valentina to her preschool for “one last goodbye.” Then we loaded back up and went to the cemetery. All the cemeteries here are above ground concrete tombs. More words were spoken here, but not a single person left until the tomb was cemented up. Refreshments were served while each person mourned in their own way. We went back to the house and a huge meal was served to all who attended. I don’t have much else to report. It was intensely emotional, but my host family demonstrated a strength that was incredibly noteworthy and honorable.

The day of the funeral was the day of the host family appreciation party, and although my family insisted that I attend the party because I had been practicing a dance to perform for weeks, this was the one occasion where I set my foot down. This family had done so much for me, I felt as though I had to show my support. The Peace Corps staff were extremely supportive and even bought and delivered flowers to the house. Speaking of the strength shown by my family, they attended the swearing in ceremony the next day. I assured them that my feelings would not be hurt if they couldn’t make it, but Rebeca told me that they have to move on.

The ceremony was nice. My favorite part was not the director’s moving speech or the assistant ambassador’s motivating words, but I loved the speeches given by the two volunteers from my group more than any other part. There were great snacks afterwards, and as you can prolly tell from the photos, I’ve gained a little weight. They say that it happens to all female volunteers in this country. You think that you are gonna join Peace Corps and come back home after two years as thin as a rail. I’m going to come back unrecognizable, but just the other way around. The food here is good, and it makes Peruvian mamas so incredibly happy when you eat all their food. The carb intake here is astounding, phenomenal, unbelievable, but I digress. I’ll write a different blog about food later. I am now an officially swore-in volunteer of the United States Peace Corps. Here’s some pics from the ceremony:

My training host family: Trinidad, Dylan, Rebeca, HI!, and Ganiella

Host mom and hija (daughter)

The 3DO (Tres de Octubre) Volunteers, Rebecca, D.D.,
Dylan, Scotney, Jojo, and Caroline

My low novice language class with our awesome instructor, Pablo.
We all graduated!

All the 3DO kids and our families

The director of Peace Corps Peru

One of the Volunteers from my group that spoke

Final thoughts about training: All in all, I understand that I needed training and that there is no way to personalize training for the individual, but in all honesty, except for the language classes, I was over training by the time I got back from the shadowing trip. My group, Peru 21, is a relatively small group – 35 volunteers (and I can call us “Volunteers” now, since we all made the swearing in ceremony, we are no longer “trainees” or “aspirantes”) – so usually there are around 50 people in one training group. I have been teaching university for almost 2 years, and while I know that I’m no expert and I have a different teaching style, it wouldn’t take a monkey 10 weeks to figure out to give a charla the way the U.S. government wants a person to do it. That being said, there were absolutely invaluable experiences that occurred during training. This is the only time that my entire group, Peru 21, will be together during our service until the close-of-service training. I enjoyed every second with the host family that I had in Chaclacayo. The majority of the staff at the training center were superb. I liked meeting the “Volunteers of the Week” and other guest speakers. I really liked the history and cultural lectures, and I learned some things about myself in a relatively short period of time. The older I get and the more that I learn, the more I understand how little I know…about anything.