20 de septiembre
so now the training is over... and i am assigned to live in Catache, Cajamarca - its about 20 hours north of Lima - up in the Andes. im not gonna lie, i was a little bummed not to get Arequipa, but the mountains of Cajamarca are much greener.. and its freaking beautiful here too. we have a rainy season that lasts 3 months beginning in january. 3 months to feed the plants!
luckily i live near some of the awesome friends i made during training. zach is like 2 hours from me in Huambos, my dearest mark is 4 hours from me, hes in the main town of Chota - where we will have our regional meetings - and my dearest courtney is the closest one to me (we really lucked out with that one.. when we found out our site assignments, all of the other volunteers just laughed and said “wow - what were they thinking putting the 2 of you guys together??”) - she lives about an hour bus ride away in Santa Cruz.
i am assigned to work with 2 business groups: “mujeres virtuosas” - which is a small group of artisans who make scarfs, table runners, and napkins with an ancient back-strap loom (courtneys artisans are also in this group); and a small group of women who are locally known for their tasty production of canned figs, papayas, and oranges. my peruvian mom is a part of this group and a skilled maker of these products.
i am living with a very large family here. theres the mom and dad, a pet parrot, a brother, a sister, her 2 kids, the sister’s husband, etc etc... it’s a full house! my mom owns a tienda (small shop) on the lower floor and conveniently sells bus tickets to santa cruz and chiclayo there, too. my room is on the 2nd floor. sounds like a big, luxurious house - but its a big, adobe, typical peruvian home.
upon my arrival to site, we had a town fiesta. each year on august 18th, Catache celebrates it’s anniversary and has a week long party. (all of the towns in Perú celebrate their anniversaries like this.. i feel like they are always celebrating something.) the anniversaries include mini-parades, fortune-teller monkeys, street food (i have a new-found love for anticucho! - - cow heart on a stick), peruvian music, peruvian drinking circles, LOTS of dancing (peruvians LOVE to dance), and completely dangerous castillos! its pure craziness, especially because my town only has 1 main street and a couple smaller ones. (Catache is super super little.) also during town fiestas, there is bullfighting.. my tiny little town has its own bullring! i saw my first bullfight (bullfight in Spanish is “corrida de toros”) and it was soooo crazy...
they kill the bulls here in peru. the bullfight for my town fiesta was crazy-gory. we had 4 different bulls. the 3rd bull just wouldnt die, and he threw-up blood for about 15 minutes before he finally fell to the ground. disgusting. the last 2 bulls were given to my town as gratis, and my family fixed me up bull for dinner!
i also went to another bullfight in courtneys town for her fiesta. there were 3 bulls and 2 very popular bullfighters. this time around, it was a bit different. after they let the bull out, they send a guy on an amor-dressed horse out to stab the bull once and get him all revved up. well, the second bull went crazy and kept charging the guy on the horse!!! he knocked them into the inside ring, knocked the wall down, and kept going at the poor horse! it was completely chaotic! the horse collapsed, the bull got out of the inside ring, and people were screaming!!! they finally got the bull back into the ring, but the horse died. it was all over the news out here. terribly awful! but, i dont think ill miss another bull fight - just for the bull fighters and police men. :)
so, i’ve been here in Catache for 1 month now.. and i love it. this land is beautiful. when it rains, it creates clouds that swallow the tops of the Andes around my town. there are breathtaking, deep canyons, cliffs, and beautiful waterfalls. sort of reminds me of north carolina, but with canyons and grand cliffs. and another plus: my lovely district of Catache has some pretty freaking cool Pre-Incan stuff here. the site is called Poro Poro and its in the caserío of Udima… (a caserío is a very very very small village in the campo).. and im talkin petroglifos, cool archeological structures, and even water falls nearby. i havent been yet, but i heard about it from the locals and ive seen pictures. i would love to look into a side tourism project there, but i dont think it would really work out because of the condition of the roads around here. its such a shame - there are TONS of Pre-Incan sites just scattered around everywhere, but nothing can be done about it. no money to put into tourism. such a pity.
life here is so completely different (duh, right?). but, whats crazy to me is that the people of Catache have never seen a foreigner before. for real - NEVER EVER. they call me “gringa.” children stare and touch me to see if i am real and grownups point and laugh at me... all in the while, calling me gringa. it really took some time to adjust.. i’m still adjusting. and actually, i dont know if ill ever completely adjust.
my first 3 months at site are spent integrating into the community and working on a “Community Diagnostics” report. i dont do too much work with my artisan group or my fruit group. i just observe the town, talk to the people, interview the Mayor and other important people of the town, figure out the history of Catache, economics, health, education, etc... then i type up my findings (in spanish) for our bosses, and in my fourth month i present all of this to my town. (in my broken spanish.)
one thing i am currently doing to integrate into the community is teach english. i teach at an Inicial (a preschool - with children 3-5 years old) in one of the caseríos, in the town of Munana. i teach every wednesday morning for about 2 hours or so. it’s definitely hard to teach english to children who don’t even read or write yet, but ive been finding some cheesy songs online and making up dances to help them to remember the words. the children LOVE that! i even have the teacher singing and dancing by the end of class.
some mornings, i hike back through the caseríos . i usually hike an hour back to Monte Alto (Monte actually means “wilderness” in spanish, and Alto means “high” - pretty cool, huh?). i’ve met a lot of great people up in the mountains there, and they’ve taught me a lot about the history, flora, and fauna of this land.
my artisans are new to the “mujeres virtuosas” group that courtneys artisans are in. i have spent some time with courtneys socio and she has taken us to meet the other groups of the association in the surrounding districts. she has probably taught me the most about how “mujeres virtuousas” works and the organizational structure of the entire group.
and, my second priority business group... they are freaking hard workers. the main road linking the cities of chiclayo and santa cruz comes right through catache where they make a brief pitstop. the women of catache are famous for being skilled makers of canned figs, papaya, and oranges. their target client is the frequent traveler coming through on one of the buses - so they spend their days sitting on the side of the road with their stuff, waiting for the next bus to drive through. as i said earlier, my mom makes this stuff - i see the process every moment of everyday. and they sell a poop-ton of it - people around here love it… you say “Catache” to anyone within a 10 hour radius and they immediately say, “conservas de frutas.” they dont have an association or anything (its every woman for herself when it comes to making it and selling it).
well, i think that should be enough for now.. its been a while since ive written - but immm baaack! (my finger tips have almost no feeling left in them.) we have 1 internet cafe in the whole town.. with only 2 computers you pay to use. half the time, the electricity is out in our town (this is day 2 that we have had no electricity), so i usually pre-type emails or important forms by candle light, put them on my USB, and send them off when the electricity turns back on..
ill write more later…!
