Clearly I am a Superhero

A few weeks ago, another volunteer and I were painting a mural in the town of Alto Moche, not far from Trujillo. WorldVision (NGO) had asked for volunteers to help, and we agreed, not realizing that we were signing up to design, draw and paint 2 entire murals by ourselves. I was in mural club in High School but I'm not sure that exactly prepared me to try to get something that attractively promoted early childhood education onto a wall using terrible quality paint and brushes. But I was pleasantly surprised with the results:



While we were painting, a lot of people passing by stopped to stare, ask what we were doing (because given the paint brushes in our hands, it really wasn't obvious), or make other comments. Usually it was little kids bouncing around as if they were determined to knock over our paint cans or leave hand prints on the wall, but their parents stopped, too. And on our third day of painting, one old man marble-mumbled (a technical term for how old men with no teeth tend to talk as if they have a mouth full of marbles, obviously) from under his giant sierra-style hat something about how odd it was that 2 women were painting the mural instead of men (??).

But my favorite comment happened on the second day. Two younger kids, maybe 7 years old, were playing around with a skateboard whilst staring unabashedly. About to practically explode with excitement, one of them turned to his friend and exclaimed, "Mira! Mira las gringas! Ellas hablan inglés! ELLAS HABLAN INGLES COMO LOS POWER RANGERS!!!"

(Look! Look at the white girls! They speak English! THEY SPEAK ENGLISH LIKE THE POWER RANGERS!!!)

Clearly, I am a superhero.

Pause.

Vacationing with Katherine this past week was lots of fun and a great break from all the thinking I seem to be doing lately--I visited Viru (my new site) the week prior and that went really well, but I still feel like something isn't a done deal.

We went to Huaraz and hiked around the Llanganuco Lakes (Lake Chinancocha), which was freaking gorgeous (see photo!). The mountains looked like chocolate (or peanut butter fudge where some lighter colored rock was mixed in) and make me feel tiny. We never did find the trail up to the second lake that someone at the hostel mentioned to us, but we did find great views and trees that definitely grew straight out of some Lord of the Rings haunted forest, so I can't complain! We also ate a lot of good food--papas rellenas and tea at the park, but then also some great meals in Huaraz itself. Katherine is officially my good luck charm for trying out random pollo a la brasa and chifa restaurants and finding heaven!

Later in the week we visited the Huaca de la Luna just outside Trujillo, which was pretty interesting. I was surprised how well some of the paintings have been preserved (although I guess I shouldn't be, since they have won awards for the quality of their preservation). The museum nearby, which held artifacts found in huacas, was also really nice, especially compared archeological museum we visited in Huaraz (the mummies were kind of cool and definitely creepy, but it was easy to see why tons of people wrote "falta muchas cosas/missing a lot" under Comments in the visitors book).

And now I have about a week before I head up to Pacasmayo for the marathon/4th of July celebration, before then moving to my new site.

A week to do... what? I intend to do some more planning for my biohuerto project, but I also need to caution the engineers I am working with to slow down a bit--we haven't officially gotten any funding yet and I'm worried that if it falls through they will have wasted time starting things that cannot be finished.

Otherwise, I'm not really sure. Maybe I'll be artsy and finish a few good books. But I also have been doing a lot of thinking about what I want to do, what I want to get out of my service and where I want to take it from there. So far, I feel like I've largely been paid to travel around Peru every so often (which is better than saying I've been paid to get frustrated in site!). Obviously that is why a site change is necessary. But what do I want to get out of my new site that will make staying here worthwhile?

Even though in the Peace Corps (and probably in life in general, really) it is smart to keep a very open mind and avoid having concrete live-or-die expectations, I feel like I need to outline what it is that I need to find and do in site in order to have a worthwhile experience, because I am realizing that I also have a lot of reasons to leave--I need some way to weigh the pros and cons. I am increasingly convinced that I want to pursue a law degree or public policy masters (or... both! Dual JD/PPM at Stanford?!), and to figure this out I should work for a while as a paralegal. While doing so, I could live in New York and hang out with awesome people there that I miss very much, and of course visit home and all the friends and family in Chicago that I miss very much, and not feel like I'm wasting my time.

I'm pretty sure at this point that there is nothing here in Peru that can help me make up my mind about what I want to do with the rest of my life post-Peace Corps, so the question becomes whether or not I want to delay the figuring out in order to have an experience in Viru. So what does that mean?

Worthwhile work, mostly. A feeling that I'm actually accomplishing something even if it's difficult and slow and frustrating sometimes--like a car that spins out on gravel every so often but still keeps moving forward. Hopefully Viru's much bigger municipality and organized JASS can help with that.

I also have realized that I need to be a lot more integrated into my site in order to be, well, happy. I'm leaving my first site with acquaintances but no one that I really felt particularly comfortable calling a friend. But now that my Spanish is so much better and I know how important it will be to my service, one of my top priorities in Viru will be to "hang out" with Peruvians as much as possible. Ideally I will come up with plenty of good in-site memories to make up for the times I have cursed at apathy or tardiness ("la hora peruana" is definitely not cute anymore!) or "why is this huayno music so f#$%ing loud!?"

My happiness relies not just on the site I find in Viru, but very much on my own shoulders. I can't let one negative experience stop me from exhausting every possible work opportunity and social situation in my new site--that way, if I'm still unhappy, I can be satisfied saying that the Peace Corps just wasn't for me, without wondering whether or not the problem was my own motivation.

In the infamous words of Ferris Bueller, "You're not dying [of boredom], you just can't think of anything good to do!"

Movin on up?

I try not to blog when I’m frustrated or angry or upset because words written down always sound so much worse than when spoken aloud—no need to exaggerate myself and then post it online for the world to see and judge and worry. But I also want to be honest, which isn’t really possible if I only share half of what I’m feeling.

Honestly, lately I’ve been pretty stressed—apparently I started grinding my teeth, so everything has been happening against this backdrop of jaw pain. I had to make a trip to Lima to go to the dentist, which cost me both way too much money and time I felt I could have spent actually working now that my biohuerto project is getting started (hopefully in July we’ll get some good news from Kids to Kids about the funding we applied for and be able to really get going, but there is still a lot to organize so we can hit the ground running when the money gets here).

Why the teeth grinding? According to the dentist, the alignment of my teeth is off—so much for those braces?—which makes my jaw muscles tense up, but stress is also a contributing factor.

Why stress? At this point, it feels like there is just something in the air in Buena Vista, something that’s bad for me. I don’t have the community support here that I need to be an effective volunteer and I’m tired of waiting for it. I can think, well, maybe I should have done things differently, been more persistent from the beginning, been better at integrating… something. But at this point it doesn’t really matter. The air has gone stale and it feels like time to move on.

So 2 weeks ago I made the decision to move to Chao (the district capital) so that I can work more closely with the municipality there. The one thing that I have had going for me--the biohuerto—relies heavily on the support of the environmental engineers employed by the municipality. So my idea was to work more closely with these engineers and their coworkers, both in Buena Vista and other surrounding caserios. Chao has resources--both money and personnel—that my current site does not. I talked to Jorge (Water and Sanitation APCD, basically my boss) about this idea when I was in Lima and it sounded like he was on board—he just needed official approval from the assistant country director. A little red tape, courtesy of the infamous Office.

But of course nothing is that simple! I spent last Tuesday and Wednesday in Trujillo with Greg because he had to pick up a new phone after his was stolen the week before. But of course, nothing is simple for him, either—due to the complete incompetence of the Office’s tech person, the Movistar store was (is?) still waiting on some paperwork from Lima to be able to hand over the phone and Greg finally had to go back to site without one. Who, may I ask, is going to reimburse him for the 3 days he wasted waiting in Trujillo? Who is going to make it up to his stressed out girlfriend? It’s been 2 weeks now…

So I was (am) angry at the Office already, not just the tech guy but the whole mess that hired him and hasn’t fired him yet, and then I talked to Jorge again last Thursday. He told me he is going to talk to the assistant country director over the weekend and everything should be good. But then just as I was about to hang up, he comes out with, oh, by the way, it’s too difficult to have 2 water and sanitation volunteers in Chao with separate projects. So we’re thinking that instead you should move to Viru (the provincial capital, about an hour from Buena Vista, which would essentially represent a complete site change).

And start all over? Redo my diagnostic, meet new people? Why on earth would I do that when I know I have people to work with in Chao? I was furious already and now you’re going to drop this on me,too? I would have rather stayed in Buena Vista and just turned my service into a nice long vacation.

Or even better, after talking to Merril (the other volunteer in Chao), I presented the idea of moving to Nuevo Chao, a caserio of Chao that is only 15 minutes from the municipality—so I would essentially be doing the exact same projects with the same people, just making the Office happy by technically living somewhere else. I was still furious but feeling sneaky. Maybe this could work? He agreed so long as Merril and I would meet with Sandra, the regional coordinator for our area, to hash out separate work plans.

On Saturday I met with Frieda, the 3rd year volunteer who works with Jorge, and we were talking about this whole mess and how Frieda can help out by making sure Jorge understands what I am trying to do, that I do not want to start over completely and can’t abandon the biohuerto project, etc. But just as we were finishing lunch, Sandra called me to say that she was in Viru and would like to meet with me in an hour and a half—what?

Turns out moving to Viru was not Jorge’s idea, but Sandra’s—she doesn’t want to place two volunteers in the same program in the same site, but would rather get a “cluster” going in Viru, where they are putting a small business volunteer very soon. So many communities have been asking for volunteers that it wouldn’t be fair to give 2 to one and none to another. It would be a better experience to have my own site, and there are lots of potential community partners ready to go. I wouldn’t be starting over completely, not really—I’ll be able to do my diagnostic much more quickly this time. Plus, as the provincial capital, Viru is even bigger than Chao and I could potentially continue to work with Chao and its caserios, but using the capital’s resources. It’s not so far away that I can’t continue with the biohuerto project, and hey, apparently it’s prettier.

So if Viru is so great, why didn’t they put me there in the first place? Why didn’t Jorge explain this over the phone?

We (Sandra, Frieda and I) had this conversation in the Sandra’s car (Chao could use a good coffee shop). I started out still furious, feeling like my plans were all being turned upside down for the convenience of the Office instead of me, the volunteer who just wants to accomplish something. Gee, I’d love to talk this over with someone, but guess what? No phone! I like Sandra, but at that moment, I kind of wanted to hit her for surprising me like that. It was hot, I was mentally exhausted, leave me alone!

But then, this isn’t about incompetent tech people and miscommunication and throwing huge surprises at me as afterthoughts, this is about finding a way for me to be productive, and doing the most good that I can with the time that I have here. The stress of suddenly finding out that the plan I had just become comfortable with isn’t going to happen hit me pretty hard, but I’ve ultimately agreed that it might be for the best. I can still be minimally involved with the biohuerto, but there may also be another entire town of possibilities with my name on it. We spoke to the police about safety issues in Nuevo Chao, and as Sandra suspected, apparently being right next to an invasion, it’s not very safe. So it’s either rot in Buena Vista or see what’s what in Viru.

I’m getting used to the idea, although I have to admit that I’m not entirely sure what happened in the heat of Sandra’s car to change my mind. At the time I felt like I was admitting defeat, but after I had some time to think, Viru actually started to sound like a good idea. I really don’t know why, but I hope it is due to one of those gut feelings that turns out to be very, very right. I need this to work out.

On Thursday, Jorge is doing site visits here and we’re planning on going to Viru so I can see it for myself. Friday, I get a week to think it over in peace when I travel to Huaraz with Katherine. Hopefully I will come back refreshed, less stressed out, and ready to go. The Office may be infuriating sometimes, but I don’t need it to be perfect to escape the bad air and make this a good experience.