Munay (Love & Beauty): Stories of Life in Peru: Week One of Two Years in Huallanca

My first week as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Huallanca was full of spending time with my family and getting to know them, meeting new people, getting to know my socios, being “presented” to large groups of teachers and students, attending many meetings, and trying to figure out the organization and beauracy (I have concluded that organization does not exist in Peru) of the schools, municipality, and health center. I also spent a majority of the week helping out with a social program called “Vaso de Leche” (it means class of milk) in which the government of Peru goes to different communities and neighborhoods and literally hands out cans of milk and bags of oatmeal to women living in poverty who have children under the age of 7. Nurses go along with Vaso de Leche to give sessions on nutrition to the mothers, to weight the children and get their height, and give vaccines to the children (all the information is recorded to keep track of the info of each child so the nurses can know if children are gaining/losing weight). The women can only receive the cans of milk and bags of oatmeal if they have attended the nutrition session, weighed/gotten the height of their children, and had their children receive vaccines. This governmental program exists all over Peru. I am hoping to get involved with it as a side project to give health sessions to the mothers of Huallanca.

My new host family is awesome! They are very caring and have already made me a part of the family. In addition to my parents and my ten year old sister, connected to our house is the house of another part of the family. My parents have siblings who married each other so it’s like the family is doubly related. My mom’s sister is married to my dad’s brother. Both couples met in high school and are still together. They have three adorable children so it’s basically like I have four younger siblings because our houses are connected and we eat most meals together. The rest of both sides of the family lives literally less than a block away. Like many families in Latin America, my new host family is really tight and spends pretty much all day every day hanging out together. Everyone in my family is super interested in me and all day people are asking me a million questions about life in the states and just about my life in general. Personal space is not something that really exists in this culture, especially in tight knit families that live on the same block so I am trying to get use to always having someone right next to me, hanging out with me. My family is really proud to be one of the only “true Huallanquina” families meaning one of the only families in which everyone was born and raised in Huallanca for generations back. My family is great and I feel really lucky to be with them! Hanging out with them every day is a cultural experience in its own.

Huallanca seems to make itself known for bull fighting, gold mines, and mountains. I had a very interesting cultural experience when I went to a bull show with my family. A bull show (for lack of a better name in English) is basically when a bunch of drunken Peruvians tease very angry bulls in a rink and try to not get killed while a crowd watches and laughs hysterically as though they have never seen anything more funny in their lives…Like I said it was a very interesting cultural experience. It was similar to a rodeo in the states only instead of riding the bulls they get in a big rink with them and tease them while at the same time trying to avoid getting killed. It seems to be extremely entertaining for Peruvians. I definitely got a good amount of entertainment out of it but more so from the amusement of the cultural difference.

The bull rink

My cute little sister Melany dressed up for the bull show

My pregnant mom

My adorable cousin Billy!!

My cousin sister and I!

With my site mate and our families

Something else interesting to note is that people here eat more potatoes than I have ever seen in my life. Since Huallanca is at such a high altitude, the only thing that can really grow on the farms here is potatoes. I am often reminded of the scene in Forest Gump when he lists off all the different types of food they make out of shrimp, “You can bbq it, boil it, broil it bake it, saute it shrimp ca-bobs, shrimp creol, shrimp gumpo, pan fried, deep fried, stir fried, pinapple n' shrimp, lemon shrimp,coconut shrimp, pepper n' shrimp, shrimp stew, shrimp soup, shrimp salad, shrimp n' potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sand which..." except for in my reality the shrimp would be replaced for potatoes...Here potatoes are eaten in some shape or form at literally every meal. They even have a desert pudding type thing that they make out of potatoes (which they SWEAR gets rid of cancer…).

Something that is going to take a while to get use to is the weather in Huallanca. Since we are high up in the mountains, it is quite chilly here but at the same time the sun is so strong that you feel like you could die of heat if you sit outside in the sun for too long. When you are in the shade or inside it is uncomfortably cold, and when you are outside in the sun it is uncomfortably hot. At night it is freezing! I sleep with two pairs of pants, three pairs of thick socks, three jackets, a scarf, a hat, gloves, and four wool blankets. This might sound dramatic but it really is very cold at night for me especially because in my room where the walls meet the tin roof there is a five inch gap around the entire room so a lot of cold air gets into my room at night. In addition to the cold air getting in through the space in between my wall and ceiling, the sound of the river right by our house also makes its way quite loudly into my room. The combination of being freezing cold as I try to sleep and the strong sound of the river really make me feel like I am camping every night. And almost every morning I wake up to squealing and shrieking of dying pigs and the smell of burnt hair (or rather fur) because there is an animal slaughtering place right outside of our house. I always see the poor sheep, pigs, and cows on their death sentence in line waiting to enter the slaughter house and I can see dead animal bodies hanging from my window. I am really not complaining though because I really am very lucky to have such a wonderful family.

In addition to settling into my new town and adjusting to life here in Huallanca I am also settling into the idea of being a Peace Corps volunteer. That may sound odd since I just spent the past ten weeks doing Peace Corps training, but now that I am actually in my two year site starting my life as an official Peace Corps volunteer, things have really changed. I have already had moments in Huallanca where I wonder to myself what in the world I am doing here and what on earth am I going to do for the next two years. When getting settled into my new room and putting up photos of memories with my best friends and amazing family from back home, I had the sudden realization that I will not be making new memories with these people that I love so dearly for the next two years…that kind of hit me hard. But then I have my moments where I am super excited to start my work as a Peace Corps volunteer and for all the potential that Huallanca has and all that I can do to make a difference. The thing about the job of a Peace Corps Volunteer is that it is very independent. For ten weeks the Peace Corps trains us and prepare us to the best of their ability and gives us access to many tools and resources. But when we get sent to our two year site, they don’t tell us what to do at all. They send us and it’s our job to figure out what our community needs and what we want to do about it. We make our own schedules and agendas and we decide what we are doing to do in our communities. These first three months are spent doing a “community diagnostic” to get a deep understanding of what our community needs and what we want to spend out two years focusing on. I already know that Huallanca has a big problem with teen pregnancy and that is definitely something that I will focus heavily on, but there is still SO much that I need to learn about Huallanca before I jump in and try to save the town so to speak and that is why the Peace Corps has us spend our first three months in site doing a community diagnostic. While my next three months will be spent doing a lot of research, interviews with people in the community, giving surveys, and attending as many community functions as possible to learn more about Huallanca, I will also be spending time helping out in classrooms to become familiar with the students and teachers as well as doing some small projects with the youth. All the big projects and activities will come after these first three months!