Part II

The next day we picked up last minute items and said our goodbyes to the rest of the volunteers in our training group. It will be at least 3 months, maybe longer, until I see most of them again and a lot of us because really good friends. It was nice to have the night in Lima to spend together though. From there we took our buses to our respective department capitals. For me that’s Cajamarca City. Most people were in the capital cities for site visit but my site mate, Jeff, and I were not. Cajamarca is pretty mountainous and it can be difficult and time consuming to cross. Cajamarca City is in the south but most of the volunteers are in the North so they met in a city up there for site visit. This meant it was way too far for me and Jeff to travel. Instead we traveled 6 hours from Trujillo, the department capital for La Libertad.


I really love Cajamarca City. It’s much less commercialized, more traditional and more tranquilo (tranquil/calm). We had a fun 2 days or so to hang out there. There are no American chains there so it looks if I want Pizza Hut or McDs I’ll have to travel the 6 hours to Trujillo. The restaurants and food in Cajamarca are great thought and, right now, I’m glad not to have the temptation of American food because it means I have tried a lot of delicious food in Cajamarca City. Oh and I’ve finally tried the cheese here! There are a lot of dairy products here so I also tried some really good yogurt.

Jeff and I headed to site on Tuesday afternoon. To get to our site you can either take a bus or car to another town about 1.5-3 hours away, depending on the driver. Then from the town you have to take a car up to our site which is roughly 1.5 hours going up through the mountains. The part that makes it kind of exhausting is they wait for the car to fill up, which could take quite a while. When I say fill up I mean squeeze as many people as they possibly can.

So far I like my site. Its really beautiful here and I hear that during the rainy season its even prettier. We’re a provincial capital but probably only about 5000 in the main part of the city. The town sits in kind of a valley surrounded by mountains so we are definitely isolated out here. The only cars out here are ones that are used to transport. It’s pretty much just walking or taking a burro. The weather is kind of crazy. The sun is HOT so its pretty warm during the day but as soon as the sun goes away it gets pretty cold. My host family is really sweet. It’s just me and two parents because their kids are studying in Lima. The food’s good and my host mom is all about fruits and vegetables. Now we just have to work on portion sizes because she tries to feed me an obscene amount of food.

You may be wondering, what are you doing now that you’re in site? Well that’s an interesting question. First, you figure out what the heck you should be doing with all this time you suddenly have on your hands. As I previously explained you spend the first 3 months doing a diagnostic of the community not actually working. I basically have to get out and get to know my community and then at the end of 3 months I do a report on it, the diagnostic, and formulate a work plan. We go from heavily structured training to basically spending your day doing whatever you want.

My host parents actually left for Lima on Wednesday for a few days so I’ve been eating with neighbors and it’s the anniversary of one of the schools here so both of those have gotten me out of the house and able to talk to people. I’ve been going for walks and one day I ran into a old couple who quickly took me with them for a walk up one of the hills where you can see the whole town. They proceeded to tell me all about the town and show me where everything was. It was really awesome and then the old woman, who by now was referring to me solely as gringita , and I walked to the quique which is a natural fountain spring. Apparently it’s custom to drink from it, which I did. We’ll see if I regret that decision later. Then we walked to this nature reserve where there is a really nice picnic-type area and a fish farm. Mostly I’ve been going to the events for the anniversary. It’s been a real party here. Everyday there’s something different going on. I’m getting a lesson in Peruvian time that’s for sure. If it says 9am it will actually start at about 11. They’ve had folk dancing, expositions at the school, a parade and a big fiesta/dance. There were 3 days of futbol games. I think I clocked about 10 hours watching futbol in total this week. I would say I was over it at hour 5. The whole town comes out though so it’s great time to see and be seen. In about a week starts the celebrations for Feistas Patronales or the town anniversary and that last 2 weeks. They do love a good holiday in Peru!