Friday, July 23, 2010

a marathon, machu picchu and a garbage truck (in other words, Peace Corps Peru)

I don’t even know where to start…July has been a show to say the least. To start with I ran a marathon. It was in a beach town on the northern coast called Pacasmayo that has been a Peace Corps site for a while and 3 years ago a volunteer organized this marathon for July 4th as a way to raise money for his community. So it’s not just a marathon it’s also a big Peace Corps party. So yea I finished in 3:51, which isn’t outstanding, but it’s under 4 hours and I jumped into the ocean right afterwards and now I never have to run a marathon ever again unless I really, really want to. And I got to hang out with a bunch of Peace Corps friends, and I won a framed race poster and I got a cool medal. Overall, I knew I was gonna run a marathon one day and I think this was a cool way to do it.
Work has also been progressing, in that Yanamito kind of manages its trash now. So basically with the support of our mayors, Pete and I have been running between 4 municipalities trying to get trash cans and the commitment of a garbage truck to come up. I managed to wrangle 4 big metal cylinders out of the municipality and up the hill, which to my surprise were still sealed oil drums. So after a day of using a hammer and chisel as a huge can opener and some fun with spray paint, I came out with these:

We also managed to get the municipality to say they would send up the truck on a weekly basis every Thursday, starting July 8—4 days after the marathon and the day my parents would be up in Yanamito getting to see my life. We also found this out on June 25th. Needless to say, I had to scramble a bit, but I managed to explain what was happening to the town in a community meeting (that’s right…I gave a 5 minute speech to everybody in Spanish. There was only a little confusion I think) and I got a promise from my mayor that the Saturday before there would be a community cleanup and everything would be fine. So I went to the race, slightly nervous that my work life would fall apart while I was gone, but to my pleasant surprise I came back with my parents the day before the truck was supposed to come and the pails were out and there was a neat mound of garbage waiting for the truck to come. Just when I began to have faith in the system, I went out on Thursday morning to meet the truck with my parents, and we waited. And waited. So I called the guy in charge who said whoops the truck got 2 flat tires, it can’t come, we will try again next week. I’m pretty sure he was lying, but what could I do. So again I departed Yanamito, this time on a jaunt with my parents, nervous that while I was gone the streets would pile high with trash until someone just decided to burn it. But what could I do—I was on vacation. More on the trip to come, but after 5 days in the jungle with no cell phone service I called Pete on Thursday evening to hear that…the garbage truck came and everything went swimmingly. We were on a bus full of somewhat annoyed and wet tourists, but I fist pumped the air and my parents cheered. And two days ago I was actually in town when the truck came. I got to ride in the front while we drove around town emptying the barrels and waiting while mostly ladies ran out with full bags to dump in the truck. It was awesome. Hooray trash management.
One more garbage story and then I move onto other things I promise. So every Sunday for the past two months there has been a soccer tournament in my town. Teams come from a bunch of towns within walking distance and they play each other, and most of my town spends the day outside watching, eating ice cream and generally relaxing. Ice cream here is sold in little Styrofoam cups for 50 centimos a pop (the equivalent of about $.15). What happens to all those little cups you ask? They get thrown everywhere. Every Monday the town is a mess. So before the last Sunday in June I got the mayor to agree to put one of our garbage pails there. I brought it down at 7:30, had it all set to go, and when I got to the tournament later in the day I bought myself an ice cream as a pat on the back. I threw out my cup, and the pail was mostly empty, but it was early. I came back after lunch to check on it—still empty with garbage just about everywhere but in the pail—I could still differentiate my cup. Huge fail. So I went to go sit down, pretty dejected, to watch the game. One of my little buddies from first grade, Noel, sits down beside me and starts talking to me about ice cream (what else?). He says he wants some ice cream but his mom won’t buy it. My wheels start turning, and I told him if that if he filled up one little shopping bag with garbage I would buy him some. He got really excited, agreed, and five minutes later (with some help from me…he’s just a little guy) his bag was filled and we went to deposit it in the pail and buy ice cream. A few other kids and there parents saw this transaction and soon I had a good chunk of the elementary school lining up to wait for a shopping bag. Within 20 minutes the whole drum was filled to overflowing and the area was a whole bunch cleaner. Sustainable? Probably not. Effective? Definitely. And the kids enjoyed it and a bunch of moms saw it too and encouraged their kids to throw out their garbage. It was fun. And encouraging. Ok no more garbage.
My parents came to visit. I hadn’t seen them for the 10 months I’ve been here, by far the longest we’d gone without seeing each other, so I was pacing up and down the bus station incessantly by the time their bus finally came in at 9:30 pm, but as long as the ride from Lima was they made it. We spent a day in Huaraz, where we went for a hike and I showed them around town. Then 2 days and 1 night in Yanamito, where there just happened to be a town soccer tournament that day, so they met everybody.

Then we spent 6 days in the Manu jungle and a few days in Cusco, including Machu Picchu. I had to do a lot of translating, but I think it was really great that they got to see my town and where I live and work. Everyone was really glad to meet them and now all they ask is “when are your parents coming back?”
The jungle was awesome. First of all, as I learned in India, it’s good to travel with your parents, especially when you’re used to backpackers standards. Hotels were nice, food was good, to say nothing of the company. But the back to the jungle. We saw a ton. About a million different birds (we stayed at a hotel with some serious birders who were keeping a log book and all that and in the morning we were out looking at birds with them and they said they saw 40 different species before breakfast), including a ton of hummingbirds and macaws, which are like huge parrots and according to our guide (who was the man) are as smart as 5 year olds, and some hoatzins, which I’m pretty sure are dinosaurs:

We also saw few different mammals, including the world’s largest rodent (basically a pig sized guinea pig) and the largest jungle mammal, a tapir:

which kind of looks like, according to my dad, a combination of hippo, horse and pig. The mammal list also included 5 different kinds of monkeys, giant river otters and some chinchillas. We also saw some caimans, which are like crocodiles/alligators (I don’t really remember the difference). And one almost ate us. For real. We were on a catamaran taking a wildlife viewing boat ride around a small lake, and I spotted a big (according to our guide 4 meters from nose to tail) caiman on the bank. We got a little bit closer and our guide told us it was full and resting, but our two boat drivers contended that it was dead. We got closer still and we saw that its stomach, nose and tail were all chewed up, so we all thought it was dead. So one of the boat drivers gets the boat real close and says he wants to go grab its tail. He hops off the boat and the caiman rears up its head, splashes the water and full on snaps its jaws. Our guy ran back to the boat and we booked it out of there. It was pretty exciting—my heart was pounding for a few hours, no joke.

That was probably the most exciting thing that happened, but in general the jungle was just really cool. We got to ride down a river in a boat, I saw a million cool trees and plants and it was just really different from anything else I’ve ever seen, and I think my parents would say the same. There’s a lot more to write about, but I feel like I’m rambling a bit, so if anyone wants to hear more or see more pictures just let me know.

Side story for the jungle trip. We stayed at 3 different lodges, only one of them had electricity and we happened to be on this part of the trip over the world cup final. Watching the world cup here has been another cool experience, cuz people here actually like soccer and get really into it. Like one morning when Pete and I had just got back form our last training conference and Portugal was playing Brazil (I think). We had work to do, but we passed a small store where the game was on, and so we decided to have a soda and watch the game, where we talked international soccer with the shopkeeper and whoever else entered the store and stuck around to watch the game. So meanwhile, we get to our lodge at about 2 the day of the final, and there is power, but no TV in the room. But walking around I heard the game coming out of the kitchen, with the 6 workers huddles around.

So, despite our hike that was supposed to start at 3, me, my parents, our guide and the staff crowded around a 10 inch TV in the middle of the jungle to watch Spain take down the Netherlands, then we went on our hike. It was a lot cooler than watching in a sports bar somewhere.
So that was the jungle. And of course, you can’t come to Peru without seeing Machu Picchu. So we went to Machu Picchu. We took a car from Cusco city, through the Sacred Valley and eventually up to the famous mountain. Along the way we saw an Alpaca farm, some other Inca ruins and a cool town called Ollantaytambo, where there is a modern town that still lives in and uses the Inca infrastructure and houses. We took a train to Machu Picchu, which was a beautiful ride and they also served sushi as a snack, which blew me away. And Machu Picchu was cool—it’s really old and beautiful and our guide explained a lot of cool cultural and mystical stories. And yea here we are—the classic photo:

And for all of us, having visited the Taj Mahal, this was the second wonder of the world we could cross off our lists, so 2 down 5 to go.
And yea after that it was a little more souvenir shopping and back to the airport so that my parents could head back to the states and I could go home and see if I can get some work done after 3 solid weeks of distraction. It was a great trip and a good marathon, but I am ready for a few calm, normal weeks in site (I hope).