In the beginning of August Vitis has an annual 4-day fiesta in honor of it's patron saint, Santiago. On the last day is a Jala Gallo (Chicken Pull). About a dozen contestants ride through two posts connected by one on top which had a chicken hanging from it. The first to pull off the chicken's head wins. Vitisinos admit it's kind of gross and hurts the animal alot but do it anyway out of tradition.




This was a Ranza, held at the top of the mountain at Vitis. People get together and drink, smoke and chew cocoa leaves while helping a family replace the ribbons on their cows' ears. The ribbons are usually various bright colors and are replaced every other year. There was some dancing and a lady banging a drum while she sang some traditional song in Quechua, a native Peruvian language which i absolutely don't understand. This Ranza was held by Adrian's family (an artesian who is in a photo of a previous post and friend of
mine). I was invited and went there for a bit.



Jared and I went to Miraflores, another small pueblo nearby, to help out in some site development. A volunteer should be coming there in December when the next group is done with training. We explored a bit, met alot of people including people of the municipality, explained what the Peace Corps was and what we do in our sites, then ate lunch and walked back to Vitis. You can see a snow capped mountain in the back of the photo. Jared's pointing to it.


So a little health update. I'm in Lima for some problems that havent gone away despite taking different pills and seeing different doctors. It appears it's my jaw, which is not aligned right or overworked from grinding my teeth two much (probably when i sleep). I'm currently taking an anitiinflammatory and a muscle relaxer, one of which is named Diclo-K, or something which sounds painful if you pronounce the name of the medicine without the hyphen.




word to ur motha

Tara is a local native tree that has medicinal properties and whose pods can be sold because they are part of the process to make leather. My program director gave us all a bag of Tara seeds. Here a local grower, Rudolfo, is trying them out first.



Signs for the local ruins aka archaeological sites, still in the works. Rafael is the sign maker, voluntarily.



Perhaps not the best choice for a name?

Drinking plenty of water- Peace Corps taught us a basic way to clean untreated water using plastic bottles, a metal surface and the sun. Here Danilo and Joel are drinking water their family prepared using this method, named SODIS.







This is Elias's loom. He's one of the artisans we are forming a comitee with. Next step: We plan to sign them up and have them be nationally recognized. Next week is an artisan fair in Llapay, a town near us. First prize is a sewing machine, second is a brand new loom. Good luck Vitis!



This is Adrian and a blanket he made. His loom is broken, so winning a new one would be excellent.




This is the new tree nursery in Vitis that I work in, usually with the community president and his sons.

Well hey everybody!

As usual, some notes
-We have exited the Electric Problem season in Vitis, passed the very short though enjoyable No Problem season and are currently in the Not Enough Water season. Expected to last some months. I wonder what´s afterwards....
-I found hot dogs (though they`re chicken, still counts), a guy who sometimes sells mustard and fireworks in Vitis. This equation adds up to I Love America!
-Every time I`m in the city and eat at Chicken Buerger I get sick, but I still come back. Pavlov was wrong.


First I want to tell you about this amazing movie I saw on one of my many looong bus rides in this here Perù. The name of the movie was Thai Dragon and it started with a scene of a little kid hanging with his six or seven elephants, who were his best friends. I stopped paying attention for awhile, until later when I saw a scene where a man (i assume was the little boy from scene 1) walked into a restaurant and saw ppl eating. He then entered the kitchen and saw elephant parts everwhere. He had two flashbacks, one was from Scene 1 and another was poorly put together CGI of war elephants, it looked like it was from a videogame. Then a massive fighting scene with all the cooks started. Of course, our man won, found a baby elephant in a cage and released it, and next thing I know, he`s walking down the center of Sydney, Australia with his elephant. He went right into a stockbrokers meeting of an apparently evil coorporation, and shouted "¿¡donde està mi elefante!?" (where is my elefant?!). It was confusing because he didnt specify which elefant and he was standing right next to one, which I would´ve pointed out if i was an evil stockbroker at the meeting. Instead no one said anything, and a fight scene with the CEOs of the coorperation including flashbacks of the elefant boy´s childhood and the bad CGI ensued. I´ll leave the ending of who won up to those who wish to watch Thai Dragon without my ruining it for them.

So i just ran in the Pacaysmayo Internation Marathon, and by that i mean i ran in the 5K which also took place there on July 5th. Pacasmayo is a town on the coast of Perù with a great surfing record and beautiful artesiania. Fortunately, unlike the rest of the coast of Perù, Pacasmayo was sunny every day! The marathon, half marathon, 10K and 5K were all set up by the town and PC volunteers. It was great seeing volunteers and enjoying 4th of July with them. The 5K was good, it consisted of one big hill and both dirt and concrete terrain. Race volunteers where at every corner cheering us on, as well as a group of schoolchildren and thier teacher from Pacasmayo. I finished 4th overal! My time was 22.18, which im told is good, especially for my first 5K. So im pretty proud of that.

Workwise, my man working on the signs for the tourists who do come to Vitis is making good progress, he has all the stencils in English and Spanish. So i did some good facilitating there! Im currently working only in Vitis schools, giving the new volunteer in Huancaya room to work as her own person over there. Lately its just been drawings and short stories about endangered animals in the preschool in Vitis, but i´m just starting. Also my friend Alcedo aka Wilmer and I have a big presentation about what we think the mayor should do about the trash situation in Vitis next week. Currently trash is collected and there are trash cans (not the same can be said for much of Perù) but it is still all tossed on the side of the mountain, falling into the River Cañete below. A sanitary landfill is the goal, but a very high one- only 9 registered sanitary landfills are in the entire country and Vitis is just a small isolated town of 500. Also i have completed investigating the artesians of Vitis. 3 men have their own private wooden looms and make beautiful blankets, ponchos, scarves, gloves, hats, ect. but are unorganized. So we´re going to meet together and see how we can sell to tourists all year round while still giving the men more than enough free time to take care of their farms every day.

The only way I can go anywhere in Perù except for the central jungle is to travel through Lima. This includes if I am on the coast and want to go to Huancayo. Huancayo to Lima is the safest and most comfortable route to Lima for me (though I usually use the cheaper bus from the Reserve we live in, which usually doesnt leave directly from my site). For half of June, possibly longer, the route from Huancayo, a city of half a million and the largest in the Andes of Perù, to Lima and back was shut down due protests. The protests are by a town La Oroya, whose population under 50 has 90% of its people with higher mercury counts than is recommended by the CDC. It is one of the to 10 most polluted towns in the world. The mine is run by Doe Run, an American company whose owner is a mega millionaire. And i need this road to do my environmental work for an American organization.

Also in Perù there have been conflicts between native jungle tribes and the police. In May-June ´08 up to several dozen police were reported killed. The natives however have reported the Peruvian national police as rounding up people from certain tribes, killing them and burning their bodies, then throwing the ashes in the water to cover it up. The media interview I saw about this was with a tribal native and the reporter kept insisting this never happened when the interviewee mentioned it.

Nobody´s perfect.

All my n****s from the Chi, they's my family, dawg
And my n****s aren't my guys, they my family, dawg
I feel like one day you'll understand me, dawg
You can still love ya man and be manly, dawg


NOTESSSSSSS
-5K training is going OK. Race on July 5
-Traveling tip: Apparently more than one road leads to the capital Lima
-Raw fish is delicious
-Scissors: 4 soles. Looking somehow even more handsome: priceless


So the project for the "Archaeological Sites" of Vitis is getting a do-over. The town asked this guy who's made signs with the Ministry of Agriculture before, and he said the type of wood had to be changed. I wrote him all we want to have the signs say, in Spanish and English, and he is making stencils of the writing so we can easily paint the new, better material. It looks like he's really dedicated to doing this. I won't be around for two weeks since my family is visiting, but the guy said he'd get started on the project alone. Cool.

Two days ago I saw a group of Llamas haning out in a yard in Vitis. One had a wool mask on, it was red and went around the llama's mouth and eyes. Then I noticed a llama staring at me, and laughed out loud because I noticed its teeth sticking out like it was a stupid smile. I laughed for about 3 minutes straight, making eye contact with this buck-toothed llama the whole time. I would have photogenic evidence, but when I returned with the camara he was eating (couldn't see his teeth) and soon after his owner took him somewhere. Best llama of my life.

Difficulties prove unending at times. Last week I had arranged to give an important charla (presentation) in Vitis about trash and the possibility of installing a sanitary landfill. I was going to explain we'd need to make a team of at least 5 ppl to do a study of the trash so we'd know how big to make the landfill and what kind of trash we'd have, in case recycling became a possibility. The charla was set to be at 7pm since people are back from the farm around 5 or 6 then rest for a bit. But Vitis did not have electric that day, or the next four, and also i was very sick because I ate something bad. Also after talking to my friend Alcedo, we came to the conclusion that since May is the time of the harvest, people would not have the urge/time/energy to come to a presentation or do volunteer for the trash study anyway. So I'm putting it off. But i have alot of faith that Vitis will put much effort into this once the harvest is over.


Como te llamas, llama?

-after a month and a half in my new room with no water, the municipality of Vitis was finally able to connect me to the town´s water supply. This makes things considerably easier
-it´s still cold
-The project to make signs and pamphlets of the arceological sites of Vitis (formally called ´ruins of Vitis´) is coming along, albeit slowly. We plan to paint the letters on the signs this week.


Project Huascarán is a government project in Perú aimed to give internet to schools. Recently both Vitis and Huancaya, the towns i work in, were given a total of about 40 computers, cables and equipment for this. On the 16th of this month (May) a tecnician is being sent from the Peruvian government to connect the towns to the information superhighway. I´m psyched to be able to contact people more, and this is also a work opportunity since i can teach classes on how to use the internet, look things up and avoid getting viruses.

In terms of work I am giving a charla on trash next week to push for a sanitary landfill in Vitis as well as to simply grow knowledge that littering and the such is bad. To get a sanitary landfill the municipality of Vitis needs to lead the effort. I think they can do it and hope we can get it done in my time here. Also i´m teaching at least two environmental education classes a week plus helping out in English still.

Last week i noticed a very beat-up old car in the town square of Vitis. I had never seen it before, and neither had the townspeople i whom i asked about the car to. Soon a man walked up and took the cover off of the rusty car (yes it had a cover) and starting taking tools out of it, as well as a giant trunk out of the back of the car. He asked one of the men standing nearby who I was, and when he found out i was American he told me his car was American. I didn´t understand what he was saying when i asked what type of car it was, until i finally realized he was saying ¨Datsun¨. I then explained to him he was the owner of an antique.
He changed the subject, saying ´´¡yo soy tapahueco!´´, which literally translates to ´´i´m a hole coverer´´. He explained to me and the man next to me that he covered all types of holes, from shoes to wood to pots. Then an old lady inquired about a ladel which the Tapahueco had recently fixed, haggling with him for a full five minutes. Finally he lowered the price and the lady walked away anyway, saying ¨no tengo plata´´ (i have no money). The Tapahueco got over this quickly though, because he noticed cars passing through going on to Huancaya for a giant fiesta there. He recognized his business opportunity and packed his stuff, saying there would be more customers in Huancaya.
He got in his car but it didnt start. He yelled out the window that he needed someone to push the car so it would start. ¨Gringo, ¡empuja!¨ (Gringo, push!) he yelled but i just stared at him. The man next to me did the same. Fortunately the car was on a hill, since all of Vitis is on a hill, and it started rolling anyway. It eventually started, the Tapahueco turned it around towards Huancaya, and, just to be weirder i guess, let off a siren sounding like the police with the microphone on top of his car, which i hadn´t noticed until that moment.

Today we were at the ATM and some little kid tried selling us candies. I turned my back to him as my friend was taking money and the kid walked away. Then his mother approached us with more candies. I, as we took money out, looked at her and with a straight face and said, "No hay plata." (There's no money.)


i love this www.youtube.com/watch


Jamie Moyer-Immortal?

Though it´s thousands of miles away
Sierra Leone connect to what we go through today
Over here it´s a drug trade, we die from drugs
Over there they die from what we buy from drugs


Algunas Notas
-Michigan State, I am accostumed to teams in green which I am also a fan of settling for 2nd.
-There are no lions in the jungle here
-So i hear there is some economic trouble going on somewhere?
-Looks like my dream sailboat trip along the shore of Somalia will have to be put off until the next year...again


Last week I attended a meeting of the mayor and other authorities of Vitis. I had turned in a idea for a project to attract tourists to the ruins of Vitis (tourists just pass through the town now). The meeting included alot of talk about our trout farm and how the refridgerated truck from Lima can come more often and how it could be made easier. But in the end of the meeting the mayor briefed through proposals and ideas, and concluded with mine, saying he believed it to be a good idea and that we should get started on it right away. Then in front of all apologized for the housing crisis of earlier (I was homeless living in the health post for a week and nearly left the town) and for the first months being so hard, and said he appreciates the work we are doing here and sees we will have a positive benefit on the area. It was big, and showed how much things have improved since even a month ago. I finally really felt comfortable and accepted in Vitis.

Also since the last time i wrote, a man from PC offices in Washington gave us four in Yauyos a visit, along with our program director (Stonewall) and the vice president of PC-Perú. Their visit came in my first week in my new room, and their overall sympathy for the recent situation and love of my site really helped out.

Last week I went with my friend Alcedo to his farm. It was an hour walk, up and down a mountainside, to his terrace on the mountain and I helped plant some alfalfa for the non-rainy season coming up. Then we walked along the mountains to his cows. His mom and two cousins, also women, were making cheese from the milk. They were in traditional mantas (i call them capes, but they´re more like a wool blanket with colorful designs which are wrapped around the neck and pinned to keep the back warm and dry) and sombreros, and we were all hiding from the rain under a big rock, kind of like a cave. It very much felt like I was in the Peace Corps. The women do this every day. The cheese was good.

We had 4 days off for Holy Week (national holiday in Perú) and took a trip to the jungle. The jungle we went to is about 8-10 hours from my site split into 2 bus rides. 5 from the coast came. They ended up driving from the coast through the Andes into the jungle in one day. I and two others from Yauyos met them in the city of Huancayo. We left for the jungle town of San Ramon, where we spent two nights and days exploring its waterfalls. One was about an hours hike into the jungle. Another was near the main road and fell in front of a cave which we walked into. My favorite and i believe the larges was named La Ducha del Diablo (The Devil´s Shower) and we walked up the steep hill alongside it until it was impassable and took photos of us in the water.

We had planned to go to a national park deeper into the jungle, but the roads were not all asphalt and a mudslide made it inaccessible the day we wished to leave. But the next day we found someone who would take us. The taxi took us as far as the mudslide. There we walked down the hill (it was mountainous jungle-and not as hot as expected), crossed a river (after taking a photo of me holding a Peruvian´s machete) and walked up to the other side where there was a mini-bus that took us the rest of the way. Then we got as close to the reserve as possible, to a very small town named Huancabamba, and got up at the crack of dawn the next day to find a taxi who would take us farther.
None would, so we waited for a bus to pass by. The day before a mini-bus got caught in rushing waters and although everyone escaped, the bus was taken down the mountain and smashed and all the bags and possessions of the people were lost. We saw the bus being taken by a tow truck, and it looked like someone had smashed all the windows in and beaten it with a wrecking crane.
So we took a mini bus, which immediately got a flat tire but made it to the reserve. There we had a 2 hour hike alongside a cavernous rocky wall and river. The only park guard was very nice and told us all about animals that lived in the area as well as plants and herbs. The only monkey i saw was a wood carving of one next to a placard explaining the monkeys of the park.
We missed the bus coming back to Huancabamba (we had bought bus tickets for the night, leaving from San Ramon) and the next was full. So we walked a bit and found a sign for a waterfall, which four of us (sarah, kate, fletcher and I) went down to and swam in for a bit. Then we walked back up to the road and met with Rich. Another bus then came, we barely missed it and it would have passed us but the others had the idea to stand in its way and when they said they were full, they said 3 of us would have to go on top. So Rich, Fletch and I were on top of it for 2 hours and it was a blast-Riding on top of a bus through the Amazon! It was also real scary. At one point Fletch said ¨dont look to the right¨ and I saw we had a 200 foot ledge below us, on this small old bus on a muddy small road. It was like this most of the way. At one point I leaned over to grab plastic from a man inside (it was raining really hard) and I thought it was stupid to do that just to stop my shirt from getting wet. I had to reach over because Rich was smart enough to tell the guy he wasn´t reaching for it haha. Near the end we crossed a water passing, the one which had taken the combi for a ride only a day before, and after a false start the combi finally made it past and us three on top could be heard shouting for joy.
We somehow made it back to San Ramon in time for our buses-once again we had to cross the river where the mudslide still was and find another mode of transportation-and it was all worth it!


happy 21st Scott Curtis- Do a cement mixer shot for me!

Let me know
Do I still got time to grow
Things ain't always set in stone
That be known let me know

-I cannot find the new Kanye CD here.
-Is it true Eminem came out with a new CD too?
-I met a girl who recently volcano boarded, trumping my sandboarding of a few weeks back
-My area is Nor-Yauyos Cochas, or NYC.

When it comes to being true, at least true to me
One thing I found,one thing I found
Oh no you'll neva let me down,


Notes:
-i still haven´t gotten a haircut since leaving the USA in september
-shaving is overrated
-i have a coupon for a Burger King meal but there is no Burger King
-I am running low on Kanye quotes
-I can't wait for my limited knowledge of Peruvian dialects to help me in the USA workforce
-All 23 flavors of Dr. Pepper have never tasted so good. The doctor is in!


Recently a friend of a friend, who is a PC volunteer in Costa Rica, was a victim of a planned armed robbery in an internet café. He was OK but his money was stolen, as was the money of the other costumers. I am certain when I say this does not happen where I am. Nothing happens in my town, there are no robberies or even guns that I know of. Neither have I heard of things more dangerous than your typical pickpocket in my regional capital, Huancayo. I´m happy to say I feel safe where I am.

I went to Miraflores last week. Miraflores is the name of the richest part of Perú´s capital. It is also the name of a small town of about 600 people about 9 kilometers from me. I went with Valle Grande, an NGO from Spain. Since there is a definite rainy season here, it is only then when the people can have their one harvest. But in Miraflores they have built a tank to collect rain water close to the top of the mountain. Then the community farms are connected to this tank, and sprinklers have been installed to let a second yearly harvest be possible. After the people from Valle Grande showed me and the town the tank and successfully tested the sprinklers, we had a group photo. I was told to be in it, even though I did absolutely nothing. Then we went to my town, Vitis, and had lunch with the mothers club, because they had just finished a cooking workshop with Valle Grande. I was then asked to be in another photo, this time with the mother´s club, mayor of Vitis and Valle Grande, even though, once again, i did not participate in the workshop. But the lunch was delicious. Then Valle Grande talked to the mayor of Vitis of installing a sprinkler system here.

Every month we have a meeting on the coast, which is 8 hours from my site if we leave on the weekend because the bus comes to Vitis. But, to make matters convenient, we usually leave on a Thursday, so I bike or walk 12 kilometers (like about 7-8 miles) to the closest bus stop. Sometimes I walk back this distance when I return from any city also. This is why I have not been able to upload photos or videos; it is too difficult to bring my computer to any city. The last monthly meeting I didn't need to do this walk though, because my program director, Diego, visited us in Yauyos and drove us back to the coast since that's where his office is in Lima. On the way there we had a random urge to get fruit, specifically avocado. We were on a gravel road with absolutely nothing for miles, until we passed a small house with what looked like  a stand. Diego asked if we saw avocado, and then I heard someone yell "My Friend!". It was my previously mentioned friend Carlos, who sells fruit in my town and used to live in the jungle. When he's in town he teaches me some Nativo, the language of the jungle, in exchange for me teaching him English. As we bought fruit and pisco (peru's famous licor) from him and he gave away some fruit to us, I thought of how Carlos is always asking me to visit him in his town of Putencia. I overheard Diego ask him about Putencia, and Carlos explained it is his house we were in, the house next door where his brother has a family, and his cousin's house accross the street. I don't know how Carlos ever expected me to find this place.

I have successfully moved into a new house. There were issues with the old one, and now i am living in a room separate from a family but right on the street. I had asked two families to move into. One said there was no space, but i am now closer with the family so it was overall a good thing. The other family had a room for me, but wasn't sure where because one of the sons is a teacher. Here teachers are placed by the gov't after they take annual tests. Since it was possible the son would be placed in Vitis, I waited until we found out his placement buy crashing with all my stuff in the health post. Then at the last minute the mother of the family changed her mind. I was homeless, and prepared to move permanently to the town next door, Huancaya, where I work at once a week and spend the night with a really nice family with an awesome little 6 yr old who is alone alot but is real ambitious to learn. He's really timid but has opened up to me. But then at the very last second, the town of Vitis showed their true colors. They found a room for me. It's independent of any family but my program director accepted it since it was the only option and I really apreciate what Vitis has done the past week or so. They helped me clean up the room and take out random trash and tools that had been lying there. Also they are provided paint and a helping hand when we paint the room this week. The health post lent me some things like a small desk and chair as well. I just need to buy things like blankets and to connect an outlet, which is why I'm now in Huancayo. The community is connecting water to the room for me as well, since there is a sink but no running H2O. There is no bathroom but there are community ones, as well as on in the health post nearby whose hot shower was also offered to me. Also we´re repainting the walls when I get back from Huancayo. Vitis really helped me out here, i had no options left and they gave me a huge helping hand.



With Greg Lewis gone, so have gone the hopes of a Philly Super Bowl anytime soon.

Most goodbyes are not so hard. I love you Brian Dawkins.