My Big Fat Peruvian Family - Part 1

My Peruvian Family
Left to Right: Tia Romel, Liva, me, Lily
In Front: Valeria y Dayana

I decided it is about time to share about my loving family here in Peru.  When I received my site assignment of Mocupe / Ucupe, Lambayeque, my family information listed 6 women in my family ranging in age from 61 to 5.  Then my regional coordinator and another current volunteer in Lambayeque told me I would really only be living with one women and my house would be super “tranquilo.”  So basically I had nerves, excitement, and all around no idea what to expect.
From the time I first arrived in Ucupe, I found a big, loving family waiting for me with open arms. 

Livia

My Host Mother SISTER

 

 The one women I was told I would be living with is 55-year-old Livia.  While Livia plays the role of my host mom, preparing my meals, washing my clothes, taking care of me, she rarely calls herself such and prefers to be thought of as my host sister ;)
         Livia is a petite Peruvian and devout Catholic.  She once spent 8 years on-and-off living in Argentina with a family as their “empleadora” – a person who cooked, cleaned, and took care of the children.  In this way, she is accustomed to the role of caring for someone and does exceptionally well making sure my every need and want is filled – almost to a fault.  She also has a keen understanding of what is means to live in another country away from family and for this understanding I am most grateful.
          Livia’s mother died this past March on March 11, a day before her 72^nd birthday.  The family is currently observing the one-year mourning period.  All adult members of the family wear only black, do not attend parties, and do not dance.  I will soon add a post about what it is like to live with a family in mourning – just another adventure.
          Livia frequently explains to me how she lived alone after her mother’s death before I moved in; however, 5 other people sleep in our house every night and even more spend every evening in our living room, watching TV and chatting.  And so, Livia, along with 4 other people make up my “immediate” family here.

By joining Livia’s family I joined a big, extended family.  Livia’s mother was one of 8 children – 5 girls and 3 boys.  One of the daughters and one of the sons live in Lima and I have not met them.  Livia’s mother, as I mentioned, recently died.  This leaves 3 aunts who are very involved in my house and daily life: Nelly, Romel, and Nicol. 

Tia Romel, her daughter Lily, Lily’s daughter Dayana, and Romel’s other granddaughter Valeria all sleep in my house every night along with Livia’s friend Peta.  

Romel

My Aunt
Romelia, called Tia Romel, is always happy and enjoys being the jokester.   She and her husband have a house in the campo within walking distance from me. She spends her days there and her evenings/nights in my house.  There is a neat outdoor kitchen area, fields where they grow squash and corn, a great garden with beautiful roses and avocado trees, and lots of animals including chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, a pig, and a dog.

Romel has 3 children and at least 4 granddaughters that I know.  2 children live in Lima and her youngest daughter Lily lives with us.

Valeria

My Niece

Valeria is my 8-year-old niece.  Her father Juan Carlos, is the oldest son of Tia Romel.  He, his wife, and their other 2 daughters live in a town in the department of Lima but Valeria lives here in Ucupe with multiple aunts as surrogate mothers.  I met her mother and sisters on their visit when I came on my site visit in August.
        As I understand it, Valeria’s family was visiting here when she was very young and she got very sick.  Her mother was pregnant with her younger sister and needed to return to Lima.  Unable to make the trip, Valeria stayed here to get better.  After some time, the family decided Valeria had gotten use to life here and would remain here indefinitely. 
        She is cared for by Livia, Tia Romil, and Lily and now I share in the daily tasks of getting her homework done, making sure she baths, ect.  She is full of energy and your typical 8 year old girl who would rather play outside with friends then sit down to study Peruvian religion before test day.  And life with her is what I would guess a typical relationship of a much older sister with a much younger sister – 16 year young sister to be exact.  To Valeria, everything I have or do is exciting and should be shared, or even just given to her. Including my attention.  We have lots of fun but sometimes doors just need to be shut for a minute ;)



Lily with her daughter Dayana

Lily
My Cousin/Sister/BFF
Liliana, called Lily (pronounced LeeLee), is Romel’s 29-year-old daughter.  She has her mother’s sweet disposition and a smile and laugh that can quite literally brighten any day. She loves to include me in anything she is up to from painting her nails to going to buy shoes to going to birthday parties and dancing until the next morning. 

Dayana

My Niece
Dayana is Lily’s 5-year-old daughter and literally the light of my day.  She is a burst of energy and cutest thing you’ve ever seen.  When the popular (and terribly overplayed) song “Soy Soltera” comes on the radio, she dances with more sass than I’ve ever seen.  A smile and hug from Dayana will quickly stop any headache or confusion with this sometimes frustrating society. 

The other person who sleeps here most nights is Peta, Liva’s best friend.  I have my own room, as required by Peace Corps.  The other 6 people sleep in one room in 3 beds; however, 5-year-old Dayana likes to beg her mother and aunts for permission to sleep with “Tia Carolina” and I can hardly object to her big smile.

While the entire community does an excellent job of being my family while I am away from my family, these are the people I more or less spend every day with and, as such, are the ones who expect and who have specifically requested to be on my gift list should I find time to visit the states. (All of us are pictured together at the top)

I realize this is one of those posts that goes on probably too long but I could go one forever about my family here just as I can about my family at home and I look forward to sharing more of my adventures with Livia’s family over my two years with them.

Monday's (belated) Inspiration - JFK

 "Life in the Peace Corps will not be easy.  There will be no salary and allowances will be at a level sufficient only to maintain health and meet basic needs.  Men and women will be expected to work and live alongside the nationals of the country in which they are stationed - doing the same work, eating the same food, talking the same language.

But if the life will not be easy, it will be rich and satisfying.  For every young American who participates in the Peace Corps - who works in a foreign land - will know that he or she is sharing in the great common task of bringing to man that decent way of life which is the foundation of freedom and a condition of peace."

- John F. Kennedy

I am a day late (and, ask JFK pointed out, always a dollar short) on posting this week's Monday Inspiration, but I have some reason for my tardiness.  Today marks one month since my group swore in as Peace Corps Volunteers and one month since we began our service in site.  So it felt appropriate to save JFK's words for today.  JFK, along with Sargent Shriver, founded the Peace Corps in 1961 and the mission and foundation has not changed.  This is what I am working for in Peru - a little world peace and a lot of happiness and adventure!

And, as my Papa has reminded me in years past, it is appropriate on Constitution Day (which is today) to be thankful I am an American and part of a country that allows me to come to a developing country and share ideas of development and improvement for the health, education, and future of their youth.

And that is my inspiration to share this week :)

 So Happy Constitution Day and Happy One Month In Site, Peru 21ers

Inspiration Monday

I have decided to occasionally post some of the inspirational or motivational things I stumble upon during my time here in Peru - just things I read and enjoy, things that make me stop and think, or just small things I want to remember and find fun to share.  And what better time for a little inspiration than Monday mornings when, even in Peru, getting out of bed seems to be a little more of a chore. So with this explanation, here's a little Monday motivation from Walt Whitman :)

THE OPEN ROAD

by Walt Whitman
Leaves of Grass

Afoot and light-hearted I take the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

*This is a picture of the walk I went on yesterday with my host sabrinas (nieces).  The little one making strides here is 5-year-old Dayana

I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer...Now What?

As I talk and catch up with people at home, I realize very few, if anyone (myself included sometimes), really know what it is that I am doing here in my small pueblo in Peru.  So I thought I would take a few minutes to explain what I know so far about my job as a youth development volunteer in Mocupe and Ucupe.

So I am here for 2 years but that time is slightly split up, especially during my initial year.

First Months (August - December)
The most important part of my first months at site is integration - learning about my community, bonding with my family, practicing Spanish, etc.  The big "work" of the first months is the Community Diagnostic - a document I write and present all about my community and the youth here in particular.  It includes statistics, demographics, and information gained from observations, interviews, and surveys.  Then the diagnostic will, supposedly, lead the projects I will work on in the following year and a half. (To my macro social workers - yes, I am writing another community needs assessment!)

Other work of my first months in site include "Early Wins" - or activities that are more or less easy to do and foster integration in the community and the development of confianza (trust) with community members.  I'll write a post soon about the activities on which I have been working.

Summer Vacation (January - February)
The end of my first months run into the summer vacation here. Obviously, as a youth development volunteer collaborating with students in school, summer vacation affects my work.  During summer vacation, I will be working on Vacaciones Utiles - essentially summer school.  It usually consists of remedial academics such as math or expensive sport options in the capital city so I will work with the municipality and/or schools here to coordinate and teach different enrichment options - or something like that.

 March/April 2014 - Close of Service in 2015
This is the time I will really work on projects, including sustainability efforts to continue the projects in the community past my time here and return home. 

There are Peace Corps trainings sprinkled through this time in December 2013, March/April 2014, August 2014, and the Close of Service conference in Spring 2015. There are also opportunities for me to work on a few different committees like the youth initiative committee or gender equality committee that I may look into joining when applications come around.

That is probably more information than you wanted to know about the boring parts of the job of a volunteer in Peace Corps Peru but I hope it helps paint a picture of my work here for my friends and family back home.  I will stop now before I bore you all to death with the mission of the Peace Corps and goals and objectives of Youth Development - but the nerd in me loves it and could go on for days ;)

So that is all for now and I look forward to sharing my activities and projects as my job develops here in Mocupe and Ucupe.

A Week Full of Bienvenidas and Motivation

My first week in site proved to be as awkward and overwhelming as so many promised it would be.  I will be perfectly content if I live the rest of my life without being ´presented´to another director, alcalde (mayor), school, or any other group of people.  However, even with the awkwardness and mass confusion, I am eternally grateful for the amazing welcome I have received.

I am a replacement volunteer, meaning I was sent to a site where another youth development volunteer recently left after her 2 years of service.  Being a replacement volunteer has its pros and cons - on the one hand, the majority of the community know what Cuerpo de Paz (the Peace Corps) is and I have lots of community members willing and excited to work with me.  On the other hand, I am constantly told what Amanda (the last volunteer) did and am expected to dive head first into work.  Thankfully, Amanda left me with a great set of potential socios and good relationships with the municipality and local schools.

So here is a glimpse of how my week went:

After convincng a collectivo to load up all my luggage and a mattress and drop me off directly at my host family´s house, I arrived in Ucupe just in time for lunch.  I found my room ready for me complete with balloons and signs of ¨Bienvenidas¨ from Valeria and Dayana - my two host sabrinas ages 8 and 5 respectively.

I spent the afternoon unpacking a little and beginning to settle in.  I intend to continue working on my room, which will aslo serve as an office of sorts, for the next several weeks - gradually getting things in the capital city and getting organized.  As for now, the floor suffices as a dresser and a desk.  My host mom had many members of the family - aunts and cousins who spend every night in our house - as well as 5 or so women who live on my street over for dinner to introduce me to everyone.  It is nice to already have familiar faces on the street and people looking out for me in the tranquilo pueblo of Ucupe.

Tuesday I ventured to the municipality to be presented by and to members of the muni.  After waiting an hour - a typical occurance in Peruvian culture, I was escorted to a room set-up with a table and ¨Bienvenida Caroly al Distrito Lagunas Mocupe¨ displayed on the wall.  I think they ran out of letters to actually write Carolina ;)  It was a nice reception led by a member of the municipality staff who recited a poem to me.  It also included ¨palabras¨ or speeches from directors of the local schools, a representative of the regional government of Lambayeque, my host mom, and the tenant alcalde and I had a song sung to me by another member of municipality staff.  It concluded with the tenant alcalde giving me a dozen roses, refreshments for everyone and each person introducing themselves.

Following the muni presentation, I walked with my host mom, muni representative, and director of the high school to the school.  In case everyone hasn´t already noticed the new gringa walking around, I was particularly conspicuous carrying a dozen glittery roses.

The school presentations continued for the next 2 days as representatives of the muni and my host mom took me around to 10 or so schools where I was once again ¨presented¨ to directors, professsors, and students with varying levels of interest and excitement.

My crew of municipality works and host mom also took me to the beach in Lagunas, only 30 minutes from my house so I am excited to visit the beach lots this coming summer!

Overall it has been quite a week that will continue into next week as I begin helping at 2 schools.  As many awkward moments I had being ¨presented¨ over and over again, this week gave me great motivation to fully get to know my community and truly dedicate 2 years of work and life here.  Visiting many small caserios, schools, and directors proved there is no shortage of work and energy here.  No, the tough part will not come in finding partners but in choosing where to focus energy and where I can have the best impact.

Thanks for the awesome welcome District of Lagunas!

*Also, I hope to share pictures of these adventures soon.  Unfortunately, my computer has broken so don´t have a way to get them from my camera now.  I will be working on this and hopefully sharing pictures before too long.

Final Weeks of Training and Swearing In

For a year application process and 10 weeks of training in Lima, I have prepared for and dreamed of the community I will live in and work with as a Peace Corps volunteer - my site.  The first week of August, I traveled to Ucupe, Mocupe in the department of Lambayeque for the first of many times and the community immediately stole my heart.  

Over the next 2 years, I will share lots of information about my new Peruvian family and the community of Ucupe (and of Mocupe).  

***So to clarify - my new home is in the pueblo of Ucupe - a small caserio of Mocupe.  The main community is Mocupe and includes the caserios of Lagunas, Nuevo Mocupe and Ucupe.  This is all in the District of Lagunas.  To give an idea of the size: The entire district has around 10,000 people with under 4,000 residing in the main community of Mocupe and the remaining 6,000 split between the 3 caserios. So my home is in Ucupe and I will be working with schools and health posts in both Ucupe and Mocupe***

So, as I was saying, I will share lots of information about my family and site over the next 2 years but for now, after just a few days, I can already tell you I am thrilled to be a member of the rural coastal pueblo of Ucupe and think, or optimistically hope rather, that with current community leaders, patience, and hard work I can see some cool things happen in my community over the next 2 years and I'm looking forward to finishing training and returning not as a trainee but as a volunteer. 

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Following site visits, we returned to Chaclacayo as trainees and 7 days later we once again packed our bags and headed to the bus station as volunteers. 

The final week of training was a blur of finishing up trainings, language interviews, preparing to move, and soaking up the last days in Chaclacayo - including time with my host family, other trainees, and the hot water and wi-fi I was spoiled to have in Lima.  

It is hard to imagine I was telling my family, friends, and life stateside good-bye only 10 weeks ago. 

Within 10 weeks, I have gone from a bajo-bajo (low-low) Spanish level to intermedio-alto (intermediate-high) Spanish level.  

I have traveled to 3 different departments in Peru - including coastal areas to the north and the south.

I have become a member of a big Peruvian family to whom I was a stranger a few short months ago.  

And all of this I have done with friendship and support from amazing training staff and other trainees who are on this wild ride with me. 

Now it is equally as strange to say yet another goodbye to that new Peruvian family, those supportive staff members, and many of those fellow trainees and friends to venture to the real experience of Peace Corps - our sites.  The 10 weeks of training are an extreme learning curve and certainly an adventure in their own right, but they are but a blip of time and only the surface of the real task of serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in site.  I was sad to leave my first Peruvian home of Chaclacayo but overjoyed with anticipation, nerves, and excitement to take my first steps as a volunteer.  

Mil gracias to the host families, training team, Peace Corps staff, friends on the journey with me, and, as always, my family and friends supporting me from home for making training a great experience.  Now let's take some pasos adelante (steps forward) to the meat and potatoes of this adventure - my service in Ucupe Lambayeque Peru! 

Celebrating Swearing In as Peace Corps Volunteers with the close friends of my language group and one of our wonderful language facilitators Pablo 

*as usual, there are a few more pics posted on Facebook so enjoy :) 

Training Continues: Weeks 7 & 8

As training continues, it has become more and more of a time management experiment.  A great balance between spending time to learn and bond with my host family, studying and learning Spanish, spending time to relax with my fellow trainees, and taking time for myself to reconnect with friends and family back home, blogging/journaling or the rare but necessary alone time.  

This great balancing act seemed to intensify in the training weeks following FBT.  The highlights of my walking the tight rope of training in Weeks 7 & 8 follow. 

Site Assignments

The Thursday following Field Based Training was Site Assignment Day - the day we find out the departments and communities we will call home and work with for the next 2 years.  The training center staff like to get creative and have a game or activity to reveal sites.  For my training class of Peru 21, they hung balloons across a clothes line.  Each balloon had one of our pictures on it.  Two at a time (one business trainee and one youth trainee) would pop our balloons to find the names of our site.  

Following the reveal, we had meetings with our Regional Coordinators to learn more information about our departments and sites.  I am excited to say I will be living in the department of Lambayeque - a region on the northern coast of Peru and the department I visited for FBT - in a small site called Mocupe.  I will be a replacement volunteer for a youth development volunteer who recently finished her 2 years of service and returned home this summer.  While I was given information about the town of Mocupe, my new host family, and the past volunteer's projects, I feel the true identity of Mocupe and the nature of my work will remain a mystery until I not just visit but move in and begin my life and service there. 

Dinners with Host Families and Trainees in the Neighborhood 

A definite highlight and favorite moment from the past two weeks was cooking dinner with host families. The night of site visit, I went to the host house of 2 trainees to cook tacos for their families.  Getting to cook a tasty meal while spending time with friends and their families was a lot of fun. 

Apparently that family had a great time, too because they told my host family how great it was leading my host family to invite the other volunteers over to cook at our house.  At the request of my host sister, Sara, we prepared my mother's recipe (with a few Peruvian substitutions) of Lasagna.  It was not only a fun. Igbo but really special to share a favorite home cooked meal with my trainee friends and my training host family. 

Fiestas Patrias and Visit to Miraflores

On July 28, and the surrounding weekend, Peru celebrates it's independence or "Fiestas Patrias."  One of my most exciting moments of the celebration was that it meant a day of from training!  During the weekend, I traveled to visit Miraflores, a very nice area of Lima with two friends and my host family.  It was pretty and felt eerily American-like with a Starbucks on every corner.  

My host brother Samuel and my host sabrinas Ariana and Estephany in Miraflores

One of the coolest things on our Miraflores adventure was finding a Cuerpo de Paz connection in the artisan market.  During Fiestas Patrias, artisans from all over Peru come to Lima to showcase and sell their works.  This is what spurred my host family's trip because my host mom wanted to get a scarf from an artisan of her home town in the Sierra.  While walking through the market, a friend of mine who is a business volunteer trainee spotted embroidered goods he recognized from some of the volunteers' current projects.  Upon asking the ladies at the booth, we found out they were in fact artisans currently working with Peace Corps business volunteers and were artisans featured at the fashion show I attended during FBT.  It was a neat experience to connect with local artisans and Cuerpo de Paz partners.

 Artisans and partners of Cuerpo de Paz in Miraflores on Fiestas Patrias 

Looking Ahead

Next week I will travel to Lambayeque for orientation and site visit - which includes 3 days and nights in my new community of Mocupe.  Following the week of site visit, I have one final week of training in Chaclacayo that includes my final language interview, celebration for our host families, and the ceremony to be sworn-in as a volunteer.  Look in the next weeks for the final blogs about training and the beginning of my service as a Peace Corps Volunteer!