Mira! Señor Perro!

Sunday June 28
“My very first cock fight.”

The wedding raged on so late last night that no one could get good sleep. Por ejemplo, un hombre cantó muy tarde (casi 3 de la mañana) en la pasillo. So we slept really late, woke up to work more on organizing our contacts, and then slathered on some sunscreen to hit up Paracas. We've tried in the past to work on the weekends by doing encuestas through neighborhoods. However, the answers we usually get by knocking on doors are very short because they're not into being bothered by extranjeros on their weekends. We'll try again next weekend by just sitting in the Plaza and asking people who walk by.

The bike to Paracas is 21 km. Lindsay holds up just great in the ridiculous wind. I would say it was at points more than 30 mph with desert sands that basically made you bike with your eyes closed. Anyways, we ended up trying to tomar el sol, pero so much sand ended up on us that we had to wash it from our ears when we got home. We hung out on a wrecked ship on the beach mientras estabamos sacando fotos, ate a million egg sandwichs, and decided against going to the actual reserve at that point in time since we only had so much time and so much wind deterring us.

So we went home, rode our bikes soooo long without handlebars with the wind on our backs. And somehow, we ended up in San Andres in the middle of a crown ´round a couple of birds fighting, blades tied to their feet. It was ... crazy. Their feathers fluffed up around their necks, their beaks went at each other, and everyone looking on was glazed over in awe. After one fight, we decided we had seen it all and left. In the Pisco Plaza de Armas, we ate din din. There is a couple who works at this chicken sandwich cart who we like to hit up. They are really ridiculously in love. Like chicken sandwich making love. They spend all their time together (starting at 7 am) to prepare for their night selling chicken sandwiches. For 30 cents!! Oh geez, they're so good. Lindsay ate 4 ice cream cones today. That's like... one more than three. And she ate some chocolate cake. And popcorn. And churros. And bread. And smoothie. And carapulcra. Which is approximately 40 times more than she ate on her first day here.

Afterwards, we go to the opening for the fiesta in San Andres which is already in full swing by the time we arrive. Carnival-esque you might say. We don't stay long because we plan on waking up early tomorrow morning to hang out with Pisco Sin Fronteras


Saturday June 27, 2009
“This one will be Pamela Andercat. That one is Samuel L Catson. You're Princess. That one's Kitter Katter. Flounder. And you will be stinky butt.”

7am wake-up again – but this time we go back to bed because we've been NGO-ing nonstop. Then we realize we have to get our bikes at the Red Cross office at 8am so we hop out of the bed and into the streets with our dancing feets. We hit up a juice man for juice. We hit up the key man for keys. And then the bread guy for bread .And the cheese guy for cheese for grand sanwichs of avocado, cheese, bananas, and jam. Then we wash laundry for hours. And hours. And hours. Oh my god. But it's cool cause Lorena names the cats as you've read above.

We organize a bit more, standardizing our encuestas, interview questions, and other massive amounts of data. We figure, if we can get things under wrap before we head out into the big, scary world we can then be prepared for almost anything. We are basically incapable of moving out of bed from being up and working from our sometimes 12 + hour work days... so we listen to the loud, tacky music from the wedding outside our door in our hotel and party a little while we work on the lappy.

When we finally do taste fresh air, we bask for all its worth. Lindsay's incessant “helado” chant finally moved us from horizontal mattress-ridden to walking again. So we went out to the Plaza finally to grab some dinner of chicken feet soup during which we were rudely interrupted. A man on stilts, humping the air and being accompanied by a talented drummer, flew into the market to entertain us... and totally rip us off. We end up trying to give him a sole, but he only gives us 2 back from our 5. Lesson learned, again. Good job Lindsay for... not trying the feet. We expected much more from you, young lady. The soup also came with a little heart, mmmmm, our favorite. Actually, let's take that back. Liver is the best, hands down.

Anyways, then we headed out but got blind-sighted by donuts in syrup. A lady selling phone cards tried to convince Brooke to switch spots with her so she could go home. After chatting about volunteers in the region, hostals, and Adam's excellent cooking skills, the phone-selling-lady also tried to recruit Adam as her chef. Then she threw some mandarins our way for being such funny people.

Somehow, we ended up sitting around the Plaza and watching people until the end of the night. When we got back, we turned and tossed as the wedding raged on late late late. It was a good day to recover.


June 26, 2009
“Santa doesn't give anything to people who kill puppies.”

1:30am - We fell asleep uploading. Today our camera usage consumed the complete anion potential of both batteries, the internal memory and nearly all 16 extra GB of SD cards.

10pm – After arriving back in Pisco we enjoyed our nightcap of ice cream for Lorena, herbal tea for Brooke and another sandwich for Adam. Then we headed back to the room.

8 pm – We ate dinner in San Clemente before leaving – liver and potatoes with noodles in a sauce and soup. Topped by a chicken sandwich and some french fries, bananas, peanuts, and french fries. All for about $3.

4:30pm – The meeting has 2 agendas: outlet for community leader complaints and questions towards the mayor and his past 3 years of promises, and to elect 2 new public officials to serve as advisors to replace those that were voted out of office by the same committee a few months ago. The Q and A with the mayor went as smoothly as you might think and it was interesting to see the input of 2 NGOs – CEAS and Derechos Humanos (Human Rights). The leaders were chosen after a painstakingly democratic process of electing the people who were in charge of running the democratic election. It was all very....long, and very political, oh so political. Many good speeches though, and it was interesting to see how our first perceptions of the candidates correlated closely to the final outcome of the elections.

2:30pm – Red Cross drops us off at San Clemente, just outside of the site of the elections for new public advisors to the mayor. We eat lunch at a small restaurant nearby – Escaveche de Pollo – basically onions and chicken in a sauce over rice.

1:15pm – Red Cross treats us with a short detour to the nearby Laguna Morona – a.k.locally.a. “mermaid lake” since there apparently exist multiple reports of a female voice that calls out to males from the town by name.

Noon – Interview Karen from Peace Corps. She is from Michigan and has been stationed in Bernales for almost 6 months now. She had to go through the grueling training process for three months in Lima before being able to take station here for the next year and a half for a total of two years like with any other Peace Corps assignment. She basically gives us tips on how to administer encuestas in a way that elicits honest, useful answers. She also explains how she chooses, executes, and evaluates her projects.

9am – Arrive in Bernales, which is a district east of Pisco, not yet getting into the sierra mountains. This is the most dessertesque place that we have yet been. Breakfast finished off on the way. As soon as we get out we are greeted warmly by Nery, the Red Cross coordinator for the town of Bernales – another volunteer – who is also the director of the town's population. The town runs off the cotton industry which only brings in income for 3 months out of the year. The males in the town work from 4am to 5pm every day during cotton season as hired farm hands. After that, however, there is no work for them.

Nery explains that the Red Cross is really the only NGO that has brought aid to their town since immediate relief in the first few months after the earthquake. 110 homes are being built out of quincha, which is a building technology that uses walls made of woven sugarcane stalks covered with mud and a cement facade. The roof is supported by wooden beams and the floor is a thin layer of concrete. Basically, this technology has developed as an available, flexible, lightweight, inexpensive, but outwardly unnoticeable alternative to bricks.

The Red Cross is involved in many other community development projects in the area and is currently putting a lot of effort into organizing and equipping the community to use its own resources to rebuild and move forward.

8:20am – Leave with Red Cross. Jesus is the driver and he's real fun. Rita too, the Red Cross volunteer stationed in Bernales and left with the inglamorous task of showing us around. The truck we jump in is a white Land Rover with the Red Cross emblem plastered on the front and sides.

7:55am – Arrive at the Pisco office of the Red Cross Federation.

7:30am – Buy 8 breads, 3 bags of grapefruit and papaya juice, 1 bottle of Maca drink, 2 ham sandwiches, 1 egg sandwich, 1 small bottle of yogurt, and 1 middle-sized bottle of yogurt. The most we have spent on breakfast in awhile - $5. No time to eat though, so we stash it for the road.

6:45am – Wake-up


25 June Thursday El DIA DE PAZ
“Things are always pooping on my head. Let's just say poop is my middle name”

So today was full. Like we were full of food and the day was just bursting with NGO meetings. For instance, today we ate large smoothies, 16 pieces of bread, fish soup, raw fish, ham sandwiches, coffee, ice cream, diet cokes, soup, rice, and fried fish too. Oh and more ice cream. Oh yeah, and a chicken sandwich for Talsma to top the night off. And I quote, “I'm never really full until I eat that sandwich sandwich.”

The NGOs that we contacted today: Paz y Esparanza (peace and hope), Cuerpo de Paz (Peace Corps), ADRA (... we'll fill this in later ... ), Cruz Roja (Red Cross), and a few community members from San Clemente. Our first interview was at 11:30 am so we had a slow morning for Lauren to recuperate from her ridiculous travel here from outside of Philly. We went to San Andres for breakfast smoothies in bags. Bolsitas are for meals and drink para llevar- juice in a bag to go. It's amazing what you can put in there without compromising the integrity or presentation of the food. It's so much less wasteful than styrofoam, plastic, and paper cups from McDonalds. Although we'd probably have do an LCA to determine the validity of that statement to take into consideration the evaluation's scope. You know, gotta normalize those functional units and make sure to take into consideration recycling and remanufacturing and what not. But instinctively, it feels like it is more “green.” There's a whole lot of talk of sustainable projects here in Peru, but we've never seen a good definition of such a thing yet.

So we head out to meet with Jaime Mok. His office is just a stone's throw away from the Red Cross Peruvian branch. The office is shared between Paz y Esparanze (PE) and Acción Contra el Hambre (ACH, Action Against Hunger). This is the first indicator of the unique feature of PE- this NGO works very closely with other NGOS. So close, Jaime jokes, that they even share the same bathroom in the office. PE has worked with Red Cross to organize projects together, with PNUD to participate in “mesas de viviendas,” and ACH in ways we've already demonstrated. Mesas de Viviendas is essentially a way of saying that PNUD organized a weekly night where all people interested in working on or were already working on aiding the reconstruction of homes in Pisco can get together to compare and discuss projects in an open environment. Their coordination far outstrips what we've seen so far here. Just to demonstrate further... As we walked through the front of the office, we had to duck in front of a meeting happening in between PE and ACH to get upstairs to Jaime's office.

During the interview, we learn that PE is largely funded by evangelical institutions such as churches in the states, the tear fund in the UK, and the United States' branch of Peace and Hope. The funds in Independcia, the region that his branch works in, the funds are open to be spent towards mostly any project they decide is appropriate. This is a much different manner of funding than for American organizations like the Cruz Roja Americana who only donates to specific projects. In general this is to ensure that institutions are spending money on what donors deem worthwhile. Jaime explains that their work is in Independencia, as an attempt to make a focused effort to target an area that hasn't had much attention from NGOs. This matches up quite up a bit with what we've been discovering with our surveys of different regions. It seems as though some neighborhoods can list several NGOs in a split seconds whereas others will give blank stares to questions like, “what NGOs work in this region?” This is the other unique feature of this Pisco NGO.. Like ASPEm in Tambo de Mora, their work is very concentrated. In Jaime's opinion, this makes their work much more effective than NGOs trying to work in several regions at once.

Jaime's interview went very well, and he surprised us at the end by speaking nearly perfect English to his wife who entered the room right after we finished. We rode off to find ADRA's office afterwards only stopping a few times to force our non-fluent Spanish speakers to ask for directions and to eat this weird thing called an elephant ear which is actually fried dough covered in honey.

There was only one lone soul at the ADRA office who kindly explained that everyone else was out to lunch and about to set up for a meeting in San Andres. Remember all the “Participatory Budgeting” from San Clemente and Pisco where municipalities are collecting the community's opinion on budgeting? Yeah, well ADRA was running a meeting at 3pm with the municipalities to describe how to best utilize those opinions. So we decide to hit that up. After 3 sole ceviche, of course.

At the meeting, we decide that it's really just a review of 1.011 (project evaluation class from our department back home). We record a bit, eat some refreshments, and take a packet of their materials to review back at home. Unfortunately, we had to leave the meeting early to catch our 6:30 interview with the Director de Programa Agua y Saneamiento from Peace Corps. From the Plaza de Armas in Pisco, we scope out our next victim. Jorge Izaquirre is at the shoe shining stand, just waiting for us to put him under the light of our questions.

In the interview, we figure out that the Peace Corps is hardcore. The volunteers in Peru are subjected to a session of “getting used to food here” where they eat foods that are mixed with specific bacterias from Peru in Lima. That way if they get extremely sick, they can be treated where there is good medical care. He also tells us that he believes that the defining characteristic of the organization that helps it to have more impact is its bottom-up approach. There are a few other defining moments from the interview, but what we most remember is the several attempts to get recruited. If only we weren't 3rd year and off-to-grad-school students.

Anyways, a la sosie, we get one chicken sandwich and 4 scoops of ice cream to cap off our night. Then we go home to do the “clean the camel back in as many innovative, ingenius and stupid looking ways possible,” “upload so much footage it makes your head hurt because there is just way too much documenting occurring,” and “reading books with a little bit of spanish but mostly dirty words in order to 'learn more'” jobs.