Pobre Chico

Wednesday, June 24 – Lindsey arrives!
"There's this bug that pokes a personal hole in the female and aprovechars of that hole."

Lindsey gave us a wake-up call at 4:45am. (Lindsey = Lauren Biscombe. MIT '09, and a fellow Course 1 stud) She was on a cab to the bus station. This left us with a mere 13.75 hours without being bothered by other MIT kids while being in Peru. She gave us the second wake-up call at 8:50am. First visual contact between Brooke and Lindsey was later but they didnt care to note the exact hour at which this momentous interaction occured.

Breakfast was a juice of apple, orange, banana, spinach and 12 little breads – 4 wheat, 4 sweet, and 4 french. Total: 9.20 soles ~ $3. From here we biked off to San Clemente which is about 30 mins away by bike. Lindsey kept with us all the way and pulled ahead on the hills. Josie are you reading this? We located the two NGO offices in town we were targeting for the day – ADRA and CEAS. Both happen to be the social outreach branch of churches – Adventist and Catholic respectively. After introducing Lindsey to tallerines (noodles with spagghetti-esqe sauce) and papas a la huacayina (potatoes and cheesy milk sauce) and caldo de gallina (chicken soup) we headed to our CEAS interview where they are playing with some cool bamboo building techniques. By the way, Adam had to eat all of Lindsey's food cuz she eats too slowly.

The CEAS interview goes well and afterwards we meet the french architects, who study in the Peruvian University of San Martin and are the technical advisors to the bamboo construction project. They were building a two-story house out of bamboo using innovative two-way floor designs. In addition, they showed off their bamboo dome and bamboo conference room, not to mention their bamboo watchtower that Brooke noted could be seen from far down the highway.

The focus of this NGO is on teaching construction skills to youth in the area and to work on small development projects that help families reconstruct. This was the first organization we found that really stressed how helpful the role of PNUD (UN branch) in coordinating between NGOs, municipalities, and the people. Interestingly enough, CEAS also collaborated with quite a few other NGOs on many projects. Another interesting part of CEAS is that it relies heavily upon local pastors and priests to obtain the needs from the people and to also communicate with the people throughout the project.

After the CEAS interview, we biked home – by a new way, and stopped to do surveys in the El Molino community. This community is full of earthquake refugees who relocated to uninhabited land and have slowly set up more and more permanent residence even though no one has land titles. They are working on this, though, and have organized themselves at least somewhat in order to petition for land titles. There is also rumors of the government forcing them off the land before the two-year anniversary of the earthquake, but that seems impossible given the size and permanence of the informal settlement. As expected, the people here have received little to no aid since the immediate relief after the earthquake and they are understandably bitter. There is also a lot of talk about corruption within the municipality directed towards them because they do not have land titles and therefore are diffecult to track when donations are made. Brooke does her first encuesta on her own and is now making complete and coherent sentences in spanish. 1 month of hard work and effort towards picking up the language is definately put on display. Lindsey refuses, claiming she needs to aclamate herself to the survey culture first.

During the surveys we met another NGO working in the region – COPRODELI. This organization had set up an after-school, and health care center in the middle of town. Unfortunately this establishment can only cater to around 30 children, so only a few within the community are able to benefit from it. We set up an interview with them on Monday. Also, they had recently met randomly with Pisco Sin Fronteras about teaching English to the kids, and it seems they have set up next Wednesday as their first meeting. Maybe we will show up to that as well.

Anyways, after it gets nearly dark, we hop back on our bikes and pedal the last bit to home - stopping only to get orange juice at the plaza central. After the daily chores of uploading and blogging we find that it is useful to have a third person around filming and manning some other equipment – gps, flipcam, handycam, still camera, smartpen and notebook.

Now we are about to head out to grab dinner before coming back home for the night to read a bit, laugh a bit, love a lot, and sleep a lot, Sir Lancelot. Potrotjot. Or not.

Tuesday, June 23 – CEAS, ADRA, and some really ticked off community members
"Would you rather drown or burn to death? How do you feel about arranged marriage? How many brothers do you really have? What if your dad came here right now and told you you had to marry x girl? How many sheep would you have to pay?"

Our first interview of the day is with CEAS at the new catholic church on Pisco Playa. However, our interviewee had forgotten about our appointment and instead invites us to a meeting he is attending later in the day that is being run by ADRA in San Clemente. We happily agree and head back to the hotel room to send Josie off on the Flores bus to Lima. As we write, he is on his plane, headed to another paradise. We've found that making appointments is nearly usually less useful as opposed to simply stopping by NGO offices. Just a little something we've learned from NGOs about Peruvians since we've been here: do it in person, call them twice, and make sure to send an e-mail if you're not certain they remember you.

So we hang with Josie a bit before he heads off, celebrating with one last four scoop sundae (less than a dollar) topped with chocolate sauce and a wafer. Immediately after he boards the bus, we book towards San Clemente for our 4pm meeting. His directions are vague: main street at a local place. Right, so we do that. And manage to get further down the dirt roads than Josie's bus does in thirty minutes when it passes us while we ask for directions. Pisco is situated on the beach, Las Americas heads directly away from the beach where it makes a T with the Pan Americana. At this T is the villa de Tupac Amaru where UNICA (ooh-knee-kuh) is snugly situated among the dusty calles. North of here, towards Ica, is the town of San Clemente and the road that heads up into the mountains towards the region of Humay (where our meeting with PNUD in Quitasol took place). It's about a 30 or 40 minute bike ride, up hill, but the sun is shining so everything is alright.

In San Clemente, you find a very well constucted Plaza de Armas (PS every city has a plaza de armas which is essentially the city square around which everything revolves). It has a concrete shell pond with a small bridge over it, several terraces connected by stairs, and well-lit surrounding areas. The people here seem much more well off than the people in Pisco Playa or El Molina. We look around, locate the municpal building, and then sneak up on an ADRA guy who is knocking on the front door. We ask him for directions to the CEAS meeting which he gives surprisngly quickly considering that we saw him arrive in a taxi not two minutes ago.

So we set off, peek in, and sit down inside the tavern which has plastic lawn chairs with pictures of beer on the back of them. The place probably can fit 60+ people. There are only 5 people there fifteen minutes before the meeting, but by 4:30, when they start there are almost 30. At 5:00, an hour after the scheduled opening, the room fills up with probably 50 upwards to capacity. So goes Peruvian time. The meeting opens with a municipal worker who welcomes the audience who consist of community leaders from San Clemente annd its annexos (surrounding villages).

Then the ADRA guy we saw in front of the municipal building stands up to start the meeting which was a surprise. Our interviewee was simply attending the meeting, not running it. Ooops for thinking CEAS was running it. Anyways, ADRA proceeds to talk about social, economic, institutional, and environmnetal development. They talk about the statements from last year's meeting, and begin to open up the floor to the people to comment on the vision for 2021 that was established in the last meeting (a year ago). This workshop is a partipatory program so the talking from the audience is plenty. In fact, so strong-willed and so opinionated that they begin to take over the meeting. Everyone comments on the fact that the municipality is supposed to be collecting their opinions but the municipal representatives left. This, according to the community, is typical behavior from their mayor. With a year left in office, the people are fed up with this treatment and are frustrated that the municipality has yet to authorize proposals for a comprehensive city reconstruction plan.
In any case, the people cause quite a ruckus to the point that ADRA gives up and asks for a vote. Who wants to stay? Who wants to go? And the majority rules. The meeting is let out. We gather tons and tons of feedback afterwards. We are invited back on Friday at 9am, 3pm, and 5pm to various meetings ranging from a one on one interview to another meeting with the same people run by themselves instead of the NGO leading the way. We are also invited to another meeting tomorrow at 3pm which will involve us talking to a woman who is very unsatisfied with the Red Cross. Everyone here is articulate and passionate. We wonder if it is a function of their income bracket. Could communities with more money have more time to participate in meetings like this, put time and effort into interacting with NGOs, and taking advantage of getting their opinions heard? I think there is a strong connection.

Anyways, we return home by bike after the discussion. On the ride home, we grab churros and bike oil. We eat one and use the other to clean up our chains in the Pisco Plaza de Armas. We grab orange juice, tea, and a chicken sandwich to tide us over until breakfast tomorrow. We run into Phol and Julie in the front of our hostal and chat with them for awhile about Pisco. The neighborhoods, the tourism, and about the NGOs in the region.

Now for some massive uploading, blogging, and transcribing data from our meeting. And then BED. Oh sweet, bed.

Monday, June 22 – Pisco Sin Fronteras!
"Where's the duct tape?"

So today is our last full day with Josie. And you know what he does? He wakes up at 6:20 in the morning to go on an all day tour of Paracas. Pfft. Meanwhile, we are racing over to San Andres to get our fill of orange fruits and vegetable juice: carrots, oranges, and papaya. It is delicious, but we are crestfallen to find out that the other significant Jose of our lives, Jose the Juice Man, will also be leaving us... for a week. But his prices and zest were the best of Peru, so we are sad to lose him. He advises us to visit his brother in the Pisco market, but I'm certain he will not be able to compare, charge us more than 2 soles per cup, and just not be the.. same.

After the (heart) breaking news has been dropped on us like a bomb from 10,000 feet high, we decide to drown our miseries by biking as fast our little legs can carry us towards our NGO of the day quien se llama "Pisco Sin Fronteras." This is the first largely English-speaking NGO so it should be a completely different experience. Their 8am meeting is held every morning besides Sunday in the back of the volunteer's home on Pisco Playa.

This morning, they are joined by several new faces, but no one is phased. Introducing new volunteers is simply part of the daily routine. Every one is merrily eating breakfast, with antique american rock music in the background, when we arrive. We say hello to the familiar faces from Saturday and while we sip on our orange wonderjuice, we wait for the director to start the meeting. He announces a few things, asks if any one else would like to announce anything, and then asks the new people to introduce themselves. People are from all over the world, including Australia, Columbia, Mexico and Boston.

People mostly hear about this place from friends or through the Internet. Beginner's are taken in with full arms, even if they are non-spanish speaking. In the evenings, there is exchanges of Spanish-English lessons so you're bound to learn quick while volunteering. Afterwards, Jeni takes the board. She is the project coordinator of six months who keeps track of all the sites. She looks a bit frazzled, but in a sort of satisfying smiley sort of sense. There are 5 jobs for today: concrete pouring, bamboo moving, medical center logistics, trench digging, and a UNICEF project. She says how many people are needed on each site, ensures that a Spanish-speaker is on each, and finds places for left-overs. The two directors also make sure that a few people volunteer to clean up breakfast and dinner dishes as well as the bathrooms. Morale here is high, and people are all of good cheer.

So then they finish eating breakfast while we interrogate a few people. We get addresses to all the sites, learn a bit more about Assessments, and start to discern who is best to talk to about our project for more information. Our plan of action is to skip one of the sites which is out of the way, start with the furthest job, and make our way back towards the beach throughout the day to end with the most volunteer-rich job of concrete pouring for some quality footage. Since there won't be any one doing Assessments today (basically, walking around neighborhoods asking if any one needs manual labor for their homes, filling in some forms about each household that is surveyed, and communicating these needs back to Harold for further assessment), we lose out on a chance to observe some project evaluation and selection processes which we have yet to witness.

In the truck, there are several blankets for the community of El Molina, a small makeshift town between the coast and the Pan-Americana. The people that live there are mostly made up from those who used to have homes situated right along the ocean. Homeless after the earthquake, the community migrated further inland to construct new homes in a dusty bowl right off Las Americas (the main road from the Pan Americana towards Pisco). Here, Pisco Sin Fronteras will be doing work on two sites: altering a makeshift structure for one of the community leaders here and doing some logistical work behind the medical building that PSF put in recently. The work here is visible, from the waterlines that were installed by the volunteers in January to the child care building. The communication between PSF and María (the community leader) is done on a twice a week basis, mostly over phone and in person. Both projects have been proposed by the communities themselves.

After seeing the initial interactions between María and the volunteers, largely consisting of her telling them where to move her house, she left to go negotiate with some Cuban doctors in Tupac Amaru. We followed her there to see a sort of miscommunication occur, resulting in a delay of the opening of El Molina's medcenter. So we grabbed our bikes and check out the large project closer to the coast off Las Americas. 15 homes in a small cluster being sponsored by a religious group. Unfortunately, the team had already finished so we weren't able to witness any action.

Then we set off to call fathers from the Locutorio, eat orange juice, and try new sweets from the market. The day passes a little slowly, so we decide to take a random sample of surveys from the people with homes on the beach. Largely, they are familiar with PSF and a few are friends with M.A.D. One mentions UNICEF, but for such an NGO-rich community, there is very little awareness anymore. Before dinner, we head out to conduct a more formalized interview with the director from PSF.

Harold is originally from Pisco, he's the cool one, remember? Anyways, he is very kind and takes us into their headquarters which also doubles as a home for volunteers. There are two houses where volunteers pay for their food and lodging at a much cheaper rate than any of the hospedajes in the area. We walk past a slew of volunteers attentively engaging in discussion, some waiting for the guitar to start up while others spit passionately in their conversations. Harold kindly invites us to his room, where we hold the interview.

Here, we learn much more about PSF. Two things. First, NGOs can work together to build off one another to evolve and morph into a more efficient entities with entirely new leadership, name, and mission statements. Second thing, an NGO can function entirley without funds yet still generate labor and useful products after establishing their presence. In any case, Harold has been a leading force for PSF. His work there has tied their vision together into a cohesive body of workers that hold true to their word. As duly noted with Cruz Roja, having the work of a local (i.e. Harold) can really keep an NGO or group of volunteers true to their course. In my opinion, one of the amazing parts of this NGO is the ability to host non-Spanish speaking volunteers and yet turn them into useful labor. Harold also talks about some of the NGO's less successful projects. The largest that PSF has taken on was coordinated to take place with another NGO called Espacio Expresion, but fell through due to frustrating conditions. Apparently miscommunications about whether the school-to-be would be private or public. He seemed rather bothered that such a promising project hadn't been followed to completion, but he also knew what made it unsuccessful. In any case, the entire interview proved a stark contrast to many of the NGOs we've worked with thus far.

Then we took the rest of the night off to mourn Josie's departure tomorrow by eating a lot of street food and sundaes. Bueno suerte con todos, Josie :( At least Lauren will show in about two days. Hooray for more company.

Sunday, June 21 – Happy Father's Day!
“Take it off.”
“No one is taking anything off, Josie.”
“Speak for yourself.”

Breakfast for the first time in Pisco market. It is not up to par. Maybe its a function of the teeming masses and the buzz of many bodies buying food in the morning. The prices were higher for heavy breakfast dishes of rice and chicken and saucy sauces. The juices were simply not Jose and unwilling to flex. Oh, and they lied about the prices.

Not having time to even finish our juices, we headed over to our 10am interview with Ascension Martinez, Head of the International Red Cross Federation's Earthquake Reconstruction Program in Peru. She is from Spain. She is from Australia. She has 3 degrees and is bien chevere. She has worked with numerous NGOs in Vietnam, Cambodia, the Andes, India, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Australia, and maybe more but she lost me by then. The interview went well, but mostly because Brooke was running the show. Ms. Red Cross Chevere did much more than simply answer our questions and gave us a lot of useful information on the organization. She also took time out of her Sunday to show us the Red Cross office and the events they have coming up. We hope to check out some of their events, and by that I mean we will. She also is kind enough to confirm Brooke's suspicions that the Peruvian diet of sugar juice, potatoes, and rice is simply not enough. So there.

Basically the Red Cross does a lot more than people think – i.e. not just health. They get their hands dirty by building homes as well as hosting workshops on community risk realization and mitigation. The interview whipped up realizations that the success of an organization is largely a function of the people who are on the ground doing the work. These people, in turn, are largely a function of a principled culture and foundation upon which they are hired. Whatever that sentence means, ask Adam. Anyways, Red Cross seems to have this down when it comes to the Pisco office. The mix of outside help along with local Pisco volunteers is very successful here. Their volunteers have to go through an application process which includes some personal interviews with serious evaluation. She praised their work ethics, dedication and..

Happy Father's Day, Pop!

...communication skills.

During the interview, I got a great shot of an NGO worker opening and locking doors. Later, we had to go through and weed through all the footage since Adam's overexcitement and camera withdrawal caused a serious overclicking of the record button. It's cool though. Happens to the best of us, so Adam claims.

After the interview, we ran a few errands, recapped where we stood and planned our schedule a bit more for the upcoming week. We also tried to find an open international calling center but not of the cheap ones were open, so we will have to settle for calling Dads tomorrow. Sorry :(

To make up for it, we gladly fulfilled our promise to visit our former host in Chincha and wished our host father a Feliz Dia del Padre. We bought a cake before arriving. It was sort of dry. Josie was a wuss and made us eat the rest of his food. What a surprise. His stomach is like the size of a walnut. Our host mom made aji de gallina, which was excellent, and Brooke sniffed out the peanuts, which were a part of the excellency. Of course, we asked how it was made so we can try to disastrously duplicate the delicious dinery of this place. Did we ever mention food before on the blog? I thought not. After chatting with them and catching up, we headed over to a friend's place with Choche, our host, to meet some of his friends. There we met a group of people with diverse levels of cognizance.

We have to wake up real early tomorrow to hang out with the Pisco Sin Fronteras crowd so we had to leave around 9pm. We had a decent trip ahead of us including a colectivo (taxi on a route), a bus, and a micro-bus (taxi agragandado), but we kept our balance. And Adam proceeded to take more film as if this morning wasn't enough. Thanks.

And then there were none.

Saturday, June 20 – Happy Belated Bday Uncle Steve!
“Oh my gawd, thats awesome. Sneaky old ladies, I love them!”

Yo so today we like biked to a new hostel, because the one we were staying at was way outta Josie and Brooke's league. By that I mean it was $8 per night for three people. So now we are staying at a place that is under $3 per night per 3 chicos. And it would be less if you don't include the money the owner lady from the hostel refused to give us back because we stuck around past midday. Bitter is sweet.

Before moving, though, we stopped by two English-speaking, volunteer-rich NGOs. The first was Pisco Sin Fronteras. We immediately met Daniel, a Yale student who is volunteering there along with many others from around the world. Daniel's cool, and takes us over to meet Harold who runs the place. Harold is chill. Harold is from Pisco. Harold recommended our new hostel to us. Harold said life should be lived. Harold said we could come by and interview/tape up a storm on Monday. Harold, you're cool too.

Then we met up with MAD (Making A Difference) which was nearby. It is run by Dominick and Kate. They also seem cool and are willing to hang out with us later in the week. They tell us a little bit about their work and the structure of how they find their volunteers. Or well, how their volunteers find them. Both these NGOs seem to have been born from the same NGO at some point and are also related Burners without Borders somehow. But we'll find out more on interview day(s). Will they reveal their secrets? Will the truth be told? Will life be unveiled in mannerisms unforseen? Stay tuned to find out.

Remix. Breakfast in the market again. Jose, the juice guy, made us delicious juices of fruits and carrots – again. Life is good. All Joses are clearly not created equal. Josie thinks he is related to Jose cuz all Joses are related. We're not entirely convinced. Then we ate some carapulcra with spicy aji while sitting on the other side of the big penguin statue on the beach. Thankfully, we've hit the ground running since we've been here. We have interviews on every day this week, including two on Tuesday, up until Sunday. Saturday holds promise for another all-day Red Cross extravaganza. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing Jose much before he leaves for Mexico on Tuesday since he's visiting Paracas tomorrow. This means he has to get up at 6:20, an unprecedented wake up call.

We painted a bit at the end of the night to re/unwind. Josie has hidden talents that only show themselves when he is painting Adam. Too bad he is leaving otherwise we would start generating income from his paintings. And his fried plantains. And Brooke made a magic pineapple orbiting as a moon around another planet and some fresh, hot, pancakezzz. Adam painted in a picture from an earlier drawing session from the week as well as an abstract scene of people walking on multi-colored sidewalk/plank things on which he refused to comment. Artists are so complicated.

Somewhere on our Saturday night, we also checked out the Plaza de Armas, where Josie and Adam ate even more street food. Que deliciosa.

Sleepy time.