Friday, 17 July
“And I totally am in love with Henry. And our chicken lady-lover pair was there, but not our tea lady nor our smoothie lady, oh but our ice cream man was.”
When some people get older they become more humble, even though they have only gotten wiser. Type 1. Others listen less, and talk more. Type 2. What does that to them?
Henry is type 1. To the 100th power. Too many old ones are type 2 – but they´re friendly and harmless so we advocate keeping them around despite their twosomeness.
Breakfast was fruits and pan and quaker at our new breakfast spot in the market. We like the whole table to put fruits and bread on thing. They had milk and manzana quaker this morning. ¿Cómo se escribe ´delicious´ en francés?
9am radio show with CODEHICA. Weekly, one-hour long, and titled ´Voces por La Reconstrucción´. Sounds up our alley so we´ve been excited all week to hit this bad boy up. We film them interviewing a couple journalists from the ´Periodistas por La Reconstrucción´ group and hear some community feedback on the ground from Sunampe and Pisco on what they think of the reconstruction so far. Their responses are very familiar, as we´ve heard the same things many times via our community surveys.
10am interview with Ingrid, an NGO worker at APORTES. We arrive a bit late and it seems she is taking time out of free time this Friday to hook us up with her words of wisdom. And suddenly Brooke had done her first complete on-her-own real-life larger-than-life totally-in-spanish interview. It may have taken 3 hours and felt somewhat like being murdered with a corn cob, but it happened. And when the husks were swept away, months of ceaseless Spanish-intake efforts and Ingrid´s unique perspective were smelted together to glitter like a golden success nugget.
After this interview we had a brief breath of fresh air – and by fresh air I mean leftover fruits, bread and a angel-fruit cake like pastry. We confirm our interview at 2pm and also confirm our meeting in Pisco with Henry Flores. During the radio show we had heard about a 5pm march in Pisco in protest of the lack of reconstruction on the part of the government. Interesante. Of course, we still had to remember the CODEHICA workshop with journalists and students later on tonight. So we decided to do it all. And then, we did.
But first we interrupt your normal blogging program with a miner strike. No, not a minor strike. A strike about the current income rates for iron miners in Peru. Their flyers are labeled “Unidad Sindical” and tell “las autoridades de trabajo: respeto al derecho de huelga y a la libertad sindical!” They’ve been on indefinite strike as of the 13th of July until their demands for .70 centimos raises have been met. “El gobierno no debe proteger a empresa que no respeta los derechos laborales (The government should not protect a business which does not respect labor rights).” They are fighting for a raise of 23 American cents.
From here, we split up. The interview at 2pm was at Guadalupe, a town outside Ica, and with Casas de la Salud rep Percy Gutierrez. Brooke now has two feathers in her cap and gets the sweet reward of seeing our favorite community member: Janet. And don’t forget her 5 beautiful children. I encounter Lucera chewing on a sugar cane outside on a dirt mound, intently supervising a work site. A cement mixer is roaring in the background and wheelbarrows are flying between it and the foundation’s trenches. She runs up for hugs and kisses, and then we go into her house where Janet is breastfeeding the newest addition to the family. I also say hi to Percy, and we ask Janet to conduct the interview in her house. She dodges to the left, she barrel rolls past the right, and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! I conduct my next full-on in-Spanish interview.
In one of our more recent brainstorming sessions, we brilliantly formulated a worksheet with questions specifically dedicated to workers in the field. We infused this sheet with some of the burning questions that have lain dormant in our bosoms. Then there was an eruption of courage and determination within our hearts to include said questions in our typical q+a sessions. Thus became the “Ficha del Campo.” Which was so deftly utilized by our budding journalist hero. Casas de la Salud plan on constructing at a rate of 5 homes per month. Four months of work to finish houses for 20 families. In addition to homes, they will be planting trees and hosting community-building talleres. Despite the lack of attendance at last Saturday’s meeting, he says that the people of Guadalupe are much more likely to participate and come to meetings than many of the other communities they’ve worked with. It’s all due to the intense initiative of the informal leaders of the town. One thing that I find interesting about their work is that they divide the work into smaller projects so that the housing construction is staggered. After the first trial run, the architect conducts interviews with the people to decide on how to make the homes more suitable for the needs of the people in that specific region. Then they move onto the second group and so on.
In Pisco, we’re hitting up the PNUD office to talk to handy dandy Henry Flores. He suggests two groups: “Espacio y Espresión” who wants to do work with kids to discern new uses for public spaces or maybe with a group of urban planners/architects instead of the kids. He also mentions working with his friend Jorge who is in charge of stirring up democracy in the minds of ambitious youth. Maybe we can draw from this pool of know-who. We bring up our idea for troubleshooting a larger scale project about evaluation that we’ve had in mind. Are there other organizations already providing public information about the failures and successes of these privately funded, civil service organizations? On the topic of APCI, he refers us to the website but advises us that their work is mostly regulatory. Like an FDA stamp for organizations. As an alternative, he suggests CIES which apparently has at least produced some evaluation report. It´s location is known only by his secretary. Finding any more info looks like a job for the… Internet! We will spend a whole lot of time researching the responsibildades de estas organizaciones. In the future. When we get some free time.
While Brooke colectivos, taxis, walks, and bikes from Guadalupe to the CODEHICA office, Adam and Lorena leisurely enjoy the stomping and shouting of a peaceful protest march at the central square. “¡¿Alcalde rata, donde está la plata?!” “Rat of a Mayor, where’s the money?!” They reminisce in the good ol’ days of Pisco while visiting the normal ice cream man and chicken sandwich couple. If some people get more humble or more talkative as they get older, there is a third category of people who just get more bad ass and greasy. And we love them for their threesomeness.
Adam and Lorena try to hop on the bus back to Pisco but it only has space for 1 person. Anti-splitting up as we are, we choose to hang back. Turns out, a truck driver nearby saw it all, and offered us a ride and a lollipop. So we said cool. He said, ´my place afterwards´? And we said cool. But really, we caught a ride back in a 32 ton tanker transporting hydrochloric acid to Arequipa. Fun and exciting, just ask Lindsey, who fell asleep 10 mins in due to the fast and furiousness of living in 3rd gear.
At CODEHICA, there is a meeting at 4:30 with students. Except there isn’t. But she still waits around for them until 5:00 since everyone is normally 30 minutes late. After asking again about the meeting, the security guard changes his mind and says that maybe it’s actually at 5:30. Unfortunately, they people hosting the meeting are all in another kind of meeting and can’t answer the questions about meetings until they’re done meeting in their meeting. Meeting meeting meeting meeting. So again, there is some waiting around. At 5:30, there is frustration and a decision to go out and ask the hosts of the meeting what’s up. There never was a 4:30 meeting. In fact, the next meeting we have scheduled at 7pm is actually at 6:30. Or is it?
Anyways, the meeting for Periodistas Unidas Por La Reconstrución (scheduled for 6:30) doesn’t begin until 7:15. Más que nada it is an organizing rendez-vous to decide who is going to which community, who is calling which mayor, and what their organization’s name and emblem is going to be. Afterwards, we pick out people who write about private institutions as they relate to reconstruction. That’ll be useful in the future.
So then we are all like, let’s meet back at headquarters. And we do. And we debrief each other. And celebrate Pisco by eating hot hot chicken sandwiches and sweet bread. And we upload. And we sleep, oh don’t we sleep.
Thursday, 16 July
“I bought 48 cookies today. I only planned on eating one package of 6, but then they looked so good, I had to eat another one. On my third, I decided that eating a fourth would gross me out enough to prevent a fifth.”
Our rent is due. Our landlord is pounding on the door. I thought it might have been room service.
No breakfast in bed this morning. Instead, we all go to the market to eat diner-style. We split up into the fruit group and the bread group. The fruit group’s mission is to obtain 2 soles worth of fruit. The bread team will return with 2 soles of bread. The normal bread ladies are missing in action, so we find a joven at the entrance.
Bread man: “How much do you want?”
Adam: “One Sole, please.”
Bread man: “How much?”
Adam: “One Sole.”
Bread man: “But how many pieces of bread?”
This should have been our first indicator that this bread boy was no pillsbury push over. He played dirty and didn’t bat an eyelash when he handed us 14 pannes not 16. When we noted this to him, he reluctantly gave up the last two and 17 soles change for 20. Leaving us one sole short. Eventually we grew frustrated and proceeded to take the boy by his legs, turn him upside down, and shake him down for the rest of our change. Blame Lindsey’s pent up rage.
We sat and drank quaker de manzana. A heftily jolly woman selling corn con queso jaunted over to our table from the middle of the street and asked where we were from. When she found out we were foreigners (not very hard to do since we are gringos) and that Lindsey didn´t know the Spanish word for an ear of corn, she proceeded to pull one out and hand it over. Try this! It´s good for your cholesterol if you have it for breakfast. And so we did. We each got an ear of corn and a little bit of what was quite possibly the best tasting queso of this trip. After talking a while and learning that on other days she sold some sort of yucca treat, she set off and promised to look for us in the market in the future so we could try her other food.
From here we have to run a few errends. We head to GTZ to gather more information on the trip we had returned from, the connection between GTZ and Pachamama, collect a DVD copy of a video shown to the people, and set up a guided site visit on Wednesday with Pachamama´s headquarters in Cusco. Then, we head over to the internet café to print off financial aid documents that cry “we need non-digital signatures”. The scanner is a little harder to come by, not to mention the corresponding jump in price (14.01 in action).
After this we ran over to the plaza de armas to brainstorm for a couple hours and make a couple key calls. We discussed where we would like to return to and what project we would implement. The project is to be designed based on what we feel is lacking in the community-NGO communication aspect of post-disaster reconstruction. The location is a function of the project we choose, but will likely be around Pisco since this seems to be the location of the most sustained NGO intervention at this stage. We conclude that whatever project we do must be very specific or be very preliminary. We discuss many permutations of these two routes, and come up with a couple ideas. We agree that the next stage is to invest time into planning right away, specifically meeting with the right people to find out what they think can be done and their thoughts on the evaluation stage of NGO projects by third-party observers. Luckily we will be interviewing PNUD in Ica later tonight so we can ask them. We also call Henry Flores from PNUD Pisco to set up a meeting with him tomorrow on the same topic. We figure these people have much more knowledge on these topics than we do. It is our priority to find out if we are missing any institutions that do this same kind of work in this region.
Its sunny. Conveniently there is a 1 sol ice cream cone place on the block. We head over there because we suspect Lindsey will be there. She is. Fancy us being right. We treat ourselves to an ice cream each. Tasty balls of lime, cocunut, lúcuma, pecan, and chocolate chip dissolve on twitching, muscular tongues.
Lindsey heads to lunch, and Adam and Brooke decide to try and see Mesa de Concertactón Contra la Pobreza (MCLCP), who apparently has many contacts of local leaders everywhere. Turns out they have a 4 hour lunch break. Literally. So we are forced to go eat lunch with Lindsey. Of course, she is eating the last meal available at a lunch-only restaurant since its 3pm, so we can´t sit together.
Lunch done, and we head over to our PNUD interview. We had set it up with Julio Rojas the Coordinator of the office, but two others (Hernán and Rosario) from the office are kind enough to sit down with us and join as well. The interview goes well. They remind us that PNUD workers cannot be interviewed and can definitely not be filmed – but since we asked nicely and wrote a nice email and have two girls with shy smiles then they´ll let it slide just this once. We like PNUD.
We finish just in time to run over to our 7pm commitment with CODEHICA´s television crew. They are interviewing the Director of the College of Lawyers and someone else for a show that is televised on Saturday nights. It is quite irrelevant to post-disaster, but it gives us a chance to gather footage on the video equipment used by CODEHICA, an NGO involved in the reconstruction as part of its program of general development. Besides, the camera crew is very nice and let us film in the room live, and take many pictures of ourselves pretending to be interviewing each other – i´m pretty sure they saved some footage of us making professional fools of ourselves, but they are chill. One of them had a ACDC shirt on.
Home time. Then dinner time. We savor some pineapple chicken with rice and potatoes and some duck. Chicken soup, and then scalding herbal tea. We had all of this at the new place we found on the West side of the Panamericana highway. The atmosphere is chill and it lends itself to being a hang-out spot for many of the mototaxi drivers.
Wednesday, 15 July
¨I bet your mom´s water broke and she was like, Oh, it´s a Brooke!"
Alarm´s set for 4:02am. Second alarm set for 4:45am. We roll out of bed at 5:25am. Last time that Lindsey is left responsible for making sure we wake up.
Under harsh verbal orders from Brooke, we wake up, pack quickly, and stash our breakfast of yogurt and breads in our packs. We arrive at the German aid institution GTZ at 6:01. We are greeted by a security guard and a cleaning crew, who are friendly, but no Ing. Armando Moyonero. Bad news, is that in our rush we managed to forget our camera battery charger. We anticipate two days with multiple meetings and rural community footage, and are worried we won´t be able to last. So, Brooke, again snaps her fingers to get Adam´s attention, points, and grunts ¨Fetch.¨ And so he does. Good boy, goooood boooooy. Yeh, who´s a goooodddd dogggyy? You´re a goooddd dooooggy!
6:20am and everyone is on site and ready to head out in the van. We get to ride with Armando from GTZ, David the driver, and Renán - Mayor of San Isidro which is the district of the first meeting later today. Renán becomes our new favorite mayor by inviting us all to breakfast. A hearty chicken noodle and egg soup with hot coffee/quaker.
Then we pick up a projector in a box with a projector graphically illustrated on all four sides.
Then David pulled out his sunglasses. Armando zipped up his flaming jacket. Renán squished in the backseat with us three. Asphalt to concrete, concrete to rougher concrete, rougher concrete to dirt. Dust billows behind us in un-Matlable fashion. Thankfully, no one is in sight ahead of us so we aren´t riding into the wind – just dirty.
Dirt to bumpy road and we have to slow down. It looks like its in the middle of a road paving project but why would we know? MIT doesnt teach Civil/Env. Engineers these things. Neither did life apparently. Two of us hold our breath in anticipation of the Sierra landscape – dry gradual mountains that slowly turn more green, more rocky, and higher as one travels further into the departamento de Huancavélica. The other one tries to sleep, cuz she can ´sleep through anything´.
The landscape doesnt disappoint and soon we are happily filming and shooting pics from the inside of the fully caged full cab 4x4 Hilux. Our first stop is Córdova which is about 3 hours from Ica. We stop here to greet the Córdova mayor and set up lodging for the night, since this is the only place in the region with a hotel/hostel. Turns out this town is in the midst of its annual 15 day festival. That would be quince. Brooke and Adam have seen this before elsewhere, and here is the blunt and excusably ignorant foreigners version of what the festival is. It is religious (largely syncretic) and centered around church services, fireworks, dancing, local alcoholic drinks, beer, and folk music. By day 3 expect every single person in town to be drunk.
We end up staying here quite some time to watch fireworks and be invited to drinks from town members dancing behind a train of what looks like a school band. After prying ourselves away and picking up two workers (Walter and Grimaldo) from a partnering NGO Pachamama Raymi, we head up towards San Isidro.
We finally enter San Isidro, which is a spread out district with many farmers. At the first group of 8 roofs we come across, we stop to greet a local resident. 30 mins later we are exiting the cluster, after snacking on beans and potato soup with boiled potato and goat cheese. Rico.
In the end, we do actually reach our final destination, and are greeted by a rather new 3 story municipal building and spacious plaza de armas. Both are rather empty. We are already hours late for the meeting that was scheduled by us, but no one seems to be complaining. The mayor proceeds to announce the beginning of the meeting over a loudspeaker on the outside of the municipal building. It takes awhile for everyone to get settled in and its not until 3pm that the meeting gets going. Rumor has it that the meeting was scheduled to start at 10am. We were too scared to confirm this minor detail, afraid of the answer.
The meeting is only about an hour long and consists of an introduction of the development project set up by GTZ and operated on the ground largely by Pachamama Raymi, which has had a significant record of success working in areas of extreme poverty in Quechua regions of South America and apparently Guatemala. This NGO utilizes a strategy of gradual change realized by setting up a competition among all families of a community to see who can best utilize 2 to 3 years of basic life-improvement training. They help with improved stoves, adobe latrines, vegetable gardens, small animal pens and fish farms – all of which are designed to help the people become self-sustaining and healthy. The next step takes another few years and consists of raising the crop production to goods that can be sold at markets as cash crops. Then comes encouraging vegetation tourism.
Another part of this NGOs strategy is to choose the top performers from the advanced communities to work for them and replicate the same projects in other regions. This is where Walter and Grimaldo come from and they are set on their assigned task of working in San Isidro. They introduce their project to the community members listening and Armando puts a couple videos on the projector as examples of success in other similar rural Andean communities.
After this meeting we are again invited by the mayor to a dinner at his place. It is getting late however, so we decide to go back to Córdova where our lodging is staying. It is now cold, and we choose to sit in the back of the pick-up. It is very cold. Colder than Cusco says Grimaldo. On the way we pick up at least 5 different locals walking from one area to another. They are all very grateful for the ride, and we wonder how often trucks with free space come by. By the way, we met the President of the Farmers Committee and he said transportation costs are killing this region, and says it must be fixed before everyone in the town is forced to leave for elsewhere.
Turns out the hostel we thought we had booked was full. Surprise! Not worried, Armando hunts down the mayor to see if he can find us a place to crash for the night. Everyone in town is partying – only dancing harder than before to shake off the cold. We wait an hour and still cannot find the mayor, and finally decide that it is best to simply return to Ica tonight. The meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning will be cancelled because of the party anyways (everyone will be drunk says Armando, telling us what we could´ve told him.)
Before leaving, however, we sit down to a delicious dinner of rice, ram meat in a delicious sauce, and potatoes with tea to top it off. As expected, everything is more expensive here than Ica (if you eat as cheap as possible) since the food must be imported from town at a cost.
Arrival back at Ica is 11:30pm. We pick up our bikes and follow the short and well-lit road home through the center of town. Yogurt dies. We upload and blog and fall asleep.
14 July, Tuesday
“Hola, it´s Lindsey. I don´t know a whole lot about what Brooke and Adam did today because I stayed home in the morning and watched Wanted. I didn´t like it the first time I saw it and after a second chance today, I still wasn´t impressed. But it was decent I guess. Anyway, almost right after that ended, Brooke and Adam returned home and I was hungry for food, and they were hungry for internet and entrevistas, so we headed out in the direction of sandwiches in hopes of finding internet also. However, Adam quickly broke off from the group and soon after I heard Brooke say something about looking for something but I didn´t understand, so I decided to go my own way and look for some tasties. This took me to the Super de Ica, aka the land of the KEKE, but after eating like 20 keke´s over the last few days, I decided to swear them off. Instead, I got some vanilla yogurt and a ¨Dalmatian¨ treat: gooey chocolate at the center, with chocolate cake outside that, covered in white chocolate with chocolate chips on top. All for about 50 cents American. On my way back to the room, I passed Adam and Brooke and decided to turn around and follow them to whatever meetings they were planning on attending. We rode very quickly through typical crazy Ica traffic and Brooke and I ended up camping out outside the CODEHICA/Proetica office and although Brooke might try to deny it, she totally tried and liked the ¨Dalmation¨ tasty.
Then we went in, met with Leonardo of Proética and spoke in both English and Spanish during the interview. He was eating an helado and it made me really want to go buy one, but I´d already had four kekes and that other treat and that´s pretty much my limit on junk food for the day so I didn´t get one. (Later I ended up buying these animal crackers with giant blobs of hard colored sugar on top plus some little chocolate cookie things for one sol, but you don´t encounter those as often as ice cream so it´s kind of a must. Peruvians really like their ice cream…it´s kind of everywhere.) But anyway, after that, we stopped by this CODEHICA how-to-use-the-internet workshop for a little bit but we were all hungry so we soon left to pick up some breakfast for tomorrow (we´re going to have a very early day- have to be at GTZ at 6:00am and then we are going to Huancavelica and staying overnight there I think).
After this I started off towards dinner with Adam and Brooke behind me. Or at least that´s what I thought. Turns out they had passed me at some point and then when they looked back again, they didn´t see me. I still thought they were behind me, and at one point when I looked back, I didn´t see them. I waited for a bit and then continued on to our favorite dinner spot near the animal cracker store. I sat there for quite a while expecting them to roll around the corner any minute. When they didn´t I figured that they had either run out of traffic-dodging luck or had ditched me for some tallarin verde or lomo saltado or were already home somehow. Either way, I had no money and was kind of hungry. So I went back to the room, grabbed some change and headed back out. On my way to the food, I passed them on the street. ¨Did you get me some sandwiches?¨ I asked. They were too far away on the other side of the street to hear so I went over and asked what they got and where the heck they had gone. Turns out they thought I had gotten lost or ran into a car or ditched them for sandwiches. And took turns searching the Plaza de Armas and the animal cracker area for me. Woops.
So then we got food. A whole lot of food. And then some more. Then I led the way home and again when I turned around, no Adam and Brooke. Oh well. The shower was calling since I hadn´t paid it a visit in…a while. When I emerged all fresh and too clean for all the sand on my roll up mattress pad, I learned that Adam and Brooke were off acquiring more sweet bread and tea. Adam tells me to eat it and so I do, but now I think my stomach is going to explode.”
And so this ends Lindsey´s recap of the day. On to more serious important grownup NGO things from La Brooke and El Adam:”
So this morning, we got to see some cool things. CODEHICA’s office is a media dream. Not only is there a room set up for recording audio for their radio station as well as a place for writing the CODEHICA newspaper, there is also two whole rooms dedicated to television. There is one large room where they record for their Saturday and Sunday television spot that airs a la Good-Morning-America style and a smaller room connected where all the post-production editing occurs. Apparently they go out Monday through Wednesday to collect footage within communities, record their own news anchors on Thursday in the Good-Morning-America room, and then Friday is CRUNCH. Two lucky filmmasters sit around with all the footage from the week and edit it into a one hour version to be aired. Given this rate of editing, our documentary should be completed with a mere twelve days work. Into a twelve hour documentary.
Fruit death toll from this morning: 2 peaches, 3 apples, 6 bananas, 3 oranges, and 1 liter of strawberry yogurt.
We start at 8:40 a.m. at the CODEHICA office where some are in a rush out and others are in a rush in. We are handed off to Rosario for a break down of CODEHICA’s communication defense line. The best way to describe their strategy is as a four-dimensional attack of radio, television, print, and internet (wa-BANG!). They try to diffuse and highlight the opinions of community leaders, “dirigentes,” and elected representatives from local organizations. So they run a radio show five days a week 9-10am, a television spot on Saturdays and Sundays, a newspaper once every two months, and have their internet site updated con frecuencia.
Next, we meet Diana. She is in her third year at UNICA studying communications while doing a three month internship with CODEHICA. She is currently enjoying her work in the printing office, but is nice enough to take some time out of her day to escort us to CODEHICA’s off-site radio broadcasting spot. The set-up for the radio show is not typical. It is a room that is about as big as a wealthy man’s closet. It fits just one dining table with very little room to walk around when the chairs are occupied as well as just enough space for the electronic equipment in a small nook. There are newspapers sprawled across the table, and two very knowledgeable, fast-speaking woman seated across from one another. Words are darting back and forth between them about the government’s reconstruction promises, factory strikes, education, and masculinity. They deftly pass papers, microphones, and cellulars between themselves as one narrates the story and the other queues their reporters on the ground. They simply press their cell phones to the microphone to broadcast. Amidst all this impromptu coordination, a guest shows up to participate. Seamlessly, they incorporate him into the show without missing a beat.
Back at the CODEHICA office, we are passed around to more people to get a more thorough tour of the office. “NGOs are faced with low participation.” In this woman’s book (her name escapes me), this is because people make their problems the NGO’s problem. But the NGO knows that it’s not their problem, it’s the peoples’ problem. They’re just there to help the people help themselves. We also meet Leonardo of Proética after catching a short glimpse of their impressive website. Take a look at http://www.codehica.org.pe/ or http://www.vocesporlareconstruccion.org/ or http://www.reconstruccion.org/ If you scroll down, Proética is one of the participants in this project “Voices for the Reconstruction.” Their website is brimming with intriguing tidbits that will definitely help our report later. Proética’s site looks like it took a lot of foot work and time to develop.
We plan to return again at 3:30 to speak with Leonardo and attend a taller with CODEHICA. On the way home, Adam gleefully purchases a Chicha Morada and Maracuya refresco. He also manages to snag the to-go bags on a bush, losing all of the tasty purple juice to a fight with a plant. Then we contemplate Cuzco, Lima, and that place with a volcano. Then we hit up Internet for some more printing out of real world forms, learning about home, and sending some e-mails to key players for the last phase of our project. This is the part where we lost Lindsay the first time.
The phone cuts through our contemplation, and a voice on the other line informs us that we should meet them in fifteen minutes on Diamond Street. Fishy. Appointments are lined up like soldiers one right after another at 3, 3:30, and 4pm. We lasso our bikes for adventure and slide into homebase for a run. On Diamond Street, GTZ confides further intel concerning our sleepover tomorrow morning. On Avenida Cutervo, Lindsay savors a Dalmation. Brooke also enjoys a bite, but no tanto. Inside the wooden doors of CODEHICA, Leonardo paints a scenic picture of words about Proética work. We are astounded to hear that the incredible website from earlier was the result of two people’s work. Then we are floored to know that it is just 12 people in their office working in all of Peru. He tells us that getting honest, constructive, and critical feedback from the people is going to be impossible to get from the community. In fact, he says that what we are looking to accomplish might not be possible. Communities here are not entirely aware of the meaning behind NGOs, what expectations to have from aid agencies, and will be wary to be critical. Most of all, the communities haven’t had enough experience to grasp the entirety of what should or could be done. We learn that he will be doing encuestas on Sunday so we decide to join him. In addition, he invites us to the movies but we have to politely decline in order to find our way to the CODEHICA Workshop on how to better utilize the Internet.
By the time we arrive at the workshop location, they are still on the basics of learning words like CPU, monitor, keyboard, and USB. We all look at one another and decide to roll out. Then we lose Lindsay again. But we find her so we eat dinner like woah, so it’s cool.
To end the night, we restlessly ride through the streets until we find ourselves somewhere entirely new where we eat tea and fresh pan.
“And I totally am in love with Henry. And our chicken lady-lover pair was there, but not our tea lady nor our smoothie lady, oh but our ice cream man was.”
When some people get older they become more humble, even though they have only gotten wiser. Type 1. Others listen less, and talk more. Type 2. What does that to them?
Henry is type 1. To the 100th power. Too many old ones are type 2 – but they´re friendly and harmless so we advocate keeping them around despite their twosomeness.
Breakfast was fruits and pan and quaker at our new breakfast spot in the market. We like the whole table to put fruits and bread on thing. They had milk and manzana quaker this morning. ¿Cómo se escribe ´delicious´ en francés?
9am radio show with CODEHICA. Weekly, one-hour long, and titled ´Voces por La Reconstrucción´. Sounds up our alley so we´ve been excited all week to hit this bad boy up. We film them interviewing a couple journalists from the ´Periodistas por La Reconstrucción´ group and hear some community feedback on the ground from Sunampe and Pisco on what they think of the reconstruction so far. Their responses are very familiar, as we´ve heard the same things many times via our community surveys.
10am interview with Ingrid, an NGO worker at APORTES. We arrive a bit late and it seems she is taking time out of free time this Friday to hook us up with her words of wisdom. And suddenly Brooke had done her first complete on-her-own real-life larger-than-life totally-in-spanish interview. It may have taken 3 hours and felt somewhat like being murdered with a corn cob, but it happened. And when the husks were swept away, months of ceaseless Spanish-intake efforts and Ingrid´s unique perspective were smelted together to glitter like a golden success nugget.
After this interview we had a brief breath of fresh air – and by fresh air I mean leftover fruits, bread and a angel-fruit cake like pastry. We confirm our interview at 2pm and also confirm our meeting in Pisco with Henry Flores. During the radio show we had heard about a 5pm march in Pisco in protest of the lack of reconstruction on the part of the government. Interesante. Of course, we still had to remember the CODEHICA workshop with journalists and students later on tonight. So we decided to do it all. And then, we did.
But first we interrupt your normal blogging program with a miner strike. No, not a minor strike. A strike about the current income rates for iron miners in Peru. Their flyers are labeled “Unidad Sindical” and tell “las autoridades de trabajo: respeto al derecho de huelga y a la libertad sindical!” They’ve been on indefinite strike as of the 13th of July until their demands for .70 centimos raises have been met. “El gobierno no debe proteger a empresa que no respeta los derechos laborales (The government should not protect a business which does not respect labor rights).” They are fighting for a raise of 23 American cents.
From here, we split up. The interview at 2pm was at Guadalupe, a town outside Ica, and with Casas de la Salud rep Percy Gutierrez. Brooke now has two feathers in her cap and gets the sweet reward of seeing our favorite community member: Janet. And don’t forget her 5 beautiful children. I encounter Lucera chewing on a sugar cane outside on a dirt mound, intently supervising a work site. A cement mixer is roaring in the background and wheelbarrows are flying between it and the foundation’s trenches. She runs up for hugs and kisses, and then we go into her house where Janet is breastfeeding the newest addition to the family. I also say hi to Percy, and we ask Janet to conduct the interview in her house. She dodges to the left, she barrel rolls past the right, and GOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL! I conduct my next full-on in-Spanish interview.
In one of our more recent brainstorming sessions, we brilliantly formulated a worksheet with questions specifically dedicated to workers in the field. We infused this sheet with some of the burning questions that have lain dormant in our bosoms. Then there was an eruption of courage and determination within our hearts to include said questions in our typical q+a sessions. Thus became the “Ficha del Campo.” Which was so deftly utilized by our budding journalist hero. Casas de la Salud plan on constructing at a rate of 5 homes per month. Four months of work to finish houses for 20 families. In addition to homes, they will be planting trees and hosting community-building talleres. Despite the lack of attendance at last Saturday’s meeting, he says that the people of Guadalupe are much more likely to participate and come to meetings than many of the other communities they’ve worked with. It’s all due to the intense initiative of the informal leaders of the town. One thing that I find interesting about their work is that they divide the work into smaller projects so that the housing construction is staggered. After the first trial run, the architect conducts interviews with the people to decide on how to make the homes more suitable for the needs of the people in that specific region. Then they move onto the second group and so on.
In Pisco, we’re hitting up the PNUD office to talk to handy dandy Henry Flores. He suggests two groups: “Espacio y Espresión” who wants to do work with kids to discern new uses for public spaces or maybe with a group of urban planners/architects instead of the kids. He also mentions working with his friend Jorge who is in charge of stirring up democracy in the minds of ambitious youth. Maybe we can draw from this pool of know-who. We bring up our idea for troubleshooting a larger scale project about evaluation that we’ve had in mind. Are there other organizations already providing public information about the failures and successes of these privately funded, civil service organizations? On the topic of APCI, he refers us to the website but advises us that their work is mostly regulatory. Like an FDA stamp for organizations. As an alternative, he suggests CIES which apparently has at least produced some evaluation report. It´s location is known only by his secretary. Finding any more info looks like a job for the… Internet! We will spend a whole lot of time researching the responsibildades de estas organizaciones. In the future. When we get some free time.
While Brooke colectivos, taxis, walks, and bikes from Guadalupe to the CODEHICA office, Adam and Lorena leisurely enjoy the stomping and shouting of a peaceful protest march at the central square. “¡¿Alcalde rata, donde está la plata?!” “Rat of a Mayor, where’s the money?!” They reminisce in the good ol’ days of Pisco while visiting the normal ice cream man and chicken sandwich couple. If some people get more humble or more talkative as they get older, there is a third category of people who just get more bad ass and greasy. And we love them for their threesomeness.
Adam and Lorena try to hop on the bus back to Pisco but it only has space for 1 person. Anti-splitting up as we are, we choose to hang back. Turns out, a truck driver nearby saw it all, and offered us a ride and a lollipop. So we said cool. He said, ´my place afterwards´? And we said cool. But really, we caught a ride back in a 32 ton tanker transporting hydrochloric acid to Arequipa. Fun and exciting, just ask Lindsey, who fell asleep 10 mins in due to the fast and furiousness of living in 3rd gear.
At CODEHICA, there is a meeting at 4:30 with students. Except there isn’t. But she still waits around for them until 5:00 since everyone is normally 30 minutes late. After asking again about the meeting, the security guard changes his mind and says that maybe it’s actually at 5:30. Unfortunately, they people hosting the meeting are all in another kind of meeting and can’t answer the questions about meetings until they’re done meeting in their meeting. Meeting meeting meeting meeting. So again, there is some waiting around. At 5:30, there is frustration and a decision to go out and ask the hosts of the meeting what’s up. There never was a 4:30 meeting. In fact, the next meeting we have scheduled at 7pm is actually at 6:30. Or is it?
Anyways, the meeting for Periodistas Unidas Por La Reconstrución (scheduled for 6:30) doesn’t begin until 7:15. Más que nada it is an organizing rendez-vous to decide who is going to which community, who is calling which mayor, and what their organization’s name and emblem is going to be. Afterwards, we pick out people who write about private institutions as they relate to reconstruction. That’ll be useful in the future.
So then we are all like, let’s meet back at headquarters. And we do. And we debrief each other. And celebrate Pisco by eating hot hot chicken sandwiches and sweet bread. And we upload. And we sleep, oh don’t we sleep.
Thursday, 16 July
“I bought 48 cookies today. I only planned on eating one package of 6, but then they looked so good, I had to eat another one. On my third, I decided that eating a fourth would gross me out enough to prevent a fifth.”
Our rent is due. Our landlord is pounding on the door. I thought it might have been room service.
No breakfast in bed this morning. Instead, we all go to the market to eat diner-style. We split up into the fruit group and the bread group. The fruit group’s mission is to obtain 2 soles worth of fruit. The bread team will return with 2 soles of bread. The normal bread ladies are missing in action, so we find a joven at the entrance.
Bread man: “How much do you want?”
Adam: “One Sole, please.”
Bread man: “How much?”
Adam: “One Sole.”
Bread man: “But how many pieces of bread?”
This should have been our first indicator that this bread boy was no pillsbury push over. He played dirty and didn’t bat an eyelash when he handed us 14 pannes not 16. When we noted this to him, he reluctantly gave up the last two and 17 soles change for 20. Leaving us one sole short. Eventually we grew frustrated and proceeded to take the boy by his legs, turn him upside down, and shake him down for the rest of our change. Blame Lindsey’s pent up rage.
We sat and drank quaker de manzana. A heftily jolly woman selling corn con queso jaunted over to our table from the middle of the street and asked where we were from. When she found out we were foreigners (not very hard to do since we are gringos) and that Lindsey didn´t know the Spanish word for an ear of corn, she proceeded to pull one out and hand it over. Try this! It´s good for your cholesterol if you have it for breakfast. And so we did. We each got an ear of corn and a little bit of what was quite possibly the best tasting queso of this trip. After talking a while and learning that on other days she sold some sort of yucca treat, she set off and promised to look for us in the market in the future so we could try her other food.
From here we have to run a few errends. We head to GTZ to gather more information on the trip we had returned from, the connection between GTZ and Pachamama, collect a DVD copy of a video shown to the people, and set up a guided site visit on Wednesday with Pachamama´s headquarters in Cusco. Then, we head over to the internet café to print off financial aid documents that cry “we need non-digital signatures”. The scanner is a little harder to come by, not to mention the corresponding jump in price (14.01 in action).
After this we ran over to the plaza de armas to brainstorm for a couple hours and make a couple key calls. We discussed where we would like to return to and what project we would implement. The project is to be designed based on what we feel is lacking in the community-NGO communication aspect of post-disaster reconstruction. The location is a function of the project we choose, but will likely be around Pisco since this seems to be the location of the most sustained NGO intervention at this stage. We conclude that whatever project we do must be very specific or be very preliminary. We discuss many permutations of these two routes, and come up with a couple ideas. We agree that the next stage is to invest time into planning right away, specifically meeting with the right people to find out what they think can be done and their thoughts on the evaluation stage of NGO projects by third-party observers. Luckily we will be interviewing PNUD in Ica later tonight so we can ask them. We also call Henry Flores from PNUD Pisco to set up a meeting with him tomorrow on the same topic. We figure these people have much more knowledge on these topics than we do. It is our priority to find out if we are missing any institutions that do this same kind of work in this region.
Its sunny. Conveniently there is a 1 sol ice cream cone place on the block. We head over there because we suspect Lindsey will be there. She is. Fancy us being right. We treat ourselves to an ice cream each. Tasty balls of lime, cocunut, lúcuma, pecan, and chocolate chip dissolve on twitching, muscular tongues.
Lindsey heads to lunch, and Adam and Brooke decide to try and see Mesa de Concertactón Contra la Pobreza (MCLCP), who apparently has many contacts of local leaders everywhere. Turns out they have a 4 hour lunch break. Literally. So we are forced to go eat lunch with Lindsey. Of course, she is eating the last meal available at a lunch-only restaurant since its 3pm, so we can´t sit together.
Lunch done, and we head over to our PNUD interview. We had set it up with Julio Rojas the Coordinator of the office, but two others (Hernán and Rosario) from the office are kind enough to sit down with us and join as well. The interview goes well. They remind us that PNUD workers cannot be interviewed and can definitely not be filmed – but since we asked nicely and wrote a nice email and have two girls with shy smiles then they´ll let it slide just this once. We like PNUD.
We finish just in time to run over to our 7pm commitment with CODEHICA´s television crew. They are interviewing the Director of the College of Lawyers and someone else for a show that is televised on Saturday nights. It is quite irrelevant to post-disaster, but it gives us a chance to gather footage on the video equipment used by CODEHICA, an NGO involved in the reconstruction as part of its program of general development. Besides, the camera crew is very nice and let us film in the room live, and take many pictures of ourselves pretending to be interviewing each other – i´m pretty sure they saved some footage of us making professional fools of ourselves, but they are chill. One of them had a ACDC shirt on.Home time. Then dinner time. We savor some pineapple chicken with rice and potatoes and some duck. Chicken soup, and then scalding herbal tea. We had all of this at the new place we found on the West side of the Panamericana highway. The atmosphere is chill and it lends itself to being a hang-out spot for many of the mototaxi drivers.
Wednesday, 15 July
¨I bet your mom´s water broke and she was like, Oh, it´s a Brooke!"
Alarm´s set for 4:02am. Second alarm set for 4:45am. We roll out of bed at 5:25am. Last time that Lindsey is left responsible for making sure we wake up.
Under harsh verbal orders from Brooke, we wake up, pack quickly, and stash our breakfast of yogurt and breads in our packs. We arrive at the German aid institution GTZ at 6:01. We are greeted by a security guard and a cleaning crew, who are friendly, but no Ing. Armando Moyonero. Bad news, is that in our rush we managed to forget our camera battery charger. We anticipate two days with multiple meetings and rural community footage, and are worried we won´t be able to last. So, Brooke, again snaps her fingers to get Adam´s attention, points, and grunts ¨Fetch.¨ And so he does. Good boy, goooood boooooy. Yeh, who´s a goooodddd dogggyy? You´re a goooddd dooooggy!
6:20am and everyone is on site and ready to head out in the van. We get to ride with Armando from GTZ, David the driver, and Renán - Mayor of San Isidro which is the district of the first meeting later today. Renán becomes our new favorite mayor by inviting us all to breakfast. A hearty chicken noodle and egg soup with hot coffee/quaker.
Then we pick up a projector in a box with a projector graphically illustrated on all four sides.
Then David pulled out his sunglasses. Armando zipped up his flaming jacket. Renán squished in the backseat with us three. Asphalt to concrete, concrete to rougher concrete, rougher concrete to dirt. Dust billows behind us in un-Matlable fashion. Thankfully, no one is in sight ahead of us so we aren´t riding into the wind – just dirty.
Dirt to bumpy road and we have to slow down. It looks like its in the middle of a road paving project but why would we know? MIT doesnt teach Civil/Env. Engineers these things. Neither did life apparently. Two of us hold our breath in anticipation of the Sierra landscape – dry gradual mountains that slowly turn more green, more rocky, and higher as one travels further into the departamento de Huancavélica. The other one tries to sleep, cuz she can ´sleep through anything´.
The landscape doesnt disappoint and soon we are happily filming and shooting pics from the inside of the fully caged full cab 4x4 Hilux. Our first stop is Córdova which is about 3 hours from Ica. We stop here to greet the Córdova mayor and set up lodging for the night, since this is the only place in the region with a hotel/hostel. Turns out this town is in the midst of its annual 15 day festival. That would be quince. Brooke and Adam have seen this before elsewhere, and here is the blunt and excusably ignorant foreigners version of what the festival is. It is religious (largely syncretic) and centered around church services, fireworks, dancing, local alcoholic drinks, beer, and folk music. By day 3 expect every single person in town to be drunk.
We end up staying here quite some time to watch fireworks and be invited to drinks from town members dancing behind a train of what looks like a school band. After prying ourselves away and picking up two workers (Walter and Grimaldo) from a partnering NGO Pachamama Raymi, we head up towards San Isidro.
We finally enter San Isidro, which is a spread out district with many farmers. At the first group of 8 roofs we come across, we stop to greet a local resident. 30 mins later we are exiting the cluster, after snacking on beans and potato soup with boiled potato and goat cheese. Rico.
In the end, we do actually reach our final destination, and are greeted by a rather new 3 story municipal building and spacious plaza de armas. Both are rather empty. We are already hours late for the meeting that was scheduled by us, but no one seems to be complaining. The mayor proceeds to announce the beginning of the meeting over a loudspeaker on the outside of the municipal building. It takes awhile for everyone to get settled in and its not until 3pm that the meeting gets going. Rumor has it that the meeting was scheduled to start at 10am. We were too scared to confirm this minor detail, afraid of the answer.
The meeting is only about an hour long and consists of an introduction of the development project set up by GTZ and operated on the ground largely by Pachamama Raymi, which has had a significant record of success working in areas of extreme poverty in Quechua regions of South America and apparently Guatemala. This NGO utilizes a strategy of gradual change realized by setting up a competition among all families of a community to see who can best utilize 2 to 3 years of basic life-improvement training. They help with improved stoves, adobe latrines, vegetable gardens, small animal pens and fish farms – all of which are designed to help the people become self-sustaining and healthy. The next step takes another few years and consists of raising the crop production to goods that can be sold at markets as cash crops. Then comes encouraging vegetation tourism.
Another part of this NGOs strategy is to choose the top performers from the advanced communities to work for them and replicate the same projects in other regions. This is where Walter and Grimaldo come from and they are set on their assigned task of working in San Isidro. They introduce their project to the community members listening and Armando puts a couple videos on the projector as examples of success in other similar rural Andean communities.
After this meeting we are again invited by the mayor to a dinner at his place. It is getting late however, so we decide to go back to Córdova where our lodging is staying. It is now cold, and we choose to sit in the back of the pick-up. It is very cold. Colder than Cusco says Grimaldo. On the way we pick up at least 5 different locals walking from one area to another. They are all very grateful for the ride, and we wonder how often trucks with free space come by. By the way, we met the President of the Farmers Committee and he said transportation costs are killing this region, and says it must be fixed before everyone in the town is forced to leave for elsewhere.
Turns out the hostel we thought we had booked was full. Surprise! Not worried, Armando hunts down the mayor to see if he can find us a place to crash for the night. Everyone in town is partying – only dancing harder than before to shake off the cold. We wait an hour and still cannot find the mayor, and finally decide that it is best to simply return to Ica tonight. The meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning will be cancelled because of the party anyways (everyone will be drunk says Armando, telling us what we could´ve told him.)
Before leaving, however, we sit down to a delicious dinner of rice, ram meat in a delicious sauce, and potatoes with tea to top it off. As expected, everything is more expensive here than Ica (if you eat as cheap as possible) since the food must be imported from town at a cost.
Arrival back at Ica is 11:30pm. We pick up our bikes and follow the short and well-lit road home through the center of town. Yogurt dies. We upload and blog and fall asleep.
14 July, Tuesday
“Hola, it´s Lindsey. I don´t know a whole lot about what Brooke and Adam did today because I stayed home in the morning and watched Wanted. I didn´t like it the first time I saw it and after a second chance today, I still wasn´t impressed. But it was decent I guess. Anyway, almost right after that ended, Brooke and Adam returned home and I was hungry for food, and they were hungry for internet and entrevistas, so we headed out in the direction of sandwiches in hopes of finding internet also. However, Adam quickly broke off from the group and soon after I heard Brooke say something about looking for something but I didn´t understand, so I decided to go my own way and look for some tasties. This took me to the Super de Ica, aka the land of the KEKE, but after eating like 20 keke´s over the last few days, I decided to swear them off. Instead, I got some vanilla yogurt and a ¨Dalmatian¨ treat: gooey chocolate at the center, with chocolate cake outside that, covered in white chocolate with chocolate chips on top. All for about 50 cents American. On my way back to the room, I passed Adam and Brooke and decided to turn around and follow them to whatever meetings they were planning on attending. We rode very quickly through typical crazy Ica traffic and Brooke and I ended up camping out outside the CODEHICA/Proetica office and although Brooke might try to deny it, she totally tried and liked the ¨Dalmation¨ tasty.
Then we went in, met with Leonardo of Proética and spoke in both English and Spanish during the interview. He was eating an helado and it made me really want to go buy one, but I´d already had four kekes and that other treat and that´s pretty much my limit on junk food for the day so I didn´t get one. (Later I ended up buying these animal crackers with giant blobs of hard colored sugar on top plus some little chocolate cookie things for one sol, but you don´t encounter those as often as ice cream so it´s kind of a must. Peruvians really like their ice cream…it´s kind of everywhere.) But anyway, after that, we stopped by this CODEHICA how-to-use-the-internet workshop for a little bit but we were all hungry so we soon left to pick up some breakfast for tomorrow (we´re going to have a very early day- have to be at GTZ at 6:00am and then we are going to Huancavelica and staying overnight there I think).
After this I started off towards dinner with Adam and Brooke behind me. Or at least that´s what I thought. Turns out they had passed me at some point and then when they looked back again, they didn´t see me. I still thought they were behind me, and at one point when I looked back, I didn´t see them. I waited for a bit and then continued on to our favorite dinner spot near the animal cracker store. I sat there for quite a while expecting them to roll around the corner any minute. When they didn´t I figured that they had either run out of traffic-dodging luck or had ditched me for some tallarin verde or lomo saltado or were already home somehow. Either way, I had no money and was kind of hungry. So I went back to the room, grabbed some change and headed back out. On my way to the food, I passed them on the street. ¨Did you get me some sandwiches?¨ I asked. They were too far away on the other side of the street to hear so I went over and asked what they got and where the heck they had gone. Turns out they thought I had gotten lost or ran into a car or ditched them for sandwiches. And took turns searching the Plaza de Armas and the animal cracker area for me. Woops.
So then we got food. A whole lot of food. And then some more. Then I led the way home and again when I turned around, no Adam and Brooke. Oh well. The shower was calling since I hadn´t paid it a visit in…a while. When I emerged all fresh and too clean for all the sand on my roll up mattress pad, I learned that Adam and Brooke were off acquiring more sweet bread and tea. Adam tells me to eat it and so I do, but now I think my stomach is going to explode.”
And so this ends Lindsey´s recap of the day. On to more serious important grownup NGO things from La Brooke and El Adam:”
So this morning, we got to see some cool things. CODEHICA’s office is a media dream. Not only is there a room set up for recording audio for their radio station as well as a place for writing the CODEHICA newspaper, there is also two whole rooms dedicated to television. There is one large room where they record for their Saturday and Sunday television spot that airs a la Good-Morning-America style and a smaller room connected where all the post-production editing occurs. Apparently they go out Monday through Wednesday to collect footage within communities, record their own news anchors on Thursday in the Good-Morning-America room, and then Friday is CRUNCH. Two lucky filmmasters sit around with all the footage from the week and edit it into a one hour version to be aired. Given this rate of editing, our documentary should be completed with a mere twelve days work. Into a twelve hour documentary.
Fruit death toll from this morning: 2 peaches, 3 apples, 6 bananas, 3 oranges, and 1 liter of strawberry yogurt.
We start at 8:40 a.m. at the CODEHICA office where some are in a rush out and others are in a rush in. We are handed off to Rosario for a break down of CODEHICA’s communication defense line. The best way to describe their strategy is as a four-dimensional attack of radio, television, print, and internet (wa-BANG!). They try to diffuse and highlight the opinions of community leaders, “dirigentes,” and elected representatives from local organizations. So they run a radio show five days a week 9-10am, a television spot on Saturdays and Sundays, a newspaper once every two months, and have their internet site updated con frecuencia.
Next, we meet Diana. She is in her third year at UNICA studying communications while doing a three month internship with CODEHICA. She is currently enjoying her work in the printing office, but is nice enough to take some time out of her day to escort us to CODEHICA’s off-site radio broadcasting spot. The set-up for the radio show is not typical. It is a room that is about as big as a wealthy man’s closet. It fits just one dining table with very little room to walk around when the chairs are occupied as well as just enough space for the electronic equipment in a small nook. There are newspapers sprawled across the table, and two very knowledgeable, fast-speaking woman seated across from one another. Words are darting back and forth between them about the government’s reconstruction promises, factory strikes, education, and masculinity. They deftly pass papers, microphones, and cellulars between themselves as one narrates the story and the other queues their reporters on the ground. They simply press their cell phones to the microphone to broadcast. Amidst all this impromptu coordination, a guest shows up to participate. Seamlessly, they incorporate him into the show without missing a beat.
Back at the CODEHICA office, we are passed around to more people to get a more thorough tour of the office. “NGOs are faced with low participation.” In this woman’s book (her name escapes me), this is because people make their problems the NGO’s problem. But the NGO knows that it’s not their problem, it’s the peoples’ problem. They’re just there to help the people help themselves. We also meet Leonardo of Proética after catching a short glimpse of their impressive website. Take a look at http://www.codehica.org.pe/ or http://www.vocesporlareconstruccion.org/ or http://www.reconstruccion.org/ If you scroll down, Proética is one of the participants in this project “Voices for the Reconstruction.” Their website is brimming with intriguing tidbits that will definitely help our report later. Proética’s site looks like it took a lot of foot work and time to develop.
We plan to return again at 3:30 to speak with Leonardo and attend a taller with CODEHICA. On the way home, Adam gleefully purchases a Chicha Morada and Maracuya refresco. He also manages to snag the to-go bags on a bush, losing all of the tasty purple juice to a fight with a plant. Then we contemplate Cuzco, Lima, and that place with a volcano. Then we hit up Internet for some more printing out of real world forms, learning about home, and sending some e-mails to key players for the last phase of our project. This is the part where we lost Lindsay the first time.
The phone cuts through our contemplation, and a voice on the other line informs us that we should meet them in fifteen minutes on Diamond Street. Fishy. Appointments are lined up like soldiers one right after another at 3, 3:30, and 4pm. We lasso our bikes for adventure and slide into homebase for a run. On Diamond Street, GTZ confides further intel concerning our sleepover tomorrow morning. On Avenida Cutervo, Lindsay savors a Dalmation. Brooke also enjoys a bite, but no tanto. Inside the wooden doors of CODEHICA, Leonardo paints a scenic picture of words about Proética work. We are astounded to hear that the incredible website from earlier was the result of two people’s work. Then we are floored to know that it is just 12 people in their office working in all of Peru. He tells us that getting honest, constructive, and critical feedback from the people is going to be impossible to get from the community. In fact, he says that what we are looking to accomplish might not be possible. Communities here are not entirely aware of the meaning behind NGOs, what expectations to have from aid agencies, and will be wary to be critical. Most of all, the communities haven’t had enough experience to grasp the entirety of what should or could be done. We learn that he will be doing encuestas on Sunday so we decide to join him. In addition, he invites us to the movies but we have to politely decline in order to find our way to the CODEHICA Workshop on how to better utilize the Internet.
By the time we arrive at the workshop location, they are still on the basics of learning words like CPU, monitor, keyboard, and USB. We all look at one another and decide to roll out. Then we lose Lindsay again. But we find her so we eat dinner like woah, so it’s cool.To end the night, we restlessly ride through the streets until we find ourselves somewhere entirely new where we eat tea and fresh pan.
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