Questions

Time continues to march forward. I am currently busy lining up all the details and organizing a big project we are carrying out in two of my caseríos (communities) in February and March. Regardless of the busy-ness, the last few weeks have been somewhat confusing. There are some days that I look at the beautiful sunset in Santiago while enjoying the cooler early evening breeze and think to myself, “I will not be ready to leave this place in November.” Then there are other days when I consistently find myself daydreaming of whatever lies after completion of service: grad school, seeing family and friends, whatever that next adventure may be, etc. At this point, I don’t know what I’ll end up doing. I might try to extend my service another year. I might not.

In between all the confusion and various musings, I also reflected back to spending Christmas with my relatives and friends. They asked me some questions that I realized I have never addressed in a blog. They are great questions and deserve attention. Perhaps you wonder some of the same things. I haven’t really talked about my communities a lot. Hopefully these questions and answers will help depict where I live and work.

What do I do as a Peace Corps Volunteer?
This is constantly transforming. Basically, I do whatever is a priority in the community. For me, this includes teaching English, teaching sanitation classes, helping set up bathroom construction projects, serving as a liaison between a community and the mayor, getting people motivated to make change in their community, working with youth, etc. As a water and sanitation volunteer, my primary projects and priorities are to carry out wat/san’s three program goals (in whatever manner that may be):
1. Improve the accessibility to and availability of safe drinking water.
2. Promote basic hygiene practices.
3. Build the capacity of service providers in charge of water and solid waste systems.

What do I eat?
I actually eat very well here. The food is delicious! My host mom is a great cook! Breakfast is almost always some bread and a piece of fruit. For lunch, we have two courses. We almost always start with chicken soup, which is followed with a dish of rice with some form of meat or beans in a tasty sauce. Every once in awhile we eat vegetables. For dinner, we reheat the left-overs from lunch. Lunch is the main meal here.

Do I have running water where I live?
I live with a very well-of family in the district capital Santiago (this is like the county seat), so yes I have running water, flush toilets, showers and electricity. However, I work in the smaller communities in the district. In most of the communities where I work people do not have faucets in the house. Instead, they have one spigot outside their house. Once or twice a week they can collect water from that spigot. They have to store the water in containers and ration it so that there is enough water for the rest of the week.

Do we have electricity?
Yes, I have electricity, and almost all the people with whom I work here have electricity.

What about bathrooms?
One of the privileges of living in the town of Santiago is that we have a sewage system. My host family has two very nice bathrooms connected to the sewage system. None of the caseríos (towns) in which I work have desague (a sewage system). This means if they have some form of hygienic services, they are latrines (like an outhouse). Many of the families just dig a big pit in the ground, make a cement cover with a hole and then create a privacy barrier with sticks, grass and/or plastic.

What are people’s houses made out of?
The material of a person’s home depends a lot on their economic status. The ideal material for most people is to have their houses made out of brick. (There are not houses made out of wood here). Many families have houses made out of adobe (bricks of mud with clay and straw). However, most of the houses made out of adobe were destroyed or damaged during the big earthquake we had here on August 15 of 2007. For this reason, many people are scared to build their houses out of adobe again, but it is still significantly cheaper than brick. Many of the families’ whose homes were destroyed in the earthquake still cannot afford to rebuild their homes so they are living in esteras (a grass/reed woven together to make a mat, which used as a wall to the home) with sheets of plastic for the roof. There are a lot of people also constructing their homes out of quincha (reeds/grass mixed with mud/adobe) because this type of house has proven to be a more anti-seismic design.

Drinking Water?
All water has to be treated, boiled and/or filtered before drinking it. If not, one will end up with parasites, bacteria and/or diarrhea

What occupations do people have?
A large majority of the people work in agriculture. Ica, has a lot of agricultural exportation companies that export grapes, artichokes and many other fruits and vegetables. Most people work from 6 or 7 a.m. until 5 or 6 p.m. six days a week. They earn an average of $7-10 per day. Women also work.

These are just some of the questions I was asked. Please ask me more questions. I love answering them. I forget about the parts that are different here, because, for me, it’s what I see every day.

Peace.