In which I found a chicken foot in my soup and other amusing/interesting anecdotes...

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Well, I´ve been in Cusco (think The Emperor´s New Groove or Inca Capital or oldest countinusouly inhabited city in South America or city shaped like a puma) for over three weeks and it´s high time I sent out an update! I have been doing lots of activities, thinking about many issues and generally experiencing countless new things, so be warned this is likely going to be long, but hopefully interesting.

I´ve decided to include a summary at the END (so as not to spoil anything) so if you want the one minute read instead of ten minute read, scroll down.

Volunteering:

Why don´t I start with the actual reason I am here? I am in Cusco for six weeks (so just under three more) to volunteer in the Ancahuasi Puesto de Salud, which in English terms is a small rural medical clinic in the community of Ancahuasi, which is conveniently reached after about two hours of various forms of transportation from my house. More about transit later though.

The posta (as the clinic is referred to) is in a very small, rural farming region though it also serves twelve additional small neighbouring communities. It´s primary focus is healthy child development and to provide basic check ups for minor ailments and first aid. Larger issues are referred to the Centre de Salud in nearby Izcuchaca or to Cusco.

Here´s a sampling of the highlights at the posta so far:

1) Hepatits B vaccination campaigns in RURAL villages: we take the ¨ambulance¨ (a rickety old van) to neighbouring areas looking for specific kids who need their third dose of the vaccine. Since roads into these mountain areas are literally cow and donkey trails, and often being dug up or filled with rock piles for ¨improvements¨ we often have to go offroading...driving over random fields, through ditches (Simeon, the driver managed to get us stuck once, which was great) to reach the homes. The best part about arriving at our destination is we never know what the destination is...since addresses don´t exist here we only have the kid´s community. So, we go there and start asking random people on the road or in the fields if they know where so-and-so lives and it continues until we find (or don´t find) the kid. Once a Quechua woman invited us to eat some maize and beans with her under a shed...so we did, while on duty. It was great. Sometimes we go out for 3-4 hours and successfully vacciante five kids. While this is wildly inefficient, I must commend the Ministry of Health for developing this program and encouraging so much outreach by the healthcare workers. The parents are very receptive of vaccinations, which is good to see. Two additional interesting tidbits: one day I was allowed to DRIVE the ambulance, complete with (almost) no steering, brakes or power. It was delightful. Also, some of the nurses seem to give the kids the used syringes (without the needle obviously) as toys when the shot is over. I find this a bit dicey as there´s still a bit of vaccine in there and syringes in my opinion syringes shouldn´t really be used as toys (though I suppose it does get them more familiar with the device). Anyway...
2) Once every two weeks dentists from the larger health centres visit the posta, making these days very busy. Mostly, they pull teeth (kids and adults alike) because they are so rotten that they are beyond repair. I spoke with the dentists about oral health in rural communities and they told me that despite providing families with toothbrushes, paste and fluoride treatment once per year (perhaps the frequency should be greatly increased) almost noone brushes their teeth on a regular basis, if at all. The result is a lot of fillings, missing teeth and in the interim, PAIN! It was heartbreaking to watch this five year old boy scream and squirm while he received anasthesia and then had several teeth removed.
3) Healthy growth of children is a huge focus at the clinic and as a result, I see loads of babies and kids coming in for regular check ups. I often weigh and measure them, determining if their growth is normal (based on charts, as a rough estimate) and discuss age-appropriate nutrition with the mothers. Sadly, nutrition is a large challenge around Ancahuasi and many kids are malnourished. They eat loads of potatos and corn, while missing out on other vegetables and fruits. I also suspect they´re low on dairy products, despite the large amount of cows around (for example, almost all you can find for milk in the supermarket in the city is canned, condensed milk! ICK, not to mention the volume consumed by most people is pretty low). The government of Peru has created a national program called ¨Juntos¨ that distributes soft food for babies and kids that has been infused with nutrients as is thus (more) healthy than what they usually get at home. These packets are pretty popular at the posta. However...with so many ¨handouts¨available I wonder if this is the most sustainable and overall best method to improve child nutrition (perhaps a lot of education and some assistance with growing different crops or creating a trade network with jungle farmers who can provide fruit would be a better approach, in the long term...)
Also, as part of healthy growth, various vaccinations (polio, five-in-one for tetanus, diptheria, Hepatits B, pertusis and influenza) are administered at different ages. Special vitamin supplements are also given at prescribed intervals and it is SO cool to see ¨funded by CIDA, the Canadian International Development Association¨on the bottles! I am literally seeing some of our foreign aid dollars at work, and it is fantastic.
4) Sports (soccer and volleyball mostly) are popular among the young people in the region, of which there are MANY (though if you´re wondering, various forms of birth control are available at the posta), and sometimes we receive sports related injuries, such as slashes in the face requiring stiches. Procedures like this cost a little bit of money and I wouldn´t be surprised if some people go without visiting the clinic.
5) Many adults come to the posta with small ailments, such as respiratory infections, eye infections and such. I would attribute a decent percentage of these problems to the absolute lack of hygeine exhibited by these people. Like their teeth, many people come to the posta without having cleaned themselves or their children for a long time. Many are very dirty and they smell. It´s kind of interesting actually, I´d like to think that I have been able to experience the true natural odour of humans of the land here (even smelly people at home tend to wash sometimes or have some other fragrance, nice or not to cover things up) and it´s really not that nice. But I manage.
6) Sundays are usually the busiest day of the week at the posta because of the market in town. This past Sunday I went to work as usual because when it´s busy I am actually helpful (!) at the clinic with admitting patients and recording their vitals. Strangely, we worked for about two hours and then the other nurses closed the clinic and ushered me over to the town Church, where Dr. Faus´goddaughter was being confirmed. After standing around and talking to people I didn´t know for a LONG time, as well as having confetti thrown in my hair (that part was kind of fun) we were all ushered to have a feast with the girl´s family. The nurses originally said we would be gone for an hour (it turned into almost three) and I really wish I´d pulled the plug and just left. We went and had lunch in the yard of one of the adobe houses (which smell very earthly inside, by the way). The feast consisted of a HUGE chunk of meat each (I think it was pork) and a bunch of bread. Everything was eaten with your hands, which made for a pretty messy experience, and the beverages were bottles of pop and some sort of homemade liquor in a used water bottle. They then tried to feed me this gigantic bowl of soup afterwards, and the whole time I was trying to eat it Sara´s words about not eating everything is a rude gesture were swirling through my head. I simply couldn´t though, I think I was the most full of food I´ve ever been in my life, and thankfully then the nurses signalled to leave. Unfortunately, about half an hour after eating this sketchy meat with my hands (I did use hand sanitizer beforehand because washing wasn´t an option) I started to get sick, and there ended my seven and a half weeks of excellent health in Peru.

Some people have been asking me how my Spanish is coming along, considering I work with it all day at the posta (and Quechua too, but I know hardly any of that) and speak it at home. The answer is: I am improving slowly but surely. As an impatient person, some days I get really frustrated that I can´t understand everything or communicate on a more adult level. However, many people I´ve talked to say it takes about a year, give or take, of being immersed in a language to really have a firm grasp on it. So, for me at less than two months, it´s normal to still feel fairly out of the loop.

Living with a Family in Cusco:

I am experincing Peruvian life pretty authentically by living with a family. Rich by local standards, the de Torres family that I´m staying with is certainly interesting. For example, they have a maid/housekeeper named Irma (who is really wonderful and is probably the person I actually speak with the most because she´s so patient and kind!). This is probably the only time in my life I´ll be living with hired help, so I guess I should enjoy it!

Some of the highlights at the homestay so far:

1) Eating cuy. I´ve been hearing for the past several weeks that cuy (guinea pig) is a great and very unique dish here. Naturally, my curiousity was piqued and I decided that I must try it. I requested that my host family make it one evening and so they did. Now, the actual meat of the guinea pig wasn´t that bad or weird, but the process was a bit different, to say the least. To my understanding, the guinea pig is basically boiled, to remove the hair and cook it, and then is removed, completely intact. Nilda, my host mom then quartered them and handed each person a quarter, leg, skin, internal organs and all. We had to then eat the thing with our hands and the family basically ate all except some of the skin (they even went so far as the suck the fat off the skin...so gross) and the bones. Yes, that means all of the ¨guts¨ were part of the dish too...I think I had part of the esophasgus and that´s about it. Interesting experience, to say the least and one that I probably won´t be repeating.
2) On the subject of sketchy food...how about eating chicken foot soup? Well, I can say I ate the soup around it but I could not bring myself to eat the foot. The story goes, one day I came home for lunch and Irma gave me some soup. I could tell that there was meat in it, but was positioned in such a way that it looked just like a chunk of chicken (a normal piece). Well, when I had eaten a few spoonfuls I touched the piece of meat with my spoon, it turned over and there was an entire chicken foot staring at me. I almost screamed. Joaquin, the eighteen month old living in the house was eating at the same time and he grabbed his foot with his hands and put the entire thing in his mouth. I basically had nightmares about that for the next two nights...just the sight of the claws and skin (and nothing can convince me that those feet are actually completely CLEAN) going into his mouth and being consumed was almost too much to take.
3) Transport to and from Ancahuasi each day is quite the ordeal and usually takes about two hours, door-to-door (one way)! This is going to be my primary complaint on the eval for this program, the commute simply way too long. I start by catching a combi just outside the house. Combis are vans (in Canada it would be an eight passenger van, here it´s 25-30) that rip along the street with people hanging out of them as they are usually exploding with people. My favourite is the batman combi, though I don´t take it because it follows a different route. I then exit the combi and walk a few minutes to the bus terminal, which takes me to Izucuchaca, a community about 45minutes outside of Cusco. On Sundays there are markets in Izcuchaca and Ancahuasi and so the buses are absolutely packed and very slow. People often bring things with them to sell as well...I´ve seen bags of lie chickens, various bags of produce and a wheelbarrow make their way on public transit. Very funny, in my opinion. In Izcuchaca, I then take another crowded combi to Ancahuasi. It´s on this combi that I´ve travelled with many chickens, huge bundles of grass, a pig and a dead sheep. Everytime something like this happens I just can´t help but chuckle; the situation is so ridiculous to me. Anyway, after that ordeal I arrive ready to work! When I return at the end of the day, I have the pleasure of walking along ¨Meat Street¨in Cusco where there are random carcasses in the street, chickens being killed, blood and guts on the sidewalk, taxis filled with dead pigs and on one occasion two cow heads laying on the street. Aside from the strange images and terrible smell, I keep wondering how things work when NOTHING is refrigerated. I am thinking this possibly has something to do with my current upset stomach, boo.
4) Sometimes police board buses and ask for everyone´s ID card. The first time this happened I was a bit nervous since I didn´t know what they were doing (though I did cleverly have a PHOTOCOPY of my passport with me if they asked for it...I would not trust them with the real thing). This has happened on three occasions and they´ve never asked me for anything and I´ve deduced they´re just looking for criminals or something. Still, a bit of a wacky experience, especially the first time.
5) Conterfeit money is extremely common here and the other day I finally received my first one (now I´m actually checking them). The best part was that it was for a ten sole bill...about $3-4 CDN. I´m not sure how it´s really worth it at that amount, but I suppose in large volumes it adds up. I´ve even heard of counterfeit coins, which are all pretty worthless. Funny funny.

Visiting Nilda´s School:

My homestay mother is a teacher in Ancahuasi and one day last week I decided to go with her to school to see how things worked and help out a little bit. Here´s a summary of my day:
-we arrived slightly late (all Peruvians, professional or not are pretty much always late...we joke about it as ¨South American time¨ after having ridden in a taxi, a normal car, with nine adults in it (a tad cramped, to say the least)
-school started with Nilda gathering the kids in a field and completing a morning prayer (there are no bells...so starting/ending on a schedule doesn´t matter! also, about 95% of Peru is Catholic and it´s apparent in the schools)
-I then went with Nilda to her grade 4 class, where they had a lesson on fractions, which was very cute
-the kids used a knife to sharpen their pencils
-the map on the wall of the classroom procalimed Saskatoon to be in Manitoba and had numerous other errors which was funny and bit sad!
-after the lesson, the boys went for a pee break and literally ran out onto the field/schoolyard and went right there
-there was no water at the school that day, for handwashing for example, though I get the impression it doesn´t occur that often even when water is available
-sadly it is apparent that these kids don´t get garbage duty for misbehaving (in fact discipline is not really administered here) as the school yard is as littered as the rest of the countryside
-after ¨recess¨ Nilda informed me that she had to go back to Cusco and that I was to teach her class for the next two hours...which I did! I taught the kids numbers and colours in English along with other words they wanted to know. It was a bit tricky to keep control of the class because of course they were FASCINATED with me, being a white person and all, and were very excited and hyperactive
-when school ended (at 1pm, thank goodness) I went with some of the kids to watch a soccer tournament on a random donkey field...some of the boys ran ahead of the rest of us and proceeded to climb a very thin tree which was a bit miraculous actually (that the tree held them all) and then jumped on donkeys tied next to the side of the road. It was pretty funny.

Whilst travelling there are loads of opportunities to meet really cool and sometimes bizarre people. For example, I met an Australian girl who is going to hitchhike-float down the Amazon for a month on industrial boats (which I would love to do if I had time), a French guy who is going to live with a Shaman in the jungle for two weeks and try various ¨medicinal¨ plants and an American guy who came to Peru with one pair of pants and didn´t change for two weeks (there´s a difference between being hardcore and being disgusting...this guy missed the memo on that).

Speaking of cool people...I´ve been spending a lot of my spare time (when not volunteering or in transit...which seems to be about the same amount of time) at South American Explorers, a club for travellers of this wonderful continent. The club offers loads of information about travel, reliable agencies to go with, offers a library and book exchange service and lots of social events. Not to mention, this organization is also very green and one of the only places I´ve seen here that recycles! They support environmentally friendly, fair-trade groups and I´m just to happy to be affiliated with them that I started volunteering there once a week! I´ve met my group of Cusco friends there and it´s really great to have like-minded, mature (the crowd is 20s-30s which is GREAT) people to hang out with! I´ve gone out to lots of dinners and done some exploring of the Sacred Valley around Cusco which brings me to my last section (phew!)...

The Sacred Valley and Exploring Ruins:

Next to Cusco is the Sacred Valley, named because it is very fertile and the people living there are thankful to be able to grow many different types of crops. I´ve made a few journeys out that way on days off and have loved it every time; again the highlights follow...
1) With South American Explorers, I did a day trip to Urubamba (how awesome is that town name) to meet local artisans and learn how they conduct their trade. We visited a potter with beautiful ceramics, a lady who made CHOCOLATE (only cocoa beans, sugar and peanuts were included...it was possibly the best chocolate I´ve ever had), a lady who made chicha (beer made from corn, it´s pink and quite good), a weaver and a cuy farmer. It was very insightful and a nice to learn how people make a living.
2) With my friends Lies, Marisa and Thea, I did another day trip to Ollantaytambo (again, cool name) just to check it out. It is an adorable little town that features Inca constuction (buildings and roads) and has been continuously inhabited since those times. It also contains ruins which mark one of the sites where the Spanish were defeated during conquest times.
3) Ruins, ruins, ruins...there are loads of Inca and pre-Inca archaeological ruins around here. With a tourist boleto, you can visit sixteen different sites (within ten days) for a decent price. My price was even more decent because I managed to argue my way into paying the student rate, which is a 50% discount, despite having an expired student card (which the lady pointed out to me about five times). This again goes to show that ANYTHING in South America can be negotiated. This particular event also helped me with my identity crisis and I´m back to calling myself a student (instead of a undecided wanderer, though that´s less exciting than vet, which is what the posta people think I am because I studied Animal Biology). Anyway, back to ruins. I´ve now visited all of the ruins with my ticket and they´ve been mostly great. Pisac was situated on top of a mountain and is a HUGE site. I especially enjoyed climbing down the mountain among the terraces...they are so big and impressive and must have taken SO much work to form, it is truly amazing. Moray was another cool one with spiral terraces descending into the earth to create different microclimes for different crops. Finally, Salernas was a natural salt flat (in the mountains and nowhere near the ocean, mind you) where Peruvians have now made terraces and mine the salt. Interestingly, none of the ruins had barricades to dangerous places (you could easily fall off the mountain on Pisac and be seriously injured) or any sections blocked off! It was a pretty uninhibited, authentic experience (though is probably quite bad for the ruins themselves to have people scampering over them all the time). Cool stuff, for sure and it´s all building up to Machu Picchu, which will hopefully be the subject of my next entry!

Ok, I think I´m just about done here, thanks for bearing with me. I know for next time not to let so much time pass without an update!

As promised at the top, here´s the short, sweet summary version of my time in Cusco so far:
-volunteering in a very rural medical clinic and taking part in vaccination campaigns (I get to give the shots too!) which involves offroading in an ambulance and going on wild goose-chases to find kids
-observing dentist day at the posta and watching more tooth pulls than I ever hope to see again
-interacting with Quechua people of the mountains and observing their farming practices (most things done by hand, live and dead animals moved via public transit)
-observing meat literally on the street (hello foodsafe?)
-living with a family in Cusco and eating cuy (guinea pig) and chicken foot soup
-being a teacher for a day in Nilda´s school without any warning
-combis with loads of people, awesome names (like batman), and all sorts of live and dead animals to take to market on them
-visiting ruins and going for day hikes in the beautiful Sacred Valley

Finally...here is a more complete collection of my recent photos!

Life in Cusco: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231272&l=6f256&id=21003528
Volunteering in Ancahuasi: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2231511&l=8fe19&id=21003528
Trips into the Sacred Valley: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2232535&l=3bbd4&id=21003528
Ruins!: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2232540&l=b0194&id=21003528

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Photos

Hep B Vaccination Campaign
Currently, a large project at the posta is to vaccinate all kids in the region aged 2-19 against Hepatitis B. I´m quite impressed with the amount of effort put into this program.

Ambulancia!
Here is the self-proclaimed excellent ambulance of the posta, which may as well have four wheel drive for where it has to go.

Adobe Houses!
Virtually all of the houses in and around Ancahuasi are adobe. They look really cool!

Best Sign Ever
This sign really could not be more inaccurate.

Pig in a Bag
And this is how one comes to ride with livestock on public transit.

Nilda´s Class
These kids were so full of energy!

The one and only chicken foot soup
I don´t think this really needs and explanation.

Cuy
Here´s when I ate guinea pig, for the first and probably last time.

My friends in Cusco!
Here are some of my friends in Cusco!

Chocolate Lady!
During a trip to Urubamba, we met a lot of local artisans and learned how they made a living. This woman made all natural chocolate with cocoa, sugar and peanuts and it was SO good!

Inca Street!
Ollantaytambo is an Inca city featuring stone walls and roads that have been in place for hundreds of years! They are very cool!

Oxen Plow
Most of the work in this country, on the farm or in construction is done by hand, case in point with this pair of oxen plowing about to plow a field. There are LOADS of plowed fields around the sacred valley and most of them have been plowed by hand.

Pisac Ruins
I felt like I was on top of the world here! The ruins went on and on, and the views of the valley below were spectacular!

Ruins at Ollantaytambo
Here are some of the Ollantaytambo ruins. Fun fact: this is one of few sites where the Spanish were initially defeated by the Incas.

Big rocks at Sacsaywaman ruins!
Some of the rocks at Sacsaywaman are HUGE. They aren´t on the scale of stonehenge or anything, but there are a lot of them! I´m not quite sure where they´re from...perhaps nearby. What makes them even more impressive is that they have all been carved into square shapes to fit together in the complex...no easy feat with simple hand tools!

Comments

[cachorro]

thanx
thank you 4 volunteering while enjoying my PERU