Ups and Downs: First Week in Cajay (11/5-11/19)

Site Exploration!

Nov 19, 2024

TLWR: Visited my site for 2 weeks, now back in Chaclacayo. Lots of amazing things and hard things both to look forward to for these next couple years. Look at the pics, my town is beautiful! Pictures are the best way to see a glimpse into life here.

These past two weeks have been a rollercoaster of ups and downs. Many past volunteers had told us that site exploration is the hardest part of the entire two years, which I honestly didn’t believe, but now I hope that by the end of my two years I agree.

We started out by meeting our socios, who are the people with whom we’ve been assigned to work in our communities. Two of my socios made the trip to Carhuaz, one of them was one of the obstetricians at the health post and the other works with social programs at the municipality. Both seem to be super involved in the community, so I am excited to work with them. Wednesday, we awoke to terrible news from back home, it’s too bad we’re going to have to explain the hate that our country spews into the world for the rest of our time here. But as our country director wrote to us, “it is personal connections that remind us of our shared humanity, our shared desire for peace, for love, for belonging. I encourage you to find ways to continue building a world that is more just, more tolerant, more compassionate, that opens more doors for more people”. It then was time to look forward to arriving in our new homes.

My host mom came to Carhuaz to pick me up and then we took the bus over the mountains to the Conchucos valley which took about four hours. The ride was insanely beautiful, and a bit sickening as the entire way was switchbacks up mountains. My host dad picked us up from the bus in Huari because he drives a collectivo (basically just a big car that acts as a shared taxi) and drove us up the mountain about 30 minutes until we reached Cajay.

Me and my socios (left), me and my host mom (middle)

My host mom’s name is Maria Angelica and my host dad’s name is Carlos Cesar. I also have a 13-year-old host sister named Denisse and I spend much of my free time with her. Denisse goes to school in Huari, it seems like a lot of the people who work in Cajay live in Huari because Cajay is so quiet. My host family is super nice, Denisse never stops talking and on the contrary my host mom is very soft spoken, but both are super sweet. We also have two cats, and a dog named Bobby. Bobby also looks a bit like Bailey! Bobby is my host brother’s dog, but he works in Lima as a police officer and hasn’t been home in three years, but they are hoping he will be able to come home sometime next year. His name is Carlos and he is 22. My host mom has been teaching me a few words in Quechua which has been fun. However, I think I first need to double down on my Spanish because although I can communicate the gist of what I want to say, being at a loss for words as a result of feeling massively out of place is only exacerbated by the language difference. But I do think learning Quechua will be an important show of respect and also a necessity as most people in my town speak it. Our house is at the bottom of the town, across the street from the police station which means that we get to enjoy the mini plaza that the police built. The house feels a bit like a tree house as the entire house is essentially outside except for the bedrooms. The main source of cooking is atop a fire which adds some nice heat to the kitchen. It really fits the vibes of mountain house, and the views are always absolutely stunning.

After 4 days here, I can certainly say I will need to find some new hobbies to occupy my time. Cajay is a very quiet, small, rural town where most family’s grow much of what they eat. My host family has a lot of cuy (guinea pig), pigs and chickens and grows avocados, peaches, apples, strawberries, squash, onion, lettuce, carrots, lucuma and many kinds of herbs. They also have bees for honey. We do not have a market, so you must go down to Huari if you want to buy most goods. So far, the food has been good as most of it is incredibly fresh. Although, I am dreading the day that I am given tocush. We asked one of the volunteers ending her two years in Ancash if there were any times she wanted to quit and she said every time that she was given tocush. Tocush is a drink made either of fermented corn or fermented potato and, as you can imagine, it smells terrible and supposedly tastes exactly how it smells. When you walk around you can smell when you pass by someone with tocush. It is essentially natural penicillin which is why people in Perú drink it as it is said to be very good for you. I fully believe them, but I don’t think it’ll ever be worth it for me. One of the other current volunteers told us that pregnant mothers drink a lot of tocush the week before having a c-section and the week after and the wound heals incredibly fast. Anyways, I tried cuy for the first time! The actual meat is pretty good, the only tough thing is they also eat the skin which is thick and very chewy. We mostly eat hot, liquid foods, like soup and various grains in hot water (for breakfast I either eat quinoa in water or flour in water), as it is so cold.

(I learned how to make polls on here which is fun)

November to April is the rainy season here which should be their “summer”, however the rain brings the cold so November to April is actually the coldest time of the year, same as back home! I am pretty much always wrapped in a blanket and am always in my coat, and the only times I am warm is when I am in bed, under many thick wool, woven blankets. My host family didn’t let me shower until my fourth day here because they said that I could get sick if I showered before my body was adjusted to the cold. It honestly wasn’t that bad because I’m so cold all day, so I am never sweating! I think my host family only showers about once or twice a week, so that will be a bit difficult for me to get used to. It has been raining every day here, sometimes it is for the entire day and sometimes it is only in the afternoon. Watching the rain and hearing the thunder from atop a mountain is beautiful and really reminds you how small you are. My family fiercely believes that once water is cold it can make you sick, so we don’t do the dishes at night or in the morning because it’s colder, they add boiling water to my water bottle once it sits out for too long because it gets cold, I’m told to stop eating soup once it gets cold and I’m not allowed to shower at night or in the morning.

On Thursday I spent the day with one of the obstetricians, Carmen, at the health post and then accompanying her on house visits. Although she is an obstetrician, she pretty much just does whatever she can to support the health of the community. The health post in Cajay is super well organized. There is a lot of community education surrounding anemia, adolescent sexual health, mental health and more. I think it will be a little hard to find my place as they are already carrying out all the community health measures we were taught how to implement. When I accompanied her on house visits, we visited the mothers of young children to educate them on proper childhood nutrition, we visited elderly people to assess their mental capacity and check their teeth and we walked around the community stopping men and testing them for HIV and handing out condoms. Carmen is definitely a health badass! According to Carmen, the largest health problem for children in my community is anemia and for adolescents it’s drinking at an early age which leads to an increased risk of alcoholism. At my health post there are 2 SERUMs, one is a general practitioner, and one is a dentist. SERUMs are when doctors in Perú have to work for one year in a rural community as part of their residency before returning to where they want to practice (mine are both from Lima). I hope I can befriend them as they are relatively young, but I think that they both are living in Huari.

On Friday I went to the high school to introduce myself to the students and faculty, the school has about 60 students across five grades (high school is five years here). All of the staff seem very welcoming, and I am excited to see what I can help out with. Again, the school is very well organized and well run, which makes me feel a bit unqualified as what they are teaching already supersedes my training. They have a school psychologist who works a lot with the student’s mental health and self-esteem and also with education about familial violence which is a large problem across Perú. So hopefully I can help her out some! The school teachers invited me to their weekly volleyball game on Tuesday nights, I am definitely going to have to improved my volleyball skills because it is super popular with kids and adults here and let’s just say it was very clear that I needed some practice when I played with them. It seems as if the people of Cajay live very rural lives, but the town itself and its institutions seem to have a fair amount of resources and good organization. This tracks with what we’d heard about how the Conchucos valley is much more rural than the Huaylas valley, however there are mines located in the valley which has funneled money to the town governments.

Over the weekend I spent pretty much all of my time with Denisse. She showed me around all of the family’s animals and crops, took me on a little hike to a nearby waterfall and then a neighboring town, walked with me around all of Cajay (doesn’t take very long haha) and then we played endless rounds of UNO and spent hours completing a puzzle of Chicago that I had brought. Growing up in Cajay could not be more different than how I grew up.

Earlier today right after we finished lunch (important to remember this detail), my family was invited to a friend of my host dad’s house. I thought we were just going to hang out, but boy was I unprepared for what I was about to walk into. We hiked up the hill a bit and entered a house made of cemented mud, much like most of the others in the community, and I was immediately greeted with two massive pig heads hanging from the ceiling. We then went upstairs, and I have never seen so much raw meat moving around so quickly before. The house was filled with various people, the dads were drinking pisco in one corner and the moms were running about processing every kind of pig meat you could think of. There was a bucket of blood being boiled, ribs being dried from the ceiling, multiple different types of sausage being made, meat being fried and livers and hearts being sorted in baskets. We were handed heaping plates of fried pork, Incan corn and beet salad. Thankfully, my host mom had come prepared with tuppers so we didn’t have to finish our plates. In Perú it’s seen as quite rude if you don’t accept the food that someone gives you, but it’s acceptable to bring whatever you can’t finish home to eat later. Honestly, I was quite scared of the meat as I could see right in front of me the complete lack of sanitation going into the preparation, and 3 other volunteers have already been to the hospital this week to get IVs after becoming so dehydrated from food poisoning. But man was that some delicious fried pork. It was crisp on the outside, juicy on the inside and completely doused in flavorful pork grease. Fingers crossed that it sits well!

Every night after dinner my host family goes outside, wrapped in blankets, and sits on sheep pelts, sometimes talking, sometimes peeling aveja beans, sometimes passing around a volleyball, sometimes Denisse is playing her guitar and sometimes we just look out at the lights of Huari across the mountain and the complete darkness on the other side. I am embracing the psychology of sitting! “People in Western civilization no longer have time for each other, they have no time together, they do not share the experience of time. This explains why Westerners are incapable of understanding the psychology of sitting. In villages all over the world, sitting is an important social activity. Sitting is not a ‘waste of time’ nor is it a manifestation of laziness. Sitting is having time together, time to cultivate social relations.” -Andreas Fuglesang. This is something I’ve enjoyed as I can spend time with my host family without having to find the right words to say. It also gives me space to appreciate the opportunity that this is and realize the insane privilege I have that is allowing me to be made uncomfortable by some aspects of life here. And how deeply lucky I am to have people who make it so easy to miss home so dearly.

A baby guinea pig whose mother doesn’t lactate so my host mom spoon feeds it milk.

After another overnight bus ride, we arrived back in Lima. There were military and police everywhere because President Biden and the majority of the other world leaders were in Lima this past weekend for the APEC conference that Perú hosted! We are now back in Chacla for two more weeks of training before heading out for good. I missed having little kids at my site so am soaking up all my Arya and Hansel time, it really is something special to have someone so purely excited to see you when you walk through the door every day. I also really missed having such a wonderful support system like we do here in training, so we are soaking in our last couple weeks of adult summer camp (aka training).