Pictures with moms and a video

My final gift to the mothers I work with was a growth chart to put in their homes.  Here are some pictures!

Also, check out THIS VIDEO that I made!

Peace Out

When I first came to Peru, I made a list in the back of my journal titled “Reasons I am here.”  The idea was to have a running list that constantly reminded me to keep my chin up when things got hard.  By the time the pages ran out in my journal, I had 15 items, and I had read and reread that list about a million times. 

When I started my new journal, I thought about making another list for the second half of service titled “Things I will miss.”  Unfortunately, at the time I was feeling too cynical to actually put anything down, and then the idea slipped my mind and it never happened.  One day from leaving site, I’ve decided to actually write that list. 

Really, the things that I will miss about Tantará and about Peru are little.  They are small moments that happen during a passing day that I almost forgot to notice. 

I will miss waking up to church bells and the bustling house.  I will even miss the rooster crows.  I will miss small children calling me Tía and hugging me on the streets.  I will miss knowing everyone I pass and having them greet me with a smile and, “Hola, Señorita Jenny.”  I will miss making my own schedule. 

I will miss the sunset turning the whole town pink, and how amazing the stars look when the electricity goes out.  I will miss walking into the kitchen every night and eating soup with my family.  I will miss sitting next to the stove when I’m cold.  I will miss aguita de hierbas and fresh fruit, especially oranges and avocado. 

I will miss my dog, Oso, protectively following me around, and my cat, Leo, purring in my lap.  I will miss that feeling of drying my hair in the hot sun after a cold shower.  I will miss having a beautiful garden of flowers right outside my door and eating vegetables that were in the ground that morning.  I will miss being able to make everything better by eating popcorn for dinner. 

Most of all, I will miss my host mom asking me, “¿Que novedades?” (What’s new?) and coming into my room to chismosear (gossip).  I will miss her protecting me and bragging about me.  I will miss my host grandfather telling long drawn out stories, and I will miss sitting in the kitchen listening to my host family talk about anything interesting that happened that day (mostly about the cows). 

In the last few weeks leading up to COS, I’ve been torn between overwhelmingly excited and overwhelmingly sad.  Most days, I don’t know if I should jump up and down or break down crying.  Sure, I’m excited for toilet seats and speaking English and high speed internet.  I’m excited for beer and indoor heating and driving my car.  I can hardly express how excited I am to be home with my family.  As the day gets closer, though, the list of things I will miss keeps getting longer, and I keep remembering reasons I am here. 

Last November, I got a letter I had written to myself right before I left for Peru.  One of my wishes for myself was that Peru had stolen a little piece of my heart.  As I get ready to leave, I know that it absolutely has.

Baby, you got SOL

Things here are rapidly coming to a close.  I officially have less than 20 days until I leave site for good, and I won’t even be in site for all of those days.  It suddenly seems like days are slipping through my fingers while I desperately try to squeeze every moment possible out of them.  I can hardly believe that I am writing a blog about my last activities with teens.  But here it is.

I’ve written about Pasos Adelante before.  It is a Peace Corps-Peru program focused on sexual and reproductive health for teens.  It is also one of the most rewarding and fun parts of my job in Peru.  Last year, my Pasos group was only 5 kids or less.  This year, I had an average of 9 youths at each class who were motivated, curious, and enthusiastic.  I also had the help of a wonderful teacher, Prof. Dina Tovar Cullanco, who was at every class, eager to help.  I am proud to say that 7 youths graduated the program, and will hopefully work with my replacement volunteer to train other youths in life skills and sexual health.

In addition to my Pasos class, I also taught a School for Parents once a month in the secondary school.  Again with the help of Prof. Dina (didn’t I say she was great?), we got together with parents and talked about communication, adolescence, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, and effective parenting.  There is nothing more encouraging than parents taking time out of their evenings to come learn about how to better support their adolescents.  We had some phenomenal, open, and frank conversations and they hopefully have some more tools to communicate with their adolescents moving forward.

Finally, last weekend, the LIcaH region held a youth camp called Camp SOL (Solidaridad, Orgullo, Liderazgo… Solidarity, Pride, Leadership).  We had 22 adolescents come from three departments (Huancavelica, Lima, Ica) for two nights at La Tinguiña, Ica.  From Tantará, I brought two adolescents: Milagros and Guillermo.  They have been the superstars of my Pasos group for the last two years.  At camp we had workshops on personal health (sexual health, anti-violence, etc.) and on leadership (communication, listening, problem solving, etc.).  Then, they created work plans for their communities so that they can go back and begin to confront some of the problems that youths encounter in their lives.  I couldn’t be prouder of Milagros and Guillermo, as well as all of the young leaders who came to camp.  We were lucky to have an enthusiastic and interested group of kids, as well as motivated and helpful Volunteers and Peruvian counterparts.

To the people who donated to our grant to make Camp SOL possible, I can’t thank you enough times.  I am also incredibly grateful to Prof. Dina for always coming to classes and helping me no matter what, and to Taylor Warren for being the other half of the youth camp planning committee (arguably the much more important half).

Coming next week to a blog near you: pictures on this post and another post about working with mothers.

The big two-four

As far as birthdays go, this year was pretty tranquilo.  My host mom made a small dinner for some friends in site, and we ate cake.  

But as a year-in-review type thing, here are things I did last year, and hopes for next year:

23 things I did last year

1. Rowed 112 miles down the Amazon in a raft
   
2. Became the madrina for the most adorable 12 kindergarten graduates that you’ll ever see
   
3. Taught my first group of teens sex ed
   
4. Painted a World Map in the Primary School
   
5. Painted a map of Peru in the Secondary School
   
6. Read all 7 Harry Potter books in Spanish
7. Visited home
   
8. Completed one year in Peru, one year in site, and had the mid-service meltdown
9. Taught English classes to both students and professors
10. Participated in a giant paint fight for Carnival in Cajamarca
    
11. Watched the Broncos lose the Super Bowl
12. Milked a cow
    
13. Learned to make queso fresco
14. Walked 9 days in the Cordillera Huayhuash, including over a pass of 16,400 ft, with my favorite hiking buddy
    
15. Learned to cross stitch
16. Ran a marathon
    
17. Started applying to medical school
18. Dated (and broke up with) one of the best people I’ve ever met
    
19. Wrote my first ever cover letter
20. Said bye to a best friend
    
21. Was thrown head first off a bridge over a 150 meter canyon
22. Taught a second year of sex ed, including meetings with parents
    
23. Was adopted by a Peruvian family
    

24 hopes for this year

1. Go to Mistura (food festival in Lima)
2. Bring 2 teens to a youth camp in Ica (help by donating HERE!)
3. Finish all my trainings with teens and parents in site
4. Leave my site ready for my replacement Volunteer
5. Finish Peace Corps feeling good about my service
6. Get a tattoo
7. Travel to Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia
8. Paraglide off of Giant Jesus in Rio
9. Celebrate Thanksgiving at home
10. Move to Denver
11. Finish applying to medical school
12. Get into medical school
13. Start medical school
14. Figure out all the technology in the developed world
15. Visit family and friends around the States
16. Ski every moment I possibly can
17. Stay in one place, without travelling, for more than one month
18. Run another marathon, or do a triathlon (or both)
19. Get a job
20. Stay in touch with my Peruvian family
21. Go to Italy
22. Visit Hamilton
23. Go to Telluride Bluegrass Festival
24. Play a lot of piano

Tantará students present their school

Check out this video that the students of the secondary school made to send to my World Wise Schools connection in Manitou Springs!

I Am A Runner

I can't count the number of times I've said, "I'm not a runner".  It always seems to go along with the phrase, "I'm a swimmer".  It's as though we swimmers have collectively decided that we don't have to be runners.  I can, however, tell you the first time I called myself a runner: it was about 3 minutes ago when I wrote the title of this blog post.

Training for the marathon for me, was a lot like Peace Corps in that it seemed to follow the same progression.  When I was just starting, it was exciting and relatively easy.  I felt motivated to leave my room each day and go on a run, and I felt good when I finished.  That happy feeling lasted for quite awhile.

Day 1

In Peace Corps, we talk about the "mid-service crisis".  The mid-service crisis is that point in the middle of service when the excitement of being there has long passed, but the light at the end of the tunnel has yet to appear.  Mine happened when I got back from visiting the States.  Marathon training was actually one of many things that helped me lift myself up every morning and eventually pulled me out of that slump.

I also had a mid-training crisis.  Around weeks 9 and 10 of training, suddenly motivating myself to pull on my shoes was a challenge.  The runs were getting longer, but the end was still out of sight.  As I struggled through my training schedule, I needed some way to get out of the rut I was in.  The answer came inside the book "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall.  I was reading this book at the time, and came across a section that talks about the look of bliss, of complete serenity, on the faces of many ultra-runners.

Jenn Shelton: one of McDougall's examples of someone who is happy to run

So, I decided to start enjoying my runs.  Every time I started to hate running, I forced a smile on my face, took a deep breath, and looked at the mountains around me.  I forced myself to appreciate that I got to be outside, that I had this time to relax, and to remember that running a marathon was a choice I had made.  Even I was skeptical that this plan would work, but suddenly, I started to like running.  I stopped hitting Snooze in the morning, started looking forward to my runs, and felt a lot happier while I was running.

About to finish!

I wish I could write more about the actual marathon, but to be honest, I don't remember most of it.

Here are a few things I do remember:
1) Group photo at the start line

Ready to go!

2) Peeing in a park at Km 6 because all the toilets had lines
3) Seeing Mike taking pictures at Km 11, jumping in the air and almost falling over
4) Finding 2 bald men running at the same pace as me and pretending like I was part of their group between Km 18 and 27
5) Seeing Todd at Km 28
6) Someone handing me a peeled banana at Km 31 and gripping it in my hand for almost 10 minutes before realizing I really didn't want it and throwing it away
7) A really nice man at Km 36 giving me some Gatorade and telling me that I was almost there
8) The last 0.2 Km (because just 42 Km isn't quite enough), and finding it really hard to push myself to the finish line until I saw the giant group of friends waiting at the end, who gave me the strength to finish hard.

Team Peace Corps

The Marathoners

Doing my first marathon in the Peace Corps was a great experience.  Training helped me through some rough times, and being here helped me though the hard parts of training.  People in my town got very excited when they found out that I was training for a marathon, and began to stop me on the street to ask, "Did you run today?" or, "How many kilometers?"

I am already thinking about my next marathon, and I can confidently say, "I am a runner".

Poop Week

The Universidad Cayetano Heredia in Lima is doing a study on the prevalence of taeniasis and cysticercosis in Peru.  Taenia solium is a tapeworm that is spread through the consumption of undercooked pork.  If the eggs of the Taenia are eaten by a human, larvae can enter into the muscle or brain and form cysts, causing muscle pain, seizures, and all sorts of other problems, like death.

Yeah, pigs, I'm talking about you.

So the Universidad Cayetano sent me materials (and the lovely biologist, Lauralee Woods) to collect stool samples from as many people as possible.  They will test the samples for any parasites, and send treatment to those who have taeniasis.

Before we could start doing samples, I had to go door-to-door and do a survey of my town to collect information on how they keep their pigs, where and when they kill them, and also the general sanitation of their homes.  Then we had to coordinate dates when Health Center personnel would be available and get the materials shipped.  And finally, last week was Poop Week.

Poop Week got off to a rough start when I accidentally left 2/3 of the materials in Chincha and had to get them sent up to me the following day.  Tuesday and Wednesday, 3 técnicas got on their ATVs and visited some far away communities to give out cups to families, while I visited as many houses as I possibly could in Tantará.  Prioritizing families with children, we managed to give 300 people materials to do stool samples.  

Lauralee and I then spent Thursday and Friday collecting, coding, and processing poop.

Lauralee stirring a vial of PBS and poo

Poop can be fun!

In the end, we collected 154 stool samples (not a bad percentage in a community of between 400-500 people).

Now we wait for the results, and then get to work treating the parasites we find.

Special thanks to the Universidad Cayetano for making this possible, to my Health Center staff who repeatedly woke up at the crack of dawn to help me (in addition to their already busy days), and most of all, to Lauralee, who dealt with my panic attacks, made everything run smoothly, and who gets extra bonus points for handling the most disgusting stool sample that ever existed:

(so gross I had to take a picture)

Huayhuash

Over the Easter holiday, my mom and her friend, Lynn, came to Peru to visit.  They arrived in Lima, and we immediately got on a bus to head north to Huaraz.  After an acclimatization day, we got on a bus at 5 am, drove 5 hours to the town of Pocpa, and started walking. 

Our group consisted of 7 people, the three of us and two couples from England and Switzerland, plus two donkey drivers (Jose and Ronald), a cook (Sammy), and a guide (Hector). The trek was 9 days, completely circling the Cordillera Huayhuash.  We camped every night above 14,000 feet, and went over high passes (between 15,500 and 16,400 feet) almost everyday, sometimes twice. 

I don’t have much to say except that it was easily the most beautiful place I’ve ever been in my whole life.  We were constantly walking through what should be scenes from Planet Earth, except in place of David Attenborough’s narration, we had Hector’s constant encouragement and repetitions of “Lento y seguro” (slow and steady).

Photos can’t possibly capture the vastness of a place like the Cordillera Huayhuash.  A picture does not show the majesty of the endless mountains or portray the smallness one feels while  standing at the edge of a glacial lake, watching an avalanche crash into the water below.  Nevertheless, here are some photos, so maybe you can get some idea of the incredible beauty that we were fortunate enough to walk through for 9 days.

The Team

Hector, Sammy, and Luis Pardo (the horse)

Our trusted donkeys and their owner, Jose

More donkeys

Camp 2

Camp 4

Lake Viconga

On top of San Antonio Pass (5000 m)

Walking up a pass

Last view of Yerupaja