Volunteering

I leave Peru tonight, and while I have a lot of feelings about that, I'm not going to address that right now. That's a post for tomorrow, and my 14-hour layover in New York.

Today, I wanted to spend a little time reflecting on my time spent volunteering with Cedro and Habla Battería.

Centro de Información y Educación para la Prevención del Abuso de Drogas (CEDRO), or in english, Center for Information and Education for the Prevention of Drug Abuse, is an organization in Lima that  helps, as the name implies, prevent drug abuse. Habla Batería is a program they have that specifically works with kids. I spent my time with Habla Batería volunteering with Kike and Paola, two of the people who run the program, in Rimac. Rimac is one of the poorest districts of Lima. Paola told us one of our first days about how she's been robbed at knifepoint there, so we should never keep anything valuable on us. While it is a dangerous neighborhood, I never had any problems, and passed blissfully through without seeing any of that danger. I did, however, leave all valuables at home. Thus, unfortunately, I don't really have any photos to show of my time volunteering. I didn't want to take the chance of having my camera stolen.

Volunteering in Peru was singlehandedly the most frustrating and rewarding experience of the trip. I frequently felt frustrated at how little we could do, and at how badly organized everything was. I also felt quite useless on more than one occasion. It often seemed as though we weren't needed. I felt that there was so much more we could be doing, but didn't know how to go about doing it.

Cedro’s stated mission is to help prevent drug abuse, but I did not see an explicit attempt to do that on the part of Habla Batería. It appeared to me that the mission of Habla Batería was more about youth leadership, and potentially preventative measures, although I never heard any explicitly stated. It seems to me that the people at Habla Batería do a good job at these. The head of the organization, Kike, has a good presence in schools, and many kids seem to look up to him a lot. He, and this organization, seem to be a positive influence in their lives. I could see this in action when I volunteered on a couple of Saturdays at Flor de Amancaes. Kike was able to get 20 or so high school students to come volunteers on their day off, students who come from bad homes, who work, or who fit other criteria for Habla Batería to feel they are at risk.

   

I was often unsure about how much we were actually helping Kike and Paola. There were many times when we would just follow them around to schools and talk to kids, or when Kike and Paola wouldn’t come, so we would just hang out at the casa de hogar. At those points, I felt like I was not being helpful at all, that I was not a necessary part of the project. There were many times when I felt very frustrated with the lack of structure and actual work in our project. The English classes are definitely where I feel I helped the most, as well as the extra Saturday volunteering in Flor de Amancaes. The English classes were frustrating in their own right however, simply because they were very challenging. I felt , that we could have accomplished more if we could have just taken over the class, but we didn’t want to undermine the authority of the teacher. I hope that we made some kind of impact there, that we helped some kid in some way, but it’s really hard to know for sure. The teacher didn't speak great English, and so obviously neither did the kids. There was little to no discipline in the classroom, and the kids were very disrespectful to the teacher. There was constant back talk and side talking, and it was hard to make them do anything at all. I could go on and on about the problems in these classrooms, but I'll just get frustrated and angry if I do that, so I'm going to move on.

   

While I didn’t form super close bonds with a lot of Peruvians through this volunteer experience, because the nature of the work we were doing didn’t really allow it, I did get pretty close to Kike and Paola. They're both great people, and it was a pleasure to work with them. I also feel I got a unique view into Peruvian culture from many of the other students on the program because I was able to go some schools. It was a really interesting insight into Peruvian culture being able to see those. School is such an important influence on people’s lives, it was cool to see the differences. I also loved being able to go up into Flor de Amancaes and see how people lived there. I met a lot of great high school kids who were willing to give up their Saturday to volunteer, and a lot of cute little children as well. I definitely met a lot of new people, and learned a lot.

FRUIT

I was feeling uninspired writing about our time in Cusco, so I decided to stop writing about that, and finally write about fruit! I wanted to wait until I had a nice variety to write about. This is not all of the new varieties in Peru, or even all that I've tried, but I think it's a good representative sample. Also, describing tastes is hard. Apologies in advance for that.
Here goes!

Peru has pretty much all of the standard fruits: apple, orange, banana, pineapple, pear, etc. Some more exotic ones (by my american standards): pomegranate, plantain. And the ones I'd never heard of before in my life, which are the ones I'll be highlighting here.

Chirimoya (custard apple)

Chirimoya is Jose's favorite fruit. This is the first truly exotic fruit I ate in Peru. My first day with my host family, within minutes of arriving, they gave me one of these. It has a consistency kind of like custard (thus the name in english), but obviously a little different too. It's sweet and a little acidic. Tastes kind of like a banana-mango-strawberry-coconut. Quite a strong flavor from this fruit!

Granadilla (variety of passion fruit)

Granadilla is a delicious fruit, if you can get past the weird sliminess of it. Eating it for the first time was definitely an interesting experience. It was one of the first new fruits I tried in Peru, and when I first opened it up, I was a little unsure about it. My host parents told me to just kind of suck on it, and not chew the seeds, which is what I did. I took my first tentative bite, and, while the sliminess was not my favorite, the sweet, mellow taste. It was quite pleasant, and I was surprised at how mild it was.

Maracuyá (passion fruit)

So, I love maracuyá flavored things. They're probably my favorite of all the flavors here. Juice, ice cream, popsicles, you name it. When I asked my host family about the actual fruit though, they said "people don't just eat the fruit here", or something like that. I was insistent though, so I bought one to try. Definitely agree with them now. It was probably the most sour thing I'd ever tasted. I tried adding sugar, but it didn't really help. Maracuyá flavored things, however, as I said, are delicious. They taste like sunshine and happiness. But really, it's sweet (with the added sugar, of course), and a little tangy.

Pepino (cucumber)

Obviously this is not a cucumber as we know it. But that is how the dictionary translated it for me, so deal with it. I also forgot to take a picture of the insides before I ate it. It was kind of like an apple, but juicier. And with very little flavor. Weird little fruit, this one.

Lúcuma (lucuma)

Lúcuma is by far the strangest fruit I have eaten here. I'm honestly not too much of a fan of this one, but for many peruvians it is their favorite. As you can maybe tell from the picture, it's kind of a dry fruit. Not a lot of juice, as in basically none.

To be honest, I don't really remember what this fruit is called. I asked Gloria (the woman who works in our house), and she couldn't remember either...

This fruit is very mild. It didn't have much of a flavor. The most distinctive thing I remember about this fruit was the surprising amount of seeds in the middle. It must not have been that exciting, because I've only eaten it once, and don't even remember the name. Disappoint section, I know, but I had the pictures, so I figured I might as well post them!

Aguaymanto (peruvian tomato)

This fruit kind of reminded me of a kiwi, but with a different texture. It's kind of sweet, but kind of sour too. It's got a nice combination of the two. You bite them off and eat them whole, and they're quite delicious! They feel kind of like eating cherries in the first bite, but less juicy. The texture on the inside is kind of mealy(?) but not really. That makes it sound really unpleasant. But it's not!

Pacay (pacay)

I think this was the strangest fruit we tried here. You eat that white part, that looks kind of like cotton, and throw the seeds away. It's sweet, and surprisingly has some juice in it. I was slightly sweet, and had a flavor I'm having a really hard time describing (shocking, I know). Okay, so maybe it had a bit of a vanilla flavor maybe?

Tuna (cactus fruit or prickly pear)

This is actually a cactus fruit I picked myself, from the cactus you can see in the background of the first picture. We were on a hike in San Jeronimo, and when the Peruvians with us pointed this out, I knew I wanted to try it. All those little black dots you see in the last picture are seeds, and you eat them along with the fruit. These are called prickly pears, but don't really taste like pear. They taste kind of like a rasberry mixed with a kiwi. But not really. But kind of. Descriptive, right?

All of the fruits in the above picture are talked about earlier in this article. I just thought it was pretty, and a good way to end the post!

Fruit here is amazing, and I will definitely miss it a lot. It's going to be hard to go back to the standard apple/orange/banana, but I'm glad I had the chance to try such a large variety. This post probably represents about half of the total new fruits I tried here, but don't ask me what the other ones were, because chances are I wouldn't remember what they were called. Suffice it to say they were all delicious (minus the lucuma), and I'm sad to leave them behind when I leave in a week.

Jungles and mountains and potatoes, oh my!

The past couple of weeks in Peru have been crazy busy. We're in the middle of our 3-week trip to the south and north of the country, and it's been pretty amazing so far. I'm currently sitting on a beach in a beautiful hotel in northern Peru as I write this. We're spending a few days here to relax and gather our thoughts before heading back to Lima for a busy last three weeks. Rather than write about everything in one mega-post, I'll divide our trip into three main parts. Jungle, mountains, and potatoes. We spent the first two weeks travelling to Cuzco, the Tambopata National Reserve, and Parque de Las Papas. This first post I'm going to talk about the rainforest.

We spent four days at two different beautiful lodges in the middle of the rainforest. We spent the night before we headed into the jungle in a town called Puerto Maldonado, which is just on the outskirts. I was not too excited about out trip at that point, because the amount of humidity was overwhelming. I was sweating buckets while lying on my bed. I was not excited to head into the real heat of it in the jungle.

Sunset in Puerto Maldonado

When we arrived, however, we quickly came to realize that while yes, we would be smelly, sweaty, and gross for the next few days, it wasn't unbearable. The only way to get to the lodges in the jungle was by boat, so we headed off on the Tambopata river for a 3-hour boat ride. It was incredibly beautiful, and I took way too many pictures. Here are a few of my favorites from the two boat rides.

Our lunch the first day on the boat. Fried rice in a leaf. Quite delicious!

On our way!

The first animal we saw, a capybara!

Sunrise over the Tambopata river.

Our first night was spent at the main lodge, where we also went on our first walk through the jungle. Our guide took us to a canopy tower that allowed us to look out over the expanse of jungle. It was really amazing to see the sea of green stretching away from us for as far as the eye could see in every direction.

The tower, as seen from below

                                      

Our first view of the canopy

                                      

Sunset over the jungle

We then headed deeper into the jungle to another lodge, where we spent our last two nights. Most of our time was spent walking through the jungle with our fantastic guide Aldo leading the way. He (along with, to a lesser extent, the other guides) was a huge highlight of the trip. He joked around with us and teased us, but knew when to be silent and how to spot the tiniest frogs or insects, as well as the bigger monkeys and birds. He was incredibly knowledgeable, and fun to be around. He was by far the best guide we've had in all of the touristic sites we've visited so far in Peru.

Our group with our wonderful guide, Aldo.

There were a few other tourist groups there, and I really enjoyed getting to know many of them. Most of the tourists that go to Tambopata don't speak Spanish, so it was kind of fun to be able to surprise the guides there with the fact that we could. That's been a pretty common theme in these three weeks. Since we've been in pretty touristy areas, where many people don't speak Spanish, people assume we don't either, and are pleasantly surprised when we do.

After our 4 days in the jungle, we were all sad to go, but considering the pungent aroma that surrounded all of us, it was time to leave. I don't know if I can say that the jungle was my favorite part of these three weeks, but it was definitely an incredible experience, and I know that I'd love to return some day. Here are a few last pictures of our adventure in the jungle.

These trees are so cool! They grow around existing trees and eventually kill the inner tree, leaving the inside of this one hollow.

Birds!

A lagoon in the middle of the jungle.

Our group. Look at Sonja, so strong!

A jungle path.

Monkey! This one's a saddleback tamarind.

The guides from our trip. Great guys!

A great weekend

This past weekend was by far the best two days in Peru so far.

I got up early Saturday morning to go volunteer at Flor de Amancaes, in Rimac. I volunteer twice a week in Rimac proper, but this was my first time going up to the hill to volunteer. The homes can easily be described as shacks, and most, if not all, do not have running water and electricity. We spent the morning hanging out with the kids that live there, and playing games with them. I'll talk more about my experience there when I write my post about volunteering, but here are a few pictures the organization we're working with posted.

I spent the rest of the afternoon with my host family. We had a full house for a few hours, because both of my host parents sons came over. It's always fun when they all come over, because our normally quiet house is full of activity for a few hours. When they left, I went shopping, because I'd decided to make dinner that night. I made tigadegena and crepes, and it seemed as though my family really appreciated it. My host dad opened up a nice bottle of wine with dinner, and we sat and chatted for about two hours. I feel so comfortable here with my host family, it's really great. I feel so lucky to have been placed with these wonderful people. My host dad took a picture of our dinner, and I'll try to get a copy of it, but I don't have it yet, unfortunately.

The next day, we went off on a hike near San Jerónimo to a waterfall called Pacalaca. It was about a 4 to 5 mile hike, but was pretty steep, and at a high enough altitude to be challenging. Our guides were two Peruvians named Jose and Jason, and I spent much of the hike talking with them. They were good friends with Meg Tuta, who went on the program last year. It was really fun getting to know some more young Peruvians, because I feel like it's been hard to do here. With my host parents being older, and not taking classes at an actual university, it's been hard to get to know many young Peruvians, so I jumped at the chance to talk with them. The hike, while being difficult, was incredibly beautiful. Here are some of my favorite pictures from it. Unfortunately, they don't even close to capture the expanse of the view, but it was worth a shot.

                                               

                                     

                                                

                                     

We leave tomorrow for our trips to the South and North, and I am not bringing my computer, so I will probably not be able to post again for about 3 weeks. But when I do, you can be sure I'll have some awesome things to say!