yep. another update.

It’s 7:42 pm and I drank a cup of coffee at 5. This means I can’t go to bed yet, despite the rapidly approaching bedtime (currently between 8:30 and 9:30), so I figured I would sit down to update all of you on my current happenings and shenanigans.

Well where to begin. This past month or more has been filled with good things all around. Treks, projects, festivals, and new people. I’ll begin with the trek.
Alex, myself, and our buddy Will from another department set out on the Santa Cruz trek a few weeks ago in the end of October. After living in Ancash and outside of Huaraz for a year you begin to hear an awful lot about this particular trek. As some of you may know due to my rambling emails and occasional phone calls, Ancash and better said, the Huascaran National Park, receive a great number of tourists and the area is full of exciting outdoor trekking, mountaineering, biking, etc. This particular trek is the Park’s and region’s most popular and is completed by a great number of tourists each year between May and September. We figured after all the good hype we would give it a shot. I mean it’s practically in our backyard. I won’t bore you with small town names and mountain valleys. Lets just say that the trek was amazing and we ran into no one save a group heading in the other direction our last night on the trail. We completed the trek in about 2.5 days passing through the Punta Union towards the end of the second day. The mountain pass sits at 4,750 m high and cuts right through the Andes. It was pretty incredible. I’ll try to post a picture or two. If you want more details I suggest grabbing the nearest Peru guide book and paging through it. All in all it was a great trek passing through native queñual forests, glacial run off rivers, and of course the incredible mountain landscape. The three of us had a great time and it was fun to welcome Will to Ancash after a few months of not seeing him.

Festivals. We had our town festival as well this past month. I made the mistake of buying a guitar (not really the mistake part) and then showing it off to my family, who if you remember from constant blog reading has their own huyano group. So, not knowing the basics of guitar let alone rocking huayno rifts I was thrust into the practice sessions for one night of the festival. I practiced and attempted to learn but after a few jam sessions realized that this might be better suited for next years party and not the one in 4 days. The band agreed, ha. In any event I followed them up as a groupie and drank some of the “delicious” warm sugar cane grain alcohol to stay warm. Campo parties like this are just hard to put into words. You dance, drink, and go buy the occasional fried fish/potato combo when hunger strikes. This plus the huayno music continues for 4 days straight. Not like 4 nights and some rest. 4 days. Straight. I only got to witness the first 2 days this time around because with left for the trek during the parties. Another great time with my community. We also celebrated Halloween this year in Ancash as volunteers. It was a bittersweet weekend as the amazing group of Peru 12 said their goodbyes amidst costumes and beers. We had a pretty epic goodbye party for them, however bittersweet it was.

Projects. “Work” has actually been picking up this last month and I might be forced to stop putting it within sarcastic quotation marks. My PEPFAR (HIV/AIDS prevention program) grant has been approved and we have been pushing forward with that. I think the kids enjoy it, if nothing else because they get to see me talk about sex. We have a few murals planned that should hopefully go up this month and then the big finish on World AIDS day December 1. On top of this I finally got around to starting up and putting in the application for the grant for our healthy homes project. Basically the healthy homes idea is going to incorporate a project focusing on trash management, organic fertilizer like worm composting, bio-gardens, nutrition, hygiene, and at the end of it all the ever coveted improved cooking stoves. You may be asking yourself “how the hell did Peter fall into this one?” Not a bad question. The improved cook tops are focused on in the Health program of Peace Corps, so I knew what they were and had the resources about them. Furthermore, like I mentioned before this type of cook top is coveted…literally…in my area. It is a relatively simple metal cook top with a chimney that is installed on top of an adobe or brick base. It has a great deal of benefits including smoke reduction, more efficient fuel usage (wood), etc. It is also a shiny metal thing that costs about 200 soles. In other words, due to their already existing presence in some home of the area and the shininess factor, people know what they are and want one. Perhaps not for the more efficient fuel usage and less smoke, but because Joe next door has one. Regardless of the motive, they are a hot topic. So, I figured I could build a project focusing on both environment and health issues that revolved around something everyone wants. Thus, the healthy homes idea. We have started the few month process of giving educational sessions on various themes like trash management and organic fertilizers. After all these sessions we will install the cook tops and wrap things up. These two projects coupled with my time at the school are actually keeping my busy and like I said before, allowing me to work. Let’s hope things keep up with minimal setbacks (often a struggle here…)

So there it is. The last few months in review. Nothing outrageous, but a great trip into the woods and the start of a cool project. I apologize if the subtle humor was lacking in today’s post – Its now pretty late into the night (8:30).

Like always, I hope things are going well for all of you back home. Send me updates when you get a chance!

Peter