For us, right now, what this means is
that I’m looking at how best to get my certification to teach. For those of you
unaware of this situation, I’ll sum it up quickly. I was supposed to already be
certified, but due to a technicality, I was unable to apply to the secondary
education minor while at UIUC and ended up just getting a degree in English.
Peace Corps has a wonderful service called the Coverdell Fellows program which
wipes out a lot of the time, money, and energy wasted on applications to
graduate programs, but there’s a catch: it’s still a master’s program when all
I want is a teaching certificate, and the discounted tuition doesn’t mean much
when we’re already tens of thousands in debt from our undergraduate education. There
are more universities than I care to sort through that offer some sort of
incentive to attend their particular brand of higher education, but it kind of
seems like they just want your money. Hence the name of this post. There’s
maybe something to be polished out of all of this, but it’s really hard to get
past the cost.
So what are my other options? Right now,
the leader of the pack is moving to Chicago, finding an alternative teaching
certification program through a university in the area, teaching inner city
high school English for a few years, and walking away with a teaching
certificate, invaluable experience, and hopefully not too burned out. The
insight into where we’d be living would make it easier for Menda to find a
position, and the appeal of being so close to family and friends definitely has
its pull, but it still remains to be seen if I can find a program that fits my
particular situation. Another option is Teach for America. They eliminate a
small amount of previously accumulated debt, they’ve been trying to draw in
returned Peace Corps volunteers in recent years, and there’s something exciting
about not knowing where we’ll be. It also means we’d potentially be very far
from our family and friends, and Menda would have to try last minute to find a
job that she can live with for two years. Not as attractive an option, but it’s
still on the table. There’s also the possibility of grad school for Menda as
well, possibly in natural resource management, applied ecology, or really
anything related to environmental science. Or we could go the route of moving
to some national park for a job for Menda – not at all unappealing. In both
scenarios, I would probably work on a teaching certificate through an online
program and find a school locally to get the required classroom experience.
Onto other exciting stuff. We’ve finally
started the TESOL course we stupidly signed up for last December. It’s not that
it’s a bad idea to get a little training in teaching English; it’s the source
and the timing of it. Apparently, the company we’re doing it through is simply
the cheapest on the market, but it won’t necessarily be recognized by everyone
to whom it will matter (future employers). Still, for the price, it doesn’t
hurt to have something else to throw on a résumé, and it seems as though the
information will be pretty useful. We’ve done two of the twenty lessons thus
far. The course is pretty evenly split between teaching methods and attempting
to explain the English language to people who have never had to think about
grammar before. As an English major, I have built up a resistance to this kind
of instruction, but it’s torture for Menda. I think we technically have until
June or July to finish everything, so if we do three or four a week, we’ll have
plenty of time to wrap everything up.
Speaking of teaching English, we’ve
started up classes in one of the caserios. Once a week we take the combi down
to Jinua and attempt to instill some understanding of the language which seems
nearly as pervasive as Spanish when it comes to music, advertisements,
t-shirts, and other commodities of mass-consumption. Like foreign language
education in the States, we’ve given them each a modified version of their name
which they will use while in the classroom, or, in the case of our first class,
in the street, because no one unlocked the school for us. During vacaciones
útiles, we had an open door policy. It served its purpose; people in the community
now know who we are. However, this time around, we had a sign up, and the
students helped us come up with an attendance policy which will hopefully keep
the kids out that don’t actually want to learn.
I should probably say something with
regard to my program goals. Just to remind you, I have two main things I should
be focusing on for the duration of my service. The first is educating mothers
with children younger than four about nutrition, hygiene, prevention and
symptoms of common illnesses, and early childhood stimulation. The second is
working with youth 12-17 years of age and instilling some level of
responsibility in their personal lives. In other words, I’m teaching sex ed.
I’ve not so much started on either of these goals yet. There’s a level of
comfort I’ve not quite reached with walking into someone’s home and telling
them what they’re doing wrong – especially given than I don’t have kids myself
– or talking to kids about something that’s still rather taboo for the people
of my community. I’ll get there, but there are going to be a few steps in
between. This next week I’m starting to help out in our health post. Every
Monday, I’ll go and pull patient histories, weigh and measure babies, and
whatever else they need that’s within my abilities. Through this, my face will
be seen, I may glean some appearance of being knowledgeable from the fact that
I’m working there, and eventually I’ll maybe feel comfortable talking to
mothers in their own homes. Of course, I’ll still need a translator, because my
Quechua is somehow not quite advanced enough to talk about the more detailed
issues of infant health.
Menda, on the other hand, is kicking
some ass. She got back from her training in Lima with a plan for a community
cleanup campaign, and every day she’s been making phone calls, writing up
documents, putting together presentations, and scheduling meetings. She’s
planning on working with the school in Jinua to teach a weekly environmental
class, through which she would start a tree nursery, participate in the
G.L.O.B.E. project (www.globe.gov), and convince the kids the world isn’t their
garbage can. Basically, she’s already working on all of her program goals. If
it weren’t for machismo, I’m pretty sure no one would still want to talk to me.
Apparently rainy season is finally
wrapping up, though it’s really not been so bad. It’s like a slightly more
rainy Illinois spring, but we got some pretty crazy hail these past few weeks.
Water can’t all that easily get into our rooms, but hail can stack up by our
door, melt, and then flood part of our bedroom. (There’s a picture in the
gallery linked to below.) Still, the rain hasn’t slowed us from getting out and
having some fun.
Semana Santa was about a week ago now,
and with some of the non-earned vacation days we volunteers get we decided to
stay home. Part of this was because Menda had just gotten back from her
training in Lima, and the idea of traveling isn’t as appealing after having
just done so. However, we primarily stayed because a bunch of volunteers from
other departments were coming in to Ancash, and, for us, staying home means
staying in one of the world’s premier backpacking destinations. We didn’t end
up going with the other volunteers on everything they did, which included Lake
Llanganuco (a glacial lake below the highest peak in the Andes), Pastoruri (a
glacier which used to have skiing but will be gone in five to ten years due to
that much beloved theory of climate
change), and Chancos (hot springs in a series of increasingly warmer caves, the
hottest of which you can apparently boil an egg – or I imagine burn yourself
pretty badly). They also visited the pre-Incan ruins in our site, and I (Menda
was feeling sick) got to go with two other volunteers and some nice Limeños who
gave us a ride up to the trailhead for Laguna Churup – a glacial lake at 15,000
feet. Of the people with whom I went, I was the only one to make it all the way
there. Lonely Planet said it was a beginner hike, but there were three parts
where I had to pull myself over steep rock faces with a metal cable – the top
one which was frayed and broken – I could barely feel my hands due to the cold,
and though everyone we saw told us it was only a couple hours to get there,
that was just another example of the chronic chronometric understatement so
commonly encountered here. Still, it wasn’t all bad. There’s a competition
among Ancash volunteers where the winner (or loser depending on how you look at
it) has swum in the most glacial lakes. Well, this was my first. I think I have
26 more to go if I want to break the record – I don’t.
Also during Semana Santa was the
traditional Catholic procession, complete with creepy statues and lots of
drinking. Regardless, it was a sight to be seen. It was more or less exactly
like that scene in the Godfather, minus the gunfire. Even more cool, however,
were these giant drawings that were done in the street. There were probably 15
or so of them, mostly religious imagery, with logos of their corporate sponsors
in the corners, and all made almost entirely with sawdust. They dye it a bunch
of different colors, sketch out the drawing in chalk, and then pour it into the
appropriate sections like a giant paint-by-number watercolor. This all goes
down the morning of Good Friday. Then, after all that work, the procession
comes through with their creepy statues, crowds of people, and four or five
marching bands and trample over all of them. There’s probably an Easter
metaphor in there somewhere. Also, the Easter bunny does not visit Peru.
Somehow they missed out on that particular perversion of Christianity.
I think that’s pretty much it. I’ll add
in another reminder to mail us pictures. It’s less than three bucks to send them
through the USPS, and you’d have a revered spot on our wall. Only one person
has sent any so far (Thanks, dad!), and it means a lot to us. Oh well. Here are
some of ours:
After writing this post, we had a very
interesting day, so I’ll add it in. We had a meeting at 6:30 in the morning
with the mayor, the regidores, and an anthropologist from the district
municipality. It was almost three hours, but we talked exclusively about
tourism, Menda’s community clean-up plan, and our community diagnostic, which
we were able to officially present. In the afternoon we had a meeting with an
environmental group comprised of local young professionals. Menda presented her
community clean-up plan, and I organized a start date for our English classes
in Willkahuaín for the guides. We’re due to start them in about two weeks, and
they asked if we could have a traditional Peruvian ceremony beforehand. In this
ceremony, people bring offerings to Paccha Mama (Mother Earth). We didn’t
really know what to expect, but we soon found out. Immediately following the
meeting, the president of the organization asked if we’d like to attend one of
these ceremonies at that moment. I guess it just so happened that one was going
on. There was a fire in the center, and it took place next to a large, flat ceremonial
boulder that far predates the Incans. There are five holes bored into this rock,
and in them offerings are placed. Throughout the whole thing four or five types
of flutes and a conch shell were played while everyone stood in a circle
chewing coca leaves and placing them in the flames – though we of course didn’t
chew them, because it’s against Peace Corps rules. Near the end of the
ceremony, a man danced around the fire and placed flowers over each of the
holes bored into the rock. I can’t say I really understood what was going on –
being both unfamiliar with Peruvian tradition and Quechua – but it was
definitely quite an experience. We at the very least now understand what they
mean when they say mystic tourism. There was a girl from the Czech Republic
there as well.
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