Where the Sidewalk Ends

March 29, 2012

If you had asked me a month ago what my worst nightmare was, I probably would have said being surrounded by small children. I have friends who love kids and who are amazing with three-year-olds and it completely boggles my mind.  I’ve never been particularly fond of children, nor have I ever known what to do with them, and I actively avoid interaction with anyone under the age of 14. It occurred to me in Nepal that this is not an acceptable long-term personality trait because even if I never have children, someone in my immediate family/friend group will. I am bound to have to interact with miniature irrational humans at some point. So when I was thinking about what to do this spring, I thought forcing myself to interact with children fit nicely within the scope of my gap year: it’s certainly out of my comfort zone, it’s an area I would never give up time/brain space in my everyday life to improve, and there are lots of volunteer opportunities with kids.

Today marks the end of my fourth week in Peru—and my eleventh day working at a preschool! I now have thirty plus hours of child herding under my belt! This may not sound like much to anyone else, but for me, it is huge. I am proud to say I have not injured anyone (a claim Cole cannot make), mistakenly called a girl a boy (as I did my in my last child-interacting role) or done long-term damage to anyone’s psyche (I think).  And what’s more, some of the kids even seem to like and listen to me!

Photographic proof: me with a small child

The preschool we’ve been helping at is in a part of San Bartolo very different from the area in which we are living. There are no sidewalks or paved roads or landscaping. The houses all have electricity but are just four basic walls and a flat roof of shoddy-looking materials. Instead of ocean views, the houses back up to the Pan-American highway with no barrier between the cars and the kids. Apparently the neighborhood developed illegally on public land and the residents pay little or nothing to reside there, but now it is so developed that it would be hard to get them all to leave. Regardless of the zoning legitimacy of the area, I like our time at the preschool because it feels much more like an area that needs help than the sufficiently church-funded Centro Pastoral. The preschool was built with public dollars but the money was used up before the grounds were completely finished. The result: a basic cement classroom and bathroom next to two other incomplete classrooms; a playground with huge piles of sharp rocks; and two unidentified “death holes” in front of the buildings.

Where the sidewalk ends

School grounds

The majority of the kids are three, with a few four- and five year-olds mixed in. If everyone shows up, there are eighteen kids in the class (on most days there are about thirteen). It turns out that playing with small children is pretty easy. Teaching them and disciplining them seems crazy hard, so luckily the class seems to have a pretty good teacher.

Start of school party

In the first hour of school, we just play. The kids love to build things, so legos, tanagrams, foam blocks, etc. are quite popular. The second hour is for work, which in preschool means coloring something or gluing yarn to paper. And the third hour is snack time and recess. I spend the majority of playtime playing a game I like to call “Where does it go?” which looks a little like this:

            Elena picks up a lego or tanagram.

            Elena: Donde va? (Where does it go?)

            Small child, after a long thinking pause: Aqui! (Here!)

            Elena picks up another toy and puts it somewhere silly, like the kid’s head.

            Elena: Va aqui? (Does it go here?)

            Small child bursts out laughing.

            Small child: No! Grabs object. Va aqui!! (No! It goes here!)

I love this game because it is within my Spanish capacities and because the kids never seem to tire of doing the same thing over and over again. During work time, Cole and I each man a table and make sure the kids stay on track. During snack time, we open packaging, try to keep kids from stealing other kids food, and wait for the inevitable beverage spill (who sends a three-year-old to school with a wide-mouth soda/juice bottle?). And during recess, we play games, chase kids, and spin the broken merry-go-round the best we can.

On a more serious note, even without any background in educational policy, the small amount of time I’ve been hanging out in the classroom has been enough to see some of the “duh” structural improvements needed in the educational system (here or in the US). It makes me really wish our policymakers were forced to spend one day a month in a school or health clinic or community center, not as a photo shoot but as a chance to observe the real-life fallout of policy decisions. Here are a few of the things I’ll be keeping a closer eye on moving forward:

1. Class Size. This one’s always seemed logical to me, but now I understand better which kids it matters most for. Bright, self-motivated kids are going to well no matter what. Trouble makers are going to get attention no matter how many other kids are there. But the kids in the middle—especially the quiet kids in the middle—are the ones truly at risk of falling through the cracks in a high student-teacher ratio classroom. The teacher in our preschool doesn’t even consistently call the quiet kids the right name. Granted we are only a few weeks into the year, but still, how sad for them.
2. Importance of Preschool. At the health foundation, I learned that Head Start and other preschool programs can have an unbelievable impact on a child’s future educational success. Now I can see why: preschool teaches kids how to learn, how to exist in a structured environment, and how to listen to and follow directions. It’s amazing the difference between the kids brand new to preschool and those who are on their second year. Less crying when the parents leave, better listening, and an understanding of the cause and effect between doing work and getting to eat a snack. I can only imagine how difficult kindergarten must be for kids who don’t go to preschool—especially when they are in classrooms with those who have.
3. Safe School Grounds. If I could endow a foundation, I would spend all my money just to go around the world completing half-completed school construction projects. So often I see foundation or government funded projects that begin construction and then run out of money and never finish. The ironic thing is that I’m pretty sure an old building is safer than a new building surrounded by death holes. And what’s more, San Bartolo regularly has large groups of volunteers (missionaries) from a church in Boston—this June, they will planting trees at the already immaculate Centro Pastoral. Seems quite superfluous after a morning at the preschool.

Small children playing near death hole #1

All in all, I've found the preschool experience fun and educational, though exhausting: First, working with such an impressionable age group makes me feel like we're actually helping. Second, I've learned a ton about the education and development of small children. Third, I have confirmed my career decision to leave the education of and responsibility for small children to others (not that this was ever in doubt). And fourth, most importantly, if a close friend were to have a baby tomorrow, I would no longer treat it like a pariah.

Small children!

Huelga! Huelga! Huelga!

My trusty friend Wikipedia tells me that the UN considers a developed country "one that allows all its citizens to enjoy a free and healthy life in a safe environment." Although it’s probably useful to make a distinction between developed and developing somewhere along the lines, going to Peru right after Nepal has made it clear just how large a continuum development really is. Nepal isn’t even ready to think about providing basic education and health services to their population because they’re still struggling so much with the prerequisites for strong social services, things like roads, building construction, running water, electricity and a financial system to handle aid efficiently. Compared to Nepal, Peru might as well be the US. True, you can't drink the tap water or put toliet paper down the drain. But they have paved roads—highways even—with lights and painted lanes and street signs! The (very comfortable) buses have schedules and seat assignments that are more or less followed. The restaurants are licensed. There are municipal garbage trucks. It’s wonderful.



Woohoo! We don't have to sprint across the highway, there's a bridge!



Lima: looks a heck of a lot like a European city at first glance

But just as I was starting to get lulled into thinking Peru could be a developed country, I hit a roadblock—literally. This weekend, we got stranded in Northern Peru, in a town with no sewage system, because the illegal miners decided to block the Pan-American highway to protest unsafe working conditions. The strike was supposed to last for 72 hours; luckily it only ended up lasting about a day and a half. I’m still a little fuzzy on the details, but I imagine it went something like this:

Miners: Huelga! Huelga! Huelga! (Strike! Strike! Strike!)

Police: Why are you blocking the road?

Miners: We’re protesting unsafe working conditions!

Police: But you’re working in illegal mines… we can’t do anything about the conditions in unlicensed mines.

Mines: …Oh… Shoot.

When you have no legitimate way of airing your grievances, I guess blocking the highway is as good a move as any.

The town we got stuck in was Chiclayo, located on the trade route between the coast and the jungle about 12 hours north of Lima. The town itself has a huge market, including a corner for witch doctors, but most of the really cool things to see are a few kilometers outside the town. We went to see the Sipán tombs, the Sipán museum, and the beach towns near Chiclayo.

Sipán Tombs

Sipán was first unearthed by local grave robbers (huaqueros) who would sell looted artifacts on the black market. Luckily in 1987, archeologists and police were able to protect the sites before everything was removed. The site itself was not too exciting because all the artifacts are now carefully tucked away in the museums, but the tombs are still actively undergoing excavation and some have been mocked up so you can see what they looked like upon discovery.

Mock-up of the Lord of Sipan's tomb

I didn’t really understand what we were looking at initially. To me, Sipán just looked like a little hill and I figured the Moche people used them as a foundation for their temples and tombs. Actually it turns out that hills were the Moche’s temples. Pretty cool.

Hill or Temple?

My favorite thing about the tombs was how the discovery, excavation, and presentation of the site had propped up the local economy. When the tombs were first protected, the locals were not happy about losing access to “their” buried treasure. So instead of bringing in outside help, the archeologists trained the locals as excavators, researchers, guards, and guides, providing lasting employment to the nearby village. And because the main museum is in another town on the other side of Chiclayo, a new level of economic stability has been introduced into the whole region. Tourism walks a fine line between helping and hurting, and this to me was a great example of tourism done right.

Sipán Museum

Most of the goodies from the tombs have been moved into the absolutely gorgeous new Sipán Museum in Lambayeque. It’s amazing how much stuff was buried in the graves of the upper class Moches—enough to fill a three-story museum in Lamayeque, plus the smaller museum at the Sipán site. The Moches believed that in death you just continue doing the same things as you did in life. So the higher up you were in the society, the more things you needed with you when you died—including your entourage, which they killed in order to bury with you! The Lord of Sipán was buried with his three young wives, a military chief, a guard, a flag-bearer, a young boy, a dog and a llama, plus an insane amount of gold and ceramic objects and precious stones. Pictures are not allowed in the museum, but if you ever find yourself in Northern Peru, check it out. I think it definitely lives up to the claim of being one the best curated history museums in the world. Because the excavation was so carefully documented, pictures of the objects as they were found are interspersed with the actual objects, giving you a more complete understanding of the archeological process.

Sipan Museum in Lambayeque

From the little museum onsite at Sipan, the Younger Lord of Sipan

SQUISH! The head of the Younger Lord of Sipan

Beaches

For a change of pace from ruins, we went to check out three beach towns southwest of Chiclayo—Pimentel, Santa Rosa, and Monsenfú. In retrospect, the only one really worth the time was Pimentel. There, along the sandy beach, was a cool look at the fishing economy, both in modern times and historically. On one side of the beach, we got to see the modern fishing economy, with the large boats out in the ocean catching the fish with big nets, then the smaller boats bringing the fish from the big boats to the shore, where they were weighted, rinsed and sold right on the beach!

Small boat bringing in fish

Fish market on the beach

Washing the fishies

Nearby, we saw fisherman making cabellitos, little fishing boats that look like one half of a kayak and are designed to go up and over the ways. Peruvians in the region have been fishing in these boats for ages, and the fisherman still sell these fish to the local restaurants and in the market.

Cabellitos

Helping the fishmen get out on the water

Hopping over a wave

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We’re back in San Bartolo now and likely to stay put until we leave for our big trip after Easter. We're on a regular schedule of helping out now (preschool in the morning, school-aged kids in the afternoon and adults at night) and living with Cecilia is hard to beat.

(Sea) Lions and Penguins and Birds, Oh My!

After Lunahuaná, we headed further down the coast to Islas Ballestas. Islas Ballestas are a series of islands off the coast of Peru in Paracas that house a whole bunch of animals, including thousands of blue-footed boobies torpedoing into the water for fishies, seas lions fighting over turf on the warm rocks, and silly looking penguins hopping from ledge to ledge. For some reason when we first got the Peru guidebook, I latched onto the idea of seeing penguins and when anyone asked what we were going to do in Peru, I would immediately say “Pingüinos!” So naturally, we had to seek them out early in our trip.


Humbolt Penguins

 

Humbolt Penguins and a Pelican friend

Sea Lion Colony

Mommy sea lion helping the baby swim

Blue-footed Boobies



Me encantan los pinguinos

Oh, and Cole got pooped on, heeheehee.







Pablo’s 63rd Birthday Extravaganza

This weekend Cole and I had our first out-of-San-Bartolo adventure. We had intended to go to Ica for the wine harvest, but apparently the city has recently experienced a large sewage spill and the town reportedly smells awful. Luckily the smaller town of Lunahuaná was also having a wine harvest festival. What we thought would be a mellow day on the way to see the Islas Ballestas turned out to be a day of lucky break after lucky break that added up to one heck of a way to start our Peruvian exploration.

           
To get to Lunahuaná, we had to catch a bus on the Pan-American Highway to Cañete, where we could catch a series of shared taxis or microbuses to Lunahuaná. We were hanging out on the side of the highway trying to get a bus when a privately rented van stopped to pick someone up. Before we knew it, we were invited along to Cañete (I think they heard us saying where we were headed), since there were two extra seats. It turned out that the van was rented by a family celebrating their patriarch’s 63^rd birthday by visiting the wineries in Lunahuaná!

Instead of having to make several vehicle changes, we rode all the way to Lunahuaná with the family. When we arrived, Cole and I started to head off to explore on our own. Within a few minutes, the family caught back up to us to introduce us to a friend of theirs who could take us on a winery tour. At the time, the family was trying to take a group picture, so we offered to take one for them. Somehow we ended up in the picture with them and from there we were swept up in the birthday celebrations—we spent the whole day with the family wishing Pablo a happy birthday: First in the town, then up to a winery to smash grapes, followed by a wine-tasting, after which we were treated to a shrimp lunch and then given a ride back to Cañete!! It was a pretty awesome way to spend a Saturday; the family was great fun and welcomed us with open arms. We also got to see parts of the town that I doubt we could have found without them.

           
For me, the day in Lunahuaná was a great example of:

1.   Something that would never happen in the US—Would any of you pick up two scraggly looking foreigners on the side of the highway and then include them in your birthday festivities and buy them lunch? I don’t think I would. But how awesome that there are places in the world where that can happen!

2.   Why it is better for me to travel with a male companion—I remember reading my friend Andy’s blog when he was in Southeast Asia and thinking how I could never do many of the cool things he was doing because they would be stupid and dangerous for me as a solo woman traveler. I hate that that’s true; I want to be able to do everything my male friends can, yet I think this is an inequality better let be than fought. Hopefully eventually the world will change, until then I’m not willing to risk my safety to take a stand. Fortunately, travelling with Cole has vastly expanded the list of things I can do! Hop in a private van-full of strangers (friendly-looking strangers, but strangers none the less)? Sure! Arrive in a sort-of sketchy town after dark? Sure! Drink with people you’ve know for 6 hours? Sure! It’s a very welcome change to be appropriately cautious while travelling instead of constantly haunted by scenes from Taken.



The Alvardo family, with Pablo in the middle in white



Making wine



Post grape smashing feet.



The wine we helped make

The winery

Bienvenido a San Bartolo!

San Bartolo is a beach town about a 30-minute taxi ride south of Lima (or 1-hour bus ride) right off the Pan-American Highway. It is not at all a touristy spot, but it is a popular weekend and vacation destination for Lima locals. The coast line is squiggly so each bay created by the rock peninsulas has a distinct beach area, each one a little different. The beach closest to where we are staying is mostly occupied by fishermen and we are walking distance from a surfing beach, a sandy beach for swimming, and a very calm beach overrun with older adults. San Bartolo feels to me a lot like a ski town: there are wealthy pockets right on the beach and the corresponding increase in the cost of living makes life hard for the poorer parts of the community.

South San Bartolo, the beach closest to us, full of fisherman



Behind us is North San Bartolo, popular with surfers



Santa Maria, a good swimming beach just south of us

My friend William lived and worked in San Bartolo for seven months after high school and kindly connected us with the woman that he lived with and the community center where he worked. We are staying with a very nice lady named Cecilia (and her husband Juan and daughter Luciana) who runs a hostel one block from the beach.  We have a nice room overlooking the ocean with a balcony, Cecilia cooks three meals a day for us, and the family has been great fun to talk to and explore with. Though none of them speak much English, they are great about speaking slowly and I can understand much of what they say.



Our room



View from the balcony



Front of the house and our balcony!

The community center we will be helping at is actually a Catholic mission, but in addition to weekly religious services and on-site pastors (and pastors in training) they provide all the after-school services I’ve come to associate with CBOs in Colorado, so I’m doing my best to think of it as a Family Resource Center instead. The facilities are much nicer than I anticipated and it feels like the mission is really the center of the community. The intention was for us to help with the sports and the English classes with the kids, but Cole charmed the local women so thoroughly in the first few days that they lobbied around an English class for adults too.



The misson/communicy center



Cole and I have settled into a mellow routine that seems just about perfect for the six weeks we’ll be here (after Easter, we leave to travel around the rest of the country). For now, we will be working at the community center three days a week, Wednesday-Friday, in the afternoons teaching English and playing sports. That leaves the mornings for reading and writing on our amazing balcony, exploring the beaches, trip planning, and Cole’s Spanish lessons with Cecilia. And then the days we aren't needed here, we'll go explore the surrounding areas.