What will I be doing?

Many of you are probably wondering: What will Robyn actually be doing? Well ... let me tell you.

Step one: Embrace the awkward turtle

My first month at site will be a riot of introductions, Christmas parties, meetings and overeating. A great time to work on my Spanish and acclimate into the community.

Step two: Snoop around

My next three months (January through March) will be spent doing a community diagnostic in Pampas de Hospital. I'll conduct house visits and interviews with community members, make maps, draw up lists of local resources, etc. — all in the hopes of identifying where the community's needs are.

Step three: Plan it up

Based on the info gathered during my diagnostic, I will show my findings to the community, and (ideally) together we'll draw up a work plan for the rest of my time here. For example, helping families build vegetable gardens, training youth health promoters in sexual health education, or starting a recycling program.

Step four: Get to work

... yeah.

BUT, as important as the diagnostic is, I'd go insane if I got up every day just to conduct surveys. So meanwhile, I'll also be working with the health center staff, giving life skills and health education sessions in the schools and teaching some English.

Super Secret Step 1-4a: PEPFAR initiative

During 2009, Peace Corps Peru will be working with local governments to implement an HIV/AIDS prevention project in the highest risk areas of the country (Tumbes, Piura and Lambayeque). In addition to the plan I create with my community, I will be working simultaneously with this initiative throughout the year. I'm super psyched. I don't know much yet though. More info to come.

Welcome to my site!

Bienvenidos a Pampas de Hospital!

So I live in a small town of about 3,000 people called Pampas de Hospital in the department of Tumbes, Peru. As far as Peace Corps sites, I hit the jack pot. I have electricity, water most days of the week, cell service, TV and even an internet cafe.


It´s about 23 km from the department capital, Tumbes, and less than an hour from the warmest beaches I´ve even felt.



It´s always summer here, going between 28-31 C. But between January and March it rains and rains and rains, and scary mosquitos come out in clouds.



Some of the biggest health problems Peace Corps volunteers are helping to tackle is HIV, malaria, dengue and (even though the food is delicious) chronic malnutrition.


Our main dishes include seafood (especially fish), chicken, rice, fruits (especially mango and lime), plantains and more rice. They also make these delicious fried plantain chips that taste like Frito Lays ... Mmm ...


So, in short, come visit!


Me in the main plaza. (check out the mosaic!)

The Potato Incident

Here in Lima, I was getting along great with my host family. I was adapting, learning the new culture, enjoying the food and mejorando-ing my Spanish. I thought I was doing pretty well.

That is, until, the potato incident.

We were cooking lunch at the training center, and we all needed to bring in a certain assigned item. Mine was 3 kilos of potatoes. Simple, right? Well, it got a little complicated. I'll explain.

Twenty soles a day go to our family to cover food, lodging and laundry. I had been sick since visiting my site, and I hadn't eaten dinner with my family all week. We also had two days where lunches were already provided by Peace Corps, and I rarely eat breakfast. My meal total was low, and I was hoping my family would pick up the 5 soles it would cost for the potatoes.

Money matters are always a little bit awkward. And being the conflict-phob I am, I gently approach the issue by talking about the lunch and how excited I am for it. I then continue with how I will need to bring 3 kilos of potatoes and would that be an issue to get? Oh no, not at all, my host mom assures me. You can buy them at the market.

Oh ... I say, a little surprised. Not quite sure how to approach the matter, I let it go until later in the week.

Like I said, I had been sick, plagued by an all-consuming grossness that culminated the day before the big lunch. I still hadn't gotten the guts to bring up the issue again, but I was down to the wire. I was hoping my host mom would have a little pity for the girl who was clutching her stomach, slumped over on the couch.

I can't go to the market today, I say. I'm really sick, but, shoot, I still need to buy the potatoes.

Don't worry, my host mom tells me. You can go tomorrow morning before you go to the training center.

No "how awful you're sick! Is there anything I can do?" No "don't worry about it, Robyncita. I'll go grab them for you." Nothing. Not a shred of sympathy or offer of assistance.

Naturally, I am miffed. I grab my favorite hoodie and hide myself in my room, curled up under my covers for the rest of the evening. The next morning, I get out of bed, dress quickly, and go to the kitchen where my host mom is prepping the family's breakfast.

Are you going to eat? She asks me.

No, I can't, I say. I don't have time. I have to go to the market.

Oh yes. The potatoes, she says. Ok, have a good day.

That's it.

I step outside the door, absolutely fuming. I go straight across the street to the host family of another Peace Corps volunteer and ring the doorbell. She invites me in, and I sit down at her breakfast table, trying hard not to burst out in a violent string of profanities.

I ask my friend if she wouldn't mind going with me to the market to get the potatoes before heading to the center, and her host mom, overhearing everything, interrupts me.

But Robyn, she tells me. You didn't tell your mom you needed the potatoes? She's supposed to buy them, you know. It's her responsibility.

I know, right?? Exactly! I want to scream, but gossip is a pretty big deal in Peruvian culture, and I don't want to fuel any negativity about my host family. The truth is, I'm sitting there in the kitchen, on the verge of tears.

Here, I was going to have to figure out how to get to the market and back before our training sessions started, when, really, it shouldn't be my responsibility at all. Not to mention that I had hardly eaten a scrap of food from my family that week, and then I had to front even more money when I shouldn't?? What's worse: She didn't even ask if I was feeling better!

It took me a Coca Cola, a single-serving package of Oreos and a whole lot of venting for me to realize how irrational I was being. Sure, my family should have offered to get the potatoes for me. And they probably should have offered a little human empathy for my being sick. That part of my reasoning is logical. But who am I to expect that they have the same culture of social courtesy and astuteness?

What I really should have done is just been upfront with my host mother. She would have bought the potatoes if I had just asked, and I probably would have avoided a really awkward couple of days and at least 300 calories.

But when you're new in a culture, it's difficult sometimes to find the balance between offending and being clear about what you need. I was expecting my host mother to meet me halfway by offering. When she didn't, I was irrationally offended.

This all transfers back to my life in the States. My Minnesotan raising has made me a little too passive-aggressive. But this lack of communication can get even more slippery with another culture and another language. Yes, I need to be sensitive and not come on too demanding or too strong. But at the same time, I need to be able to express myself clearly, without the expectation that those around me will pick up on my subtleties — which might be even less pronounced here than I think.

For a while, I will be a little awkward and uncomfortable. But if I continue down this conflict-phobic path, I mind just end up in totally avoidable, frustrated tears, drowning in a sea of Coca Cola bottles and Oreo wrappers. And for what? A sack of potatoes?

My First Lesson in Humility

When I first decided on the Peace Corps, I knew I was going to have my eyes opened. The US is a privileged nation. I had no doubts whatsoever that I would be humbled by my experience.


My humbling came about two weeks ago during my field-based training. We were divided in groups of four and sent to the far corners of Peru (hyperbole added) to work with current volunteers in their sites.


Our first stop was Potrerillo with Lizzi — an incredible volunteer who's already been in her site for two years and heads home this month (We'll miss you, Lizzi!). In the mornings, people come out with their buckets and burros to a small canal running through the town to carry water back to their homes. In the afternoons, they bathe and wash their clothes in the same canal. It is the lifeblood of the village. Despite being in a fairly arid region, there were fields of rice, stacked in Andean steps up the hillside.


Lizzi's main project was working with Plan International to build approximately 150 latrines in the area. It was absolutely incredible to see the work the town had accomplished.


After a few days in Bajo Piura, we went up (literally) to Sicchez, a small village in the sierra of Peru. Surrounded by chacras, the main industry is agriculture, and many of the families worked out in the fields all day with coffee and bananas. There are two telephones for the entire community, and a loud speaker announces five minute warnings for those who have calls coming in. The roads are pure mud during the rainy season. The insects are brutal. And teen pregnancy is prevalent.

I was placed with an adorable couple who gave me the last bit of red meat they had. The floors were dirt and the walls of adobe. A hole in the ground served as the toilet; a small faucet in the middle of the yard was the shower; and I slept in an empty room with a hard-as-rock bed and at least 50 spiders.


Silly side note about the spiders: The first night, I could barely sleep because I thought they were going to bite me. I slept with my hood up, long pants and high socks. The second night, I decided to just kill them all before I went to bed so that I wouldn't have to sleep in fear. I walked up to the first, huge, juicy one (literally two inches in size, with a big, fat body), and held up my shoe to crush it. But I couldn't do it. What if I don't kill all of them and the rest of them (surely hiding beneath my bedpost) revolt against in me in the night? I thought. So I made a truce with them. I'll spare your lives, spiders, I said. But that means you must spare mine.


I went to bed that night with my pants tucked in my socks. My undershirt tucked into my pants. And my hood closed so tight around my head only my nose peeked through. ... I still was bitten on the cheek.


Anyway the humbling experience was centered around my interactions. The people were incredibly friendly and generous — embracing us as friends and feeding us way too much of what little they had. We ate bananas picked straight from the tree and fresh coffee beans from the recent harvest. We spent hours after dinner talking about the United States and Peru. My host father was floored that we have over 300,000,000 people in our country and truly couldn't believe that "fast food" existed in such a prominent way in our culture.


I'd like to think that I would be able to survive — maybe even be successful — in a town like Sicchez. The truth is: I was miserable. I got sick from the food, the water supply was littered with insects and fecal matter (and had to be sifted even after boiling), I couldn't shower for days and slept in absolute fear of the creatures that lived in every crevice.


I left Sicchez incredibly proud of the volunteers there (Brian and Angela) and impressed by the unbelievable warmth and generosity of the people. But also with a very startling realization of what I might actually be able to handle.

A Cultural Exchange

My host family named their new, black kitten "Obama."

The Election Day

My poor host family woke up this morning to find their gringa in a fit of tears in front of the television.

“Why are you crying??” They asked me. “I thought you wanted Obama to win!”

"I did; I did." I said. It was difficult to explain that the tears were definitely tears of joy.

One of the three goals of Peace Corps is to share information about our culture and nation with people in other countries. It’s an act of diplomacy that as a volunteer you can’t help but pick up.
But sometimes living abroad is more like damage control than a cultural exchange. I’ve talked to Peruvians about our politics, our president and our people. But always with a guarded edge, an offensive strategy, careful to counter the many criticisms sometimes even before they’re addressed.

I love my country. But we as a nation agree that we don’t love what we’ve become.
We’re fighting a painful war with no visible end, and losing the respect and standing with our international allies every day. Our economy flops while deeply rooted social problems (education, health care, ... ) are left untouched. But more so, we as a nation are plagued by a willful ignorance and indifference that allows an immoral and self-serving Washington to thrive, while nothing changes.

It takes more than moving rhetoric and Oprah’s backing to clean the mess we’re in right now. But in his campaign alone, Obama lit a fire beneath my apathetic generation and inspired them to do something for their country. He has evoked a national pride — a sprouting seed of patriotism — that we’ve never felt before in our lifetime. We’re talking about, caring about energy independence and international policy.

Whatever your thoughts on his political policies or background, you have to give him credit for moving an entire generation of youth to become patriots.

The reason I broke down was because I felt – like many people – it was the first step in the right direction. And for the first time since I’ve come to Peru, I can talk about the future of America with hope and incredible pride in my country and leader.

Obama´s not perfect. He won´t waltz into the White House like a giant band-aid and heal us. That will ultimately be up to us. But he´s a start.