A little hygiene, a little history

I had to cut my fingernails today. They were so long and pretty I was sad to see them go. Long pretty nails are one of my girlier traits. I had to cut them for sanitary reasons. Dirt and bacteria hide too easily there and that last thing I need are pockets of germs hanging out on my finger tips. Especially since I’m the kind of figity person that’s always touching my face and all it’s holes which I would rather they remain uninfected. One thing I don’t have is hand sanitizer. I thought we were getting some in our medical kit but no. We got floss and a whistle, but no sanitizer. But I’m thinking it’s not so bad because I don’t want to become immune to any things that will help the bacteria go away when I need. Plus I need to build ammunity to everything here anyways. To give you guys an idea of things I have to do to try and keep myself from getting sick…..I have to boil all the water I drink. I’m not even supposed to brush my teeth with it. All the fruit I eat has to be the kind of fruit I can peel, like bananas and oranges. Apples and pears our out. I can only eat vegetables that are cooked, so no salad. This makes me sad too. I did get cooked broccoli in my lunch today. It was one of the first vegetables I’ve got from my host mom. I told her that I really liked vegetables today, so hopefully she’ll keep them coming.
I took my first “hot shower” today. This means this morning, I went to the kitchen and asked her if I could have a bucket of hot water. She said she would heat some up for me and bring it in. It was a 5 gallon bucket that she put the boiling water in and then diluted with regular water so that it was barely warm. I guess it was better than a freezing cold shower, but not by much. She gave me the bucket that we use to scoop water into the toilet to flush it. Grossed out by this idea, I was using the little tin cup I use when I brush my teeth. I was just poring water on my legs so I could shave them for the first time since I arrived in Peru, and I guess she herd me putting the tin cup down on the tile in the bathroom cause she yelled at me through the bathroom window that I need to use the big bucket not the tin cup. It was a little disturbing not just in the fact that she was telling me how to bathe but that she was actually listening to me bathing. My seniora is very insisting when it comes to doing things her way. Most time I don’t get a choice, she just does them. It hasn’t really bothered me so far, but since I am a person who doesn’t like to be told what to do, I can see how this may soon get on my nerves. Today for example, I had my book bag all packed to go to training. It was stuffed pretty full cause I have a lot of books and dictionaries and what not I lug around with me. But me seniora gave me two bags of food to take. She realized it was a lot to carry so she said I should just put it in my bag. I told her it was already full and I would carry the bags of food. But she didn’t believe me that my bag was full, so she went into my room and started taking stuff out of my bag saying I didn’t need this or that. She proceeded to take everything out of my bag so that the only thing in there was the food and told me to carry the books. Anyways, that’s just an example of the daily occurences. The peace corps says if you want to do something a certain way, do it. Be firm with your senora. I know this. I’ve been there. But I just decided that since I’m only with this seniora for 11 weeks I’m just gonna do everything she says so I can soak in all the Peruvian culture I can so I can be better prepared for my site.
We started getting all of our assignmets that we’re gonna have to do in training. It is a lot. We were told it was intensive. I have to start making contacts in my community already. I have all these different projects that I have to start to prepare myself for my host community to come. But going out and talking to people I don’t know and talking in a language I’m not very good at? And creating projects that don’t exsist. I don’t have the slightest idea how my community works. Part of my home work tonight was to find out about the school system. I talked with my 13 year host sister. She told me that you graduate their form of high school at 16. They give grades on a scale of 0-20. They have a two month summer break in January and February. All pubic school, at least in the lima area, wear uniforms and are taught religion in school. It’s interesting, but at the same time scary at how little I know about how this country works, and I’m supposed to change it and make a difference if I don’t even know what needs changing?
I’m also learning about the political history of Peru. And by history I mean the past 30 years. For those of you who don´t like reading stop, cause I´m about to go off on a llittle history. It may be confusing, cause it is. There´s a lot of stuff that happend in the last 30 years and it´s really interesting, but there´s a lot of it. It can also help ive those of you an idea of why I am in this country and why the peace corps does what it does. During the 70‘s, the government didn’t take very good care of the people and there were a lot of problems politically, economically and socially. Unrest grew and the normal revolutionary acts began to occur like big national stikes and protests. This was also the time when south america was heavily influenced by communism and maxsist revolutions. I’m sure the US government had a hand in all of this political instability. I don’t know if any of the Military leaders attended the school of Americas of not, but it’s likely. Anyways, in 1980 the first terrorist group emmerged called the shinning path and then in 1985 the terrorist group Tupac Amaru formed. The 80’s was a decade of blood shed and chaos. The government couldn’t controll the terrorist and at the same time they were locking up and killing innocent people all over the place. In one very famous massacre, the government military went into a town and killed every single student in the university. They just figured all students were terrorists and needed to die. By the 90’s everyone was tired of all the violence that they allowed a guy named Fujimora take control of the government. This guy was just as bad as the terrorists some say. He was very curroupt and ihs administrations carried out many exucutions and did some crazy stuff like dismantled the public transportation and made it all privatized. So all ths busses I take are private and there is no governing body over them besides supply and demand. I will tell you about the bus rides here in a different entry. So anyways, things are better politically here. Not so much economically, but that’s why the peace corps is here. It’s actually pretty cool. Peace corps was in peru from 1962 until 1980 something when they had to pull all persons out for safetly reasons. After all the violence and curruption ended, the president Toledo asked peace corps to come back to Peru. When Toledo was growing up, there were peace corps volunteers in his community in the 60’s that he got to work with. So peace corps returned in 2002. I’m part of the 9th group since then to come in. The president has since stepped down and is now working on his memiors at Stanford.
I think it´s pretty cool. And there is definetly a lot to be done here. So I hope I learn a lot in training and am able to get some great programs going when I get to my site.