FBT ain´t got nothin on me

Field based training, where to begin? So far the most efficient use of time at training. I was sent down to Chincha which is 3 hours south of Lima. Chincha was a city of maybe 20,000. In The states 20,000 is considered a small town still but here it has a much more metropolitan feel. We stayed about a block from the central plaza. It felt like a tiny Reno. There was no sense of charm and almost nothing I would call beautiful. Chincha felt like a place that was teetering on the edge of modern but still light years away. The only thing I really warmed up to in Chincha was a little restaurant which I ate basically all my meals at. The PCV’s who had been there for years ate there every day too so the owners new them well and treated us like we were family too. I really love Peruvian food which is cool cause I’d say most Americans I talk do little more than tolerate it. I love what they call “menus” here. A menu is the meal of the day. It is always very cheap and you get a starter, entrée, drink and sometimes desert too. Usually you have options of a few things and it costs about 5 soles ( $2) for a ton of delicious food. I didn’t by any means dislike Chincha, I just have never seen anything else like it before. We left Sunday afternoon and took a really sweet double decker bus there. We followed the cost from Lima 3 hours south. It was gray the whole time, we never saw the sun the entire week. Our hotel wasn’t great but was very nice in comparison to everything else around it.

Monday we had an activity where we went out and explored the city of Chincha. We went to the municipality and the police station. Monday night we had the 5 PCV girls that live in or around Chincha sit on a panel and we talked about life and work as a PCV.

Tuesday we went to a Hogar de ninas which is a girls home which is an orphanage/foster home/juvenile hall. The girls ranged from 3 to 18 and there are 75 girls that live there. The PCV who works there Rachel, organized a whole morning of games with the girls. I was so terrified. I didn’t know who to approach the girls or what to say to them. I ended up sitting back for most of the activities and being a cheerleader. It hit me that these girls weren’t going to go home at the end of the day like I was. Most of these girls don’t have a family like I have. They’ve lived there for years and their concept of life is different from mine I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. The magnitude of their situation really hit me. I was sad and scared when I left and I felt that all my confidence of working with kids was drained out of me. When we met to go over the day with Rachel, she explained how the Hogar worked. It was a state run home and all the girls that were there were sent by the state. Many had been found abandoned in the streets, taken out of their families because of substance abuse/sexual abuse/physical abuse and some of them were sent there for committing crimes. She told us some of the girls were heavily drugged as part of their “help”. There hadn’t been a therapist or psychologist to help the girls emotionally in 2 years. It completely broke my heart.

Wednesday, we went to an environmental volunteers site outside the city. She had a group of kids she taught about the environment and we were in charge of organizing an activity for them. When we got there, Abby, the PCV, went over a lesson she had taught on the how long it takes garbage to break down and the importance of recycling. So Every one in my group was given 2 little kids, a big bag and we were sent out in the roads to pick up stuff that can be recycled. This town didn’t seem to have any kind of garbage collection. Everyone just threw there trash in the street or in the river. I’ve never seen a dirtier town in my life. The two girls I worked with were great and getting more one on one with them helped calm me down. I felt so snobby. I didn’t want to pick up any trash cause it was all disgusting and the girls were clean to start and by the end they were filthy. After the garbage pick up, we did a skit on the importance of washing your hands. We definitely learned on this trip the effectiveness skits. We did a couple different skits through out the week and all the kids responded so well to the older people being really enthusiastic and acting as silly as we wanted to. So them we all washed our hands and ate oranges. After this day I wasn’t feeling so terrified. I felt like the kids really liked us and enjoyed the activity and actually learned something.

Thursday, we went to the cemetery in Chincha. There are about 80 kids who’s families work there. So they are spending their child hood in a cemetery, washing graves, selling water and flowers and playing among the graves. These kids were very poor and had the worst developed social skills of any of the other groups. Spent the morning playing games with them and we did our hand washing skit for them and we washed every ones hands afterwards. These kids were so dirty, like they hadn’t bathed in weeks. When we were washing hands, many of them took the opportunity to wash their whole arms and faces. Going back to me feeling really snobby…There were always kids on me. Usually clinging to my leg or holding my hand or hugging me and resting their head against my stomach or shoulder. At the cemetery, I cringed at these little kids touching me. They were so dirty and when I looked down at them, I could see their head was covered in lice. It was a very humbling experience. At the Hogar I felt lucky to have a family and now at the cemetery I felt lucky to have grown up something as simple as soap and water. So after washing we fed the kids snacks and soda. It was evident the impact we had on the kids that day. I was feeling not only confident but empowered. For the first time since I arrived in Peru I realized why I had joined the Peace Corps. I really feel like I’m doing something great.

Friday, we organized a big party for selected kids from the three groups we had worked with. I was in charge of organizing the girls from the Hogar. These same girls who I initially was so scared of. But I was able to spend a lot more one on one time with them. Well it was really more like two on one, because I always had two girls on each arm at all times. We were walking and they were asking me about my family back home. They asked me if I had my parents still and I said yes. When I returned the same question to the girl who had asked it, she said no, both her parents were dead. As she said it, I watched all the confidence drain out of her and I just hugged her because I had nothing to say. Then a few minutes later I asked another one where she was from and she said she didn’t know because they found her when she was a baby. She also didn’t know how old she was cause she didn’t know her birthday. This is what makes working with these kids so scary. With any of the kids that I worked with back in the states, when you first meet them there is the standard protocol “Hi! What’s your name? How old are you?” greeting you give to break the ice. But when you don’t know what questions you shouldn’t ask, it’s hard. But the party at Friday was a big hit. We took them to this really gorgeous ranch in the hills and they got to ride horses and play games and eat snacks. It was one of those things I’m sure many of them will remember for the rest of their life.

So in short, I was terrified at the beginning of FBT but by the end, I had reaffirmed the reason I joined the Peace Corps. This one week felt had a greater impact on my than any other week I can remember.