Summer school classes were canceled in the secondary school, so I coordinated with the local municipality and the primary school to organize my own classes. I tried for weeks before starting classes to work sustainably by involving a local teacher, but eventually our plans fell through and I was left to work alone.

For most volunteers, the rainy season months of January and February and Vacaciones Útiles classes present unique challenges. With large class sizes, we often end up working alone even though it’s a problematic sign our work is not sustainable. (See my first summer school experience here: Rainy Season and Summer School)

Yet for me, this February may have been my favorite month of service. My class was comprised primarily of a small group of  9-12 year olds. In other words, each class was full of energy, interesting questions, and short attention spans. We focused on leadership, life skills, sports, and art and would hang out before or after the class playing group games. Their favorite is Ninja!

Since I normally work with around 130 students on a weekly basis, I appreciated the opportunity to spend multiple hours every day with the same small group of students. Also, working alone freed me from the constant challenge of coordinating with teachers and gave me the freedom to develop my own classes and workshops. Along with this freedom, I felt more comfortable this year with the students and with my Spanish, and it was obvious their trust in me had also improved.

The classes culminated with a day hike along the Inca trail to a nearby town where we visited Inca ruins. I invited a friend from Tarma who served as our guide along with another friend who is an environmental engineer. More students participated than I expected, and the trip was a wonderful way to celebrate the end of summer classes and the start of the new school year.

The school year has now officially started, and I’m optimistic about my last 7 months here in Huaricolca. Despite high teacher turnover, the schools and I have improved our coordination and work by learning from our successes and failures of last year.

Teachers and I are working to develop small groups of leaders in each grade while continuing to improve weekly life skills classes which are part of the Peruvian curriculum. We also hope to expand our “Professional Hour,” an event we did last year, by inviting different universities and technical institutes to participate and focusing on job orientation before and after the event.

Above all, I’m excited to continue building friendships with students and sharing moments with my host families. Time flies, and I know that too soon this wild ride will be coming to an end.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

The post Peace Corps is a Roller Coaster Ride: Summer School Year 2 appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Phase 1: The Decision (Applying and Waiting)

On your laps through the park, you’ve passed by the roller coaster a few times now. You’ve been waiting for this ride for years; last year you were too short to ride.

This year you’re not sure you’ll have the courage, but you feel ready. You hop in line for the long wait, wondering if it will truly live up to the hype.

Each volunteer’s rationale for applying to the Peace Corps is multifaceted — to serve, to travel, to develop oneself personally and professionally, to further one’s education, to learn another language, to meet new people, to adventure, to learn. The list is endless. For some it was a last minute decision and for others it took years of preparations and forethought.

Yet everyone experiences the same wait. While back in the U.S., we completed essays and interviews and, upon acceptance, endured the long process of legal and medical clearance, all while knowing very little what life in the Peace Corps would actually be like.

We stood in line, excited yet anxious as we imagined what each twist, turn, and corkscrew might hold.

Phase 2: The Climb (Pre-Service Training)

You buckle yourself in. Your heartbeat quickens. There’s no turning back. You begin the climb…click…click…click…click. The knot in your stomach grows with each foot of altitude gain.

Preparing for the coming adrenaline rush, you raise your hands and let out a scream. As the clicking stops, so does your heartbeat. You’ve reached the top.

After 3 days of basic preparation, you find yourself on a plane to a foreign country. You most likely speak little to none of the local language(s), haven’t tried the local food, and are unfamiliar with cultural practices. To fill in these gaps, trainees receive three months of Pre-Service Training (PST).

PST is a whirlwind of activities. Long days of language, cultural, and program specific training more closely resemble a busy college schedule than your actual service. Here in Peru, we also began living with our host families from day one, sharing meals and speaking only in Spanish.

You slowly begin learning what your life and job might be like, yet many many aspects remain vague and you don’t find out in what town or region you will be placed until week 5. The anticipation builds and builds and finally culminates in the swearing-in ceremony and your arrival in your community.

While you may have just made it through one of the most intense and nerve-racking parts service, everything is really just beginning. You’re no longer in a large group of volunteers. You’re no longer in the capital city. You have a new host family.

Here comes the drop.

Phase 3: The Drop (First 6 Months)

In free fall, your stomach rises to your throat. Muscles tighten. Adrenaline spikes. For a moment, you’re breathless, simultaneously loving and hating the terror of this adventure.

When you find your breathe, it instinctively escapes as a scream. And before you realize it, the track has leveled, and the ride continues.

Your first months in site are arguably the most challenging. On top of living each day in a foreign language, you must adjust to being away from other volunteers, living with a new host family, eating new foods, adjusting to constant sickness, dealing with hours and hours of unstructured time, and learning new professional and cultural expectations.

You make these adjustments while simultaneously trying to build relationships with local institutions and community members, doing interviews and surveys as part of a community diagnostic. Every day you also attempt to explain your role as a volunteer, the goals of Peace Corps, your program, and sustainable development while starting to match your program goals with local needs.

As a whole, your first months are a whirlwind of becoming comfortable amidst a sea of new experiences and the joys and struggles of integration. You often feel out of control, experiencing the free fall with both excitement and fear.  Yet through trial and error, through fire and flame, you see the value and beauty of integration, the foundation for the rest of your service.

Poco a poco, little by little, you settle in and your community becomes your home.

Phase 4: Acceptance (Year 2)

Accepting you’re at the mercy of this mad machine, you allow your muscles to relax for a moment. You remember once again to breath.

As you hurtle forward, you begin to truly enjoy the ride despite the many unexpected twists and turns. Nearing the end, a rush of dopamine reminds you the whole thing was worth the risk.

The rest of your service is filled with ups and downs, and the process of integration never truly ends. But many aspects of service simply become easier, and those which don’t you learn to accept.

You adjust to the food and hopefully getting sick less often. The language becomes normal, and you find yourself using local slang. You adjust to life with a host family or maybe even live on your own. You learn how to navigate local institutions and apply strategies for getting work done.

As time goes by, you also learn to lower expectations in terms of your work and accept the many limitations which exist. I find the longer I’m in my community, the more complex and interconnected the local problems become and the more I need to admit my limited role and impact in changing them.

I’ve spoken with many fellow volunteers who share similar sentiments. Two years is a short time to work towards long-term and sustainable change. The longer I’m here the more apparent that becomes.

So we do the best work we can and appreciate each moment we share with host families, community members, and friends.  And from what I’ve seen here in Peru, at the end of the day we love our jobs as Peace Corps volunteers, including all its surprises, difficulties, and joys.

Phase 5: What next? (Post Peace Corps)

You screech to a stop. You’re back where you started, yet you know without a doubt something has changed. You feel a bit light-headed and even disoriented as you stand up to walk out the gates.

It seems for a second that you’ve passed through an alternate reality. But as time goes by, you quickly readjust to life on the ground. Reflecting, you’re glad you rode, and you feel if you were to ride again, you could do so with more courage and composure.

I have yet to finish my service, but I’m positive returning to the states will require its own process of readjustment. For a while, parts of our own culture back home will inevitably feel foreign to us.

But even as life quickly becomes normal again, I’ll hope to never forget the lessons I’ve learned, people I’ve met, and experiences I’ve had here in Peru.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

The post Peace Corps is a Roller Coaster Ride: 27 Months (Part 1) appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Upon realizing the fiesta below won’t be stopping anytime soon, we head inside and shoot off a confetti cannon, a jolting surprise for those who had fallen asleep on the couch. Hugs and well wishes are shared by everyone, followed by a traditional pork dinner and the seasonal sweets panetón and hot chocolate.

Before long, silence fills the room and the food, our stomachs.

Being away from family and friends, comfortable traditions, and favorite foods is always difficult, especially during the holiday season. Despite these challenges, I decided to spend Christmas with my host family again this year, waiting to leave for vacation with some fellow volunteers.

This year I hoped to share a few more of my family’s traditions. We began by setting up our arbolito de navidad and decorating it with a few ornaments. Yet something was lacking, so I began scheming to fill the empty floor below its branches.

From the year prior, I knew that gifts are given primarily to children and rarely among adults. For me, gift giving has always been an important part of Christmas, and I couldn’t resist. Soon, the ground around our little tree was full of boxed surprises for my host family. Not surprisingly, my host siblings were not overjoyed by the tradition of waiting until Christmas to open them!

On Christmas Eve, we were invited by family members to spend the evening with them in Tarma, a larger town 20 minutes from our community. We dozed off watching telenovelas, built a small campfire, and shot off fireworks while waiting for midnight, the arrival of Christmas Day.

As we waited, I thought often of my family and friends back in the U.S. and missed them dearly. I found my mind wandering to my family’s faces, a baked salmon dinner, the recliner next to the fireplace, and gifts being exchanged.

This time around I had lowered my expectations, having recognized that many of my favorite traditions and memories cannot be recreated here, especially without my family. But this fact, like many other aspects of service, I have begun to accept and mentally frame in more positive ways.

Peace Corps requires serious mental flexibility. A constant flow of new experiences awaits our interpretation. I’ve learned that when situations are unchangeable, changing my attitude or perspective is the most powerful tool not only for survival but also to experience joy where it may not have been found.

So I leaned back against the dusty brick wall and decided to be present, allowing myself to be captivated by the colorful explosions which illuminated the dark, sloping hills of a town I have come to love.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

The post A U.S. Peace Corp Volunteer in Peru: Christmas Round 2 appeared first on Traveling Archive.

A question has been on my mind. “Am I actually a minority here in Peru?” Clearly I am the only North American in my town of 2,000 and happen to be white, blue eyed, and 6 feet tall (making me the numerical minority). Yet a sociological definition of majority/minority has much more to do with power and opportunities than it does with numbers.

Therefore, the conversation begins with one word: privilege.

I didn’t know I was privileged until only a few years ago; in fact, I didn’t know what that meant.

For most of my life, I never gave a second thought to the fact that I belonged to a group called “white”^[1] or “straight” or “middle-class” or “male” or “able-bodied.” I was just me.

Scholars call this ignorance itself a form of privilege, the “privilege of ignorance.” People with privilege can live relatively unhindered by their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, etc. They have the option of ignoring their privilege and the plight of others. People in minority positions never have such a choice, as their identities daily affect their lives.

So I was ignorant that millions of people fear holding the hand of their lover in public, write fake “white” names on job applications, earn less for the same work, are consistently spoken over, hide a central part of their identity, are feared because of their religious beliefs, or catch nasty looks in the grocery line.

I’ll admit; there is a whole spectrum of human experience I haven’t known. Yet I’ve tried to understand and empathize.

I’ve made friends with people living on the streets as we ate ham and cheese. I’ve argued in sociology classes and sat with the dying, hearing their words through a translator. I’ve read books that have made me enraged, enlightened, and depressed and tried to listen to friends who have seen life differently.

As I explored this world, I quickly learned what most of us instinctively know deep down: life is really unfair. Yet what many people never realize is that this unfairness is not a randomized unluckiness, but rather systematized injustice.  Society is a complex game and it’s stacked (or dare I say rigged) to benefit certain groups of people.

What do we call these free benefits (power, influence, and possibilities) that society grants to some and not to others: privilege.^[2] Privilege is never worrying about my skin color, never having my gender used as an insult, never been mistaken for a criminal, always expecting to go to college, always being able to access buildings, or always feeling safe in my neighborhood.

I never knew one word could describe so well the way I and many people I know navigate and experience the world.

Whether we know it, accept it, or want it, we all take part in unjust societies. The question becomes how we will respond to this understanding.

Coming to Peru, I wanted to be aware of my privilege. After all, Central and South America have experienced enough colonialism.^[3] I knew that being in a completely new cultural context would shift and change my privilege dramatically. What I’ve come to realize is that even though I’m the only gringo in town, I’m far from what it means to be a minority.

I’ve heard some volunteers express being a minority for the first time here in Peru. To some degree it’s true. The unwanted attention, odd looks, outright rejection, feelings of not belonging, and fear for one’s safety mirror aspects of the minority experience.

Living as the only gringo in town has undoubtedly given me fresh insights into minority experiences and hopefully a greater capacity for empathy.

That being said, I would say I’m not a minority in my community. Actually, the power, influence, and possibilities I experienced in the U.S. are often reinforced or strengthened here.

I’m still granted unwarranted influence or honor because I’m a white, educated foreigner.  I’m still a male in a machista culture, meaning I’m treated like a professional and my opinions are respected. I’m still a Christian in a culture where everyone believes in God and faith is part of education and business. I still don’t feel pressure to hide my gender or sexual orientation from my community. If I decided to, I can grab my U.S. passport, hop on a plane tomorrow, and be in almost any country in the world.

Part of living and working in another culture is paying close attention to how you act and how you are perceived. In any context, this is a good place to start — attempting to understand one’s place, identity, and privilege. With this awareness, we can begin to understand how we’ve been shaped to think and act to the benefit of some and the hindrance others.

As Peace Corps volunteers, we are a diverse group in and of itself and each person experiences his or her service in a different way. For my black, Asian, or Latino(a) friends here, the idea of being considered a gringo in their town is almost comical. They clearly experience their work and communities very differently than I do.

We talk about the need to be allies for one another, friends who are not only actively trying to understand the experience of minorities but are taking concrete steps to support them and stand against forces of discrimination, oppression, and violence.

Yet for anyone in my position, maintaining the status quo will always be the easy way out because coasting through life means continuing to benefiting from the system.

I admit I’m too comfortable where I am. I make friends easier with people like me. I am scared of asking hard questions. Sometimes being privileged makes life really easy. But I find admitting this is a good first step.

I hope my service can bring out a different side of me, a more compassionate and selfless side. I don’t want to coast. I want learn from becoming part of a new community here in Peru. I hope to work towards re-empowering others for their own benefit, not mine.

In the end, all is easier said than done. Yet I’m certain of one thing: the Peace Corps has already deepened my understanding of my privilege and identity and is continually helping me see more clearly the complexity of the human experience.^[4]

Footnotes

[1] Or in the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates “the people who believe themselves white.” After all, the concept and social significance of race in the U.S. was created by whites as a justification for slavery.

[2] For some incredible concrete examples of privilege and how it plays out in everyday life, check out this video about the concept of the “invisible knapsack” from sociologist Peggy McIntosh: https://youtu.be/DRnoddGTMTY

[3] For an eye-opening read about the political actions of the United States in Central and South America check out: Empire’s Workshop by Greg Grandin. I’ve also heard good things about Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano and personally enjoyed the concise history of Latin America called Born in Blood and Fire by John Charles Chasteen.

[4] If you’re interested about the complexity of privilege and the human experience, I’d suggest reading about cross-sectionality. From my basic understanding, it is a theory about how each person always experiences life in both privileged and not privileged ways and how these complexities affect and interact with one another.

****Disclaimer: “The content of this website is mine alone and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or the Peruvian Government.”

The post My Privilege in Peru: A U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Huaricolca, Part IV appeared first on Traveling Archive.