Gone Fishing!

Today was an awesome day and I’m so excited I can’t wipe the smile off my face. Today I learned my destiny. I’m going to San Miguel, Cajamarca!!!

Remember how I told you there was a pool at the training center? Well today there were 31 styrofoam fish floating in our pool. Each had one of the volunteer sites written on it and covered up with masking tape. PC made us a bunch of “fishing poles” and we had to fish for our sites. One by one we caught the fish, read off the new town and Kitty or Alfredo (the Youth Development/Small business leaders) shouted out who was going to go there. It was so exciting, luckily my fish was the second one caught so I find out right away.

Peace Corps only sends volunteers to the following departments: Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Cajamarca, Ancash, Lima, Ica, and Ariquepa. This year, no one is going to Ica or Tumbes. The way it works is that everyone flys solo, except for the married couples. They try to put us in geographic clusters so you are always close to other volunteers (hopefully less than 4 hrs) but you are always the only one in your actual site. Except for the very few people who get site mates.

Ding! Ding! Ding! Guess who won a site mate?? Me! Yep folks, I will be traveling to and living in San Miguel with the one and only Tiffany Stokes (a.k.a. - my wife). Whoa, how’d that happen you ask? Well, apparently they developed our site for a married couple with a business and a youth volunteer. For some reason the couple had a choice and they decided to go to Ariquepa instead. San Miguel was now up for grabs and it had enough work for two volunteers so watch out here we come!

Top 10 Reasons I’m happy to have Tiffany as my site mate: (disclaimer: these reasons are subject to change at various points over the next two years and may not always be positive. the writer assumes no responsibility for anything written below)
1. She gets yummy food in packages from her family and she is good at sharing.
2. Not only does she like to run, but she is going to train for her first marathon with me! (Shhh, I’m not sure if she knows this yet).
3. Even though her real name is Estefani, she doesn’t get mad when people call her Teffi.
4. It’s always good to have a site mate to split expensive things with. For example, a new can of flea spray and a box of Ammonium AD.
5. Veghead – Peruvians don’t understand the whole vegetarian thing and at least now I’m not the only crazy one.
6. I don’t want to ride the bus all the way there by myself. Sometimes Peruvians smell really bad, I don’t want to have to sit next to that.
7. People often confuse the two of us because we dress and they think we look alike. Peruvians are going to struggle even worse. I’ve always wanted a twin so we could swap places, skip classes, etc. etc. Now when I don’t want to go to work I can send her in my place and no one will ever know. Which remind me – if you ever see a photo of me riding a motorcycle – it wasn’t me, it was Tiffany. I swear!
8. When I get lonely and sick of speaking Spanish, I can talk to her instead of myself.
9. With out her, I’m not sure if I would ever take a shower. Right now I really only do after I get some kind of comment from her like “Uhhh, when was the last time you showered? You know you went running twice this week right?”
10. I think I might get bored in the rainy season, I’m going to need someone I can watch slip and fall down the hill in the mud. I think she’d be a good person for that.

OK, more about our site. Well, currently we both have listed the same host family. Umm, does that mean we are in the same room, sharing a bed? Actually, Alfredo just told us that they were expecting the couple to go there so now they need to find us a second house because we are not allowed to live together. Today everyone received a folder with a bunch of info about their new host families (names, ages, running water, communication, etc.) Looks like I won’t have a clue until I get to my site. Oh well, what’s another couple of days right?

What I do know is this. Cajamarca is extremely beautiful, picture rolling green mountains for as far as you can see and you’ve got it. Now throw in a short Peruvian lady wearing a skirt and sombrero walking her donkey and you’re really on track. San Miguel is located at 8,800 ft above sea level and it has two seasons, one of which is the rainy season. Apparently it rains every day from January through March. But not to worry, because as crappy as that sounds, it doesn’t scare away thousands of people from spending carnival in the “Carnival Capital” of Peru. Volunteers choose to come here instead of Rio to live it up with water balloons, squirt guns, war paint and plenty of alcohol. You know you’re all invited right?

The town I’m going to supposedly has paved roads, water with in the houses, a sewage system, cell phone service, and internet (but its really slow). The only problem is that it takes ~5 hrs to get to the capital city in taxi or combi. And then it’s another 14 hr overnight bus ride to get back to Lima. (People with actually money fly and its only 1.5 hrs and about $100– apparently you go over the Andes and its an amazing view).

I’m going to be working with a group of artisans. It’s a group of about 100 women, 14 of which live in town, the rest live in the local casarillos (little towns in the middle of nowhere. I know they make woven and knit textile products but I’m not quite sure exactly what yet. They do have a little factory in the municipality building where they meet in the afternoons. What they are looking for is help to find markets to sell their products in. That should be easy. Yeah right, what the hell do I know about Peruvian artisan markets?

In total, there about 20 something volunteers that live in various places in Cajamarca. There are 8 more from Peru 9 that are going to be joining the group. Here is a group photo of all us, and our regional PC coordinator Jose.

After all the excitement we had a big lunch and celebrated for the rest of the day. Hundreds of pictures were taken including this one of Alfredo (SB leader), Andrew, Ivan (the small business trainers) and I. Andrew is one of the most interesting and accomplished people I have ever met in my life. Him and his Peruvian/American wife met years ago in passing in Peace Corps in Tunsania, Africa. He speaks English, Spanish, Arabic and who knows what else fluently. Over the last 10 years, he has done relief work all over the world after every major natural disaster. Talk about career counselor for me huh? Well, while working for the PC he was also working for the United Nations. He was recently offered and he accepted a new job in Geneva, Switzerland. From what I understand it’s an amazing opportunity and something he couldn’t pass up. We just found out Monday, so even though I am extremely sad to see him go, I guess I’m happy for him. Andrew, you’re going to hook me up with a job doing humanitarian work for the UN someday right? Don’t forget me!

Anyway, Sunday night the whole Cajamarca group leaves together to go to our site visits for the week. There we will meet our counterparts and host families and start to learn about what we will be doing for the next two years. Then we come back for two more weeks of training and then finally we swear in!

Ahhhhhh, San Miguel…. Here I come!!!!