Letting off some steam

Every month, the Peace Corps hosts a regional meeting for volunteers to attend. While the meetings are optional for more seasoned volunteers, the newbies are required to go for their first three months. These meetings are usually held within a regional capital and serve as a chance for volunteers to share their work, ideas, and obstacles amongst their peers and regional advisors. They are also opportunities for us to further our training, since there could be discussions concerning how to build latrines, write community diagnostics, etc. Knowing this, when I went for my first regional meeting for Lima, Ica, and Huancavelica (affectionately acronymed LICAH), I came. Toting notebooks and pencil in hand, I sat down and was ready to take notes on some sort of tech-heavy lecture.

Nope.

As soon as the meeting started, all of the new volunteers were bombarded with gifts. The older volunteers had divided themselves into groups based on their provinces, and each group gifted us something that helped them survive their first three months in site. I received everything from boxed wine to huge stocks of toilet paper to decadent chocolate. It felt like Christmas. After the introductions were finished and the social buzzing lulled back down, we moved on to the agenda. World AIDS Day was December 1^st, and many of the volunteers had organized awareness campaigns and events within their towns. We were set to spend a majority of meeting discussing the details and activities of these events. Now that I was fully energized from the several pounds of chocolate I had just eaten, I went back to my seat, ready to take notes. This is more or less how the meeting went:

“So, how was your World AIDS Day?”

“It was great! We gave out T-shirts, did lots of activities, included our health center, and had great participation.”

“Did you think it was a success?”

“Yes a great success.”

“Great! Meeting adjourned! Now let’s go party.”

Pardon?

As I got hauled out of my chair and carried off to a house party, I stammered something incredibly nerdy-sounding about note taking and training. Without missing a beat, one of the volunteers turned around and said, “Lyndsey, you need to understand something. It’s true that the LICAH group has a representation of being a bit wild and crazy. Our motto is, ‘Work hard, party hard.’ And for good reason. We have spent a month working our asses off in the God-forsaken middle of nowhere in Peru. These regional meetings are a chance for us to finally let loose and blow off some steam. If you don’t take advantage of this opportunity, connect with your fellow Peace Corps peers, and give yourself the chance to have some fun, you will go bat-shit crazy in site.”

Fair enough.

So, for the rest of the evening I played dizzy bat, cheered jello shots, and binged on good-‘ol fashioned chili and guacamole. When the house party came to a close, it was time for a bar. We went to a local favorite, a very relaxed, chill pisco bar that was equipped with an endless supply of board games. I had a wonderful time laughing, dancing, socializing, and failing miserably in Jenga with my new support group for the next two years. It was a ton of fun. However, I just couldn’t keep up. Around 3:00 AM, I finally had to bail and was amongst the first wave of people to head back to the hotel. Absolutely exhausted, I crashed sometime between 3:30-4:00.

The next morning my site mates and I had brunch with two other Huancavelica alums at a nearby café and enjoyed a rare luxury: americanos and chocolate croissants. We were heading out around 12:30 when we got a call from the LICAH group again.

“Good afternoon! Where are you?”

“….uh, just finishing up brunch.”

“Great! Well, we’re in a bar. Come over when you’re ready, ok?”

Good Lord.

After giving ourselves a couple more hours to recuperate, we went over to another bar to meet up for some more fun. Let me just say, the LICAH gang is great. They are extremely friendly, warm-hearted and just plain fun. At the end of the night, I realized just how much of a lifesaver these meetings were going to be for me. I hadn’t realized how much tension I had accumulated just after two weeks of being in site, but believe me it was there. I was able to just let go, and simply enjoy the fact that I was young, in Peru, and having the adventure of a lifetime. And, as a new friend pointed out to me, “This group of people are going to be with you in the good times and bad. No matter what happens, you will never be judged by anyone here and you won’t have to explain yourself. We will understand. My dad was a Peace Corps Volunteer and the friends he made within his region have become his lifetime friends. Trust me, we’re here to stay.”

Who could ask for more than that? 

Day one

When I first arrived in Aurahua, my new hometown for the next two years, my entrance wasn’t exactly glorious. I came in the middle of the night, burdened with suitcases, furniture, and mattresses to furnish my room. We had already dropped off and moved in Nathan and Jeannie and, when it was finally my turn, it was past 9:00 at night. People get up really early in my town, so naturally they go to bed early as well. When we pulled up to my house, everyone was asleep. Not exactly the dramatic entrance I had in mind, but at least I had survived our gigantic shopping spree in Chincha and made it across the swerving, bumpy dirt road to my new home in one piece.

The next day I greeted my rather surprised homestay family and enjoyed breakfast with them. Because I had originally told them that I would arrive in the afternoon, they thought something had gone wrong and I wasn’t arriving. Nope! As you’ll learn very quickly in the Peace Corps, plans never go the way you want them to. When 8:00 rolled around, I quickly headed to our local health center, which is located about two blocks away from my house. A week or so earlier, when I first visited my site, I had made a schedule with some of my new socios (vocab lesson: socio = a work counterpart). We had made a day-by-day plan where they would gradually show me around town and introduce me to anyone important. I was eager to start, since, according to the calendar we had made, today I was supposed to go to the municipality and meet the mayor.

When I walked into the health center for the first time, I could tell immediately that my socios had forgotten about me. Again, because I didn’t arrive exactly when I was supposed to, I think they thought I had chickened out and wasn’t actually coming. Fishing for something to have me do, they instead sent me in a pickup truck to visit the caserios (caserio = a small satellite town). It wasn’t exactly what was on the schedule, but I wasn’t going to complain. My site has around 15 caserios, and most of them are about 1-2 hours walking distance away. Most of the health needs are concentrated in these caserios, so it’s very likely I’ll be doing lots of work in these towns. A visit, especially one in a car (a rare commodity where I live), would be very practical.

Things started off well. We visited about three caserios, and the third one in particular, Antacancha, had a lot of promise. I was able to meet with some of the community leaders, and they explained how they were currently trying to a community biogarden. When they learned that I had been trained in how to cultivate and plan these gardens, everyone got really excited. My first day and I’m already finding projects to do! Everything started to look great until we got to Chocoro, a caserio about 1 hour away from Aurahua, As we started to get back into the car to head to the next caserio, we were flagged down by a technician from the Cochamarca health post. She informed us that there was a woman giving birth to twins and the second baby was breached and not moving. The local ambulance had broken down, and they had to use our truck to get the woman to the Aurahua health center. I was quickly escorted to the woman’s house, where we found her laid on top of a wool blanket. We used it as a mock-stretcher and helped carry her into the backseat of the car as she screamed and cried. Thankfully there was a local obstetrician there too. I felt lost. Even though I was wearing scrubs, I had no idea how to handle the situation and felt completely useless. So, I cautiously approached the obstetritan and asked how else I could help. No sooner had the words left my mouth, she turned and shouted, “TAKE THIS!” and handed me a damp bundle. Rather dumbfounded, I looked inside and was greeted by a freshly born, still goopy baby girl.

Jesus Christ.

I am not a baby person. I don’t know how to interact with them. I don’t know to talk to them. Hell, I don’t even know how to HOLD them properly, and now here I am in a crisis situation in the middle of nowhere in Peru with a very, VERY recently born baby girl. I tried to remember everything I had every heard about proper baby-holding. Ok, I thought, just support the head. I know they can’t hold up their head, so just keep the neck stable. Keep the neck stable. Keep the neck stable. Keep…

Well, let me tell you, that was harder said than done. We drove to Aurahua as fast as we could, which was not exactly a smooth, gentle ride. We’re in the middle of the mountains, so the roads were extremely curvy. Also, there are no paved roads. Imagine the bumpiest, rockiest, most pothole ridden rode you’ve ever driven on and you’ll start to get a picture of what the roads are like here. As we were jostled around the car, I did my best to keep the baby safe without dashing its brains out on the window shield or smother it in its own blanket. However, my discomfort was nothing compared to the woman in the backseat. She was tossed all over the place, even thought the technician and the obstetrician were doing their best to keep her stable. I couldn’t exactly blame her for crying and moaning in pain the whole way.

We were about 3/4ths of the way there when the obstetrician shouted that we had run out of time and we had to stop the car immediately. As I watched in horror, she reached up inside the woman and turned the baby. The woman than gave birth to baby #2 in the backseat of the pickup truck.

Let me just reiterate that again. She gave birth. Right behind me. In a truck.

A TRUCK.

Also note: I was that kid that always closed my eyes during the scarring "Miracle of Life" videos they showed during wellness class. Now, here I was listening to all the sound effects and watching a baby born not two feet away from me. In a truck. 

When the baby was finally held up, my heart sank to my stomach. The little girl was cyanotic and blue as ice. I wanted to be sick, to be anywhere else but that car, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away. I watched as they tried to resuscitate the baby ON TOP OF THE MOTHER, pushing on her little chest and trying to pull fluid out of her nose with a plunger. I watched as the mother stared at the roof of the car, knowing that her newborn daughter was lying on top of her and not breathing. I looked at the other baby on my arms, knowing that one of the first things she was seeing was her dead sister in the backseat. It took every fiber of my willpower to not throw-up or break out in sobs.

Realizing that there was nothing else we could do, we restarted the car and drove as fast as we could to Aurahua. As we sped trough the mountain passes, all I could think about was my own life and birth. Why was I lucky enough to be born in a hospital, under the dedicated care of my parents and a full-fledged medical staff, while this little girl didn’t? Why was she never given a chance? Why life so unfair? And why was God showing me this? What was I possibly supposed to learn from witnessing something so tragic and horrible? What was the point of it all? I wasn’t ready for this. This isn’t what I signed up for.

After what seemed like ages, we finally made it to the Aurahua health center. We were very lucky that our own obstetrician was working that day and was in the office. As we skidded to a stop, we all piled out of the car and carried both babies and the mother inside to the birthing room. Aurahua is equipped with infant oxygen tanks, so the staff began re-administering CPR to the cyanotic girl. Then a miracle occurred – the baby actually started breathing and crying. Both little girls, and the mother too, lived.

Needless to say, I was quite freaked out.

Doing my best not to pass out and lose all self-control, I quietly excused myself and crawled back to my room. After staring at a wall for about 10 minutes in a semi-comatose state, I picked up my cell phone and called one of my program directors. After sobbing over the phone and explaining everything that happened, I made him promise – no, SWEAR upon everything that he held dear and holy – that what I had just gone through was not a typical day and would never happen again.

When I had significantly calmed down, I started to think back on what I had just seen. Again, I kept wondering why, exactly, God had put me in that car and made we witness something so traumatic on my first day. One of the Peace Corps goals within the health program is to focus on mothers with children under 3 years-old and teen mothers. Due to my insecurity with mothers and my own personal discomfort around small kids, I had sort of tried to sidestep this goal and figure out ways to avoid working with this at-risk group.

Not anymore.

If anything is to be learned from this experience, it’s the dire need for mothers to be the center of attention. I feel as if I’ve been shown a very clear picture as to why I’m here and what I need to focus on.

Now it’s time to get to work. 

I swear I'm still alive

Greetings everyone and sorry for the VERY long delay in posting. If you’re still with me and reading this blog, you’ve probably wondered why I haven’t said a word in a very long time. Well, first of all things have been rather busy. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, when I returned from FBT a couple of weeks ago we were unable to head back to Chaclacayo and stay with our homestay families. Instead, we all piled into a retreat center and lived together. I was without my computer, so communication with you all was rather impossible. We were all rather depressed that we were unable to return to our homes, but in many ways this was a perfect way to end our preservice training. In our first week in Peru, we stayed at this very same retreat center. So, in a way it was like a full circle. And, we were all together. Knowing that we were all going to be separated and sent to our sites very soon, it was nice to have one last opportunity where all the volunteers could hang out together. 

Secondly, the end of November was busy with holiday fun. We had a Thanksgiving amongst the volunteers, so we were running around like crazy trying to buy food supplies and scrounge up pots, pans, and ovens to make our American meal. It all turned out beautifully, but I was up till 2:00AM trying to finish a huge batch of cookies and a fruit salad. Thanksgiving for us was really quite special. Even thought the cooking was stressful, the meal itself was wonderful. Since it was going to be a Thanksgiving potluck lunch, everyone needed to cook or bring something. Can you imagine how hard it would be to find enough work- and oven-space for 57 people? In the end we had a HUGE spread of food, complete with turkey. It was delicious and I ate way too much. That same evening we threw a farewell party for our host families. We had a slideshow of fun photos, a talent show, and a small meal prepared for them. I (tearfully) said goodbye to my wonderful host family for two months and got ready to head to Lima. That same night we all left Chaclacayo for the city and stayed in a hostel. The next morning we dressed in our nicest clothes and headed to the US ambassador’s house. Since we all passed our final exams, we were going to be sworn in as official Peace Corps Volunteers. The ceremony itself was quite lovely and afterwards we had a nice, formal party the patio. Afterwards, we went to our country director’s house for the afterparty. There was music, and outdoor BBQ, and lots of crazy dancing. After that was the after-afterparty in a bar in Lima, but we won’t go there.

The third reason why I have been so incommunicado is because I’ve been living in site, which has no internet, for the past two weeks. So, we’re going to have to work out a different schedule for updating this blog. Since the nearest city with internet is 6-7 hours away by bus, the frequency of updates is going to drop dramatically. I won’t be posting every week like I did in Lima. Instead, I’ll keep writing posts and collectively post them every month. Moral of the story: stay tuned! I will definitely keep writing and letting you know what’s going on in my little remote corner of Peru. Keep in touch!