Ancash: Field Base Training

Alright I am finally back from my field base training in Ancash. If you want to know everything I did, prepare for a long and entertaining read.
First let me give details about Ancash: Ancash is a department (kinda like a state) north of Lima (where I am now). Ancash is mostly mountains…to be exact, the Andes Mountains. In the morning and late at night it usually stays pretty dang cold, but in the afternoon it’s warm. Keep in mind I am already close to the equator and being an extra 10,000 ft up calls for more sun. In the late afternoon it sprinkles for about 10 minutes and then just stays cloudy. In many areas of Ancash the people not only speak Spanish, but Quechan too. Quecha is the language traditional to the Incans and actually, some of the older people don’t even speak Spanish. Ok now let’s dive into my Ancash experience!

Tuesday and Wednesday:
I got out of class early to go home and pack. I was already mostly done so I spent my day with Rigel in the park. After he walked me home I spent time with the family until Nate and Kelsey came to get me for the taxi ride to the Lima bus station. While in the cab we almost got into 4 wrecks. FYI: In Peru cabs/taxis don’t have meters…you negotiate the price in advance. Therefore, when you are in the cab, he hauls ass to get you there so he can find his next victim. Your driver will drive on sidewalks, run lights, and even go around the cars who are stopped at lights, but by golly if you aren’t killed in route you will get there as fast as humanly possible.
All of Peru 16 Health climbed aboard a nice double decker bus for our 10 hour ride to Ancash. There was a movie, food and a drink. The seats were comfortable and reclined well too. We left Lima around 10:30PM and arrived at Ancash around 6AM. The bust drove in an “S” shape the entire way climbing higher and higher up the mountains. I don’t know if you have ever tried to pee in a bus driving in an “S” shape up a mountain, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You might as well pee on yourself. Once we got there we all had breakfast and relaxed a little in the park. I found a little Quecha lady with a llama and had to get a picture with her. Then we all boarded another bus for a 3 hour drive to our final destination. On the way we climbed higher into the mountains and even stopped to take a few pics. There was another lady with a llama and a 3 day old lamb! The mountains look like cupcakes sprinkled with rocks.
We finally got to Chavín and went to our hostel. I stayed with Brit and Nichole. Our toilet doesn’t flush, but the room seems nice! After lunch we went to these ruins that actually predate the Incas all the way to 800 B.C. They were pretty interesting and beautiful with the mountains behind them. We were able to go in and around all of them while it thundered a little.

Thursday:
Breakfast was bright and early at 7:30AM and we had strawberry jam and butter with bread. There was also juice and coffee with milk to drink. I loved the coffee to the point that I had 3 cups. Peru is making me a coffee drinker. After that we loaded up and headed to a volunteers current site a little outside of Chavín. We had a combi with 20 people and we were headed to the top of another mountain. Two different times we had to get out of the combi and walk part of the way because it was so steep and the road was so little (and we were top heavy). At one point our combi even started rolling backwards…that was interesting. No one wants to fall off of a mountain in a combi! The school we went too sits at 11,000 ft, but yesterday while driving we hit an area of 15,000ft. At the school we did socio dramas in three groups with the kids and performed them for everyone. Before my lunch got there me and 8 other gringos played soccer against the kids and it was awesome. The main problem was the altitude because we would run 15 steps and be out of breath. Plus it felt like we were playing on a ray of the sun. I haven’t had altitude sickness, but I did get a tan in five minutes tops.
After lunch we rounded up what kids were left and started to paint a mural for HIV/AIDS. The picture was a giant white hand with the red ribbon in the middle and handprints all around it. It turned out really well, but we had a hard time getting the paint off our hands. For dinner we could go where we wanted and I headed with a group to this little restaurant that seemed to have almost everything. I had two sandwiches of cheese and two with jam. I also had coca tea, which I should explain. Coca tea is made from coca leaves…which are used to make cocaine. The tea is really good for your stomach and altitude sickness and it tastes really well too. You can also chew on the leaves to help as well and if you do that, you can make your mouth numb. Also while eating dinner a cat came into the restaurant and pooped under Juliet’s chair. After dinner we learned how to make super cute wallets out of empty juice boxes. It is super easy and fun. Once I was done with that I went back to my room and took a HOT shower. It was the best feeling ever! It’s really the little things in life. I pooped in a toilet that flushed (it’s fixed now), used toilet paper AND had a hot shower. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Friday:
Breakfast was the same as yesterday, but we went to a different community about an hour away in the opposite direction. This time we built latrines!! My house was a 40 minute walk up the mountain in the middle of a forest. We had to climb up walls of dirt, hop over creeks and try to dodge all the animal crap in the path. The hole was already dug and there weren’t many tools so we all took turns. First we had to level the area around the hole so we could put the base down. It was fun to finally get down and dirty, but I didn’t realize how long it could take to even build a latrine. The mother of the guy we were building for fixed us lunch and it was an ok meal. If there would have been 50 less flies then it might have been more relaxing to eat. I didn’t eat too much because considering they didn’t even have a bathroom I wasn’t sure how the food is prepared so I didn’t want to chance getting sick. Then after all that I had to pee and since we were building the bathroom I went out in the field to take care of business like a real Peruvian! After lunch we hiked down the mountain to help another group with their “shit pit” as we started calling it. There were too many of us so my group was able to lay back and watch the pigs have sex. There are only so many ways to keep entertained while in the Andes Mountains. I took another hot shower and it was yet again, it was amazing. I can’t tell if I am tan or it’s just a mix of dirt and dust. I think it’s both. Our friend Michael had to stay with me, Brit and Nichole because he was sexiled. I won’t go into detail, but we had a girl’s night!! Haha.
Saturday:
We left the hotel at 5:30AM to go to another community called Huantar that is yet again, on top of another mountain. I’ve decided that driving up or down a mountain here is basically like a rollercoaster ride. There is rapid speed, on one side of the car is a cliff and you are packed inside the combi too. The road is usually gravel too which allows for the car to slide around…lots of adventure. Once we arrived in the city we split into groups of two and went with local health promoters to head to four houses and check out how their cocinas mejorades (health kitchens) were working. We were making sure they were keeping animals out of the kitchen, organizing their pots, pans and dishes and keeping all things neat and clean. Two of the houses I went too didn’t have anyone there, but the other two did and their kitchens were perfect. One lady served us this stuff called mazamora de trigo which is like a wheat soup with water and sugar. It was sooooo good. I can’t wait to learn how to make it. It made my stomach feel so good. On a side note: I think there were bugs in my bed last night because I woke up with four new bites that itch like crazy. Anyway, you have to make the site visits early because around 8 or 9 in the morning everyone leaves to go and work in their field and they don’t return until 8 or 9 at night.
After breakfast we went to a guy’s house and to help him build his health kitchen. He was in the process of building his house so we had to level the room the kitchen was going to be in. We cleared the trash, leveled the floor and started building. In the back of his house he has a place for the barro. Barro is a mud/dirt mixed with water and mule poop. Every now and then you add sugar and salt so the sun doesn’t dry it out. We used the already adobe made bricks and stuck them together with the barro. It’s hard to explain the whole process, but you used your hands for it all. We finished almost everything except the chimney and the top part which has to dry first. It was pretty fun and I think Will and I were the best “shit shovelers” there were. We gave each other “crappy” high fives a lot. For lunch we headed to the plaza and I had some star fruit/chitimoya (a green fruit here) ice cream for desert. One lick of mine and the whole thing hit the ground. Michael licked some of it off the ground, but I just went to buy more. Once we got back to Chavín we loaded up again to head back to Huaraz. This was the worst drive of my life because I was sitting in the back. I never get car sickness and I never got altitude sickness, but the ride was so bumpy and weavy I thought I was going to get sick. With each bump I wasn’t sure if I was going to vomit or poop my pants. Luckily neither happened by the time we got to our hostel. About 25 of us went to this bar/restaurant for food and drinks. It was an awesome bar because they had flags hung everywhere and lots of classic rock posters and music playing. Justin, Josh and I had a Hawaiian pizza with a coca sour. A coca sour is like a pisco sour, but with coca. A pisco sour is like a margarita with eggs so the coca sour was the same thing, but with a coca flavor and coca leaves in it.

Sunday…Halloween:
We had breakfast on our own today and we left the hostel at 730AM for an unknown destination. They decided to make today’s adventure a surprise, but they warned us we would get dirty and to bring more clothes. We all decided it would either be a mass baptism, water park or snow-boarding. We drove back up into the mountains and on the way encountered a few problems. First, the road was made for one car at a time and we ended up meeting another car who had to reverse all the way until we could squeeze by on this cliff. Every time we went around a corner our bus blew the horn as loud as he could to warn other cars if they were close so we didn’t crash. I don’t get scared of heights or anything, but this road was so little and so high up…and we were going so fast I was a little nervous at times. We finally got to this house and we all unloaded and went to sit in this area made for us. A man name Oscar and a woman (forgot her name) had us sit around and take our shoes and socks off. They basically talked about finding our “inner selves” and being spiritual and how to be leaders and still trust others. It was interesting, but I didn’t take too much away from it. We learned how to hug properly which is heart to heart and then they put us in groups and blindfolded us. We took turns in our groups on who was leading the rest of the group around the house area blindfolded and barefooted. We weren’t allowed to talk, but only make noises. It was weird. Then we had to cross this tiny piece of tree over a mud pit blindfolded and barefooted. It was symbolic of going from the USA to Peru and etc etc. I liked all of this, but I was sleepy and hungry. Then we all got in the mud pit and had our partners lead us around the mud pit blindfolded. Everyone was laughing hysterically at me because I was so short the mud came up to my mid thigh. We had lunch there and then washed all the mud off. One of the rooms our stuff was in had a wild tarantula spider. I almost threw up at the site of that thing. We drove back and then went to get dinner at the same place again before heading to the bus station for Lima. We left Ancash at 10:30PM and I ended up getting back to my house at 7:30AM. Happy Halloween.