Aaaaand...Arequipa! Beginning with FONDESURCO:

So, we arrived in Arequipa. It wasn't a really long stay, only a couple of days. We arrived Sunday morning, June 8, around 10 am. After arriving at our hotel, we freshened up a bit, got ready for church, and headed out to find a ward. A taxi driver knew where one was, and we got there at 11. I thought we'd probably make it right on time for a ward, but it turns out the ward started at 10, so we had missed sacrament meeting. But we were able to make it for the rest of the meeting.
On Monday, we met with Luís García, the Freedom from Hunger employee here in Peru, and we headed over to the FONDESURCO office. FONDESURCO is a non-governmental organization based here in Arequipa that provides loans to people with less requirements than many other institutions, and has fairly competitive rates compared with others. FONDESURCO is not yet a partner of Freedom from Hunger, as PRISMA was, and so we are doing a market research study so that they can expand their client base and know more about the communities that they serve. There at their office, we laid out a plan for the next few weeks: we were heading out to Juliaca for the rest of that week, then coming back to Arequipa to meet with FONDESURCO staff to head out to Valle de Tambo for a week, and the week after that we'd head to the Valle de Colca. So we made some more plans about how we were going to carry out the market research study that we had planned. In each area, we were going to do 24 focus groups (later reduced to 16, since we realized that we had overplanned) in various cities of the community. It was a little bit staggering when I realized how many we were to do, since in about two weeks with PRISMA we had only done 10 focus groups total, and I had only been present for a little over half of them. Focus groups are great tools, but require a lot of work to talk about everything. So we were planning on 24 in four days, three different times. The focus groups that we had planned were different from the ones I described with PRISMA. Those two were Seasonality and Well-Being Pile Sorting, the first of which was a calendar of when they experienced shortages of food, seasons of sickness, seasons of savings, and of migration in or out of their communities, and the second of which had them divide the people in their community into classes, and then describe each class according to their relative wealth and status, as well as type of food, type of work, etc. The three we had planned for the market study with FONDESURCO are a Seasonality calendar (different), a Financial Services Matrix, and an Analysis of Incomes and Expenditures in the home. The first is a more extensive calendar of the seasonality of their expenditures, income, migration, loans, and money sent home from members living in other parts. The calendar helps us understand the reality and the lives of the people in each community. The second tool is a matrix of what financial services are available in each area, and what kinds of people have access to those services. And the third tool helps us understand what kinds of work are available in each area and who (between men and women) does the work for each kind of work, and then an analysis of what kind of expenditures they have during their year and who in the family is responsible for saving for each kind of expenditure, and who takes charge of what expense. So, with these three tools, we boarded a bus on Tuesday morning and headed out towards Juliaca.

The drive, as we climbed into the Andes mountains once again, was really beautiful. The climate was quite dry looking, but it was still very interesting.

Lima, Numbah 2

As I said in the last post, we spent a week in Lima. We spent the first few days compiling findings and then presented a preliminary report on Thursday to PRISMA. They were interested in what we had found about their clients.

While we were in Lima, Cam Nelson took a trip to Bolivia to visit the other 8 students there. So It was Carly, Chelsea, and myself that hung out together in Lima for the week. I can't say that Lima is one of my favorite cities...I think it's rather dirty, to be honest. And it's so big that I had a hard time trying to find things. I was able to get my general bearings, but I just don't like cities that are so big that the ends just aren't in sight. They're fun to look at, but I don't think I'd want to live in one.

To entertain ourselves, we went to two movies that week. We saw Indiana Jones: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Narnia: Prince Caspian. The former we saw in English, because they showed it in both languages, depending on the time. The latter we watched in Spanish, because certain of us didn't want to wait for the later time when it would be in English. Agreed, sitting around for more than an hour isn't too fun. Nor is getting lost in a city while the boy of the group thinks he knows how to get back to the hotel (no, I'm not referring to my own experience...). But I still hold that I'd rather watch a movie for the first time in English, cause I'd rather hear the real voices of the people and be able to understand all the nuances. I speak Spanish just fine, and understood the movie just fine, but there's something about watching a movie in your own language that just makes it more...palatable. Or some other more fitting word. Even so, seeing the movies was fun. Also, we bought Papa John's pizza twice that week. Delicious.

On Saturday, we were to board a bus to Arequipa at 7 pm. Having all day, we met up with a woman that we met the first time we were in Lima 3 weeks before, who was an acquaintance of Cam Nelson. Her name is Charo (Rosario), and she is super nice. She walked around the city with us and we took a tour bus to a lookout called the Cerro de San Cristobal. (It wasn't a very clear day and the picture doesn't do any sort of justice to what Lima looks like. Except that there is a lot of smog...very often...).She also took us to her house and fed us lunch, which was really good rotisserie chicken. Granted, she didn't cook it, but she did cook the rice that she brought out, and I'll never understand how South Americans can make their rice so good. Maybe it's the rice. Or the water they use. But I ate a lot of their rice.

So, Lima was great. Saturday night, June 7, we boarded a bus for Arequipa.

La Merced

Strangely, despite how long winded I can be when I try to recount stories, I have found it difficult to sit down and wind out these stories here on my blog. And thus, I find myself 4 weeks behind! So let's get some catching up done today, shall we?

After our adventures in Jauja, Chelsea and I met up with Cam and Carly in La Merced, a city about 3 hours north of where we were, and in the jungle. The area wasn't rural as everywhere previous had been, so it was exciting to see something different.We arrived on a Friday, and spent the evening catching up with our partners, who we hadn't seen for about 9 days, and then on Saturday we took the day off from work (we had finished everything needed!) and slept in a little. In the afternoon we took a trip out to see some waterfalls, which was beautiful. On our way there, we got some gas from a local "gas station." It took about an hour to get to the small town where you change directions and head to the waterfalls, and when there, we began walking. We must've passed 7 or 8 people who said that we'd need to take rides, but we kept on a-walkin'. Then, about 10 minutes up the road (and past the toll station, who also told us we'd need to take taxis), we finally decided that we really wouldn't make it with enough time to spare (it was about 3 pm and it gets dark from 5:30 to 6 pm), so Cam Nelson ran back and found 2 mototaxis to take us up. Meanwhile Chelsea, Carly, and I kept walking on the trail. Chelsea got hungry, and despite me pointing out real fruit, she couldn't wait.Cam and the mototaxis finally caught up with us, and it did take a while to drive to the waterfalls. The mototaxi that Chelsea and I were riding wasn't doing so well, the chain was falling off the gear. But we finally arrived, and had about an hour and a half to look at the waterfalls. Before we walked up to the first one, I noticed an older woman in a hut with some items to sell. Even more, I noticed that she had a parrot on each shoulder. So I walked over to her to take a picture and then noticed that additionally, she was missing an eye. I still wanted the picture, so I bought some cookies from her, thinking that it would be more likely that she'd say yes. Well, failure. I guess understandably so. She probably gets asked by a lot of people. But we thought it was cool that we met a "pirate." In the jungle. That has probably never been on the ocean. Anywho, we then walked up to the first "cataratas" (isn't that a fun word?), and they were pretty.
Chelsea, Carly, and I got in the water and swam around a bit, though Cam stayed aloof. Thankfully, I haven't yet contracted any tropical diseases. I think.
Then we went on down to the lower waterfall, called the Velo de la Novia, or Bridal Veil Falls. I thought that was great, since we're students that live in Provo, and Bridal Veil Falls is just up the canyon. The light was fading, and so my camera wanted to take pictures with flash, but they were no good. So here's the best shot that I took with my oh-so-steady hands.
All in all, it was a good trip into the jungle. First time for me, really. On Sunday, we attended church in La Merced and then had a quiet afternoon in the hotel. I also got to call my family on Skype, and it was great to talk to them. Monday morning, we hopped on a bus and headed back to Lima, where we spent the next few days compiling a preliminary report on our findings for PRISMA.

Por fin...

I have recently been able to get my pictures off my camera and uploaded here to my blog, so I added them to my previous posts. Check 'em out! Also, here are the 4 of us on the team. This picture was taken in front of the Lima Temple the first week we were here in Peru. From left to right: Carly Chambers, Chelsea Brothers, myself, and Cameron Nelson.

Jauja

We started on Jauja, our third city, on Monday, May 26 during the day. It's about 45 minutes north of Huancayo. We returned to Huancayo to finish that evening, then moved up to Jauja on Tuesday to stay for a few days. Jauja was interesting...the work has progressed just fine, but we've had a couple of interesting experiences, especially Wednesday night and Thursday. First, our hotel (if we want to call it that) said it had hot water, but we found it to be a lucky moment if the water was turned on at all. Second of all, the shower had no curtain and was rather ghetto looking to begin with. I just won't let anyone in on the fact that I didn't shower for two days because of that... I took a video with my camera...

This is a picture of my door at our second hotel. So, different hotel, but amusing just the same.

Some of our typical transportation in the city.

Or outside the city. They're both motorcycles, or at least the front half. The back part has a seat for 2 (or 3, squished).

Our adventures continued when we went out to a city about 30 minutes away last night, and didn't find the woman because she wasn't home. And this is after we hiked out into the countryside for 15 minutes. So we trekked back and then went to a city on the way back to Jauja called Huertas, and began looking for a woman there. (It was dark by the time we got there, and usually we try to finish up by dark, though it's tricky since they don't do daylight savings time here and it's dark by 6:00 pm.) No one in the small city plaza knew who it was, but one man volunteered to take us to look for her and her street. After walking about 20 minutes away from the main road, we arrived at a smaller plaza where there were some more people. No one there knew who the woman was that we were looking for either, but our friend rode his bike off the the home of someone in the community who knew most everyone. Meanwhile, I called our PRISMA contact in Jauja to ask, and he said, "Oh, you'll never find her by yourselves." I then wondered why on earth he told me earlier that day that I could find her that afternoon... When our friend came back, he still didn't have information about the woman, but said that there was someone else by the same last name, so we could check there. So after another 10 minutes of walking (away from the main road), we knocked on the house, and it so happened that the woman that answered was the one we were looking for! So it was a stroke of good luck. After we finished the survey, however, we realized how dark it was at 7:40 there, and we were also startled by a man who began approaching us. It turned out that he was really only going to the house that we had just left, but we hurried down the street anyway, watching our backs. After wandering in the direction of the main road, but only finding roads darker than we wanted, we changed directions and walked until we found a small store. The woman there gave us directions to the main road, where we could grab a car back to Jauja. I asked her if there was any danger to walking there at 8 pm, and she said, "No, not until at least 9 or 10." My slight worry was not soothed... But in the end, we did make it back to the road and then to Jauja without a problem. In Jauja I dropped the dozen or so rocks that I had put into my sweatshirt pocket just in case of something unexpected. :)

The next adventure I shall mention is simply that my partner Chelsea didn't feel all so well on Thursday, and ended up losing her lunch (actually, the one from the day before) while we were interviewing a PRISMA client. Fortunately, he was very understanding and helpful!

We were able to finish up Jauja Friday morning. Which reminds me of one more story I could mention: our PRISMA contact in Jauja, while very nice, was also a bit of a flake with time. Thursday, we were supposed to meet at 6:30 am at our hotel to head out to 3 cities, where we had a food security survey (15 min) in one and an in-depth interview (45 min) in each of the others, and José (the contact) had said himself that we should get there early in order to catch them before they went out to their chacras (fields). Well, at 6:40, I called José and he said he was on his way. At 7:15, he rolls up and asks if we're ready to go. "Yes, quite," we think to ourselves. So we headed out. We ended up only finding two of the clients and only having time to do the short survey with each of them. One of them said, "If you had come earlier, I would've had plenty of time for the interview!" Yeah, I know. We didn't find the other man we were looking for because he had already left for his chacra. Such is life! But the story continues. We invited José to eat lunch three times: once Wednesday and twice on Thursday, and he skipped out each time either to play soccer or eat somewhere else. Oh well, his loss! And lastly, we were to meet at the PRISMA office in Jauja at 9:45 am on Friday to go meet a group of clients at 10:00 and do our last focus group for the Jauja area. José was a no show. So we got the city location and the names of the clients from the receptionist, and headed off on our own. We found the city, and fortunately the group as well, without too much trouble. We introduced ourselves and asked them if we could have a discussion with them as they waited for José, who was already 30 minutes late. They were happy to start. We had a wonderful discussion and then shared some refreshments with them, and then said goodbye and good luck at 11:45. José's whereabouts were still unknown. If anyone knows exactly how Peruvian time works, do let me know! Though the client group seemed to like the "on-time" idea...

Anyway, that's it for Jauja. Here are a couple of pictures.
The first is of the church in the main square of Jauja. To the right you can see a yellow sign. That was our first hotel.
Here is some landscape a little ways outside of Jauja, but a typical small town in rural Peru, and a typical plant of the area.

This is a pile of charcoal burning, and they cook a food called Pachamanca in there. I never actually tried it, but people said it was great.

Huancayo

Thursday (May 22) morning we made our way back to Huancayo, and then that day we split into teams of two. Chelsea and I stayed in Huancayo while Cam and Carly headed out to Tarma, about two hours north. And the work continued. Things went really well for us in Huancayo, and we got a good deal done very quickly. Also, our professor Roger Dixon arrived Thursday and was with us for about two days. He accompanied us while we surveyed and interviewed people on Friday afternoon, and was able to make it to a focus group the next morning as well.

We nearly finished by Saturday around noon, so we took the rest of the day to rest and went and did some shopping in a nearby artisan market. I got a beanie and gloves with llamas on them! Also, a nice colorful scarf. Monday we coordinated with the PRISMA director of the Huancayo area, and were able to finish everyone we needed that evening. Probably the most interesting experience we had here was eating guinea pig on Sunday... One of the women that we interviewed asked us to come eat dinner at her house, so we did. She had a small farm and raised, among other things, cuy (guinea pigs). It tasted a bit like rabbit, which I had occasionally in Spain in paellas.

Also, we made good friends with a taxi driver, because we used him 4 days in a row, and some of the trips were several hours. I told him he was officially a PRISMA expert, or at least an expert at looking for people that are difficult to find! We did a few more interviews on Monday evening, after we had spent the afternoon in the next city, Jauja, getting a jump start there. Overall, things went fairly smoothly and we learned a good deal. Here's a photo of some landscape of the Valle de Mantaro, where Huancayo is situated.

Pampas

Pampas is a smaller town situated in a small valley in the northern part of the Huancavelica province. We arrived on Monday morning, May 19, and got to work right away and found a few of the short surveys in the afternoon. In the evening, we travelled to a small town on the other side of the mountain range and did another one. We took these pictures on the way there. It was a steeeep mountainside!

The next day, we woke up at 4:00 am to travel to a couple of towns about 2 hours away where we had approximately 8 short surveys and 2 longer interviews. So we left at 4:30 and arrived at the first town around 6:15. We split into teams of two, and one of the girls and I went to survey one woman while the others went to another. After the survey, I walked a few feet away from the house and saw a vast valley in front of us filled with clouds, and the sun was just coming over the mountains opposite us. It was breathtaking. The picture doesn't do it justice...

After we had finished the surveys, we loaded back into the car and headed off to another town where we had 5 names. Unfortunately, when we got there, not a single one of the women was there! Despite the fact that we had gotten up so early to get there before they leave for their fields! Oh well. Since we had travelled so far, we ended up surveying several other women from the same village who had also taken out loans and were in the same group. We also did two longer interviews and a focus group as well! So it was productive, even though it didn't go as planned. And even though it isn't ideal, we will use the information we gathered there. After returning to Pampas (on crazy mountainside roads) we rested and then did some more work for the rest of the day.

The next morning, Chelsea and I woke up at 5 and travelled to a town about an hour away, and high high high in the mountains (4000 m) called Pacchapata. It was very small, only around 20 people, and it was cold. There was frost everywhere. But we found the people we were looking for, so it was great.

And for the rest of Wednesday, we tried to finish up in Pampas. It didn't end up being perfect, but we did our best and it was a good first run as we got our bearings and figured out what we needed to do. Wednesday night, we went up onto a mountainside looking for a woman in a smaller village, and she never ended up arriving. But we saw the stars, and there are way more than I've seen for a long time! There's not nearly as much light pollution here, high in the Andes, so it was a brilliant sight. I'm going to try and look at the stars some more while down here.

Job description for the first few weeks

I think it would be beneficial for me to describe what it is we're doing. This applies till...tomorrow...while we're working for PRISMA. PRISMA is a Peruvian-based non-governmental organization that is a partner with Freedom from Hunger, who I'm doing my internship with along with my 3 partners: Cam Nelson, Carly Chambers, and Chelsea Brothers. PRISMA offers microcredit loans to people living in poverty so that they can use the money to start or improve their small businesses or use it for agricultural purposes. Or anything, really, but those are the main reasons. So we're out in the Junín province of Peru gathering information from these people, who are mainly women, but there are also a few men. We were asked to assess 5 cities.

What we have been doing in each city is this: we have a list of 19 women (and a few men), as well as 19 more as backups, and we are supposed to give each of them a 10 minute survey about how food-secure they are. We ask questions about if they worry about running out of food or if they've run out of food, or if they have times when they have to eat the same thing over and over or if they lose weight. Then we ask a few questions and have them describe their opinions on not having enough food and what they view in their communities about hunger and food. With four of the women, we are supposed to follow the survey with an interview that takes 20-45 minutes and is a more in-depth look at their lives. We ask them a lot of questions about things now and how things were for their mothers and what they think they'll be like for their children. We also discuss their experience as a member of PRISMA. Each of the women has already taken out a microcredit loan from PRISMA. (Honestly, there are also some men. But most of them are women.) Additionally, each woman belongs to a group, because they have to take the loan out as a group and pay it back as a group. And in each area, we need to get with two groups and do a 30-45 minute discussion with them about their community. One of the discussions talks about the different months of the year and the fluctuations of income, migration, food shortage, and illness. The other has the group members divide a pile of beans (or whatever we have) into groups representing the classes of people in their community, and then we talk about the kinds of lives the people in those groups lead.

After we visit each of the cities, we're going to review all of the information, write reports on it, and give it all to PRISMA. Our hope is that it will help improve the services currently offered and know where the needs are greatest and how to meet those needs more effectively.

Chairs

I'm just going to take a moment and say that the chairs at the last few locutorios (internet and phone cafés) that I've been to have been extremely uncomfortable.

Here we are again

The days got really short all of a sudden... I've been on the internet a few times, it's quite easy to find here. Which was a little surprising, since it's rather a poor country. But there are little internet stores everywhere. Really, everywhere. But even though they abound, time has been much shorter, and I've only been able to check my e-mail quick.

Last Sunday, Mau went really well. It was a big hit with my fellow students, and we played again the following night. I look forward to many more rounds! And anyone who may be interested in playing, do say so and I'll teach you. It's a game with a few basic rules and then every round another rule is added, and the confusion grows and the fun multiplies. It's great!

The work has been progressing well, although it is more challenging than I had expected. Most of the challenges have been the logistics of finding all the women that we are looking for. I love it, though. I'm a guy, so putting my map-reading skills to use is excellent fun! I'll write more specific details in a future post, but I need to get to bed soon since we're getting up at 5:30. Yeah, if my parent's knew I was getting up that early under my own power they might have health problems associated with shock!

A few details about what we're doing though: these first two weeks we'll be in 5 different cities (although only 3 each, because after the first city we split up into 2 partnerships) and in each city we have a list of 19 women we need to try and find. With each, we do a 10 minute survey about their food security in the household, such as how much hunger they face and their food situation. With four of the nineteen, we also do a more in-depth interview of 30-45 min. and talk about their life, the goal being to have a glimpse as to what their life has been like. And in each city, we also do 2 focus groups, getting together 5-10 women and talking for 30-45 min. about their community. All of these women are already clients of PRISMA, which is a partner of Freedom from Hunger based in Peru. It's a microfinancial institution, offering microcredit loans to women so that they can start or improve/expand businesses and get out of poverty. So it's a lot of information gathering, and then going over the information we gathered. Later, we'll write reports on it and give them to PRISMA. Our hope is to know in more detail the situations of the people and then be able to improve the services offered to better meet the needs of the people.

The food is quite good here. Not as much rice as one would think when one thinks of South America, but a fair amount. Here in the area where we've been working for the last week and a half there are a lot of potatoes, and they're pretty tasty. This past Sunday, my fellow student Chelsea and I were invited by one of the women we interviewed to eat at her house, a humble house in the outskirts of a small town, and we ate "cuy." Which is guinea pig. It was interesting...but not bad. It was similar to rabbit, which I ate in Spain. Chelsea couldn't finish hers - she had a guinea pig as a pet when she was younger, and it was getting to her! Especially since we were eating next to the place where they kept all the rest of the guinea pigs and they were squeaking. :)

All continues well so far, I hope to add more details on cities and experiences soon!