So this past Sunday my fellow aspirantes and I all got back from our Field Based Training, and by now I’ve gotten the chance to reflect on it. Overall it was a great experience, for me and 9 other of the volunteers we were together in a department of Peru called Cajamarca. The Saturday (17th) we took off for the trip and started it with a nice little sixteen hour overnight bus ride… However, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds because my group managed to land the cama cama seats, which means that our seats reclined down to 180 degrees. This was most of our first experiences with it and I have to say it was a pretty good ride. I think it was more of the novelty of it than anything, but the seats were actually really comfortable, including getting served dinner, dessert, and even a little bit of wine. After relaxing for a while I actually got a pretty good night sleep which I thought I would never experience on a bus.
After we arrived on Sunday we got to relax and stay in a hostel with some much appreciated hot showers, which felt amazing after the glacier cold showers I’ve been getting used to. We went out that night and had a pretty good time capped off by some 3 am caldo verde from a street vendor which was pretty delicious I must say. The next day we got up bright and early and traveled to another volunteer’s site in Matara. It was our first experience seeing what an actual site could look like and we all spent our time fully taking it in. After a little tour we went to a local high school to meet some of the kids, and to our surprise a friendly competition with the students. The girls got to play volleyball and the guys got to play futbol. On a further note, from what I’ve seen men play futbol and girls play ‘volley’ no questions asked and no co-ed. This is just what is commonly accepted in Peru which still has a pretty macho culture. So anyways, we got to see the girls play for a little before our futbol match, including the nice little treat of the high school’s marching band playing for us. It was pretty funny, especially when they had a drum roll every time one of the girls went to serve. Then the boys got to play our game and we got to embarrass ourselves a bit. The kids were really good and we only kept the game close because I’m pretty sure they let us score now and then to make sure it didn’t get out of hand. After our game we then went to another volunteer’s site in a smaller town called Ichocan. This site had really nice scenery and looked like a nice town but it only had 600 people total and I imagine it would get painfully boring after a month if not less.
From this town we got some taxis and went to our destination for the week, San Marcos. San Marcos is a nice little town about hour and half away from the main city, and is a provincial capital. It would be considered a bigger site with about 12000 people total. We met one of the current volunteer’s there who hosted us throughout the week and showed us a great time. He was certainly someone we could look up too because he knew just about everyone in the town it seemed like, and had a bunch of great projects going on at once including some grant proposals for some good causes. We then got settled in to our hostel and started preparing for our first day of classes. Also on side note we not only got to try cuy (guinea pig) but I also got the chance to pick out, kill, and prepare my own and needless to say it was an interesting experience… So anyway the first day of classes was that Tuesday and we all the students that showed up divided into three rooms, my group’s room being one of them. We only got about 12 students the first day, which was a little disappointing but we still got to make three solid groups to start with. The idea of the class was to teach some basic entrepreneurship and business principles throughout three days and then on Friday they would start their mini business by taking out a loan from the ‘banco de paz’. Some of the groups over the years have been really successful and creative and they almost always make a least a little profit.
The student’s were overall pretty good and we were expecting them to be worse really so when they actually participated a decent amount were we pleased. We divided the days into two blocks of about 1 hour 45 minutes each and each of us took turns leading. The first day was about some basic principles including information gathering techniques. For day two I got my chance to lead a block about feasibility studies and SWOT analysis. For the second day we had 19 students show up which was nice but we had to reorder the groups for their businesses but after a quick adjustment we got back to it. I quickly realized the gaps in my Spanish as well as teaching abilities and was a little disappointed at first. However, I got through it and think they managed to understand what I was trying to say and I have to say it made me appreciate my past teacher’s a lot more because it’s not something that just comes natural and I learned that it can be difficult to ‘wing it’ in another language. So I made sure I did some more preparation during the night and got ready for my Marketing block. On day three, people were busy with exams or we managed to scare some of student’s off and only 11 students showed up... So after adjusting our groups once again we got onto the lesson and had to focus on getting them ready to present a rudimentary business plan to get their loan. In the end our groups decided to prepare food and each took small loans of about 25 soles each. We tried repeatedly to get them to try something different (which is a novel concept here considering my neighborhood of about 100 people has about 8 nearly identical tiendas alone) and take some bigger risks but they wouldn’t budge and they each decided to cook some traditional Peruvian dishes, arroz verde con pollo and the other papa a la huancayina.
On Friday they realized there businesses at the institute and they each made their money back along with a little profit so hopefully we got something through to them. We then left after the closing ceremony where they all received there certificates which is apparently something that Peruvian’s love. For additional classes they take, they often get certificates and they put a lot of importance into them and will even show up with their stack of them to a job interview which I thought was pretty interesting. So I have to say I learned a lot from the experience, from presenting in Spanish to just getting to see what an actual site will be like. We now find out our sites this coming Tuesday and I can’t wait to find out where I’ll be going and I’m certainly a little anxious considering it’s going to determine the next 2 years of my life…
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