FBT Accomplished

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…

FBT

So during the past couple weeks the fellow business trainees and I have been preparing for our Field based training this upcoming week. This will be our sixth week of training and we get to go to different sites around Peru and teach a class about some business principles and entrepreneurship. My group and I are headed to Cajamarca which is a department in the North of Peru. Its has a little bit of a higher altitude so it is considered to be a sierra part. My group consists of me and three others and we will have a class of about 25 peruvians that are attending an academy in the town. The overall idea is to teach them the basics of opening up a business, all in Spanish, so Im a little nervous but definetly excited for the opportunity.

So we leave this Saturday and get to take a 16 hour overnight bus ride to the capital city of the department. There we get to spend the night in a hotel and get a decent bed and hot water, which I might be the most excited about. On monday were going to travel to the actual town of San Marcos where we will be doing the teaching. We then have three days to prepare our students on how to open up a business of their own and all of the various components that should go into it from marketing to accounting you name it. On thursday we get to give them a small loan from the pc and then on Friday they get to do their busienss idea (usually selling food or something informal) and the one who earns the highest profit out of all the groups will be crowned the winner. There will be about 12 groups of 5 in total so it should be pretty fun to see what they all come up with.

We teach in the afternoon so in the morning we should have a little free time to relax and prepare any last minute materials we might need to. Ive heard great things about the city and heard that some parts are incredibly beautiful and I think were gonna get the chance to hike around for a little bit. The last night were probably gonna have a little get together and then were off again on Saturday for another overnight ride. Ill be sure to update after next week to write about how it went.

El Clasico and La uUUU

This past weekend I got the chance to go to a Peruvian soccer game, Alianza Lima vs. Universitario (La U). This game is played once every year and is deemed by most as the best game of the year in Lima, thus gaining the name, ‘el clasico’. Now to preface the rest of the story, the idea to go to game all started with a volunteer or two who heard from their host families that this is a crazy game every year. After a group of us decided to go we started hearing the warnings from the PC staff. The responses varied from person to person but all in all they seemed to express concern and tell us all to be really careful. We then found out that there are almost always fights that break out and last year someone even died. So needless to say going into it we were pretty excited and pretty cautious.

After hearing the warnings and forming our groups we decided to leave a little early and get to stadium a little while before the game started. We took some combi’s down and got there about an hour and a half before the game. Combi’s are the names of the busses that run up and down the main highway and take crowds of people throughout districts of Lima for a dirt cheap price. The Combi’s are pretty hectic and can get really crowded but all in all there aren’t that bad and there are so frequent that you can always count on one rolling up when you need it. So we got off near the stadium and for those of us who didn’t have jerseys already we decided to buy some to try to rep our team (which was based on what section we bought tickets in). We then kept walking and started to see the huge groups of people funneling toward the stadium. As we neared the stadium we started to see cop after cop decked out in riot gear, and even some on horses, looking out ominously amongst the crowds passing them. We found out afterwards that about 4000 policeman in total (not sure who was looking out for the rest of Lima).

After a little confusion about what line to get in we found the right one and get our seats, and met up with another group of gringos that had gone down (we tend to use the word gringo affectionately amongst each other because we hear it so much). They thoroughly search everyone getting in and you aren’t even allowed to bring belts for fear that people will use them as a weapon. We ended up getting seats in the Orriente section of the U side. After being bombarded by the food vendor’s we settled in and starting the pre game rituals. They passed out a bunch of plastic sleeves that can be blown up to a long balloon essentially and then thrown around everyone. Then the flags were busted out, these were huge and covered almost half of the section we were in. They started in the front and then went over everyone’s head back and forth, hitting it along the way to make a ripple effect. Then they started passing out bags of cut up pieces of newspaper to throw up in the air like confetti, and I mean thousands of bags. Towards the start of the game the cheering sections started to get really loud and traded back and forth chants about their teams.

The Norte and Sur housed the Alianza and U fans respectively and these sections are the cheaper section where it gets pretty crazy. Based on advice from the Peru staff we decided to buy tickets in the mas tranquilo section of Orriente to try to avoid the Barristas (essentially gangs of soccer fans) that reside in the North and South. Watching these two sections battle out was pretty exciting and maybe the highlight of the whole experience truthfully. The game was pretty good but after getting spoiled with the World Cup play it seemed a little sloppy. Essentially anything goes and they didn’t bust out the yellow cards too much. During the game there were streamers constantly being thrown on the field. It was pretty crazy. It happened during pregame and they never even bothered to clean it off, then during game play people would throw more on the field and even come close to hitting players sometimes.

So in the end my new found team the U lost 1-0 and we left early to avoid the fights that probably broke out after the game. We decided that it was probably better to get out early rather than be a group of gringos stuck in the middle of crazy drunk soccer fans upset by a loss and I have to think we made the right decision. But it was a really fun experience and something that would be hard to replicate again and I’m really glad I got to see it.

Week 4?

I’m now in my 4th week here in Peru, the time is flying by pretty fast and it’s hard to believe that I’m almost half way done with training. Everything has been going pretty smoothly and I have been busy with everything. Some of the highlights of my past few weeks were a trip to the mountains, trip to central Lima, and some fun nights out with the other volunteers here.

Overall I feel as that I am getting used to everything here. The food is pretty tasty, however I’m getting sick of the always present, potatoes and rice. Peruvians love, potatoes and rice. Apparently the potato was first discovered here and they haven’t stopped eating it since. Rice is something that they have with every single lunch and dinner and they generally like to put oil on it as well. But besides getting sick of the potatoes and rice is has been good so far. Some of the volunteers have had the unfortunate experience of diarrhea and it is something that 99 percent of people will get at some point or another. So far I have been able to avoid it but it is pretty common here so I’m sure it will come. It even has the nickname of ‘bicycleta’ that all of the volunteers love to say casually, which you can try to figure out for yourself. But anyway back to my trip.

Marcahuasi

As I mentioned earlier, all of the business volunteers got to go on a trip to the mountains of Peru. The town that we went to was called San Pedro de Casta. The town is in the outskirts of ‘Lima’, which is used pretty liberally considering this town is about 4 hours outside of the center of the city. It took us about 3 hours to get there from Chaclacayo, however it really isn’t that far away. The reason it takes so long is that the roads on the way there are incredibly small and pretty dangerous so you can’t go very fast. The road slowly crawls up a mountain and at many parts it is only possible for one car to pass at once, makes very a interesting and slow trip. However the scenery on the way up was beautiful with huge valleys and terrace farms along the slopes. After the three hour trip, we arrived at the town of San Pedro and waited to begin our trip up to our ultimate destination of Marcahuasi.

Marcahuasi is the name of a place where locals and tourists from all over go to hike and spend the night in tents. We all got to take horses up the to the camping ground and it took about an hour and half. We could’ve hiked but they were worried that we would have problems adjusting to the altitude since it is about 4000 meters up. After the trip on the horse I was grateful that we didn’t have to walk but it surely would’ve been pretty tough. After arriving to the campground we set up camp. We made a bonfire, where we prepared our dinner of traditional chicken stew, caldo de gallo. We all hung out for a while and then took to our tents to rest for the next day. Since we were so high up, it got really cold in the night (probably about 20 degrees Fahrenheit) and we had to dress really warm and bundle up in our sleeping bags.

After a night in and out of sleep we woke up and had some breakfast, some quaker which is essentially watered down oatmeal, which I have had many times since. After our breakfast a bunch of us went on a hike a little further up. Marcahuasi is famous for some of its rocks forms that have the shape of other objects. The most famous is the ‘human profile’ where you can easily make out all the features of a human head. The others were a little questionable, but were characterized as some other animals such as gorillas or rabbits, and you needed a little imagination to make them out. Also on the hike we got to see the remains of an ancient town that was abandoned hundreds of years ago. After a hike we took the horses back down and after waiting for our bus we arrived back in our homes. So all in all it was a pretty great trip. The scenery was pretty amazing and I got some great pictures to share.