Its not all work and no play.

I just had an opportunity to thaw out. We had a regional meeting in Cañete, near Lima and right on the beach. It was totally worth the bus ride through swerving mountain paths and cliffs to just be able to feel the sand in my toes and hear the waves crashing again. And to be warm! I can’t say enough how much the sun helps a person’s overall well being. The meeting went well, there was a lot of discussion about the upcoming Builders Beyond Borders group that is coming to that area to help the Water and Sanitation volunteers build some cool projects. Sadly us Yauyos folks won’t be able to participate because we’re a little to far to travel easily back and forth, but its still neat to hear about high-school students caring enough to volunteer in other countries already. Later, of course I ate plenty of good food and was able to drink some beers with all the other Peru 14er’s I haven’t seen since Swearing-In, and in the end I realized how amazingly therapeutic the trip was for me mentally. This whole process is totally like training for a marathon where you stair step your way up, back-off the training a bit and let your body recuperate, then stair step it up some more. After just speaking English freely, relaxing, and swapping war stories with the other volunteers I really felt ready to get back to site and take it all on again. It’s amazing how much a process living life is; there’s the beginning stages where it’s all new and novel, the stage where that starts to wear off and things start repeating, the stressed out stage, the release and relaxation, and then we head back to start it all over again. And during this entire process we are building our bodies and minds for something greater, and we understand that we are part of something greater as well…so as you can tell by my positive mindset I’ve obviously been at the beach. I also met some volunteers in the Peace Corps Response Program. From what I could gather they volunteer for 3-6 months tours and usually in disaster areas or just generally with the Red-Cross or other organizations. Of course you have to be a completed Peace Corps volunteer before you can apply for the Response Program, but it seemed like a really neat thing to do, especially for someone that’s finished up the Peace Corps, wanted to head home right afterwards and after a few years realizes they want to volunteer again and signs up for the Response Program. And this brings me to another point; what really motivates me to complete my service here in Peru. The motivation comes from the idea that after these two years I’ll be part of a global fraternity of RPCV’s (Returned Peace Corps Vols.) for the rest of my life. I’ll have the college assistance like the Fellows program available to me, opportunities like the Peace Corps Response Program, and even just the camaraderie that will constantly surprise me, starting from the day I get back and lasting forever. I’ll have that secure feeling for the rest of my life of knowing that I belong to something great.

So as you can tell, the trip was great and I’m ready to take on the upcoming project in my town for a landfill and trash management system. I’ll be coordinating, promoting, getting dirty, and sharing technical information with my town and SERNAP who’ll be overseeing its execution. SERNAP wants to excavate a landfill for each town in our protected area that will last 6-8 years and hopefully help stem the problem of the towns just throwing trash in natural caves or the river. Its an ambitious project, especially because they want to get done by the middle of this year, but its totally do-able. Right now the Peace Corps volunteers have been asked to start house-hold trash accumulation surveys to get an idea how much trash is produced in each site, so that should keep us busy for a bit. The only hard part now is trying to find level ground that is far enough away from the river…I have a feeling that after some frustrations I’m going to have to barrow the “Iraqi Okay” slogan I adopted during my deployment and use it for our landfill’s placement; “so what if its not exactly 50 meters from the river,” its still “Peruvian Okay.”