That´s one full pickup!

My goal before leaving for the states was to set up a number of potential projects that would commence soon after returning from the brief vacation. It seems to have worked out fairly well. All of my concerns about keeping busy are pretty much gone. It seems as if everything is hitting all at once…quite an abrupt change! Here is a quick rundown of what I’m hoping to be doing in the next few months…
1. I am now teaching an English class every Monday Wednesday and Friday to 10 secondary school students and their principal. The first class, this past Monday, went pretty well. It appears that their all fairly interested. I was actually a bit surprise how few people here in Peru actually speak English. Here in Piura I’ve maybe met 3 or 4 English speaking Peruvians. In the secondary school here the principal is the English teacher, however, as in many cases in this area, she isn’t exactly fluent, and there are a lot of problems with pronunciations. I see this as a good opportunity to hopefully motivate them to continue studying and also to work on their confidence in speaking in a group setting.
2. I have been working with the coordinator of the computer lab and teachers from the secondary school to elaborate a project entitled “Getting to Know Our World” which will play out from July to December. The goal is for the kids to learn how to find information via the internet and at the same time learn a bit more about other cultures of the world. They’ll start researching the state of Piura and will continue studying the various regions of the Peru… then Latin America… and finally each group will research a particular country. The whole deal will culminate with the painting of a world map on the side of a big wall in the school.
3. I’ve had 3 meeting with a group of moms with the intention of beginning a small association of women weavers. Right now there are some 10 women who are interested here in Tunal and this coming Saturday we will be traveling to a nearby village to hold a meeting with some women there. The vast majority of women here know how to weave so we’re hoping to take advantage of this skill to increase their family’s income by selling a variety of woven products. There are a number of other PC volunteers who are working with similar groups, so we’re hoping to soon visit at least one of their sites to get a better idea of how their associations are organized.
4. I’m looking into the feasibility of starting a small chicken farm in one of the nearby villages. There are a number of small restaurants here in Tunal which combine to buy 80+ chickens each week. These chickens are brought from Chiclayo, a city nearly 9 hrs away from here and often arrive dead from the long, hot journey. I am hoping that this might be a good money making opportunity for a few individuals and would also be helpful in the general development of Tunal as it would keep 1000 Sols here in Tunal weekly which would otherwise be pocketed by outside businesses. The tough part of this is that I really know nothing about chickens, so I’ve got a lot of research to do. The feasibility of the project really comes down to whether we can raise the chickens at a price that is somewhat comparable to the outside chicken businesses. I’m hoping to visit the national university in Piura to see if there might be some student who would be interested in assisting in such a venture.
I continue to plan for the PC Peru Small Business Development video project. I hope to start filming in the next two weeks!
So there’s a lot going on at the same time…but I’m really happy to finally have a plan of attack.

On the soccer front, it’s been a pretty exciting few weeks. We won the districk championship and have since moved on to regionals. The first game was a week and a half ago in a town about 5 hrs away from here. Our club really have zero money, so we were forced to ride in the back of a cargo truck to and from the game. It wasn’t so comfortable, but compared to the traveling nightmare of the next week, it was just fine. So we ended up winning the game 3 to 0. I played for about 15 minutes but performed really really poorly!! The previous week I had scored 5 goals at practice, so I was feeling pretty good… but something didn’t quite click. To make it worse, the whole crowd of people there… probably 1,000 plus had their eyes fixed on me… the only tall white guy with long light hair… they seem to get so much pleasure out of watching me play… From the time my coach told me I was going in they started cheering… then when I was playing they cheered/laughed every time the ball came near me… quite embarrassing actually!!
This past Sunday we were to play in Huarmaca, a town about 11 hours from here. Because of the distance they decided to hire one of the buses that runs from Tunal to Piura to take us there. The bus that they chose, however, was the one that always breaks down. I was hoping that maybe they gave it a quick look over to make sure that all was good… but I don’t think that was the case. On the way to the game it broke down 3 times. The first time it wasn’t very major and was fixed in about 15 minutes. The second time, the brakes went out in the back. I guess there was nothing they could do to fix it, so they decided to continue on. This gave us all a lot of confides… especially with the huge cloud of smoke that was pouring out from the back wheels.. It also made the trip longer since every time we went downhill they had to be in 2nd gear to compensate for the lack of brakes. At 2am, ten hours after leaving tunal, we were ready to make the big ascend to Huarmaca which was to make 3 hours. I was fast asleep about an hour in when I was awaken by what sounded like a small bomb going off underneath the bus. Instantly everyone started running for the door… since we could no longer go forward and barely had breaks and were yelling for someone to throw rocks under the wheels so that it wouldn’t drift backwards over the cliff… some 1000+ feet up. Turns out some big metal piece snapped and was laying on the dirt road.. This one was not repairable so we spent the night sleeping in the bus while a few went ahead in truck to send other transportation. At 6:30am we walk a half an hour to a nearby village where we waited until a minivan finally came to pick us up at 10:30am. We arrived at the game 10 minutes before it was to start. We won the game 8-5, moving one step closer to moving on to the next level. I didn’t actually play in the game, despite the hollering from the crowd to put the gringo in… The next challenge was to find a way back to the bus. Finally at 7:30pm a municipality member found us a pickup truck… a pickup truck for 32 people plus a baby. It doesn’t sound possible.. but we did it. The pickup had raised sides so 30 of us piled in the back… standing up there was absolutely no room to move… Only to make it more interesting, the truck couldn’t make it up the steep hills… so each time that it stalled we had to climb out really fast and throw rocks under the wheels. Then we would push the truck until it was able to go by itself…. Then we’d chase after it, grab onto the side and climb back in. This continued throughout the 3.5 hrs it took to reach bus. From there we had to finished the rest of the downhill portion in the bus… without back brakes… but we survived. From there, it was smooth sailing… just one more brake down… but they repaired that one in 3 hoursJ.

So they’re a lot more that I could write, but If you’ve reached this point, you’re probably just about ready to call it quits.