I realize few people understand what it is like to be a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) living in my town. It is very difficult to explain in a simple email or even over the phone. Every PCV’s experience is different, and mine I’m sure is not the norm. Days in my site “Huantar” pass very quickly. Most of the time I am very happy about that. I usually wake up early and go to bed early. Here I will write what yesterday was like for me.
I got awoken by a ruckus upstairs in my house around 6:30am. My host mom wakes up early to start preparing breakfast for the family. At the same time my host dad wakes up, eats and goes to work. For the past year or so my district (my town is the ‘capital’ of a larger area of other small villages) has enjoyed relative prosperity. The mines nearby donate a lot of money to the districts nearby to supposedly develop the area. Many jobs have been created, and people are earning good money. My host dad works building the primary school. I usually stay in bed until 7:30am or so. I could potentially wake up at whatever time I want because I don’t have a time when I start working. I usually wake up early though because I feel a little guilty that everyone is up and about since dawn. After getting out of bed I prepared myself breakfast which usually consists of milk with a little oatmeal, a piece of bread, and some fruit.
Around 8:15am I got a call from my health post. My community partner needed help with some reports he had to take down to the health clinic in the nearby city of San Marcos. So, I helped him doing some very repetitive work until 11:00am. I then ran home to get the supplies I needed to give two educational sessions I had yesterday at the school. I got to the school just in time to start. The sessions were on self-esteem and we did a really cool reinforcement activity where everyone had to write positive qualities you have on a piece of paper with your name on it. In between the sessions I had 45min to eat, so I ran to a family restaurant where I met my friend. I ate super quickly and went back to the school.
I went home around 2:00pm to hand wash some clothes. Most of my PCV friends hate washing their own clothes and take them all to the capital to wash when they come in every two weeks. I don’t mind washing my clothes at all. First, it gives me something to do in my otherwise fairly free schedule. Second, I save a lot of money. To wash two weeks worth of clothes by hand costs me about s/.2 (.66 American cents), and to take them to the capital 6 hours away to wash costs me about s/20 ($7). I would rather hand wash, and not have to worry about taking my clothes all the way to the capital.
I finished washing my clothes around 3:00pm and had nothing else to do. I grabbed a book, a notebook and went up a little hill by the cell phone antennas and read and wrote for about two hours. Made a couple phone calls from up there, and I then went to my plaza and talked to some of my high school friends. A little after 5:30pm I went to see my friend John who I spend a lot of time with after he is done with work. I went to a store where I bought bread and milk, and had coffee with John. We talked for a while, I accompanied him to dinner. Around 7:30pm I returned home. Had some tea, washed my face, brushed and flossed my teeth, listened to some music and went to bed.
I already have my basic routine. It’s pretty simple, and I’m finally getting used to it. It is not that I am not enjoying my experience but I must recognize this is the most challenging and difficult test I have had to face in my life. I usually feel lonely, many times bored, missing my family, wanting to shower, questioning what I’m doing here, wanting to be somewhere else, or simply wondering why the hell I’m crying. I always have an event, or a meeting with my friends programmed every two weeks so I have something to look forward to. I like being in my town, yet sometimes I like leaving it for a day or two. I don’t think that makes me any less of a PCV. I am entitled to feel normal, to be happy, to have fun, to dance, to shower, to eat meat, etc.
I am happy I really am. Nobody said this was going to be easy. I am learning by the minute; not only Quechua, the indigenous language but also about myself, my likes, my dislikes, and the actual essence that makes me human. I’m proud of myself although sometimes I wonder if what I do here actually helps anyone. I’m staying strong, trying to be positive and recognizing life’s little wonders that make everything worth it.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Poverty or Oppression?
Are all oppressed people poor? Or are all poor people oppressed? I have been thinking about this topic a lot lately and must say that my perceptions of poverty have dramatically changed in the past couple of months. Here I try to explain how my former imaginative concept of the poor was dismantled.
Firstly, I would like to apologize to all my friends who are academics who might be reading this blog. You must understand that it has been a year since I last wrote an academic paper and finished my Honors Thesis. My writing skills have become a little rusty, and my arguments might not follow a coherent logic. With that said, I would appreciate any comments or counter arguments to be expressed to my person in the form of letter, email or blog comment.
I am currently reading Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s work “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”(1971). Although I admit to not having finished reading it yet it has forced me to star looking at my town with critical eyes. I am a failed anthropologist. After graduation and joining the Peace Corps I became somewhat disillusioned with the discipline. I still call myself an anthropologist but refuse to be one. I loved anthropology so much that I began hating it. Anthropologists observe, not participate. Anthropologists write books, they don’t teach people to read them. I didn’t want to be one of them. I don’t want to sit in an office for the rest of my life and talk about the structure and system in place that oppressed the people that I studied, and know that the people I lived amongst remain the same. I don’t want to be the one who studies why they changed, but be their weapon of change. I say I am a failed anthropologist because in my disillusionment with my discipline I decided not to critically analyze my coworkers, friends and family in my town. I thought that studying, thinking and writing about them was like violating the trust they had put on me.
I am tired of not feeling like a highly rational human being. Today I am making an exception. Paulo Freire, up to where I have read so far, talks about the poor who are oppressed and about how education is the only way for them to escape it. I then think about my town. Most of them if not all, are poor by our standards: they are not educated, don’t earn much money and have a very traditional way to look at the world. These people have never traveled and have little knowledge of the world outside their town. They are poor, not oppressed. Freire talks about the poor and oppressed, never about only the condition of the poor. I agree with him in most of his arguments but wish he would have expanded his argument to the poor who are not oppressed. In my town I see a great difference between those who have and those who have not studied. I can usually have good conversations with educated people about my travels, my studies, music, politics, the world… With uneducated people our topic of conversation is always the weather, and lately I ask them whether or not they have harvested their potatoes. I have started working at the high school teaching the kids and I have felt how refreshing it is to work with them. They are so interested in learning and are very curious about life.
People in my town are poor but not oppressed. They don’t have much money, eat whatever they can afford, and live in adobe houses they build themselves. But they are not oppressed. They are free, perhaps more than I ever will be. At least in my Andean town education is accessible to all, all the way through high school. The school is well staffed and has good facilities. If people wanted they could get an education in my town and then attend university in the department capital if they really wanted and worked hard to get it. Accessibility to education frees these people. The more they know about the world the more they want to continue learning.
If we were to talk about oppression we must directly link it with poverty. If education frees people from oppression, and poverty prevents people from receiving higher education, then these people are only partially oppressed.
Many of these people live like they do because they want to and are happy just the way they are. This is the reality these people know, and anything else scares them. They all want to live better and live comfortably, but perhaps their idea of the optimum comfort level is not congruent with ours. For instance, we might dream to have a house with marble floors. These people dream to have concrete on theirs. We enjoy once in a while indulging with lobster; they do with trout once a week if they can afford it. My host family for instance lived in Lima for a while but decided to return to the “sierra” (mountains) and would rather work in the fields than stay in the capital away from their families in a land where another language (Spanish) is spoken, not their native Quechua.
I met a young man in his twenties a couple months ago on my walk to a nearby community. He really opened my eyes to something I never ever thought.
“My name is Juan. I was born in Chucos, I live in Chucos and will die in Chucos.” That is some food for thought. You can arrive at your own conclusions.
Firstly, I would like to apologize to all my friends who are academics who might be reading this blog. You must understand that it has been a year since I last wrote an academic paper and finished my Honors Thesis. My writing skills have become a little rusty, and my arguments might not follow a coherent logic. With that said, I would appreciate any comments or counter arguments to be expressed to my person in the form of letter, email or blog comment.
I am currently reading Brazilian educator Paulo Freire’s work “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”(1971). Although I admit to not having finished reading it yet it has forced me to star looking at my town with critical eyes. I am a failed anthropologist. After graduation and joining the Peace Corps I became somewhat disillusioned with the discipline. I still call myself an anthropologist but refuse to be one. I loved anthropology so much that I began hating it. Anthropologists observe, not participate. Anthropologists write books, they don’t teach people to read them. I didn’t want to be one of them. I don’t want to sit in an office for the rest of my life and talk about the structure and system in place that oppressed the people that I studied, and know that the people I lived amongst remain the same. I don’t want to be the one who studies why they changed, but be their weapon of change. I say I am a failed anthropologist because in my disillusionment with my discipline I decided not to critically analyze my coworkers, friends and family in my town. I thought that studying, thinking and writing about them was like violating the trust they had put on me.
I am tired of not feeling like a highly rational human being. Today I am making an exception. Paulo Freire, up to where I have read so far, talks about the poor who are oppressed and about how education is the only way for them to escape it. I then think about my town. Most of them if not all, are poor by our standards: they are not educated, don’t earn much money and have a very traditional way to look at the world. These people have never traveled and have little knowledge of the world outside their town. They are poor, not oppressed. Freire talks about the poor and oppressed, never about only the condition of the poor. I agree with him in most of his arguments but wish he would have expanded his argument to the poor who are not oppressed. In my town I see a great difference between those who have and those who have not studied. I can usually have good conversations with educated people about my travels, my studies, music, politics, the world… With uneducated people our topic of conversation is always the weather, and lately I ask them whether or not they have harvested their potatoes. I have started working at the high school teaching the kids and I have felt how refreshing it is to work with them. They are so interested in learning and are very curious about life.
People in my town are poor but not oppressed. They don’t have much money, eat whatever they can afford, and live in adobe houses they build themselves. But they are not oppressed. They are free, perhaps more than I ever will be. At least in my Andean town education is accessible to all, all the way through high school. The school is well staffed and has good facilities. If people wanted they could get an education in my town and then attend university in the department capital if they really wanted and worked hard to get it. Accessibility to education frees these people. The more they know about the world the more they want to continue learning.
If we were to talk about oppression we must directly link it with poverty. If education frees people from oppression, and poverty prevents people from receiving higher education, then these people are only partially oppressed.
Many of these people live like they do because they want to and are happy just the way they are. This is the reality these people know, and anything else scares them. They all want to live better and live comfortably, but perhaps their idea of the optimum comfort level is not congruent with ours. For instance, we might dream to have a house with marble floors. These people dream to have concrete on theirs. We enjoy once in a while indulging with lobster; they do with trout once a week if they can afford it. My host family for instance lived in Lima for a while but decided to return to the “sierra” (mountains) and would rather work in the fields than stay in the capital away from their families in a land where another language (Spanish) is spoken, not their native Quechua.
I met a young man in his twenties a couple months ago on my walk to a nearby community. He really opened my eyes to something I never ever thought.
“My name is Juan. I was born in Chucos, I live in Chucos and will die in Chucos.” That is some food for thought. You can arrive at your own conclusions.
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