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Yesterday evening I arrived back in Chiclayo after my final weekend “in the field.” Which is a slightly humourous expression considering there was a point this weekend in which I was in an actual field, in the pitch dark, with mud up to my ankles, on the side of a mountain…

As my days in Peru come to an end, this might just be the last exciting entry I have to offer…

I am told that we will leave Chiclayo at 8am and that Isabel will pick me and my interpreter up at the hotel. Fernando came recommended by Delia, my interpreter from the previous weekend who I got along with very well and so I was hoping the same would be said about Fernando when it was all done and over with. So Fernando met me here at my hotel at 7.30am and of course, Isabel was running on Peruvian time, so didn´t show up until 9am. Despite the message that constantly being late and not caring about time gives about taking time to enjoy life and not letting a schedule rule your life, it is an aspect of Peruvian culture that I doubt I would ever be able to embrace.

When we arrive at the bus station I am not surprised to discover that we had missed the bus. We then went to a “collectivo” station to try our luck there. To aid your imagination, many of the collectivo´s in Peru look like this -

The collectivo station was complete mayhem, with about 100 collectivo´s leaving for different destinations and a thousand people trying to jam themselves into each one. We found one headed for our direction and I nestled into my plastic seat. While waiting we were swarmed by people of all ages trying to sell us everything from plastic airplanes to flip flops to penny candies. While you´d think that ignoring them would work best, it turns out that a loud NO is about the only thing that will make them go away.

The collectivo ride was about 3 hours and while the scenerey was nice (farms of cotton, sugar cane and corn that stretched as far as the eye could see), my body has yet to find a way to adjust to the discomfort that these trips bring.

When I was told about this trip, I was told that it would be a three or four hour bus ride. So when we stopped in a small town, I thought we had made it. But no – the “three hour bus ride” was only the first quarter of the trip! I swear Isabel fails to tell me all the details because she knows it is the only way of wrangling me into coming!

Anyway, I guess Isabel thought that taking a collectivo at 9.30am would somehow magically make us arrive in the town at the same time as the bus that had left at 8am so that we could transfer for the rest of the way. This is why sociologists don´t do math, even though I could have figured that one out for her!

We found a man on the corner who told us we could catch a truck at 1pm, so we went for lunch and made it back before 1pm, only to find that the man had disappeared and there was no truck to be found. We waited for awhile and I became to accept the idea that this trip might be a bust. Then along came a truck…. Now, I can´t find a picture online of this, so you´ll have to use your imagination. The truck is like a Budget cube truck – one of the shorter ones. Except they´ve cut the roof off and replaced it with “benches” made of 2×2 pieces of wood. The truck is filled with people and packages – pop, beer, coffee, etc. – and chickens. The benches that make up the roof, are where more people sit. There is nothing to protect them or hold them in place.

So yes, I found myself climbing a makeshift ladder to the top of the benches, were I sat between two men who looked at me like a complete alien. I´m not sure if there is another mode of transportation that is more uncomfortable than this one. I was being bounced along on my two inches of wood, trying desperately to get a grip on it so I wouldn´t end up flailing over the sides. Meanwhile, I have to keep a sharp eye because the branches from the trees that lined the road threatened to take out my eyes at any given moment. Little did I know that this would be my destiny for another three hours. Along the way, the men on the truck decided to play me english songs they had on their cell phones (people may not have electricity in these areas, but they all have cell phones) and try to get me to sing along. If there was some Britney, I MIGHT have entertained them, but I just smiled politely and pretended I had no idea what was going on. We stopped in a village for lunch and since we´d already eaten, we stayed on board. A Peruvian man then told me that there was a woman in La Florida (the region we were heading for) who was “just like you.” I was intrigued at the thought of a blue eyed Peruvian with pasty skin, but it ended up he meant that there was another researcher there from the United States.

Once back on the road, it started to rain and out came sheets of plastic to keep us covered. We didn´t get far before we ran into a roadblock – three giant piles of rocks in the middle of the road. We got out to walk, but ended up deciding to wait when we saw a tractor on its way to clear the rocks. So there I was, standing in the pouring rain and being eaten alive by strange bugs, any one of which could kill me.

Thankfully, in less than an hour, we were back on the road and four hours after leaving in the truck, we arrived in La Florida. At this point my bottom was in far worse pain than it was after the horse riding of last weekend and I was utterly exhausted.

As soon as our feet hit the ground, we started to walk. I was hoping that we were heading for Sabina´s house, the woman we were staying with that night. We were in fact doing so, but after an hour of walking, I realized it wasn´t exactly close by. Another hour passed and it started to get dark. The path was muddy and rocky, and all uphill. This brings us to the field I mentioned earlier. Apparently it was a short cut, and for whatever reason, I was elected to lead the way. This is how I found myself standing in a field in the pitch dark, mud up to my ankles, with absolutely no sense of direction. I could do little more than walk straight and after another hour, we found ourselves in a forest. At this point Isabel remembers she brought a flashlight, which I´m not sure if this was a good thing or not because I can now see some of the scary shadows that linger around us.

Eventually, after three and a half hours of walking, we make it to Sabina´s house. It was a full 12 hours after initially leaving Chiclayo city and we were all exhausted. Sabina cooked us up some potatoes and made us coffee. Fernando, who doesn´t normally drink coffee, did a full 180 after a cup and was suddenly awake and chipper. It was pretty funny and we had some great conversations. Thanks to his excellent interpretation skills, I was actually able to join the conversations around me and we ended up staying up until nearly 1am.

After a 5 hour nap, we woke up and Sabina and her husband showed me around a bit of their land. It was pretty amazing to see the infrastructure they had built to select the best quality coffee and it was great to finally be able to take some pictures of the coffee plants that seemed to grow absolutely everywhere (every other weekend it´s been raining and I haven´t had many good photo opportunities). We did an interview with Sabina which turned out to be the best interview of my trip.

For breakfast we had rice and beans and potatoes and some sort of meat. I was having a hard time getting any actual meat from my piece and this is when Isabel commented that Americans don´t like to eat pig. I thought it was weird that my meat was pork since it tasted mroe like chicken, but then Fernando clarified that what I was actually eating was guinie pig.

Before we knew it, we were late (of course) and had to squeeze our four hour walk into three in order to make it to the bus in time. There was no way I was going to miss the bus so I decided to put my “grad student walk” into effect. By some kind miracle, we actually made it the town with time to spare and I was able to watch as the bags of coffee were loaded on to the truck for Chiclayo. It was quite funny to see men who were my height, hoist a bag of coffee onto their shoulder and carry it on when in Canada, it takes at least two guys to carry it five feet.

Isabel introduced me to a few people and then told me to interview them. I remember the first time I was told to give an impromtu interview here and I had a complete stress attack. However, my skills have obviously advanced because I had no problem turning on the old recorder and thinking of things to ask.

Needless to say, our 1pm bus didn´t show until 2pm. Regardless, it got us back to Chiclayo in record time.

I awoke today to find my body completely stiff and in more pain than last weekend. It was all I could do to bandage my feet with second skin, as they are covered in blisters. Even as I sit here, my muscles ache in terrible pain and I can hear my bottle of tylenol calling my name.

There will be more updates to come, since my Peruvian adventure is not over quite yet, but as for official field research here, I am done. I will share more thoughts on this later, but as of now, I really need to rest…

Yesterday was by far the most physically challenging day of my life and I´m quite amazed that I´m sitting at a computer today and am not on a helicopter being air lifted back to Canada.

We visited a community yesterday that is the most remote and poverty stricken of all the communities that Cafe Femenino works in. I knew before our departure that it would involve some walking as the community was in an area where trucks could not go. However, it ended up being far more than I ever expected.

To begin, on Saturday my new translator sent me an email to tell me that she could not come with me the following day. I thought that for sure this would mean that I wouldn´t be able to make the trip and was quickly filled with the usual feeling of frustration. However,  I found a back up that was available and so the plan was set back in motion.

I was told that I would be picked up at my hotel at 4.30am. I have now come to realize that Peruvian time runs anywhere from 1-6 hours behind, but being the queen of punctuation, I cannot find it in me to just show up late. I am convinced that the one time I show up late will be the one time a Peruvian shows up on time. So there I was, waiting outside my hotel at 4.30am on the dot. After an hour of waiting and then watching a prostitute sift through a pile of garbage on the curb in front of me, I decided to head back indoors. At 6am Isabel showed up with the driver and my translator, who ended up speaking impecible english and was a really sweet person. I knew it was too good to be true to be making the trip with only four people in the four-seater truck and of course I was right – we crammed in a couple more before hitting the road. We stopped at a restaurant around 7am and memories from the last weekend of eating rice and chicken for breakfast flooded back to me. I was so grateful when Delia, my translator, ordered us eggs and bread in place of the rice and goat dish that was being served to the rest of the table. After we left the restaurant, we took a dirt road that seemed to be a metropolis for bulls, pigs and chickens. The bulls all had the names of their owners burnt into their flesh on their rumps, but I still found it hard to believe that the chaos had any order. Pretty soon the road ended and the land opened up to what I thought were sand dunes. This is when Delia explained that it was actually a river, but would dry up in the winter (it is winter here right now). Eventually we found another road that was nestled on the side of a mountain and was covered in mud and rocks. I was getting increasingly uncomfortable being bounced around in the back seat with three other people and was only too happy when we finally pulled into a town and stopped. At this point, we were to walk since we were going to a community that was not accessible by truck. At first, the land was flat and it felt good to be stretching my legs and taking in the beautiful scenery. We began to make our descent down what I realized was the side of a mountain and this took about an hour. At the bottom, we had to cross a river of rapids by jumping from slippery rock to slippery rock. Thank goodness for water proof shoes. At this point, I was still smiling and thinking things were pretty great. This is when I realized that we would now have to walk UP a mountain. After an hour, we were covered in sweat, gasping for breath and my legs felt like jelly. There were points of the walk where rock climbing harnesses should have been used, as the path was so steep and nearly impossible to navigate. Desperately not wanting to be the weak link of our team, I plugged on but was at least comforted when Delia told me that she was having a hard time pressing forward. At least someone else was feeling my pain. Actually, looking at our group, I knew everyone was feeling my pain, but we had little choice but to keeping going. The great part was that we were constantly being passed by people that lived in the area, including small children. Apparently many of the children had to take this path to school everyday, so they were quite used to it. Anyway, just when I thought I couldn´t take another step, a man with a horse showed up and offered me a ride. Having never ridden a horse before, I was nervous, but couldn´t see an alternative since I was sure my legs would not take me another step. I got on the horse and thankfully the man walked along beside me and steered him in the right direction. After another hour, we finally arrived and were greated by a man who I swore I was 200 years old, offering us giant lemons.

It was quite incredible to see this community existing in such a remote region. There was a futball game going on and it seemed to have attracted most of they people from the region. The members of CECANOR and Cafe Femenino were participating in a general meeting and I was quickly whisked to a chair in front of everyone along with the communities leaders. Not having much of an idea of what was going on, I was happy when we were excused and able to start our interviews. Delia turned out to be a great translator and we got a few good interview completed. However, we were both so exhausted that we quickly lost interest in doing anymore and were only interested in starting our venture back home before it got dark. Before we left, I used the community toilet, which was a hole in the ground, surrounded by cement walls. Oh, and there were two giant hogs inside….

I was not looking forward to the way back since it started to rain and my head was pounding. A group of men came along and offered me their horse, so I jumped on. Except this time, there was no one leading the horse and I had no idea how to control it. My group walked ahead of me until they were out of sight and I had a profound moment of “what the hell am I doing here?” Ahead of me were three women in traditional dress and behind me, four men. All spoke spanish, but in an accent that I had a terrible time understanding. All at once, the women moved out of the way and then men ran in front, yelling goodbye to me and laughing. The women fell behind and there I was – on a horse, on the side of a mountain, completely alone. I had little choice but to put my faith in the horse and hope to god that someone in my group had the good sense to remember my existence. Eventually we came to the river and the men were waiting there, telling me steer the horse across. Apparently they didn´t realize that I had no idea how to control a horse. Eventually one of the men took the reigns and led him across. When we got to the other side, my horse took off and I found myself a good mile ahead of the rest of the group. At this point, I´m hurting all over, as my body has been completely tensed since getting on and I´ve been bounced around and almost thrown off more than once. My head is pounding and I´m starting to feel really, really sick to my stomach. The few times i consider getting off the horse, I find us faced with a cliff that I know would be impossible for me to climb, so I stay on and let the horse do the work. After two hours, the men stop me and tell me to get down. We are at the point where they must take a different path and at this point I don´t know if it´s safer to ask them to wait with me or to be alone. Thankfully, my group is closer than I realize and I continue the remainder of the trip on foot. It quickly gets dark and we are having more and more trouble seeing the path. Eventually we´re lost and are lucky to find a kid who will lead us to the right path for a dollar. The kid, who obviously knows the area and is experienced in climbing cliffs in the dark, seems to take us on the hardest route possible. I find I have no shame in hugging one of the men in our group as he helps me down the side of the mountain in the pitch dark. The dark ends up being a blessing, as my body decides it can´t handle it anymore and I have to stop to be sick more than once. Four hours after leaving the community, we find the town and our truck and I almost cry tears of hapiness. This is until I sit down in the truck and realize that the horse has done a serious number on my bottom. All of us are so tired, but it is impossible to sleep when you are bouncing down a road of rocks. At one point I did doze off and when I opened my eyes I saw that the fog had gotten so thick that the driver and the person sitting shotgun were actually hanging out their windows to try to navigate the road ahead of them. I quickly had flashbacks of our drive there and knew that were driving on a road that hugged the edge of the mountain and throught for sure that we were going to go over the side at any moment. Soon the fogged cleared and we were able to get our speed up to 40km. I could not believe how much pain my body was in and was desperate to get out of that truck. Eventually, we made it back to Chiclayo and I was dropped off at my hotel at 10.30pm. I could not believe everything that had taken place and I was only too eager to take a shower, a gravol and get some sleep.

As you can imagine, I am not moving a whole lot today. It is painful to sit, and everything from my inner thighs to the palms of my hands are brusied. I remember thinking yesterday that I was going to take the first flight home today. That I was going to have to be met at the airport by an ambulance who would treat me for dehydration and feed me morphine by the gallon. While I do feel awful today, I am blown away by the fact that I survived yesterday and now feel like I could handle just about anything this country throws my way.

As of today, I only have 10 more days left here and only more more community to visit. At this point, I feel like I have the resarch I need and am overall happy with what I was able to do. This week doesn´t involve very much, other than recovering from yesterday, which I imagine will take a few days. Delia invited me out to her farm outside Chiclayo city, so I hope to make it out here at some point too. I have some interviews on Friday with the technical team and then we are going to La Florida for two days, which I think only involves driving (no horses or mountain climbing). Other than that, I will be counting down the days until I return….

I’ve been meaning to update the blog since I got back late on Monday afternoon, but I needed some time to let things digest and really wrap my head around everything that happened. So the adventure started on Thursday night at 10:30pm when I headed to the bus station to meet with the rest of the team that was making the trip with me. I wasn’t surprised to find that the bus station was in a state of madness, since this is generally the state of everything in Chiclayo. Thankfully I found a familiar face quickly and soon met with the translator that I had hired earlier that day. Half an hour later we were all the bus and I was quite pleased to find that it was pretty nice and so I was able to sleep comfortably for most of the five hour trip. I woke up a few times and took some peeks out the window and even though it was pitch dark, I could see that we were on our way up a mountain and were often dangerously close to the edge. Around 1am we arrived in the city of Jaen, where I was put on a “moto” (a motorbike with a carriage on the back) and found myself racing through the dark streets of a foreign city. We had to go and hire a car and driver to take us the rest of the way, which was another five hours. After a short wait, I was packed into a station wagon with five others and forced to share the front seat with my translator. Besides the fact that I had just met this person, it was literally uncomfortable as I had to cling to the side of the car to keep myself in a stable sitting position. An hour into the drive we crossed a bridge and bid farewell to pavement as the rest of the four hour trip was on dirt paths that were thick with mud and rocks due to a recent rainfall. At times we were forced to slow to 10km, but most of the time the driver thought he was driving a 4×4 Hummer as we bounced violently towards our destination. We stopped for breakfast at some point, which was rice, chicken and yucca and unknowing to me at the time, a sign of things to come. We arrived in the village of Lorne Grande which has a population of about 500 or so and is one of the communities where Café Femenino operates. We checked into a hostel which was by far the worst hostel I have ever stayed at. It was just plain gross. We had lunch, which was rice, chicken and yucca… took a rest and then hit the streets looking for women to interview. Before long I was sitting face to face with my first participant – I had finally made it! My excitement was quickly dashed when it became clear that this woman did not want to participate. She answered every question with “yes” or “no” and when I asked her to expand she would say “I don’t know.” Her kids even came in during the interview and turned on the television and she seemed more focused on that than the interview. At the end of it, I was filled with dread at the prospect of having to suffer through more interviews like this. However, my next interview ended up going very well and I was comforted. My this time it was getting late so we went and had dinner (rice, chicken, yucca) before retiring for the evening. The next morning we woke up early, had breakfast (you get the picture, right?) and then had a couple more interviews. At some point, my translator really began to get on my nerves because he was turning out to be pretty incompetent. I hired him based on the fact that he majored in English in University, has taught English in schools and seemed to speak well during our interview. I don’t know what happened from that point to the point of us doing interviews, but he was suddenly having a hard time understanding me, wasn’t translating conversations for me and couldn’t translate follow up questions during the interviews. Besides that, he was just….annoying. Anyway, after we finished a couple more interviews we were to head to another community about an hour away in Neuva York. We were able to hitch a ride with some guy who had a truck, the only way to actually get there. The truck had two front seats and a bench backseat and there were 9 of us packed inside. In the back of the truck were easily 20 more people amid boxes and bags of goods. The ride to the community was tedious since it had been raining and the path there was in terrible condition. At some points we had to stop to move rocks and to push the truck through thick patches of mud. Eventually we arrived and were taken to Erlita’s house, a producer and the secretary of the women of the co-op and someone I had met the week before during the interviews with community leaders. Erlita fed us lunch (you guessed it!) and then we headed to the villages community centre. Erlita had asked the women of Café Femenino to meet there at 3pm and so we were able to start doing interviews immediately. However, as time went by, more and more women began to show up and I was suddenly faced with the problem of having to them all waiting around. I started to interview them in pairs or sets of three to make the wait time shorter. The interviews went quite well, although my translator ended up being completely useful and he was increasingly making me mad for wasting my money on hm. After the interviews we had dinner and Erlita made coffee – and not instant coffee either, but real coffee! She ground the beans, peeled the beans and roasted them and then served me a giant cup of the good stuff. It was so great to have real coffee, although I was surprised to find that the family all added a good three or four teaspoons of sugar to theirs. After dinner it was pretty late so Erlita showed me where I would be sleeping. Her house, which is quite nice compared to others in the community, consisted of two rooms – a kitchen with an eating area and a room with two beds. I was given one of the beds that they had enclosed with tarps to give me some privacy. Since the bathroom was a solid five minute walk into the bush (and was just a hole in the ground with cement walls around it) and impossible to navigate in the night, I was given a bucket to use in case I had to go through the night. Of course, since I’d had a giant cup of coffee, I had to go more than I’ve ever had to go in one night before. Not only was it slightly uncomfortable peeing in a bucket, but the entire family was sleeping on the other side of my tarp, likely thinking I was some kind of alien. I woke up early and had to wait until 2pm until Isabel would be ready to head back. Unfortunately, it was raining quite bad so our plan to visit Erlita’s farm had to be cancelled. This left me and my translator having to spend the day together inside a tiny room with dirt floors and no electricity. It was at this point that my translator told me that he had a problem with the women we had interviewed because many were not married, but lived with their partner and had children. I tried to respect his opinion, but he kept going on about it and pretty soon he got on the topic of finding god, and decided to give me suggestions as to how I could find him. I told him that I respected his beliefs and asked that he respect mine and perhaps it was best we just stayed away from the topic. I thought he would get the point, but clearly he didn’t, because I had to endure god talk for a couple more hours before I excused myself and hid in my tarp room. When 2pm rolled around and Isabel hadn’t shown up, I figured that we would not be returning that day. Yet, at 4pm she showed up with a truck and we made our way back to Lorne Grande. From there we got a car to drive us the five hours to the bus station. This time I had a seat in the backseat, but this didn’t give much comfort since the roads seemed to have gotten worse. The hours seemed to just stretch on FOREVER and by the time we got to Jaen I could barely feel my legs and was convinced that my back was broken from a cracked spine. In Jaen we found that all of the buses were sold out and we would have to stay the night and take the bus in the morning. I was pretty disappointed because at this point I hadn’t showered in four days, all my clothes were covered in mud and my translator was still going on about god. Luckily the hotel we stayed in was pretty nice, but I couldn’t sleep and ended up watching Olympic gymnastics until 5am. At 7am we had breakfast and then got on the bus for the five hour trip back to Chiclayo. About an hour from the city the bus broke down (of course) and we had to take a microbus the rest of the way. Around 4pm, I was finally back in my hotel .

What a trip! It was long and hard and trying, but I was happy with the number of interviews I got. Since I got so many, it became possible that I could do one more weekend in La Florida as we had planned and return home 10 days earlier than expected. My mom offered to help me out with the ticket price and I was overcome with happiness at the prospect of getting home. Unfortunately, the next day I found out that we would not be visiting La Florida until the weekend after and so I was forced to give up my dream of going home early and accept the fact that I would be staying until the 28^th as planned. It was really bad news for me and to top it off, my translator told me that he wasn’t going to work for me anymore because he couldn’t handle staying and travelling in the rural areas. I was partly relieved because I knew it wasn’t working out with him anyway.

Last night I was able to talk to Kris on the phone and it was the longest conversation I have had in English in a really long time. It always cheers me up to talk to him although when I hang up I usually find I feel worse because I realize how much I miss him and home.

My next trip is on Sunday and we will return late that night or the next morning. Until then, I really have nothing to do. Today I went to the supermarket and bought some packs of mayonnaise and cans of tuna for some sandwiches because the cup of soup was getting really old. I was starting to come to terms with the fact that I was going to be stuck here another two weeks and had set up an interview for another translator, so I was feeling half ok. Then I got an email from Isabel and while it’s extremely difficult to figure out what she is saying because I think she uses some kind of translating program to put her emails into English, I felt like she was upset with me and once again, I was ready to just throw in the towel and go home.

Alright this was a really long post, but a good recap of my weekend in the jungle. There are many things I could talk more about, but I have to save some stories for when I get home! I hope everyone is doing well….

Yesterday I finally got to do something really, really cool. Ok, really cool if you´re a geek about coffee like me…. Anyway, yesterday afternoon we went to the processing plant where the coffee arrives from the farms. Here it is dried, washed, sorted and bagged by various machines and people. It was really amazing to see first hand what happens with the coffee before it gets delivered all around the world. When I saw the burlap bags of coffee with the Cafe Femenino symbol it was almost surreal, since I see those bags every day at work. All of the community leaders that have been participating in meetings were there as well and quite excited that I was there. I think they took more pictures of me than they did of the plant! After we toured the facilities we went into a room and had a coffee tasting session. I was surprised to find out that many of the community leaders had never participated in something like this before, despite the fact that they had been growing coffee all of their lives. My next surprise was to find out that I would be teaching them how to do it! We used to do coffee tasting sessions at Planet Bean quite often and I was lucky enough to have our roaster, Dave, teach me the process. Still, I am far from an expert at it! Nevertheless, I seemed to impress everyone with my slurping and spitting skills.

Today I did another interview and this will likely be the last of those for the community leaders since meetings end today and they will all being going back to their communities tonight or tomorrow. I think that the interviews went well, although I wish that I was able to do a few more.

Tonight I´m getting on a bus for 10 hours and heading for the jungle to visit a community where coffee is grown. I am hoping to conduct as many interviews as possible during my time there. I´m not looking forward to the 10 hour trip, but I´m sure that once I am there it will be worth it. These are the most important interviews for my project and what I have been working towards for so long.

So wish me luck on my weekend in the jungle. I´m sure I will have lots to update on when I get back!

Chiclayo is what I imagine Delhi, India to be like, minus the heat and curry. Back in Cusco my spanish teacher told me that Chiclayo was a small and calm city. In Lima, they told me it was big city. Lonely Planet told me it had experienced rapid growth in the past few years and was now a “bustling, economic center.” Needless to say, I didn´t have very many expectations besides the notion that it might actually be warm here given its proximity to the desert. Instead, it is 25 degrees with a cold wind, which makes pants and jackets necessary, but hosts a humidity that makes my hair frizz. The streets are absolutely jam packed with people, all of whom walk at completely different speeds and none of whom have realized that walking on the right side, just like driving on the right side, might make things move more smoothly. This city is nothing like anything else I have experienced in Peru and there have been several “you´re not in Kansas (or Guelph for that matter)” instances. Like yesterday when I went in search of the supermarket and found myself in the “pet/animal district” (everything here is broken into “districts”…. shoe district, hair district, pizza district…. obviously these people have great faith in the idea of a free market). At first I was drawn to the tiny puppies that lay in cages along the sidewalks. But then I saw them. An entire section of them. It was the “roosters in cages section.” They crowed (??) at me and I could have sworn my neighbour rooster from Cusco had followed me to Chiclayo!! I bolted the other way and was only too happy to find the comfort of a real westernized supermarket. I spent a good hour embracing packages of oreo cookies and other “food from home.” I happily left with a new kettle and some cups of soup, rekindling memories of Michelle and I shivering in our hostel in Cusco, eating soup and drinking tea in our failed attempts to stay warm.

Besides attempting to adjust to this city, I have been busy putting things together for my interviews which start today. Every day there is a new and unexpected person added to my list of people to interview, and every day I panic at the idea of putting together a set of questions in a day when my other interview guides took 8 months. This all goes to show how right my professors were when they repeatedly told me that “no matter how much you plan, things will always change in the field.”

Today honestly feels like the longest day of my life. I am currently writing from the PROASSA offices, where I have been absolutely dying for a glass of water. My journey from the Lima airport where I updated last to this point has been filled with magnificent ups and downs. Finding my flight was relatively simple, despite it not having been confirmed until 20 minutes before take off. I was the only identifiable western person on the flight and to make me stand out even more, the seats in my row remained empty except for myself, while all other rows were completely filled. Yes, this was very odd.

As the plane descended into Chiclayo, I was at first ecstatic to see lush green farms that were in direct opposition to the gray and brown mountains that characterized Cusco. Soon the landscape turned to dirt roads and dusty shacks, and the only colour besides brown visible is when I would catch sight of a child playing in the streets. The airport is little more than a room with a conveyor belt and after collecting my luggage I went outside to find my driver. Of course he wasn´t there. I had a slight panic attack and then found a phone and the second I got an answer all my spanish went out the window. The first number did not seem to be of the hotel. I tried the second number. This time they managed to say my name and “one moment” so I at least knew they knew I was at the airport. Once I went back outside, all other passengers had cleared and I was crowded by a group of taxi driver´s that hadn´t been able to fill their cars. I tried to breathe normally while waiting and hoping that someone, anyone would come to get me. After what seemed like 3 hours (really 15 minutes) someone came around. Soon I was checked into my hotel and feeling somewhat safe in this urban jungle. The room does not have internet as promised, but rather a computer in the main lobby with a keyboard from 1974. The room does have cable and so I am able to have at least that single comfort. I slept surprisingly good despite the fact that my room faces the street which is full of cars and motorbikes that honk their horns and let their alarms go off for all hours of the night. Waking up this morning I knew I had a challenging day ahead of me. Thankfully I was able to start it with a hot shower…

Next I looked for breakfast and was served cardboard toast and frozen butter. At least the tea and juice was bearable. Next I went to my email and saw that Isabel from PROASSA had emailed me her phone numbers. I made every attempt to try to call the numbers, but as simple as making a phone call sounds, it proved to be nearly impossible. After a huge ordeal, I had Juan from the front desk telling me “tu cortar fono” (you cut the phone). Next thing I knew, he was in my room drawing me pictures that were supposed to resemble the idea of him helping me. In the end, I emailed Isabel back and told her I was incompotent and would wait for her to call me. I then was unable to leave the hotel, having no idea how long I would need to wait. Thankfully, it was not long and at 1pm she came by to pick me up. I was then put into a yellow beetle with four other people and taken to some place that resembled a country club, where two more people met us and we all ate lunch. I don´t know what I ate – one part looked like fried bananas. I think I tasted pork. Or chicken. I struggled my way through lunch with my limited spanish and then was ushered back into the beattle. Having NO idea where we were going, we ended up at the PROASSA office and I was happy to be greeted by a Planet Bean/Cafe Femenino poster – a replica of the one we have in our Grange Street cafe. Then I was taken to a boardroom where the next month of my life were mapped out doing interviews, visiting people and travelling to various communities. I went from thinking that I would have nothing to do for the next few weeks, to having every aspect planned out for me. It is both exciting and terrifying. I have since been hanging out at the office, hoping that eventually someone will usher me back to the hotel since I have no idea where we are or where my hotel could me. I am very much hoping that this will happen before dark so that I can find water and not have to venture outside without daylight on my side. I have never been so thirsty!

So that is my first day of fieldwork in a nutshell. While I am happy to have some kind of plan in the works concerning my time here, I am still trying hard not to get on the next flight home where things are much more easy to deal with. It is a completely surreal feeling to think that I am actually here and I long for the day when I start to feel comfortable here, if that day will ever come at all.

I am currently in the airport at Lima, counting down the hours until my flight leaves for Chiclayo. For the first time in two months, I find myself without a travel companion…

Kris and I waved goodbye to the mountains of Peru on Sunday morning and caught our flight to Lima. Ok, I didn´t wave…I actually ran to the plane, buried my head in a magazine and left it all behind me without a second glance. Cusco was a great city and I met a lot of incredible people, but I was only too happy to say “hasta lluego” to the pollution, the roosters and the pushy street venders. Once we got to Lima, Kris and I checked into a hostel where I was reunited with cable television. It was a beautiful moment. Later on we took a walk and I felt like I had never been in the city before, despite spending three days with Michelle in the exact same area. Everything looked so much more modern, cleaner and quieter than I remembered. The hostel Kris and I stayed at was quite nice and in a really nice neighbourhood. Of course, we went to McDonald´s first. I ordered one of everything on the menu (ok, not EVERYTHING, but pretty close). Afterwards we walked down to the ocean where Kris was able to set up a surf lesson for the next morning. He has wanted to try surfing for the past year and now was finally his chance. We also found a HUGE department store and I have no idea how Michelle and I had missed it. Had I more room to put things in my luggage I would have gone on a spree, but as it was I already had to send a few things home with Kris that wouldn´t fit in my own luggage. Oh, and did I mention I´m quickly reaching poor status? On our walk back I started to get a headache and by 1:30am I had made best friends with the hostel toilet. I have no idea why I get so sick after flying, but it seems to be a pattern. I don´t know if the change in altitude, despite coming lower this time, is what makes me sick, but it was truly awful. By the time Kris had to leave for his surf lesson, I was still getting sick so he had to go alone. I was truly disappointed that I wouldn´t be able to watch, but was happy that he was able to go. Needless to say, the rest of our day in Lima, and our last day together, was not well spent. I was in bed all day, swallowing back gravol´s and Kris was slightly achy from his surfing adventures. It was a lousy way to spend our last few hours together, but for those who know me well and know the luck I have with sickness, it likely doesn´t surprise you.

Kris left last night around 10pm and I was awfully sad to see him go. He was a good travel partner and I wish that I could have made the trip home with him as I feel more than ready for a hot bath and my own bed. However, four more weeks lay ahead and so this morning I checked out of the hostel and made my way to the airport. My flight leaves in just over an hour and from there a whole new adventure begins.

Well….it´s officially my last night in the city of Cusco, the city that has been my home, my enemy and my comfort for the past two months. It is time to start the final leg of my journey and move on to Chiclayo to begin my research – the whole reason that I came here in the first place. I am nervous about it all of course, since I will be travelling to a city where I do not know a single person, do not speak the language fluently, and which only has four pages devoted to it in Lonely Planet. Having dealt with my fair share of frustrations in communications and finding restaurants that won´t kill me and figuring out the whole system for buying shampoo in a city crowded with tourists, I can only imagine what lay ahead for me in a city where tourists rarely step foot. Of course, the city is only my home base, since most of my research will be in rural communities. As you can likely tell, I´m a little nervous about things, but with any luck, things will work out and I will be home in four short weeks.

As well, I must vent…it would only make sense that in the city where absolutely nothing makes sense, that I would finally figure out how to get hot water to come out of the shower two days before leaving. Of course.

Yesterday was the last day of Spanish classes for both Kris and I. It was sad to say goodbye to my teachers and friends who have seen me going through it all in the past couple of months. Afterwards,  Kris and I went for Japanese food with a Japanese guy that is taking Spanish lessons at our school. The food was incredible, although our conversations were quite comical given the mixture of English and Spanish, both of which are quite hard to understand when you add a Japanese accent into the mix.

We spent our last day in Cusco at the highest owned Irish Pub, eating philly cheese steaks and chicken pie. No worries though, we had our fill of Cusco favourites (alpaca steak and lomo saltado) the night before. Tomorrow morning we are up fairly early and heading to Lima for a couple of days. We´ll be there for Peru´s Independence Day which falls on Monday, so hopefully we´ll get to participate in some festivities.

As for now, it´s off to spend a final night listening to the rooster´s crow next door and the packs of street dogs battle it out on the streets…..

I just realized the other day that it has been quite a while since I have updated this blog. It is my last week here in Cusco and I have been doing extra lessons to prepare for my field work and keeping somewhat busy. On the weekend we went out for dinner with some students from the spanish school (one from Switzerland, one from Japon and two from London) and a bunch of the spanish teachers. For some reason our destination was put in my hands so I brought them to a restuarant that Michelle and I discovered and quickly became a favourite for the two of us and for Kris after he arrived. The owner´s were quite happy with us that we brought such a big group and we were treated to wonderful service and great food. After dinner, the spanish teachers went one by one into the bathroom and I finally figured out that they were impressed by it´s decorations! I have to admit, Michelle and I were also impressed as it was the nicest bathroom we had seen in Peru. The spanish teachers were just floored though by the straw floor and glass sink. Quite comical to think a bathroom could impress so much! After dinner, the teachers decided to go dancing and while it would have been a blast, all of the students were exhausted and we all made our way home.

The rest of the week has been spent making arrangements to return to Lima so that Kris can fly home next week and I can fly to Chiclayo. Finding a place to stay in Chiclayo has been a challenge, but thankfully I have the help of my spanish teacher here who has been a life saver for communication. Things seem to be coming together for my arrival in Chiclayo in terms of the research. Isabel at PROASSA has been working hard to arrange things for me and find me a translator. I was also in touch with a woman who used to work at Planet Bean and is now in Peru. She is thinking of coming down to Chiclayo for a week or so and has offered to help me out with things. I´m not sure what I can have her doing since her spanish is worse than mine, but it will be good to have some gringo company for awhile.

Kris had a case of the Peruvian dose yesterday and spent the day close to the toilet. He´s feeling better today thankfully. We are both counting down the days until we leave this city, which will be on Sunday. We are going to spend a couple days in Lima, with Kris flying to Canada at 1:30am on Tuesday morning. We booked a hostal in Lima and we are crossing our fingers that there will be hot water. At the very least our room has wi-fi, so I might be able to download some movies to keep me occupied on my off nights in Chiclayo….. also, there is a McDonalds in Lima….. ahhh…the comforts of a city…