Peace Corps and President, continued

Below is a video I found on the PC website.  It is from a few years ago, when Alejandro Toledo, the subject of an earlier post, was president of Peru.

I also want to add a few caveats to my previous biographical sketch of Mr. Toledo and his rise from shoeshine boy to President.

First, he did not become who he was because of the Peace Corps volunteers he met.  Clearly, he is a man of unusual drive and intellect, and he made his own destiny.  He sought out the PC volunteers in his town, and he is simply fortunate that the volunteers who he became so close with were able to help him begin an education in the United States.  From my understanding, he financed most of his education by himself, working a number of odd jobs and obtaining soccer scholarships.

Second, I hope that this story does not come across as a too-perfect pretty picture of what Peace Corps service achieves.  I am confident that most if not all of PC volunteers have a mature sense of their purpose, and that purpose is often "quieter" than this story would suggest.  Still, this story shows that Peace Corps volunteers really do make a difference in many ways, some "louder" than others.

Last, I think it is inappropriate for me to give a political opinion on Toledo and the upcoming election in Peru, because of my position as a future PCV in Peru.  Moreover, I haven't followed Peruvian politics long enough to have a confident understanding of the candidates' abilities and platforms.  From both of these reasons, I have given the biographical sketch of Alejandro Toledo simply as a unique story that Peace Corps Volunteers can be inspired by and proud of.

Enjoy!

Una vez más

Finally decided to acknowledge the fact that I need to brush up on my Spanish, and pulled this review book out of the few high school materials that I saved.

Since using this book senior year in AP Spanish, the only significant grammar work that I have done was Spanish 411- Grammar and Composition, my spring semester of first year of college (2007).

My Spanish has taken leaps and bounds since high school, thanks #1 to my host mother in Spain, #2 to the patient and polite migrant workers that I tutored in English, #3 to the superficial confidence that comes from using Spanish in Dominican, Spanish, Argentinian, and Nicaraguan nightlife, and #4 to Spanish movies (cinema class), radio, and passersby in DC.  These experiences have been incredible for increasing my fluency, especially in comprehension.

However, my Spanish has been ruthlessly corrupted.  For all that I have gained in comprehension, I feel that my ability to speak grammatically correct Spanish has not improve much over the past four/five years.  I've learned a few vocab words, have more informal phrases to use, and definitely have less of an accent, but I still find myself completely at a loss of how to say some seemingly basic things.  I joke with friends who took French as their second language that it is much more difficult to improve your everyday Spanish, because of the different attitudes of French-speakers from Spanish-speakers.  As a vast generalization, the French are known for their pickyness in how foreigners (especially Americans) use and pronounce their language.  But either as part of Latino culture or the fact that Spanish has become so bastardized with English words (probably both), Spanish-speakers seem to have the complete opposite reaction to hearing someone try their language.  Almost every time (with the exception of my host madre) that I have stumbled over something in Spanish and asked someone how I would express that thought correctly, the response is something like, "¡Sí, claro, es perfecto! ¡Qué bien hablas!"  Come on, amigos.  I know what I said was completely wrong, it didn't even make sense in English, so please don't worry about being polite and just help me say this correctly!


Some examples of grammar topics I need to practice:

• Commands (positive and negative, irregulars)
• What follows after "Hace ___ años que..."  -what verb form is used after this phrase? Just regular present?
• Vocab.  Good God, I have no vocabulary.  Volunteer work in Spanish has created some bad habits for me, especially pointing to a lot of things and calling them "eso/este."  The only word I remember learning in volunteer work is trapo (rag).  No chance I will ever remember how to say "spackle."  I also really need to brush up on kitchen/home vocabulary.

Clearly I will learn plenty of new slang and informal phrases when I get to Peru, but hopefully I can erase some of my bad habits before I get there!

Good habits my host mother in Spain instilled in me:

• A reliable farewell greeting is "Que lo pases bien," (loosely, "have a good time") or a slight variation thereof.  Adds to the perception that I am more fluent than I actually am, since it's more colloquial than adios, hasta luego, or ciao.  Only problem is that it might be slightly different in South America, like I think "Que te vayas bien" is used more in Mexico.
• I have a horrible habit in English of using "uuuummm" too much to fill in the empty spaces when I'm talking (I've gotten much better, thanks to a job where I have to bullshit with intimidating consultants on a regular basis).  That habit carried over into Spanish, of course.  My wonderful host mother said that if I'm going to make noises like that, I at least have to do it with Spanish sounds, so whenever I said "uumm" in her house, she literally corrected me until I said "eehhh" or "eeehmmm," like a Spanish-speaker.  Hilarious and extremely useful.
• Learned the word 'brindar," to toast, from her.  Every time we refilled a glass in her house, we had to make a formal toast.  And of course Spain also taught me the toast "¡Arriba, abajo, al centro, adentro!"

Very excited to take on a new set of colloquialisms and accents in Peru.  Hopefully I'll find some Peruvian movies on my Netflix to start getting used to the accents!

Oh, and if any native Spanish speakers are reading, por favor deje un comentario con correciones, consejos, o cualquiera cosa! 

Peace Corps and a President: A True Story

How's this for a 50th Anniversary story?


Peru's general elections are coming up this April.  The leading candidate for President of Peru is named Alejandro Toledo.


Alejandro Toledo was born as the 8th of 16 children in a poor Andean family.  Seven of his brothers and sisters died before the age of 1 year old.  From the age of 6 onwards, he worked as a shoeshine and newspaper boy in Chimbote, the coastal town to which his family migrated.  Here in 1964, two volunteers in the brand new Peace Corps program were assigned.  Nancy Deeds needed a place to stay, and in a shantytown, met a teenager.  While his family's home already had 9 people living in 3 rooms, he convinced his mother to allow the volunteer to live (paying rent) in the front room of the house, where produce was sold.  The two volunteers, Nancy and Joel, began assisting Alejandro with a youth group that he headed. By kerosene lamp in her tiny room, Alejandro and Nancy also had long talks about politics and society. "There's no doubt that I woke up and said, 'Maybe I can go somewhere,'" Toledo remembers. 


A few years later, Alejandro won a small scholarship to study in the United States.  He turned to the then-married couple, Nancy and Joel Meister, for help.  They agreed after he promised that he would return to Peru some day. They helped him enroll at the University of San Francisco, lent him money and housed him until he could find his own place to live. In 1970, they attended his graduation.  Toledo went on to Stanford, where he ended up getting two master's degrees and a Ph.D. in Economics. It was at Stanford that he met his wife, Eliane Karp, a Belgian linguistics student.


Toledo first appeared on the international political scene in 1996 when he formed and led a broad democratic coalition in the streets of Peru to bring down the autocratic regime of Alberto Fujimori.  In the 2000 presidential election, Fujimori narrowly defeated Toledo amidst allegations of electoral fraud and widespread upset over the unconstitutionality of Fujimori's candidacy.  After the fall of Fujimori and a short interim presidency, Toledo was elected president in 2001.  In the land of the Incas, he became the first person of indigenous descent to rule this land in 500 years.


To bring it all full circle, Toledo was the president who in 2001, invited the Peace Corps to return to Peru.  Peace Corps had left the country in 1975, due to political and economic instability.


And now, in the year of the 50th Anniversary of Peace Corps and my entrance as a Peace Corps Volunteer, this man may again be elected president.


Below are some fantastic videos that show the diversity of Peru, and the tour guide is then-president Toledo. It is extremely cheesy at some points, but I loved every minute of this.  The first one is the best, I think.

94 Days Until Staging

Hi everyone, it's been a while!

I haven't had much significant Peace Corps activity recently, or at least not blog-worthy updates.  I would rather not post than clog up Peace Corps Journals with stuff like my passport updates, GMAT testing, etc. but I have had enough thoughts recently that I thought they warranted a post.

A friend of mine leaves for PC Senegal this week, and she posted a picture of the contents of her luggage on Facebook.  Ahhh, made it so real!  When I saw her about two weeks ago, I asked how she was feeling about leaving.  She said "overall excitement with occasional bouts of panic."  I thought that was a perfect description of what I anticipate I will feel in two months.  She said she has moments of "What the hell am I doing?  Is there really a reason for me to move to Africa for two years?" and seriously contemplates this life choice, but then eventually gains her footing again.  I have had some thoughts like that, and I figure the more I think about this now, the better.  From what I gather, the first 3 months of training and first 3 months at site involve answering those questions from the locals very often.  The more that I work to articulate my reasons for joining the Peace Corps now, the quicker my counterparts and local acquaintances will come to understand me and my reasons for being there (hopefully).

My current sound-bite for "Why Peace Corps?" is this: 
I want a career in global development work, and I don't think I could ever be effective or trust myself in a global development job without having spent significant time on the ground.  If I am eventually in a position to make decisions/policies on behalf of the interests and needs of others, I want to make sure I have a good idea of what their interests and needs actually are, and I hope to achieve that by incorporating myself into a developing community for two years.

I also got to see a friend who was visiting DC after recently returning from "Interrupted Service" in PC Kyrgyzstan.  She was forced by PC to leave her community after a number of safety concerns, and she said she was planning on leaving service in the next few months anyway, so this was a good thing.  Basically, she was in a sketchy situation with her host father and a number of other men in the community.  From the beginning, PC had given her the option of moving to another Kyrgyz community- but as she put it, what was she supposed to tell her counterparts and friends?  "I'm moving to another community that is pretty much exactly like this one, but with different people."  Yeah, that sounds like a difficult conversation to have with people that you care about.  So for her, returning to the States was better than moving to a different community.

We got to talk about a number questions and thoughts I had, and she said I seemed to be well aware of the biggest challenges of being a PC Volunteer, which was encouraging.  Lack of hot (or running) water, rural living, strange foods, bugs etc. are things that you can get used to somewhat quickly (okay maybe not the bugs), but here are the things I think will be most difficult:

• Explaining what I am doing here.  Pretty much addressed above... but I anticipate that a lot of locals will be really confused as to why I chose to come to rural Peru by myself.  I hope I'll be able to articulate my reasons in a way that makes sense from their point of view.
• Harassment. Hopefully (and most likely) I won't encounter anything as bad as my friend did.  But I do anticipate that as an American woman, I will be somewhat of a target for sexual advances.  I don't think I'll have a problem managing if it is a sporadic occurrence, but I'm concerned about having uncomfortable situations that I have to deal with every day- for example, a host family member or coworker.  It is really awful to be in a situation like that where for one reason or another, you feel helpless.
• Working within the limits of local superstitions.  I said this one, and my friend from PC Kyrgyzstan burst out laughing.  She said this was a very accurate challenge.  For example, in Kyrgyzstan, girls cannot sit by the corner of a table, because the point of the table takes their virginity and can damage their ovaries.  Also, her very smart counterpart wanted to buy shoes with thicker soles because that would fix her kidney stones.  What do you say to that?  "Ummm I really don't want to be a cultural imperialist here, but you're wrong."  Often times, I think it will be best to just not say anything and "pick your battles."  But as I experienced in Spain, this is often easier said than done for me; after I returned from a long run in the humid summer, I went into the kitchen to grab a glass of cold water from the fridge.  My host mother panicked and grabbed the glass out of my hand, saying that I cannot drink cold water after running- only room temperature water.  I was confused and said I'd be fine, I would really prefer cold water.  She persisted that the King of Spain had a heart attack and died by drinking cold water when it was hot outside- I could die!!  Oh man, that was difficult.  I reeeeallly really wanted that cold glass of water.
• Problems with my host family.  I am nervous about the possibility of having a bad match with my host family.  I hope that PC Peru will have picked a good family and community for me, but I know that bad situations do occasionally happen.  A current PCV Peru's blog discussed her situation, where the host mother always seemed dissatisfied with the Volunteer's contributions to the household, and constantly talked about everything that the previous Volunteer did in the house.  She got support from PC Peru, and they helped her move in with another family.  I just really really hope that I am placed with a family where we can share a sense of humor.  When I am trying cow's stomach or guinea pig, or attempting to pluck a chicken or prepare a meal, I want to be able to laugh at myself and have my family laugh with me.
• Trying to be on my A-game 24/7.  Peace Corps is not a 40-hours a week job.  My success on site will be determined by the relationships that I cultivate.  When I am sick (as I have been assured I will be for the first 3 months), tired, or frustrated, I am afraid that that will affect my relationships with others, and consequently, how they respect me and my work.  As a slightly different concern, what if I just can't "make it work," and never reach the point of feeling like I am really accepted in the community?

These are serious challenges, but they don't detract from my commitment to PC service.  Beyond the career motive I explained above, I see these next to years as an important "personal test" for me, in becoming a stronger person and demonstrating my commitment to serving others.  To get really mawkish for a second, "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others." (Gandhi)

Now that I'm done with the GMAT (for the second time), I've been able to start thinking about pulling my life together pre-Peace Corps.  I've filed my taxes for 2010 and am making some financial preparations for the next two years, including consolidating banks accounts and investing some of my savings.  The next things on my to-do list are:

• Dental Clearance update.  By June, it will have been more than a year since I received my dental clearance, so I have to get mine redone.
• Backing up pictures, documents, and music.  My computer is about 3 years old now, and I know it might bite the dust while I'm in Peru.  I'm not concerned about that, since I don't want to risk buying a new one and having it break or get stolen.
• Contemplating some purchases.  I think I want to get a nice camera for PC service.  Although I have a terrible track record with cameras and am afraid of this getting stolen too, I want to have the capacity to take frame-worthy photos of the people and places of Peru.  I also need to get a long down jacket, Chacos, a headlamp, small iPod speakers and possibly some new luggage and an electronic dictionary.  Anybody have recommendations about whether I should use an electronic dictionary or regular old-fashioned one?
• Selling my car.  This one is going to be sad.  I've had my baby since I was 16, and it has treated me so well!  However, I am excited to free myself from registration, taxes, insurance, gas, etc.

Next update will probably be about the upcoming election in Peru.  I'm gathering my thoughts on that one and will get back to you!