Finding Japan in Perú

Japan and Peru have a hidden but deeply entwined relationship. Although it appears to be mostly one sided in that Japan does not harbor as many obvious links to Peru as Peru does to Japan, both countries reveal their connections.

If I were to spend more time in Japan now, I would love to explore Peruvian culture on Japanese soil. But there are a couple of instances that I recall even from before I had ever been to Peru.

I will always remember that the first time I learned the famous Peruvian song "Cariño" was from a Peruvian street performer in Nagoya, where a Peruvian one-man band was alternately playing the zampoña, quena, and singing to a pre-made soundtrack. My host mother loved him and bought his CD, which I added to my laptop music library. I loved that CD, and my favorite song was "愛人", meaning loved one. The lyrics were in Spanish, and I memorized the song. After my arrival, I realized you heard this song ALL OVER the country, and was very proud of my ability to sing it along with my Peruvian friends and acquaintances.

Besides the one-man band, I had run into several Peruvians throughout Nagoya, mostly who were selling goods at flea markets. I tried to make conversation with them in my then very halting Spanish, but I remember them being fairly reticent (maybe because of the language barrier?). Throughout my time on Honshu, I met a lot of South Americans who were working for car factories (mostly Honda, which is located in Nagoya). My university had a スペイン語クラブ, Spanish club, that I briefly attended that even had a Peruvian llama half my height that they brought out during the university festival, Nanzan-kai. Not sure how they got that llama :/

Giving the llama some love with Nanzan friends

Pala Qu'ala

I'm on the theme of Lima day trips to the Andes lately.

Probably because the Andes are so pretty! And surprisingly close to Lima are beautiful, lesser known, verdant areas full of farmland and waterfalls. I love the fact that I live on the East side of Lima so close to the pretty part of the Limeñan Andes. 

This past weekend we went with a group of volunteers to San Jerónimo de Surco - also just called Surco - in the Huarochirí province to hike to the waterfall Pala Qu'ala (also spelled Palakala). The trip was pretty painless - go to Chosica (I describe the process of how to arrive there in my Markahuasi blog here) to Parque Echenique. At the Parque, you get off and immediately take a right on the road behind the plaza, which is where the buses going to Surco are located. These buses have a final destination at Matucana (also a pretty hiking spot), so they will have Matucana written on the side. It's S/3.50 one way to get to Surco.

When you get off at Surco, it's pretty apparent how to find the trail to Palakala. You walk straight down the road from where the bus drops you, and there should be a hut with tourist information where you pay an entrance fee next to the Municipalidad building. No one was manning the hut, so we went without paying the fee :/ but I believe it's super minimal, maybe S/2. The trail was easy to find, you just walk to the end of the road where the bus drops you off, hang a right, and keep walking till you see the sign pointing you to Palakala. From there, just follow the red arrows, they're pretty clear. 

Follow me!

Marcahuasi

Several weeks back we went on a little two day trip to Marcahuasi....

Little Peru trips (Ayacucho)

Since I last wrote in February, I've mostly been working and hanging out in Lima, exploring various nooks & crannies of the city. But I've taken a few smaller trips to other parts of Peru too. 

The rest of February was mostly working and hanging out with Peruvian friends & volunteers, seeing parts of Lima like Huaca Pucllana (some pretty ruins in Miraflores) and going to a friend's birthday party.

Posing outside Erico's (which we lovingly call Carmen's for the woman who always takes our order) in Chaclacayo 

 Outside Huaca Pucllana in Miraflores

Nearly 4 months in

Hello everyone :)

My lovely friend Thomas just reminded me that I have not blogged in a while, so let me give you a quick update on life here in Huaycán....

Pachamanca at Adely's (+ recipe for Siete Semillas)

In early December I got the amazing opportunity to attend a Pachamanca at the house of one of the participants in a program I work for. Pachamanca (meaning "earth pot" in Quechua) is an Andean manner of cooking where you either dig a hole in the earth or make a brick oven, build a fire and heat very hard stones over it. You then remove the stones from the fire, fill the oven with various types of potatoes and sweet potatoes , cover those with rocks, and then layer various types of meats with hot rocks, before coving the whole thing in rocks and topping it with fava beans. You then wrap the whole oven in wet cardboard, followed by plastic tarps, followed by blankets, and seal it so no heat escapes. Then you let everything cook at this super hot temperature for 30 minutes to an hour, and then uncover it all and dig in! Traditionally, you stand over the oven and eat everything fresh from the oven with your hands. We started that way, and then moved things over to plates :)

Here is a picture guide from start to finish of how to make Pachamanca - plus a few other recipe goodies I learned that day.

3 weeks in Huaycán

I have now been living in Lima, Perú in a suburb northeast of downtown at the foothills of the Andes called Huaycán. Why am I back in Perú? Wasn't I just here in June?

I'm here because I left my job in Colorado to search for a job in International Development, and I was hired by a Lima nonprofit named The Light and Leadership Initiative (LLI) to be their Program Director...

...which is turning out to be exactly the job I was looking for!

I arrived here a little over three weeks ago, and I am excited to say that - after observing all the programs and operation of LLI - I feel extremely lucky and honored to have been chosen for this position, and I feel that I will both do well at and excel in my new job. The nonprofit is quite well integrated into the local community, it attracts like-minded volunteers who are positive and engaged in their work, and it is working hard to educate and empower local residents. This is the kind of career I dreamed of having when I decided to study international development.

What I've been working on since I arrived started mostly as orientation, training, and observation. The program has English, art, reading, chess, women's, and teen programs that I've been attending and helping with. I have also been shadowing on parent visits, where we go to the homes of the parent of our kids and speak to them about the child's progress and notify them about program dates and events. We work in three "zones" (zones S, Z, and D) of Huaycán where we have classrooms. We go to the different zones because the ones higher on the hill (S and Z) tend to be poorer - one of the families we went to on a parent visit stated that they did not even have money to send their child to school in a nearby zone - a bus ride that costs 1.20 soles ($0.41) round trip.

Here are some cute pictures of our younger participants in art class in Zone S:

Lima recap

After we started our project in Peru, I ran out of time to blog!

These posts are written after I returned to the US just to summarize what I did in Peru and give some pictures :)

We were in Lima from 5/31/14 through 6/6/14, and then we returned at the end of the trip from 6/18/14 through 6/21/14. There, we spent our time in the Miraflores, San Isidro, Magdalena del Mar and San Miguel districts meeting with the individuals and organizations working against human trafficking. There are many forms of trafficking in Lima, mostly domestic and commercial labor, factories, begging, and prostitution.

At  the end of our trip, we were fortunate enough to be invited to the National Conference regarding human trafficking, where the biggest governmental & NGO human rights groups conducted workshops and presentations about human trafficking law and statistics in Peru and other Latin American countries like Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and El Salvador. 

Otherwise, we spent our free time enjoying Lima's food scene, exploring downtown Lima where we explored government buildings and the catacombs of the Church of San Francisco,  and wandering around Miraflores where there are beautiful parks and an excellent view of the sea.

Here are some of my favorite Lima photos:

 Fries at our favorite creole sandwich restaurant, La Lucha

 One of the native birds in the sanctuary and park Bosque El Olivar in San Isidro

 The inside of the Municipal Palace of Lima

Lima

Hola a todos,

As you may or may not know, I came to Lima about two days ago. The journey took just over 24 hours because apparently Denver is not a major hub for flights to Peru. But I made it!

Our reason for coming was in order to do quantitative research through surveys for Chris' anti-human trafficking research project that we are doing in conjunction with a professor and grad student of the University of Denver. Our travel companions don't arrive in Lima until 12am tonight, so we have not started on the project just yet.

We have spent our first two days in Lima basking in its culinary genius. Our favorite thing about Peru is the food, so we were extremely excited to eat all of our favorite things and re-visit our favorite places (and maybe find some new things) before beginning our research.

First, we went to La Lucha Sanguchería Criolla, which is among our favorite places in the world. I have no pictures of La Lucha because we were pretty concentrated on our food at the time. We may or may not have gone there three times already since arriving.

We also went for a run on a park that runs along the cliffs overlooking the ocean where you see all the new surfers falling off their surfboards and the Limeños walking their dogs dressed in sweaters and skirts.

Later, we went to Mercado Surquillo, where we ate some amazing, fresh ceviche with canchita (puffed corn) and caldo de pescado (fish broth with lime and cilantro) while listening to a couple play huayno (traditional Andean music).