July 11, 2007- What now?

We are currently on day 3 of national school strikes, day 7 of no water, and day 3 of no way to get into the city for water or food. Things are looking pretty grim and I find myself getting sad and frustrated, my feelings probably being amplified by my extreme dehydration. Even if I were stupid enough to drink water from the river that passes by our house, I couldn’t because it has dried up since the end of rainy season. I am praying that the transportation strike ends tomorrow so I can treat myself to a tub of drinking water and maybe some food that resembles something other than stale rice. My family is having an interesting response to our current hardship, one that might entertain me if I weren’t so freaking thirsty. They stare at me and make comments like, ¨The gringa is looking gaunt and worried too, like us. What are we going to do?¨ As if I, as what they still consider a privileged white, am impervious to thirst, suffering, whatever. I recently read a Newsweek article about what a delicacy clean drinking water is in most developing countries, and I felt fortunate to be in a country where water isn´t too hard to come by. Now that I am getting a taste of the desperation that comes with waking up to the thought of ¨Where will we find water today?¨, I feel sick knowing that some peoples lives are made of the endless search for water. Maybe I am not cut out to be a development worker if I feel so paralyzed and sentimental about what people in disadvantaged situations have to face. How personal of a struggle this can be sometimes, even while those around you are going through the same experience.

From what I can gather, the school strike is taking place in response to a new law Alan Garcia is proposing to impose an evaluation system on the educational realm. I imagine his goal is to produce more qualified teachers and provide the students with a means of giving feedback about the quality of their classes and teachers. This is scaring many teachers since education is undervalued here, and many of them (I write from personal experience, and from experiences relayed to me by fellow volunteers) are less than serious about their jobs. Maybe some of you have read the recent Economist article about how poor education is in Peru. None of what I write here is meant to deny the fact that many talented and devoted teachers exist in Peru. Sometimes they just seem like the minority. In my last site, the teacher I was working with consistently showed up an hour late with alcohol so blatantly on his breath that his 10 year old students not-so-subtly called him Sr. Borracho (Mr. Drunk). At my current site, the students are barely in class. When I go to scheduled meetings with the director, I find him playing volleyball with his staff, the students nowhere to be found. When I ask him where the kids are, he looks at me impatiently for interrupting his game, and tells me that all 100 of them were tired, so he let them out two hours early (the school day is only 5 hours long). The teachers are refusing to come to school because they are against being evaluated and forced to be held accountable for what they are supposed to know as educational authorities. Obviously, as a bit of an outsider, it is possible that I do not have the whole story, but this is what I was able to pick up from newspapers and my townspeople. The strike has no end in sight, which is seriously hindering my work here with the youth. All of my scheduled activities in the schools have been indefinitely postponed, and I can´t make it into the city for my other job at the youth hogar.

I have no clue what is going on with transportation to and from my site, but I hear there might be a nation-wide business strike, or ¨paro¨ which is more like an organized halt in service that generally is short-lived. As soon as this blog entry gets posted, that means I was able to make it into the city, which is a very good sign. For the time being, the Peace Corps is advising us against travel as there are potentially dangerous protests all throughout the country. Since I can´t get out of my site to begin with, I guess the above advisory doesn’t really apply to me. Hopefully my next entry will be written with all things resolved.