Hello everyone and happy new semester, Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. It’s been a while since I submitted my last post. From here on, I will be submitting blogs from my experiences in Peru. The focus of my month-long project visit was to aid a Wentworth professor in an economic development plan with the community in a village there. This basically means that day by day, the professor and I would talk to people in the community, learn about the issues they are having, what they aspire to acheive, revive and improve in their community and being that tool/resource (and if we cannot be that resource, we could find the appropriate resource) to enable them to facilitate those goals they have. We were accompanied by four other students: three more from Wentworth and one from MIT. Of the three other Wentworth students, two are civil engineering juniors named Jose “Tito” Arevalo and Starling Espaillat who’s focus was to design a sand filter for the water in used in the community, and the third is Eric Danforth, a junior in Architecture who’s focus was on renovating the “Casa del Colibri” (Hummingbird House) community center in the village.
I have practically not slept since before Christmas due to all of the partying of the holidays during vacation and lack of sleep Saturday night because I missed the last commuter rail from Boston finishing up some emails for the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) at my school, to make sure they are set up and can transition smoothly while I’m gone for those six weeks in Peru. I got to East Boston at 3:30 in the morning and slept until 5:30 a.m. when I headed to the airport. After going through security and check-in, I passed out at the Gate waiting for the connecting flight to Miami. The flight left at 8:30 a.m. and after a long layover, boarded the 5-hour afternoon flight to Lima.
I particularly enjoyed this flight, despite the length, because I sat next to a Peruvian woman and we ended up talking the whole flightdown. We talked a lot about cultural differences in Peru and the U.S. and comparing those differences to other traveling experiences we have each had. It was a great orientation to Peru before even arriving. I learned about how Peruvians use the language (we spoke Spanish the whole way through), similarities and contrasts to cultures we have each been exposed to (i.e. Bolivia, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico), immigration and emigration patterns of populations like the Japanese in Peru, and different approaches to tourism that aren’t so exploitive of a country’s culture. We talked about the importance of bilingualism when raising children in the U.S., and I explained how my just learning Spanish is very reflective of my generation of Latinos that don’t speak Spanish as much anymore. She explained to me how unique Peruvian culture is in that it is so diverse compared to other Latin American countries, which largely due to its broad range of climates.
Lima is a coastal desert, yet Chirimoto, where I am going to spend most of my time and where the economic development project is focused, is a mix of the Amazon rainforest and the mountains of the Amazon. Closer to the Andes mountains of Peru, it gets very cold and it snows in other parts of the coast there are beaches where people surf. She stated that geography determines a lot about the culture. She was familiar with Chachapoyas, which is the closest well-known area to Chirimoto (it’s the capital of the Amazonas department, which is in Peruvian terms like a State) and after I asked “what is typical Peruvian food like?”, she supported her former statement by saying that it depends on the region we’re talking about. She said ceviche–a South American dish usually consisting of shrimp or other sorts of seafood–is the most popular dish of Lima, which makes sense due to its coastal orientation on a map. She stated that rather than that, in Chirimoto and Chachapoyas, and I am more likely to find plantains and yucca, which makes sense because of these greens grow in moist, dense areas like the rainforest. She lastly gave me recommendations on fun and authentic places to visit and things to do during my week-long pre-Chirimoto stay in Lima. We exchanged contact phone numbers and Facebooks and exited the plane.
While waiting for a few hours after getting through customs for Claudia, an MIT senior in Environmental Engineering that will be focusing on proposing systems for more healthy and efficient sewage systems in the village, the Wentworth students, professor and I went to grab a bite. Take a look at our arrival
I tried a Peruvian empanada de queso (cheese empanada) that tasted very good.
We took two taxis to Claudia’s grandmother’s house (yes, folks, that means she’s Peruvian-American) because our luggage combined could not fit in one, as you can tell below.
Once we got to the house, we immediately rested. Arrival at house from airport: click to here my thoughts.
