A Fundraising Post

Dear All,

My name is Katie Campbell-Morrison. I am a 23 year old Peace Corps volunteer serving as a Community Health Volunteer in a small community of about 200 people named San Antonio de Cusicancha in Huancavelica, Peru. In the past year I have been working with 32 mothers in my community in a Healthy Homes Project. A Healthy Homes Project is a project to promote better nutrition, hygiene, disease prevention, childhood development and self-esteem in the rural households. The project is designed with 6 meeting and accompanying house visits. The meetings include PowerPoint’s and dinámicas (interactive activities), usually with an incredibly organized and passionate nurse from my health post coordinating the formal information part and while I coordinate non- formal education activities.

During the meetings we discuss topics from Peace Corps program goals, the project goals, my health post goals and necessities of the community. The topics that we have covered are: preventing childhood diseases, early childhood development, a healthy community, nutrition and hygiene. In the upcoming sessions we will cover early childhood development again, how to use and maintain an improved cook stove, self-esteem and domestic violence. In the house visits each month the mothers demonstrate what they have learned from the previous meeting and implement small changes in their household. Often during the house visits the mothers realize how much they know more and become excited when they can answer a question correctly, slowly increasing their self-esteem.

At the culmination of the project the mothers who have attended enough meetings and implemented changes will build an improved cook stove. The improved cook stoves help to improve quality of life of the mother and child by reducing smoke in the kitchen and risk of respiratory infections, reducing environmental contamination and reducing the amount of wood needed to cook. In the mountains of Peru it is customary to carry young children on a mother’s backs about 75% of the time. As a result the young children are exposed to the same smoke as their mothers, which reeks havoc on developing lungs.

The mothers that I have been working with in my site are phenomenal. Their support is one of the reasons I found the inspiration to stay in my site when things seemed difficult. Their kindness and willingness to learn and work through the ups and downs may come our way has helped to make the project a reality. I truly believe that I have learned more from them than they will ever learn from me and their thirst for knowledge has sustained and guided the project.

The mothers of my annex are equally incredible women. Tambo de San Antonio de Cusicancha has the highest rate of malnutrition and pregnancies in women under-25 of all the places that my health post cares for. It is located about 2.5 hours (hiking) from my town center, a hike that makes you it feel like you are walking into the sky. Many of the mothers have faces obstacles such as: graduating primary school still unable to read, social unrest, and a struggle to access protein. In the face of there there is still a desire to grow and a support from the community leaders that is non-existent in some other communities. The community knows that they have the strength within themselves to improve the life for the next generation.

Together with the mothers in Cusicancha we worked on a project plan and grant application to get funding from outside of Peru for the improved cook stoves. Currently we are in the process of raising money for the project and short $1253.62.

Any small donation would go to a wonderful cause and help exponentially in advancing our project. It is very easy to donate at: https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=13-527-021 . Thank you so much for your time!

Eye Contact

Eye Contact is such a seemingly simple concept. Well it used to seem that way in the United States. Here in Peru it has become far more complicated. When I was young and living in Cleveland I got used to making eye contact with most people and giving a pleasant smile, unless it was -10* and I wanted to run into the nearest building. When I went off to California for college I realized that eye contact with everyone and a nice smile was a distinctly Midwestern concept. Although it was strange to make eye contact with everyone I still found myself consistently doing it. Or at least looking around to see if there was someone I knew. The only time I actively didn’t make eye contact was when I was listening to music and was in my own music far far away from the real world. Once I came to Peru I realized just how complex the concept of eye contact could mean.

In America an innocent smile and some eye contact usually means “hello,” “nice to see you, “or some other form of casual greeting. Here in Peru on the other hand a girl making eye contact with a guy and giving an innocent saluting smile usually means “ I want to fuck you.” In the states it took slightly more work than an awkward half smile to convey that message.

This confusion over a simple glance saluting hello has caused many of the female Peace Corps females to adopt a habit of walking in the street with a “bitch face” to fend off suitors or so focused on where they are going that they loose sense of the actual faces around them. Don’t get me wrong in the states there was many a time I would be walking around completely unaware of my surroundings and people calling my name, but this was by accident never by design.

My lack of acknowledging my surrounding has cumulated to a ridiculous point. When I am walking around somewhere and getting harassed I purposefully don’t pay attention to the harassers or make any eye contact. Any form of communication will generally exacerbate the situation. In fact last weekend when I was in the capital city there was a group of fabulous men that worked outside of our hotel. They felt the compelling urge to aggressively catcall any time a girl walked by solita and generally make life quite uncomfortable. I got so used to ignoring the catcalls and not paying attention to any of my surroundings until I got into the hotel that when my friend threw a cracker at my head as a joke I didn’t even respond. I partially didn’t respond because I didn’t notice, partially because he was fake catcalling me in an effort to get me to notice he was throwing crackers at my head.

Luckily in my site I can get away with eye contact or an accidental smile without it meaning too much, although I do find that when I am talking to a man who is magically in love with me I have to look at the ground rather than his face. In fact, I have to actively pay attention to those around me when I am in site because heaven forbid I forget to say hello to someone. It can get aggressive having to say hello to everyone all the time. I have to admit shaking hands or a kiss on the cheek while trying to continue to go running is one of the more complicated experiences I have had greeting people.

I have this fear that when I return to the states my general confusion about the timing and action of eye contact will pose a minor problem. As in I will no longer be able to convey the correct moment with my eyes and on the streets everyone may think I want to kill them. When I was home for Christmas I found myself constantly misinterpreting eye contact, which created a communication uphill battle. But you never know maybe my complete inability to correctly interpret eye contact will somehow come in handy in the US, although I am not holding out much hope of that.