Cheese me*

In Peru, finishing one's plate is a gesture of politeness and appreciation, so to ensure that we don't get a reputation around town as picky and ungrateful eaters, we have instituted the Clean Plate Club, the highest general honor conferred on a member of the EWB-Princeton Peru team during regular mealtimes. To make the Club, as you can guess, you have to clean your plate. This can be accomplished solo or with a food buddy; the only rule is that everything edible on you plate must be eaten by a human being (giving food to dogs not allowed).
Luckily, our meals are usually so delicious that making the Clean Plate Club is a reasonably pleasant task. The people at the Restaurante Malú make great meals with impressive variety for being located in rural Peru. Starchy (read: delicious) items make up 60-75% of the volume of each plate, and we usually have two of either rice, potatoes, yucca (pronounced yoo-ka, not yuck-a as yucca haterz are prone to saying), French fries, and/or noodles. For the non-vegetarians, there is a meat item, most often chicken but also lamb, beef, or fish. On lucky days we get our greens in the form of tomatoes, or beets. (Okay, none of those veggies are green but when you're in the Andean Sierra you take what you can get.) Yesterday we even got lettuce!
In order to bring our diet a bit more to life for our dear readers, I have put together (with the help of my compañeros) a list of the many foods that have kept our bellies and hearts happy here in Samne...
Ají. In America we just have salsa, but in Peru they call their spicy pepper condiment ají. I think it's called that because it's made from the ají pepper, although this might be a lie. Malú makes ají fresh, and we always have to ask for a second helping, mostly because Prakhar inhales ají like it's water. 
Carnero. Chicken is always a safe meat choice, but carnero (lamb) really makes a meal shine. It is usually stewed and goes great with rice, potatoes, and menestra (beans).
Lomitos. A Peruvian dish with cumin beef cut into small strips served with onions, tomatoes, french fries, and the omnipresent rice. We had this dish on our Otuzco outing, and despite receiving our food after people who had ordered other dishes already finished eating, we thought it was definitely worth it.
Cuy. Guinea pig, surprisingly tasty and more chewy than other meat, although it's not a universal favorite. 
Menestra. This delicious lentil/split pea-ish side dish complements any meal perfectly, and we also love it because it means that Prakhar, our token vegetariano, can get protein someplace other than from Clif bars. 
Fresh juice. Samne is located in pineapple country, and nothing beats freshly made pineapple juice. Unless maybe it's freshly squeezed orange juice.
Inca Kola. As our Peace Corps friend Brian says, there are some Peruvian meals that are only good to have with Inca Kola. It's the Peruvian national soda, a radioactive yellow liquid that tastes a bit like bubble gum. Don't be fooled by my unflattering description - it's delicious. I grew up in deep Coca Cola country (what up, Atlanta) and even I would choose Inca Kola over Coke if push came to shove. 
Lúcuma drinkable yogurt. In our adventure to Otuzco, we visited what I have decided is my favorite place in all of Peru: La Otuzcanita Productos Lacteos, where they sell delicious drinkable yogurt flavored like lúcuma, a popular Peruvian fruit. Oddly, not many of us are huge fans of lúcuma fruit but we all agree that the yogurt is fit for consumption by the gods (lúcuma yogurt and ambrosia all the way).
Queso tipo andino. La Otuzcanita also has Andean cheese, a semi-hard locally made cow's milk cheese with a firm but smooth texture and a taste in between that of provolone and manchego. *We polished off an entire wheel in just a few hours, using the shorthand phrase "Cheese me" (quésome) to ask for more.
Manjar. Dulce de leche with a more rich and complex taste. To understand how good manjar is, you should know that the jury is split on whether everyone prefers manjar or nutella. There are different scenarios in which I'd prefer either one - for example, nutella on crepes, but definitely manjar on pastries or shortbread cookies.
Picarones. A cross between Krispy Kreme donuts and funnel cake. Plus honey. Enough said.
Granadilla. A fruit that resembles pomegranate from the outside and inside, but tastes like kiwi. I had to ban myself from eating them this morning after I devoured five in a row last night without even blinking.

In an unrelated update, we're on the second day of the Patron Saint Festival for Santa Rosa de Lima! Lots of soccer-watching and dancing (and eating, of course) as we continue to immerse ourselves in Peruvian culture.

And then there were 5

Today is the second day after the departure of our dear friends Leo and Emily. In order to assuage our sadness we have created a list of how our lives have changed.

1) our daily bread consumption has been cut in half from S/. 3 to S/. 1.50.

2) there is much less complaining (cough cough Leo)

3) half the tech team is gone

4) our attempts to finish 2.25L of Inca Kola are pitiful failures

5) our laptop is gone...

6) Fruit Ninja is gone

7) more room on the bed

8) Prakhar gets to have some quality girl time which works out well for him since he knows all the right songs.

9) we only have Prakhar to pick on

10) we only need two tables at Malú

11) we no longer have the critical mass to make our internal parties seem like parties

12) Barbara has a new food buddy who cuts up her food for her

13) it's quieter

14) we have a lot more bathroom time

15) we're missing our caboose

16) no more really weird "would you rather"

17) no more stargazing

18) 28% reduction in quotable quotes

19) our claim to America (la rubia) is gone

20) Tom has fewer translators

21) we cannot field our own volleyball team

22) 100% of our breakdancing ability is gone

23) we can all sit at the table at the same time for breakfast... sort of.

Dear Emily and Leo, if only you had known about hurricane Irene beforehand you could have hung out with us for a couple more days and helped celebrate el dia de St. Rosa de Lima. We miss you and hope you get back safely to NJ!

Toughen Up

Living in a poor town of the Andean sierra has caused me to eschew my previous conceptions about what defines a "normal" lifestyle. After saying farewell to my more high maintenance, materialistic routine at home in the US, I have learned to value the fundamentals of survival. Forget the frills and comforts of home. The possessions and rituals that were so important to me before seem frivolous and unnecessary out here in the wilderness.

How almost two weeks in Samne have made me a stronger woman:

I base the quality of a meal by the amount of meat on my plate.
Reusing dirty socks is a common and acceptable practice.
Showers are cold, quick, and taken only when truly necessary.
I embrace the farmers tan.
Taking care of my appearance means washing my face occasionally.
A little coliform-infested water is no problem every now and then.
Dogs are not friendly companions and should be avoided at all times, as the nicer ones will steal your food and the mean ones growl and attack.
My Nalgene has become one of my closest friends.
Volleyball games are rough and competitive, especially when gambling is involved.
I can sleep in tight quarters and contorted positions if needed.
Cleaning the carpet entails hanging it out on the clothes line and beating it with the end of a mop until all the dust subsides or you run out of energy to continue.
With all the flies around, you will never be without dinner companions. 
Hitchhiking is always preferable to climbing a mountain to reach your destination, although sometimes you have to climb so just do it and don't complain.

Leo and Emily, Signing Off (sort of)

In addition to being engineers who lack borders, Leo and I happen to be super important pre-orientation leaders, and as such, we sadly had to leave the rest of the group to return to Princeton early. We waved goodbye to the members EWB-Peru, our beautiful little house, and Brad Pitt (the german shepherd) from the back of a combi whose windows were stuck open so we had the priviledge of breathing in a lot of dust on the ride to Trujillo, but otherwise had a very pleasant ride to the city.

As we were riding out of Samne I thought back to over a week ago when we first drove up that road and how unfamiliar everything was, and now just 9 days later how much like home it felt. We have been incredibly lucky in our choice of site, having Alan (probably the awesomest mayor ever to take office) to introduce us to all the town organizations and teach us how to make Pisco sours, being accepted by the Samne volleyball-playing community as hopeless but well-meaning teammates who are good for a laugh, and earning our place as "regulars" at the Restaurant Malu (which is good for some complimentary fresh-squeezed pineapple juice, fried bananas, mazamorra morada, and control over the radio to minimize Wino music). I look forward very much to returning again some time next year - EWB Peru and Samne are destined for great things I can tell!

Our Linea bus from Trujillo to Lima got inexplicably upgraded from "VIP" to "Super VIP", which was quite fantastic (although Barbara, I would say not worth the extra S./ 20 - I'll be damned if those seats actually reclined 180 degrees). However upon arrival in Lima, we learned that courtesy of Hurricane Irene, the entire eastern seaboard was shut down and our flights were cancelled. We spent many hours today arguing with airline agents (a full hour and a half was spent on call waiting as a recorded voice told us over and over and over "Your call is very important to us"). We finally now have our travel plans, but are missing Samne and the rest of the group already.

On behalf of everyone still in Samne, I also have an update on the past few days of our trip. We all had internet access on Thursday morning, but the proceeded to meet with the Marianistas of Otuzco. From our meeting with Jose Luis, it sounds like the Marianistas will be able to serve as our contact on the ground for our Samne project, which was very exciting to hear. They seem like a pretty amazing organization with interests very much in line with ours, and Jose Luis was incredibly nice and friendly. When I last spoke with Barbara, the team was in full work mode, taking community surveys and doing trash profiling with the garbage-collection women (so sorry I had to leave before that part, tech team! at least I was around for sewage testing?). And of course, preparing themselves for the fiesta patronal this weekend.
Good luck guys! See you back in Princeton!

Pictures

Between 7 people we have 7 cameras. The result is a multitude of pictures for every situation imaginable. Hopefully we will be able to recreate our travel experience for the rest of the Peru team when we go back to school. Until then, here are a few shots to let you guys see what we've been up to.

Samne is beautiful. Everybody should come visit it at least once and drink pineapple juice.

Why ride on a comfortable car seat when you can ride in the back? Los chicos cool.

And the trash problem. It actually does exist, though not too many townspeople seem preoccupied about it. Emily has many more lovely trash pictures on her camera.

Shout-out to Garrett Disco. This is your bridge! When cars cross it you can dinstinctly see the bending. Seeing it almost makes we want to do some stress/strain calculations.

Team posing in the Pitajaya post our meeting with the community. Afterwards we walked down to a huaca (sacred place from pre-Incan times) that was nearby, but sadly we could only find fragments of pottery.

This is the house we were suppose to stay in, but did not because they had not finished repairing it yet. Imagine our surprise when we discovered that the color scheme they chose was orange and black. Coincidence? I think not.

I pretended not to know these guys as they posed while we hiked around the Pitajaya. Seriously, who are they?

Group picture at our house in Samne! The two non-travel team members are Alan, the mayor of Samne, and Brian, the current Peace Corp Volunteer in Otuzco.

Sometimes the tech team actually does stuff. Just kidding. They work hard all the time!

Being in Samne is a lot like going on OA sans the 40-ton packs. Lots of sweating but a million-dollar view.

Group picture with people from the Pitajaya, a caserio of Samne. We met with them to talk about their lack of potable water.

The design team strutting their Tyvex Suits. Yes, even playing with sewage can be fun.

The health post in Samne is well-stocked. There is a doctor, two nurses and two technicians.

Well those are all the photos for now! Expect more at the end of the trip!

This is Tom's Post

On Thursday, August 18, the technical team was scouting the banks of Rio Moche for a suitable location for water quality monitoring. Team members observed an area where surface vegetation and surface soils had been removed. Upon closer examination of this area they observed massive crack in the soil characteristic of those formed when soils with a high clay content are dried. They marked this site to return for infiltrometry measurements.

On Friday, August 19, the technical team did conduct infiltrometry measurements and found that this location required 55 minutes to absorb 15 milliliters of water from the water reservoir. This infiltration rate corresponds to clay soils according to the users manual. The device used was a Mini Disk infiltrometer manufactured by Decagon Devices with the suction control tube set at 2 cm.

On Saturday, August 20 the technical team conducted a second on another portion of the site and found 45 minutes required for drawdown of 15 milliliters which again indicates a tight soil but not as tight as the former site. For comparison purposes the team conducted an infiltration measurement on a bank of sand on the edge of the river and measured a drawdown of 80 milliliters in 30 seconds, characteristic of a coarse sand.

This area and the clay content are significant for the following reason. When a sanitary landfill is constructed in Samne there must be a barrier to prevent landfill leachate from percolating into ground water. Deposits of low permeability clay could potentially be used in lieu of or in addition to a synthetic membrane.

We subsequently learned that this disturbed area is controlled by a mining company that is prospecting for silver. There were workers in the area handling drums of chemicals and mixing them in shallow impoundments.

The outcrop of soil material is obviously sedimentary in nature as the vertical profile has distinct bands of perfectly horizontal strata which vary in color and texture. These horizontal deposits are on top of eroded rubble and boulders on the valley floor. The geomorphology of this site is unknown to the team but the following mechanism is postulated as an imaginary yet plausible sequence in order to further describe these deposits. Perhaps at some time in the remote past a landslide or avalanche blocked the flow of the river and created a large lake. Over a long period of time this lake became a sedimentation basin in which eroded material carried by the river settled under the influence of gravity, and following Stokes Law, the largest particles settled at the upper, shallow end of the lake and the finer materials settled in the deeper regions of the lake. These sediments would then overlay the existing rubble in the river bed as observed. Eventually the material blocking the river eroded away and the lake drained and the sediments emerged as dry ground.

If the preceding hypothesis is reasonably correct then it follows that this large deposit of fine-grained soil material may be a rare phenomenon in the Rio Moche valley. Elsewhere in the Samne region all exposed soil profiles are unconsolidated deposits comprised of rock and soil mixed randomly. This particular outcrop along the river is the only location observed where there is fine soil free of rock. This being the case we recommend that this outcrop be preserved for as source of materials for construction and operation of the landfill.

This exact site is not appropriate for the location of a landfill because it is within the valley bottom and the elevation is probably below the level of peak floods. Therefore a landfill at this site could be eroded during a flood and buried waste would be washed loose and into the river flow. For clarity, it is restated that we consider this material to be good for the construction of a landfill but this exact location to be unsuitable for a landfill.

A New Perspective

As a member of the technical team, before coming to Peru I was really excited about the engineering aspects of our planned projects. This is the first time that I would be designing something real. Something that would actually be realized and affect people’s lives. And in fact, studying ORFE (la ingeniería de dinero as Michelle has so kindly described it to Peruvians), I realized that working with EWB might be one of the few times I could work on engineering design projects. Meanwhile, though I definitely did also recognize the developmental and social aspects of our trip, without seeing the community and the lives of people here, the difficulties of an impoverished life weren’t yet tangible coming from the sheltered and privileged life I have always comfortably led.

Interestingly, though, I have seen people living in severe poverty before. Having lived in India and having visited there many times, I have seen that the experiences depicted in Slumdog Millionaire, though sensationalized by Hollywood, are very real in their most basic sense. However, my personal visits to India have been vacations, and in fact, I have often cherished more luxuries there than in America, including chauffeurs and chefs at my family homes. Moreover, I have never been to India with the intent of helping others and, thus, the lives of those less privileged have unfortunately been out of sight and out of mind with each night’s cozy sleep.

As soon as I stepped into Samne, I saw many things the people here could use help with. Their houses are made of mud bricks and steel roofs. Sewage gets dumped out at the bottom of town, and there is a hillside longer than a football field covered in their piles of trash. There isn’t a paved road in town and pipes are often sticking out in the streets where the thin PVC has been repaired. For a while, I couldn’t bring myself to understand how people could live like this. Still, those on the team who had previous experience with international development kept repeating their surprise about how nice the facilities and buildings in Samne are.

This differences between our perceptions continued to astound me until the reality of poverty hit me full force during our trip to the Pitajaya caserío of Samne. Going there we walked a thin path through the mountainside that was hand carved by the townspeople. After our climb there, the community’s lieutenant general greeted us—his hand calloused and hardened by years of hard labor. As we walked through the town, we passed a little boy, about five years old, whose clothes and skin were patched with dirt and whose toes were sticking out of the ripped front flap of his shoe.

When we got to the community’s water source, however, it immediately became apparent why this is the main source of disease and concern. The water is stored in open concrete chambers with whatever else falls in. Furthermore, it comes directly from the Rio Moche—a river contaminated with mining waste and with no signs of life within. In the meeting that followed shortly thereafter, townspeople mentioned that while they try to boil it and add chlorine, tired workers and children often drink water crude from the source. Unfortunately, with no system of flowing water in houses or filtration, such problems are almost inevitable.

As the meeting passed, the difficulties of life in Pitajaya became further apparent. Parents constantly fear for the wellbeing of their children who are most susceptible to waterborne disease and electricity is something the community will have to wait for because of the impediments of bureaucracy. The one moment I can never forget, though, came around the end of the meeting. An older man repeatedly thanked us for just considering helping them and said multiple times, “Dios nos escucha.” God listens to us. This gratitude was for the basic necessity of potable water. Something that we take so easily for granted, but something for which people all over the world can only hope. This man’s words truly and honestly sent a shiver down my spine and made me realize that the people in this town who work so hard to carve their roads by hand and to bring everything from food and furniture to their homes by foot only barely get by every day.

Nonetheless, meeting with them also made me realize one other thing. It showed me how much hope they had. Despite having hardships in life, everyone in Picajaya seemed content. Though they still do not have electricity or clean water after years of asking the government for it, our presence still made them optimistic for improvement. The trip to Picajaya has helped me realize that people, no matter in what situation, make a fulfilling life for themselves.