Peruvian Journeys

The end of our summer assistantship became crazy as we attempted to finish the education in emergencies report and also complete all of our site visits and interviews in Peru as well during the same week.

Because of scheduling conflicts we ended up with our last scheduled work week taking place in Peru, and the Peru office really wanted us to visit the Cusco office for site visits because that is where many of their emergency responses have taken place. Because of this fact, we ended up flying from Panama City to Lima, Peru on Sunday, from Lima to Cusco on Monday morning, from Cusco back to Lima on Wednesday, and from Lima to Panama City on Friday morning. On Saturday I was scheduled to fly from Panama City back to the US, so even if we had been doing interviews alone it would have been a hectic week.

Enjoying the Starbucks in Lima

Despite the craziness, however, it was impossible not to notice the exceptional beauty and otherworldliness of Peru. In some respects walking around in Peru feels like walking on the moon. The natural features of the country are so exaggerated and there are so many mountains everywhere. Leilani and I were shocked during our only real down-time in Lima to discover that there is a Starbucks at the mall in the downtown area (and many throughout the city, as we later discovered). To see women on the sidewalks dressed in the traditional bright indigenous sweaters and bowling hats before turning the corner to a modern Starbucks with the typical smooth jazz and Carmel Macchiatos on tap was just a bizarre experience.

We had been told that the food in Lima is some of the best in the world, and we were not disappointed. Although I maintain that any meals where someone else (aka the “man”/ the NGO) is picking up the tab is double-y delicious, our first dinner in Lima was especially tasty. I think the trick is all of the flavor that each part of the meal contains, coupled with the fact that they mix so many different food items together in one dish. For example, the traditional Peruvian dish of “causas” is something like mashed potatoes layered with greens and then chicken salad on top. It may sound like a bizarre food combination but it really is very very good. If I had stayed in Peru too long I think I would have gained another ten pounds to add to the ten already packed on during grad school.


Unfortunately, we had to leave for Cusco bright and early the next day. We both were kind of dreading the altitude sickness which we knew was inevitable because Cusco is nestled up in the mountains, but also excited to see a new place. Cusco is gorgeous and actually reminds me a bit of Antigua, Guatemala (probably my favorite place in the world) but colder. It was down in the 30s at night, a fact that we were not prepared for. We met a lot of interesting people in Cusco and were able to journey out to a site visit in Pampa Corral where we saw a community that had suffered a landslide a few months before. We had to spend about 4 hours in the car each way to reach this isolated community but our time there was well worth it because we were able to talk with 3 different age-groups of children for focus groups and also with their parents, who were extremely helpful and insightful about the needs of the community.

Beautiful are near Cusco, Peru

After a brief three days in Cusco once again we were back in the airport, this time for Lima where we had one more day of interviews. Again we traveled to a community on the outskirts of Lima, about two and a half hours from our hotel (Lima is a huge city with 9 million people, almost reaching the status of mega-city). There we met a group of elementary school kids who are learning how to form brigades and evacuate appropriately in the case of a disaster (and their school is in an earthquake zone on a rocky hill so a landslide would not be a complete surprise). They did an example evacuation drill for us and it was really cute.

After a very busy week in Peru I was ready to head back to Panama City and then onward to the US. The summer was an incredible but completely exhausting journey across two continents, five countries, and dozens of cities and towns. All in all we interviewed over 60 people and wrote a 52 page report (255 if you include the annexes) about Plan’s education in emergencies programs in these countries. A summary of our report and findings will be presented at Plan’s regional conference of the Americas this month and our findings will be combined with those conducted in other regions and presented in a published report at a UN cluster group conference in September. All together, a very valuable experience and a fascinating way to spend the summer.

Now back to DC and back to school!

VIP Movie-Going

Nothing beats watching the very guapo man in Captain America at the VIP Theater in Panama City. This VIP treatment means that for $10 (the price of a regular ticket at home!) you get to lay back in a Lazy-Boy, have waiters come to take your order and bring your beer, wine, sushi, caramel popcorn, or whatever your heart desires (my heart desired a hot dog on this particular night), and watch the movie in style. This is the life.