News Flash:

After a bismal April performance of one blog entry, I'm going for it in May. It's time for a Jangas Animal Update.

I often get chastisted from Beth for my “resort” Peace Corps Housing. OK Beth, it's true, I have a toilet, you have a letrine, my showers are teasingly hot, and yours are taken with a bucket in your host family's “living room,” but you ain't got nothing on me in terms of animals.

For the non-Meyer family readers who haven't seen my house, my door opens directly to the outside. When I wake up I am in a cuy (guinea pig) zone. My family raises free range cuys—and yes they taste like chicken—in fact, they're delicious. Cuys are a serious business in Ancash, recently my host mom and I headed to Huaraz where she sold four cuys (I believe at about 20 soles each).

My host mom Maximiliana works constantly cleaning, feeding and caring for this economic investment. Mostly cuys eat alfalfa, fruit peals and scraps. As an “economista” they seem to me to be an incredibly efficient investment, and I seriously think they could be an international development project waiting to happen in other parts of the world.

That brings us to the local Jangas crime report. No mom, it's not real crime, Jangas continues to be a very safe environment. Well, I can't lie, it was a real crime. Lonchera, the family dog (I should really use past tense here...) has had it in for the cuys for some time. A few months ago, Lonchera killed a few cuys. Then came the tragic day. My host-sister was home. My host-sister Margarita loves to clean, so one day it came time to clean the animals. I participated (host-family integration, Peace Corps Goal number 2). I am sure we are the only family in Jangas that cleans its animals. Which I'm definitely not gonna complain about, believe me (I don't have fleas in my bed, while friends of mine do...).

So there we sat, rinsing, scraping, and shampooing the various mutts and kittens we have here in the Huamaliano-Cueva-Meyer residence. Lonchera was last, and looked good after her bath. Now recently I've read The Devil in the White City (thank you Duffy), so I'm pretty sure Lonchera had some of the devil in her, and to celebrate her new cleanliness wiped out 7 cuys. She ate a few of them, and killed the others for sport. Seven cuys is a major economic loss, Lonchera was not.

Before she left for another world, Lonchera gave birth to Oso (Bear). Oso is a fat little round dog that gets along well with the cuys (he better).

Lonchera is not the only one that has attacked the cuys in cold blood. Remember the adolescent rooster? Well he's all grown up now. So much so, that he doesn't like to be touched anymore. The other day when it was time for him to go out to pasture, we all tried to corner him. Remember how my door opens to the outside? The fucker ran for it, ran to the back of the room, ignored Katherine's yoga mat, and jumped for the bed, stepping on my pillow (I'm pretty sure this move was just plain gratuitous) before Marco grabbed him.


A few days earlier that week, the rooster stepped on a cuy, killing it. Let's just say it wasn't his week, and let's just say (again) that I think it's time for a chicken dinner. My birthday is coming up after all.
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Side Note: While I have your attention, or at least some of it, I will make an abrupt transition (Matthew's favorite type :).

I would like to use this forum to give a shout out for Matthew Meyer and Jessica Sayre to all of our family and friends (and a few people that read this blog in Ukraine—eso!).

Congratulations Matthew and Jessica for all your hard work over the past four years. The world now has two more intelligent, hard-working, caring doctors. Thanks for the dedication guys. Love you both very much, and will be thinking of you on Sunday.

Sandwiches, Big Birds and my 3.5 Days of Beach Service

2 out of every 5 Peruvians are entrepeneurs. Perú at 40,3% has the highest rate of entrepeneurship in the world, with the world's average being 9,3%.

For our Semana Santa celebrations, my fellow Ancash Volunteers and I headed for the coast—Mancora which is a few hours from the Ecuador border. Mancora has great waves, great food, great sand, and great sun.

In between sunburning myself, surf lessons, boat cruises, (remember, it's all part of protecting and defending the constitution), I realized that this beach was unlike any I'd ever been on, and that in fact it really wasn't a beach at all--it was the freest market I'd ever seen. Up and down the beach there were local entrepeneurs selling everything from the typical rip off sunglasses to a wicker mat you could use to lay on (I almost bought one).

Over my three days, I saw the following things being sold or rented from hunreds of vendors: soda sandwiches, necklaces, earrings, ice-cream, popsicles, sunglasses, beer, umbrellas, hats, etc. There were artists offering to make 2 week tattoos, and hair stylists offering different styles of braids. No one owned a store, no one needed to, a box or a backpack are the only necessities to compete.

By the second day I had already changed my behavior to meet the beach's supply. I started bringing a few soles to the beach. I bought coconut juice from a man that chopped the coconut right in front of me. We rented umbrellas and bought soda from the Avon Barksdale of the West side of Mancora (seen in picture, wearing light blue and white—she really did control the beach).

But most of all, we bought sandwiches. Our favorite vendor by far was the “Sandwich lady.” Where else in Perú can you get a stomach-satisfying piping hot, fresh off the moto-taxi fresh tomato, basil and mozzarella sandwich? Whenever a volunteer would arrive, inevitably, the first question they'd ask was “has the sandwich lady been by yet?.” We learned that she buys them for 3 soles, and sells them for 3.50, selling 80 on a good day. She offered to make extra for our bus trip back.

Even the “boat cruise” we went on was the work of a fellow Volunteer contracting a fisherman to take us out on the water for about an hour to see the sunset. Needless to say, my vision of the Spirit of Ethan Allen were quickly erased.

My favorite example of the intense creativity of the local entrepeneur came on the second day. A huge bird (I think it was a crane), landed near us and wasn't flying away. A huge crowd formed around it.

As the bird didn't interest us that much, we decided to go for a swim, and on the way back I joked that there'd be someone standing with the bird offering to take your picture with it for a couple soles. When we got back, my friend told me that recently a guy had offered her the opportunity to take a picture with the bird for a comfortable 8 soles.

It all made me think back to a conversation Matthew and I had a few years back in Italy as we watched street vendors enter discotecas selling roses, glow in the dark sunglasses and glow sticks—Matthew wondered aloud if the US lessened its laws against strict street vendors if just a few people might leave the US's giant informal market in drug trafficking to start their own small business.

As I got on the bus back to Huaraz, to climb those 10,000 feet again, they started loading people's luggage. Our backpacks landed next to a basket full of about 20 chickens—undeniably another small profit in a neighbor's small business.