Monday, March 9, 2009

Community Diagnostic

During the first several months of service in our town, a large part of our job was to perform what Peace Corps calls a "Community Diagnostic" whereby volunteers analyze the economic, political and social landscape of their sites through various information gathering activities. Some of these activities include interviews, surveys, attending town meetings, library research, informal conversations, and group activities. We put together a brief PowerPoint presentation of our town, which includes information on health, geography, history, economy, youth, etc. If you go through the presentation in the mode which shows "speaker notes" (under the "Action" tab at the bottom of the presentation) you will be able to understand the slides more easily since each slide is accompanied with commentary. We will soon be completing and publishing a more thorough version of the diagnostic in report format.

Hope you enjoy learning a little bit more about our site!

Click here for presentation: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=d6sp6sx_13hd6vnggq

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

The Circus Came to Town

by Milene

A few weeks ago the circus came to town. They set up their tent in the courtyard of the local high school. When a circus comes, generally it performs the same show night after night until the people stop paying to see it. There is no schedule. The show starts when there is a profitable amount of spectators in the stands, generally around 9 or 10pm. The tickets cost a little over 30 cents and the show lasts around two hours. According to people in town, this circus was not as good as some in the past which have included tricks with animals and more daring stunts. Nonetheless most of my friends went to see the show more than once. So I decided to go and check it out one night.

The whole experience seemed like a scene out of Europe when there were gypsies who traveled and put on shows. Everything was so rustic. I thought back to the two or three times I went to a circus in the US held at a huge sports stadium with fire and lights and audio systems. In comparison, the entire staff of this circus was made up of 7 people including the ticket seller. There were 7 main acts split up by clown acts. Three of the seven acts were some form of trapeze performance.

Half way into the show a woman came out and stood in front of a wooden board. Then a man threw knives that stuck in the board behind her. She stood in a few different formations and he threw the knives each time she moved. Then the clown asked for a representative from the audience. I thought to myself that anyone who would let a stranger throw knives at him or her in a traveling circus in Peru would have to be crazy. Well, before I could finish my thought the clown had spotted me since I was the only white person in an audience of about 50 people. He asked me to please come down to have knives thrown at me. I firmly said no, that I was not interested. However, this didn’t seem to mean anything to him as he pulled me by the shoulder to come down to the floor. I would have protested more, but something deep in my gut told me that it would be fine. So I proceeded to the wooden board to have the stranger throw knives at me in a traveling circus in Peru. The clown thanked me and announced to everyone in the audience that I had come from the US to demonstrate that in the US, we do not fear death.