Goodbye Campo...Hello Hot Shower

Pardos Chicken is a chain of mid-scale carnivore-pleasing food establishments here in Peru. There can order a wide variety of meaty treats, from steak and sausages to all sizes of roasted chickens. Additionally, which may not seem obvious at first, if one is lucky enough and in the port city of Chiclayo at the right time, one can hang out with the contestants of the Miss Peru 2007 competition as they have a meal prior to the big show. This is a good thing, as fresh from several days without showering and after traveling for nearly twenty-four hours, this was exactly what Luke and I were looking for when we decided to kill some time as we waited for our unnecessarily-delayed flight to leave for Lima. Did we do anything to take advantage of our situation? Of course not. Who are we to a bunch of sash-wearing beauty queens? That and the fact we smelled like rural Peru somewhat precluded us from talking to the contestants. However, our disheveled state did not prevent us from realizing, once again, that the serendipitous nature of our trip had provided us with yet another entertaining moment to share.

So here we are in Lima; back in the big town. The positives of being back in Lima include an abundance of ceviche, a warm shower, and our dress coats.

So what has happened since I last blogged? Lots. When I last wrote I was recovering from a white-knuckle ride in the back of a Toyota truck. From there Luke, Niels, our newly acquired translator Alberto, and I prepared ourselves for the next part of our work: field surveys. Essentially, we designated this past week as our time to head back into the field, this time to administer a set of surveys that explored the use of electricity (for both the home and business), and, if electricity wasn't present, the expectations for the future use of electricity if installed. We identified a small village along the Rio Tabaconas, Tamborapa Pueblo, where we felt would be able to get responses that were relatively representative of similar villages in the area. Tamborapa Pueblo is a town with about 200 households that is electrified by means of a micro-hydro system that was installed in 1999. What made this town even more appealing was the fact that nearby there were an abundance of unelectrified households against which we could perform our contrasting survey.


Tamborapa Pueblo sits in the basin of the Rio Tabaconas river valley. It is a small village with muddy roads, simple structures, and a little restaurant called Anderson's, where we ate every meal everyday. There we stayed in a simple hospedaje owned by the daughter of an elderly couple that had been living in the village for about sixty years. The four of us split up the city into blocks, and set out to interview every-other household about their electricity use.

I could go on and on about the magnitude of the experience, as never before did I ever picture myself sitting among rural Peruvians in their simple homes talking about their use of electricity. Oftentimes we only spoke of the handful of light bulbs that hung from the ceiling that allowed the occupants to work into the evening or for their children to study without needing to light a kerosene lamp. For me, not hailing from a development background, it was a giant step beyond my comfort zone. Entering another's home was difficult enough; however, transcending the social, economic, and language barriers as well was, for me, a very challenging, but equally fulfilling experience.

Top Five Experiences in Tamborapa Pueblo:
1.) Playing Frisbee with my teammates and a few kids from the town
2.) Teaching a large group of kids English words in the streets of the town.
3.) Interviewing a school teacher about his use of electricity. In exchange for this interview I provided an English lesson about the correct use of some of the most difficult aspects of our obtuse language. All of this while about 20 kids looked on laughing at the goofy gringo sitting around eating ice cream speaking (to them) a funny language.
4.) Sitting with farmers in their unelectrified homes and talking about what having an electricity would mean to them.
5.) Eating at Anderson's everyday, hosted by Anita and her young son: Anderson.
6.) A bonus - Having a coffee tasting session in which Luke took us through every aspect of of the coffee-cupping process: seperating the beans, roasting the beans, grinding the beans, brewing the beans, tasting it, and finally drinking the coffee. A caffeine addicts dream.


After leaving Niels in Jaen and spending about 28 hours traveling planes, trains, and automobiles-style from Tamborapa Pueblo back down the coast, we made it back to Lima. While in the big town we met with another set of contacts. We also resumed our culinary tour, visiting a couple of places that we enjoyed most during our first stay in the city. Add in an art show hosted by the Embassy, some cosmic bowling, and a significant amount of shopping, and that pretty much sums up our final few days in the Peruvian capital.

So I suppose I should say goodbye to Peru and South America. But I won't. I will definitely miss it and will probably write some sort of South American epilogue when I get back to Berkeley. However, I suppose it will also be a prologue, as I will be preparing to leave for Singapore immediately after I return to the States. Oh, and I will start sending out some of the 600+ pictures I took while down here.

Alright...I guess that is it. I will see many of you back in Berkeley, and will talk to the rest of you as soon as I can. Chao!