Farewell Peru, on to Bangladesh...

So... the plan was to stay in Peru and work on Project Pisco until the end of January 2008, take time off, and make it back to the US in February 2008. While the project will continue on as scheduled, I'm off to Bangladesh to help HODR make an assessment of the damages and impact of Cyclone Sidr, which struck the southwest part of the country on 15 November 2007.

I only had two days between the decision to make the Bangladesh assessment and my departure from Peru, so it still hasn't all caught up with me. I regret that I didn't have the time to personally say goodbye and thank all of the people who helped me so much, volunteer and Peruvian alike. Our neighbors who invited us to ceviche and Inca Cola, worked with us as we cleared rubble, gave us free rides, watched out for our safety, and showed us amazing love and generosity and kindness. We've had over 320 volunteers from 25 different countries working on an amazing variety of projects, with 80 volunteers on site at the time of my departure. Crazy! Here's to two more successful months of Project Pisco!

I'm so sad to leave Peru, but I leave hopeful, because maybe somewhere in Bangladesh we'll connect with another community, another pocket of people in great need who still find a way to give more us than they know; hopeful because I know we have a gift to share, and the gift is all of the volunteers who will follow us to sink their hands and hearts into the work we find.

To me, Hands On is a beautiful, serendipitous experiment in humanity. I hope we find a way to help in Bangladesh.

Thanksgiving in Peru

Happy Thanksgiving all! (a day late)

We worked a regular day yesterday, but managed to pull together quite an impressive approximation of the good 'ol 'merican Thanksgiving dinner for 65 people.

The menu consisted of turkey, gravy, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, quiche for vegetarians, and pumpkin pie, apple pie, and a strawberry banana trifle. (I know strawberries aren't traditional, but they're only 70 cents a kilo. C'mon.)

My favorite was the pumpkin pie, which was quite impressive because all they have here is a big yellow pumpkin-squashy type thing. With the addition of cream, cloves, cinnamon, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, etc. (all of which came in whole form and needed to be pulverized with the broken-off sledgehammer heads which litter our yard), it tasted amazing.

We purchased two 12kilo turkeys which were freshly killed that morning, and baked them in the oven of a local bakery. All of the Peruvians we consulted with were absolutely convinced that it would only take two hours to cook the birds. Two hours later, they concurred that yes, yes, the turkeys absolutely needed to be baked longer.

For cranberries, we pulled some Peace Corps strings and plucked the last six cans from the shelves of the commissary in Lima. The rest of the sides weren't too hard to do; the produce here is awesome.

While there's a lot of Americans here right now there are just as many, if not more, people from other countries. "Ooh, my first Thanksgiving!" One of them asked what songs we sing. "Umm.... we kind of just sit around eat...and that's it."

Prepping the meal was a two-day ordeal, and we still didn't end up serving until 8:30PM. All the volunteers were amazingly patient though. Usually, we have dinner and a meeting and then everyone goes off to do their own thing. This night, dinner was the thing, so it was neat to see everyone just hanging out and having fun at base.

We invited Gisela and Carolina, the ladies who usually do our cooking, to have dinner with us. Cranberry sauce was their favorite, followed by the desserts. They teased that everything was delicious, but next time, we should try to have the meal ready by 6PM (we always press them to have dinner ready early). Fatima, Gisela's five-year-old daughter, liked the turkey the best.

I think it's my third holiday season in a row away from home, and I'm starting to miss the friends, family get-togethers, being in SF, and dumplings and noodles at Thanksgiving (hey, we're Chinese, that's how we do). I also realize how lucky I've been, to travel to different places and get to do exciting work at the same time. Ah wells. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!