Hoosier Prof in Peru

Around 12:40 a.m. next Wednesday, 16 young people will fly out of Jorge Chavez International Airport, and, at least for some of us, Peru will never be quite the same again.

Over these past three months, we’ve shared many experiences: we visited the Museo de Arqueologia, the National Art Museum and a cross high on a hill overlooking Lima; we heard lectures on the Incas, politics, ethnicity, education, the Shining Path, the church, health care, literature; we learned a few dances; we almost found someone to teach us ocean fishing; we traveled to Chincha and to Machu Picchu; we played, or watched, countless games of Rook; we learned to know many gracious host families; we completed (or visited) service assignments in towns and cities across the country; we shared ceviche and cuy and torta de chocolate.

Each week students had to write several journal entries, often on assigned topics, and at the end they had to consider these questions: “Have you changed in small or significant ways while on SST? How do you think SST’s effects will linger in your life in 10 years? 20 years?”

In a way, it’s an unfair set of questions. How would one know? Isn’t it too soon to take stock of such an intense experience while still immersed in the SST host country? And yet . . . one might note that these entries are to be reflective essays, and one sense of essay is that of a trial or an attempt, an effort to make sense of an experience, even while it unfolds. The scientific supportive evidence is also considerable.

When Goshen College surveyed 1,358 randomly selected alumni who had participated in SST during the years 1968-98, asking them to complete a 75-item questionnaire, the results provided compelling evidence that SST has profoundly influenced the lives of students.

According to an article that ran in The Goshen College Bulletin in Summer 2007:

• A remarkable 91.5 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that “SST was one of my most important life experiences.”

• Four out of five SST alumni agreed that “my SST experience strengthened my faith.”

Already, students in the group have spoken about having formed relationships with each other and with host families that they expect will last a lifetime, and of taking home a newfound empathy for what it means to be a stranger or an immigrant in a place.

Goshen College students are not alone in wanting to cross borders. A recent report from the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica e Informatica in Peru showed a sharp increase in the number of Peruvians living abroad:

40,596 (1990)

66, 002 (1998)

128,478 (2002)

319,766 (2005)

So far this year, through September, about 293,928 Peruvians had left the country, 7.5 percent more than had left during the same period a year ago, a record-setting course. When asked where they plan to go, if they plan to live, study or work abroad, most Peruvians said Spain (42 percent), followed by the U.S. (18 percent); Italy (12 percent); Argentina (8 percent) and Chile (4 percent).

One of prime motivators is a lack of opportunity for economic advancement and upward social mobility. The official Peruvian economy is an impressive engine — it grew 8.8 percent in September, marking 75 months of consecutive growth — but many people we’ve learned to know suggest the numbers are misleading:

A security guard for 12 hours a day who holds down a second job as a cleaner. A medical doctor who recently took a job overseas. A Trujillo native who worked in factories in New York City until he couldn’t stand being away from his wife and daughters any longer and came home to Peru to drive cab seven days a week.

All are reminders of how fortunate many of us are to be a part of a study-abroad program that is primarily based on choice: to attend Goshen College (rather than, say, Bethel College, Indiana University or hundreds of other schools); to study abroad rather than on campus (four courses and language proficiency would satisfy the requirement); and to study in Peru (rather than in China, Jamaica, Nicaragua or another SST country).

But at 12:40 a.m. next Wednesday, I’ll just be thinking of what a good three months we had and of how I’ll miss 16 young people who will make wonderful global citizens, wherever they live in this world.

The other day I stopped at a kiosk after lunch to buy some dessert: a candy bar called Princesa. So I asked the older woman who was seated inside for a Princesa. She paused, smiled, and then said, “A Princesa for Príncipe.” A Princess for a Prince. What a nice thing to say; I almost bought a second bar.

While there are many bridges between the U.S. and Peru that one can cross to discover a different culture, the candy bar experience is pretty much the same. And there’s a good reason for that: most of the candy bars sold here are imports from the U.S. or Europe or are manufactured by their subsidiaries in Peru. As an announcer might intone, only the names have been changed, to protect the economic interests of the transnational corporate citizens. The Kit Kat (which apparently we in the U.S. actually lifted from England) becomes the Cua Cua.

I’ve put together a little guide to some of the more popular candy bars here (re: the ones that we buy most often).

Choko Soda

Description: We love this combination: chocolate-covered soda crackers with crunch. There’s nothing quite like it in the vending machines on the Goshen College campus, but there should be. Perfect for a light supper with a cup of tea.
Cost: 1 sol (about 30 cents)
First ingredient: Fortified wheat flour
Last ingredient: Citric acid and some kind of enzymes (proteolíticas)
Weight: 39 grams
Manufacturer: Nabisco’s Kraft Foods Peru (U.S. subsidiary)

Cua Cua

Description: A very cool-looking duck with sunglasses is the pitchman for this bar, a wafer covered with milk chocolate. Three bites and the bar is gone. Dessert lite. This is a good candy bar to have after a meal of rice and potatoes.
Cost: 50 centimos (about 15 cents)
First ingredient: Sugar
Last ingredient: Bicarbonate of soda
Weight: 18 grams
Manufacturer: Kraft Foods Peru (U.S. subsidiary)

D’onofrio Triangulo

Description: This milk-chocolate bar is long and thin and in the shape of . . . well, the name gives it away. This is a straightforward shot of molded chocolate. I’ll usually pass this over for something with more variety in texture and taste.
Cost: 1 sol (about 30 cents)
First ingredient: Sugar
Last ingredient: Vanilla
Weight: Research pending
Manufacturer: Nestle Peru (Swiss subsidiary)

Princesa

Description: Six bite-size tablets, each with peanut cream covered by a dark chocolate blend. This is my favorite candy bar to date, and should definitely be sold at Goshen College.
Cost: 1 sol (about 30 cents)
First ingredient: Sugar
Last ingredient: Antioxident (E321)
Weight: 38 grams
Manufactuer: Nestle Peru (Swiss subsidiary)

Sublime

Description: One block of milk chocolate with peanuts tossed in. The great thing about this product is that the name works as well in English as it does in Spanish.
Cost: 1 sol (about 30 cents)
First ingredient: Sugar
Last ingredient: Salt
Weight: 34  grams
Manufactuer: Nestle Peru (Swiss subsidiary)

A friend of the family just arrived late last night by plane, bearing many gifts, including a box of Fast Break bars. As you might expect, we in the U.S. are accustomed to a heftier bar: this one weighs in at 56 grams. The imported candy is also a lot more expensive than the candy made here and a lot more expensive than the same candy in the States; a Snickers bar, for example, costs 3.85 soles, or about $1.30.

Closing thought: If I were a candy maker with Nestle, I’d introduce a new bar called the Príncipe, to go with the Princesa. And I’d try introducing a chewier candy bar, with peanut butter and soft nougats, like Fast Break. Amid all the gastronomical riches of Peru, there’s room for a little more nougat.

It may be lonely at the top, but it’s even lonelier at the bottom. Unfortunately, that’s where Peru found itself this week, a country trailing the rest of the world in several significant measures of education.

According to the World Economic Forum, Peru took last place among 131 countries according to an index of the quality of primary education, and scarcely did any better in standalone math and science categories, finishing just one up from the bottom.

A front-page headline in El Comercio this week read: “Competitiveness of the country is held back by poor quality of education.”

The article went on to note that Peru will have to work hard — “trabajar fuertemente” — to overcome deficiencies in its educational system. In later commentary, the paper faulted both the teachers’ unions, which it said have become miltant arms of the political opposition (ready to strike at a moment’s notice), and the Garcia government, which it said has failed to invest in public schools.

During our first term here, several of the lecturers talked about the great divide between public and private schools. We were given to understand that those who have money send their children to private schools, which will lead to employment, and those who don’t will see their children off to public schools, without much hope of advancement.

A few statistics, shared by the lecturers, illustrate the challenges:

* Public schools typically have 50-60 students per class.
* At the end of elementary school, only 7.4 percent of students can solve basic mathematical problems.
* About 37 percent of students will drop out before completing elementary school.
* Some 22 percent of children between ages 6 and 11 work to provide income for their families.

What’s to be done?

If I were an education reformer, I’d start off by traveling around the country in search of models, places where students are succeeding against the odds. One stop would have to be Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in Chimbote, where Father Jack Davis and Sister Peggy Byrne (a former school principal in North Dakota) share a passion for raising up the whole person. (Goshen students have helped with the tutoring program here in semesters past).

Their approach to school reform starts with giving children food and milk, according to Twice a Missionary: The Life and Times of Sister Peggy Byrne , a biography by Linda Zespy published earlier this year. “We had to feed them because kids who don’t eat properly don’t study properly,” Father Jack said. The parish started a kindergarten to create a better foundation, and helps pay for uniforms and various fees and expenses (this can be prohibitive, even in public schools) in later years.

Over a decade, the percentage of parish children who dropped out of grade school declined from 40 percent to 3 percent, and the number who quit high school fell from 60 percent to less than 5 percent, according to Zespy.

Zespy tells about an 11-year-old named Vidal, who eats breakfast at the parish soup kitchen and then goes home to help with chores. He enters to a dirt floor and a 60-watt bulb hanging from the ceiling, reminders of how hard it is for his father to find work as a bicycle deliveryman. After feeding the family’s chickens, turkeys and guinea pigs, Vidal, who wants to be a nurse, heads back to the parish library to study before school begins.

“These kids have a dream,” said Sister Peggy. “They want to do something more. My dream is to give all these kids schooling and to make schooling a happy time for them. . . We won’t win them all. But in the long run, if you can save ten percent, that’s wonderful.”

One of the most uncomfortable early moments in Peru for some students in the group came during a visit to Chincha, the scene of so much earthquake devastation. We traveled by a private bus from Lima, all 22 of us, and poured off the bus in the central plaza of Grocio Prado, a district of Chincha. Where one or two of us could have arrived less conspicuously, the fact that there were so many of us, and that we walked around largely en masse, and that we were there in part to simply see the fractured city for ourselves, rather than to put on work clothes and offer to help for a day, lent some disquieting undercurrents to the visit.

We ate lunch in a small menu restaurant (where the owner-cook-mother-of-the-house seemed grateful for the spike in demand for her rice with duck and other specialties), and then bought desserts of tejas chocolates from streetside vendors at the corner of the plaza. Should we have stayed away from the plaza where benches were lined up outside in rows because the Catholic church there was so damaged? Should we have divided up into smaller exploration groups (though this would have raised security concerns)? Would the residents of this small town simply say they were glad to have our business, even if it was clear that this was only a brief stopover for a group of well-off North Americans en route to other destinations (a visit to a former slave plantation and an Afro-Peruvian concert)?

Thankfully, because of SST, students can quickly distance themselves from tourists. While three months by any measure is a brief time to spend in another country, living with host families is invaluable immersion, and the chance to develop relationships goes well beyond what most visitors enjoy.

Here’s a nice description of SST from the home site: “Expect to be transformed. Often our SSTers say that their hosts give them far more than they feel they are offering in return – through kindness, acceptance, laughter and generosity. Through the successes and the challenges on SST, you will grow as a person and discover new insights into God’s presence in the world and in your heart.”

Now in the service half of the term, students are dishing up food to hundreds of children at community kitchens. Others are teaching English, working with young people recovering from addiction, planting beans at a greenhouse. Two are back in Chincha, this time with work clothes on, getting dusty and dirty as they tear down portions of an unsafe house. Even so, one of the assumptions about SST is that service is often more about being than doing. Invest in relationships, be present in the place where you are, and the return is priceless.

In Cusco, where one student is volunteering with World Vision, a North American, even with SST credentials, can certainly feel like one of the hordes of tourists for whom this is the departure gate for the train ride to Machu Picchu. I was reminded of this when I was overcharged for the cab ride from the airport to town (10 soles, or about $3; the driver started off asking me for 15 soles, but still). Thanks to my trusted guide around town — a student — I was able to take a kombi van back to the airport for 1 sol.

Being treated a tourist will continue to be a challenge, as their numbers grow. The nation’s minister of foreign trade and tourism, Mercedes Araoz, recently reported that tourism had increased by 15.7 percent in October. So far this year, Araoz said, Peru had welcomed a total of 834,592 tourists, a 14.3 percent increase over the same time period a year ago. (And domestic tourism as well is setting records, gaining 13 percent during the first half of the year).

A friend who recently returned from a 19-day visit to China shared some thoughtful editorial advice from an anonymous source, advice that should give every writer, bloggers included, pause. We’ve just substituted “Peru” for “China” :

Observe Peru for a week, and you can write a book.
Observe Peru for a month, and you can write a chapter in a book.
Observe Peru for a year, and you can write one page.