Women are subjects in the private and the public space

Today is the international women's day. I spent the day in El Pedregal, Majes about two hour's bus ride from Arequipa. Some of the organizations that we support had arranged a day of activities in cooperation with other organizations as well as with the authorities. I was there to document the activities in the form of pictures that will appear on Svalorna.se shortly.

The day started out with a demonstration that passed through the main streets of El Pedregal. People carried banners and balloons to highlight that today is the international women's day. As we marched through the city we got both appreciative cheers and incredulous looks from passers-by. There were also some people who joined the precession as we passed, so in short there was a really good atmosphere.

At the end of the demonstration we arrived at the main square where information tables, distributing information about domestic violence and the contact details for a hotline, were set up. There was also a big stage where the mayor among others had gathered to hold speeches. This is the part that really left me speechless. There was one lady who talked about how important it is that women enjoy the same rights as men, but I could hardly believe my Swedish ears when I heard one man after another praising women first and foremost as the ones giving birth. Of course, the intention was to emphasize how important women are in social life, but I couldn't help to cringe. Women do so much more than giving birth and caring for their families. How about honoring women as workers, artists or politicians? How about acknowledging the achievement of women in the public as well as the domestic sphere? This discussion is very well known in Sweden but seemed completely absent here.

Tonight I went out to see a friend. On my way I was subject to various cat-calls such as “Hello beautiful”. Somehow it underlined that despite being western and liberated, I am no exception from the objectification that women are exposed to worldwide.

My first real earthquake experience

Yesterday I had my first proper earthquake experience – 6.2 on the Richter scale with its epicentre just south of the Chilean border. About 7:40 in the morning I found myself wondering who on earth was shaking my bed. It took my a few seconds to realize that I actually was experiencing my first proper earthquake and by the time I had leaped out of bed and put my jeans on the door to my room was rattling. I made a quick escape plan calculating that I had shoes by the door that I just need to slip into and decided that putting on socks would be a waste of time. Once out of my room I banged the door to Ida's room calling ”Wake up! There's an earthquake!”

Fortunately it stopped after a while and I decided to leap into the shower rather than trying to snooze a while longer. Later on in the morning I met up with my boss, Mattias, who took me to do some rock climbing. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow gear from him and we spent half of the day trying to overcome my fear of hights. This was the first time that I climbed outdoors and the second time I climbed properly at all, so my legs got really wobbly. While going up I wondered what on earth I had gotten myself into, but once back with my two feet on the ground I was really happy.

Escaping the rain

It has been raining almost every afternoon for two weeks now. Everybody talks about the rain. On the news, in the office, at meetings, on the bus. For someone used to a wetter climate, such as myself, I don't find it too unusual, but since building aren't constructed to cope with the rain there have been major problems with floodings. It has been even worse further up in the mountains. Outside Puno a whole bridge was washed away.

On the brighter side, Ida, César, Lauren, Alexy and I decided to do as all the other Arequipeños and hit the beach during the weekend. Said and done. We set out for Camaná, a village by the sea, that gets flooded by tourists during the summer.

It was a bit cloudy the first day, but we made sure to enjoy ourselves anyway. The Sunday was even better with dazzling sunshine. The picture above is from a small walking street inside the village where Ida and I ate the breakfast rolls that we had bought at the local food market. Below is yours truly squinting at the sun.

After having had breakfast and checked out from the hostel we spent all day relaxing at the beach. This last picture pretty much speaks for itself.

Just a brief update

We never made it to the beach last weekend as we had planned because one of our friends who was supposed to come with us got urgently stomach sick. She is fine now though and we are planning to make a new attempt this weekend. My stomach is behaving better now and I can enjoy fresh fruit again although I try to not overdo it.

The past two days Ida and I have visited Majes, which is an irrigated desert community, about two hours by bus from here. On Monday we visited a group that is learning about domestic and sexual violence in order to educate others and support victims. There will be an article (in Swedish) about this group on Svalorna Latinamerika’s web page towards the end of this month. Yesterday there was a meeting between different organizations and authorities to discuss activities against domestic violence.

I have also published a blog entry on Svalorna Latinamerika’s blog (also in Swedish, but I’d recommend for example Google Translate for those of you who don’t know Swedish). I am also planning a proper update of this blog when I have the time to edit pictures and write something more intelligible.

Pictorial update

This post is neither meant to be very deep nor informative. But now that I have managed to figure out how to shrink pictures to a manageable size I wanted to give you a pictorial update of my life here so far. I must say I understand why I stopped blogging from Japan, because editing this entry with pictures has been a nightmare. Enjoy!

This first picture (right) is becoming a familiar one: Me at the airport of Copenhagen messing around with my stuff before checking in. This time I am travelling without my bogu (kendo armor) which was a great relief when packing because all of a sudden I had no problem fitting all I wanted to bring into my bag. I must say I really start to miss kendo now, but since there is no club in town

there is not a lot to do about it.

This (left) is a little shot of the very first home cooked dinner, that I made the day after I arrived. Even on the day I arrived I was impressively energetic and cheerful, despite a 30 hour-long trip and a jet-lag. My flat mate, Ida, was very surprised that I didn't drop dead as soon as I arrived and that I managed to stay awake until 21:30.

At first I didn't like my room so much, but I think the problem was that it seemed too empty. After I had unpacked, made the bed and hung up some curtains with the assistance of Ida it felt a lot homier.

Plaza de armas, the main square of Arequipa, is about two blocks from our home. It is dominated by a huge cathedral along one side which is not in the picture. In front of the cathedral there is some greenery, a fountain and a lot of pigeons that get fed by tourists.

A street view of a rainy afternoon (left).

Ida and I have spent an awful lot of work on getting our home in order (see picture below). Our freezer was so full of frost that you couldn't even shut the door, so we had to defrost it so that we could fill it with cooked beans (oh so convenient). If you wonder about the knife we tried to speed things along a bit by helping the ice out.

We also tried to vacuum clean our flat. However, when I tried I noticed it wouldn't suck anything up. Ida suggested that it was probably because the bag was full. It was. Very full.

Apparently it is a reusable bag, and that's great, but it was so full we could hardly even get the dirt out of it. In the picture you can see a small bag and a massive amount of dirt. Well, that explains it pretty good.

After emptying the bag, the vacuum cleaner still didn't work, so we had to use a broom and a mop.

Below: Our next door 5822 m volcano, el Misti, as seen an early morning from our dirty living room window. It would be such a thrill to be up there!

The Exorcist Failure

So I've spent the last week and a half being possessed by some sort of demon that messes up my stomach every now and then. To be honest I thought I could out-smart it by just pretending it wasn't there and go on with my life. I'm sad to say that I was WRONG. When I woke up Saturday morning it hurt so much I almost thought that I would die. That's when I decided to change my diet to boiled vegetables, toast and porridge.

My diet helped to some point, but since we happen to have an exorcist, Policlínico Espíritu Santo, just across the street I decided to give them a try. It turned out to be much ado about nothing. I went there Monday, utterly confused, and was shown to the fourth floor and was shown to a cashier where I paid to see the exorcist. Then I was sent to another room where I had to give my information, get my blood pressure taken and was quizzed on diseases in my family. Once finished I was sent to a waiting room. After about 30 minutes I got to see the exorcist. He squeezed my stomach trying to localize the demon and prescribed me to take samples.

Apparently I had to head back down to the bottom floor to pay to get the samples taken at one cashier, where the lady was very upset because she wanted to close the cashier down and go home. I managed to persuade her to take my money and was sent to another line to get a small plastic cup where I was supposed to put my sample (don't ask).

Yesterday morning I returned to hand in my sample. I was told to wait in reasonably long line and after a while a lady appeared and collected my sample and told me to wait in another line to get my receipt back. After about five minutes I got my receipt back and could happily head off to work. In the evening when I came back to get the results I first had to wait in one line to get my results and once I got them I had to head back up to the fourth floor to have the exorcist explain them to me. I caught him just as he had grabbed his coat and was heading home. He told me that the test was negative, so I guess I just have to continue eating my boiled food for yet some time.

Peru is a country where the trees have two trunks.

Svalorna Latinamerika in Peru works according to a method called logical framework approach. Among other things, it is a method for involving the target groups in identifying issues that need to be addressed and, above all, root causes to the problems. This is an important process, both to ensure that any measures taken are well founded among the people concerned and to separate consequences from an underlying problem. For example, one problem may be that women are subject to domestic violence. An underlying cause of domestic violence may be alcoholism, an underlying cause of alcoholism may be poverty and an underlying cause of poverty may be unequal power structures.

The problem that the target groups or stakeholders identify will be put into a so called problem tree where the root causes make up the tree’s trunk while the consequences of the root causes will be identified as the branches of the tree. Here in Peru, Svalorna works in a program that runs from 2007 to 2011. This means that all the activities that they support during this period aim to fulfill goals that are set up for the program.

Before setting up the program, Svalorna conducted a large set of workshops in the regions where they work to identify problems and root causes. Through these workshops they found that the trees in Peru have two trunks; that there are two main root causes of the difficulties that the target group faces. The first root cause is the distance between politicians and the people, which means both that the target groups have few means to participate politically and that politicians often have a poor understanding of how their decisions affect the lives of the target group. The second root cause is concerned with poverty and lacking opportunities. This root is essential to address to enable people to participate politically, because how are you going to be able to get involved in a local community group if you have to work 12 hours per day to support your family?

Personally, I believe that every tree has two trunks that share the same crown. Human rights are divided into two separate covenants that cover civil- and political rights on the one hand and economic-, social- and cultural rights on the other. Even though they are divided into two separate documents they are indivisible and necessary to fulfill the ends of human development and equality.

Arequipa – the city of alluring mountains

Ah, Arequipa. At last I made it here and by now I'm pretty settled together with my flat-mate and co-worker Ida. Life is quite beautiful to be honest. We're close to the sky, close to the sun, close to virtually everything. Since I got here Ida and I have mainly been chilling out and working on making Arequipa our home.

There is a special scent here in Arequipa... I recognize it from Córdoba but I can't really describe it. It is pleasant though, and make me feel like I've come back (home?) to South America. Altitude sickness has been a little bit of an issue making both Ida and I short-winded from not really straining at all. Today we went to a dingy but friendly gym, which really was a huge effort, at least for me.

The weather here is pleasant but temperatures change over the day. At midday you could go out in short and a t-shirt if you wanted whereas in the afternoon you'd be better off in long trousers and a shirt and at night a summer jacket is definitely a good idea. A lot more comfortable than minus three Celsius.

Arequipa is a city full of secrets. So far it has been effectively hiding its mountains from me by covering them in a misty haze. Sometimes it's hard to tell where the mountain behind the clouds end and where the clouds begin. In the morning, before it gets too hazy, you might catch a glimpse of them filling you with awe of how enormous they are. It really is fascinating though that I still haven't got a proper view of Misti. I mean, seriously, how hard can it be to spot a 5800m tall volcano?!

In Lima. With love?

After getting through immigration, I had to retrieve my bag to go through customs and then check in again to continue my domestic flight. While waiting for my bag I realize that I have lost my jacket. Good job! Just barely landed and already loosing things. I abandoned my place in the line to go looking for it and managed to get the security staff involved in my worries about my jacket. Unfortunately without results. So I resumed my place waiting impatiently for my luggage when I see a security counter across the hall with something that looks very much like my jacket lying on the counter. Win! Thank you security man for finding my jacket.

My bag was not so successful. It arrived very late. By the time I had cleared customs I had already missed my continuing flight, but they rebooked me to a later one. At first I was kind of upset, stressed out after having tried to rush to my flight, feeling dirty and sweating. When I passed through security the official called me “Miss Bonita” which I really didn't feel like at all at the moment.

But after having freshened myself up in the bathroom, changed to clean clothes and found a functioning Wi-Fi life is not so bad. I am in Lima, I can see a palm tree from here and my plane will leave in a bit over an hour.

Between here and there

So, here I am in Madrid, Barajas, with 5 hours to kill before my plane to Lima departs. Transit land. No man's land.

Sometimes I wonder why I just don't chose the easy way out and stay at home. Although this is the third time that I set out to the other side of the planet for an extended period of time it never really gets easier. I hate goodbyes. I hate having to leave my friends and family. I hate not being able to be with the people I love.

Often I feel torn between several places, wishing I could be everywhere at once. In Sweden I have this urge to travel and miss friends that are spread out over the world. When I am away I miss my friends and family in Sweden, although I must admit that I've always felt that it is worthwhile to go.

But here, in transit land, I am neither here nor there.

What is this all about?

I am going to Arequipa to work as an intern for the NGO Svalorna Latinamerika. Svalorna is a Swedish NGO that supports long-term, capacity building efforts in Peru, Bolivia and in Nicaragua and work together with local organizations in carrying out the projects or programs. My role will be primarily to work with information; I will write articles for Svalorna's home page (http://www.svalorna.se), write entries for the intern's blog (http://www.svalorna.blogspot.com), write somewhat more journalistic articles for http://www.latinamerika.nu as well as running this blog (although it will be more of a spare time project).

I will also be involved in the evaluation and planning of the programs that Svalorna is responsible for, although the other intern, Ida, will probably be more involved in this than I am. Right now is a very exciting time to go because the office in Peru is in the process of finishing and evaluating a program that has been running from 2006-2011 and about to start up a new one come 2012.

The purpose of this blog is both to blog about my job and about my journey in itself. Hopefully you'll get to see some of the marvels and challenges I'll meet through this blog.