a world of poverty is a world of stress.

a long time has passed since you have last heard from me. and as perhaps you would assume, or should assume, a lot has happened in that time. and as always, i don't exactly know where to begin. i suppose i shall begin with all the different projects i'm working on, and we'll go from there:

first, i'll talk about my group of girls, since they're the project i am most directly related to since i basically created them. to begin with - i love them! they're a wonderful group of girls - extremely energetic, fun, and loving. they have a lot going for them, they don't even realize how wonderful of people they are. in any case, my group comprises of 10-15 girls, around the ages of 12-18, and one 4 year old who loves to tag along (she's the sister of one of the girls). the leader of the group, whom we call bomba, is 18, has a 3 year old son, and is currently pregnant with her second child. she hasn't been around for the majority of our meetings, i suppose because she's occupied with a life an 18 year old shouldn't live, but naturally as the oldest, she was put as the head of the group. in any case, the girls i work with most are 4 girls, i think around 15 and 16 years old.

we've done quite a few different things already - had a speaker about self-esteem, i met with them as a group to discuss what it is their group exactly wants to do, we've met to play volleyball in the streets multiple times... the list goes on. i go to mass with them thursday nights, because thursday night mass is held in the chapel near their house. and, with money that the last 2 goshen students left here, i went and bought materials for them to begin making bracelets that they can sell, and that i can take back to the united states to sell, so then they can get money for their group and for more materials to make and sell more things. basically, the main purpose of this group is to keep the girls busy and away from the drugs, alcohol, and prostitution that is an active part of their lives. the purpose of the art is a way to provide them with an idea of making an income and being able to do something more with their lives and with their time than to roam the streets. i've also sat down with them multiple times and have explained to them my final project. right now, they have a story of my own life and an explanation of what kind of things i'm interested in learning about their own personal lives. they seemed really excited about helping me with my project, as long as i keep everything confidential, so i'm pretty happy they're willing to work with me on it. i explained to them that i'm here in chimbote to experience the life they experience everyday, and i told them that i want to understand their problems so i can understand their lives better, because when i graduate university i hope to help young women in the world like themselves. so i must say, i'm quite excited to receive their stories and i'm crossing my fingers that they actually give them to me. i'm also curious about what they'll write about. i'm not sure how much information they're willing to share with a stranger, although i'm no longer a stranger to them and much more a best friend, and i'm not sure how much they actually understand of what i'm looking for. one girl told me she was going to share with me a story of love. i said that was fine, she could share whatever kind of story she wanted to share. so... we'll see how that story of love ends up, i suppose.

i'm also still working with the men of matt talbot, the halfway house here in chimbote. i love those guys - they're so wonderful and completely harmless. i love to just sit and have conversations with them, to hear about their struggles with drugs and how much they hope to change their lives, along with what their lives were when they were young. one of my sisters here in chimbote asked me if i was scared working with the men of matt talbot and i said "not at all. they're completely harmless and all they want are people to talk to. i'm more scared of the men on the street who hiss, whistle, and make comments at me any time i walk down the dirt road." which is true. the half-way house is a pleasant escape from the rest of chimbote.

along with that, father jack was recently approached by a group of prostitutes who want to start a half-way house for women. he didn't want to take on any more projects, and if you could see the hectic life of this parish you would completely understand, but he couldn't say no to them, so he now has scott and i going and talking with these women.. which has provided to be an overwhelming and interesting experience. these women are highly addicted to drugs, have quite a few children, and are prostitutes because it's the only means of money they have. tonight we're handing out school supplies to them, so hopefully they don't prostitute themselves for money to buy their children school supplies, because normally they would. yesterday we met with them and they took us to one of the "whore houses" where they showed us the different rooms and how they get their drugs, etc. we went through the room and asked where each of them were born, and they were born in chimbote. it's just crazy how the people here are born here, live here, see this life day in and day out, never leave, and continue the cycle of poverty, drug usage, and depression. people just can not break the cycle. it's incredibly sad and depressing, and honestly it's no wonder drugs are so prevalent here. if i lived in this kind of poverty, who knows, i'd probably become a drug addict too. i'm going crazy as it is, knowing that i get to leave in 3 weeks, yet everyone here must stay. anyway, all this is a topic to talk about when i get home. it's too heavy to write about on here... and i'm afraid none of my words make the impact they should. some things just have to be witnessed, they can't be explained.

if you keep up with the goshen website, perhaps you saw that duane visited and put up some photos. the photos are a great visual of what i'm doing here, and some of the places i work at, and are nice because you can actually see me at work! they don't exactly depict the poverty i have been talking about though because the buildings we spent time in were the nicest in chimbote. when i come home though, i plan to show many photos so you can see a visual to my words. as of now, i don't have very many photos though.

i must be honest, i had four or five days in this past week that were just impossibly hard. it was the first time since i have been in peru that i just really wanted to go home. i wanted my bed, i wanted my family, i wanted security. i believe it was a combination of things that were getting me pretty low. for one thing, my health wasn't in the best of shape. first, i broke out with this horrible rash on my arms that burned and itched. then, after the first meeting with my girls, i was attacked by these horrible bugs known as sancuros. they're smaller then mosquitoes, bite more than mosquitoes, and itch 14 times more than mosquitoes. i had at least 100 on each leg, and i'm not exaggerating about the itching. i don't quite remember having chicken pox, but i'm tempted to say that these things itched worse than chicken pox. i couldn't sleep 2 nights in a row because the itching kept me wide awake and incredibly uncomfortable. then, to top that off, i had the worst diahrrea i've ever experienced in my life. i'll just say... it wasn't fun. then there was a rather large misunderstanding at the parroquia, and i had people angry at me for something i didn't do, and my group of girls erupted into a huge fight with another group of girls because of this misunderstanding, and i couldn't understand anything going on because they only people trying to explain to me what was going on were native spanish speakers. and most of them were angry 16 year olds who speak 7980898 words per minute on a normal day. let's just say it was a pretty stressful day and i about broke down in complete tears 4 different times. after this event, a person at the parroquia was being very passive aggressive about certain things and taking stress and anger out on me instead of the people who deserved it, therefore, to say the least, i was extremely upset. somehow it all died off, i've cooled off, and everyone has seemed to forgotten the whole ordeal, which i'm okay with.

overall, after i got over my sickness, this week has been good and more relaxing. i've been doing an array of things - working with my girls, talking with the matt talbot men a bit, and we've started a new project with a 27 year old gringo here named robert. apparently, robert's sunday school class donated 1500 dollars to rebuild an extremely poor families house, so the past 2 days of consisted of tearing down the old house - which was basically nothing, and leveling out the ground for a "nicer" dirt floor. i can't explain how horrible this house was. now, houses here don't consist of much... but this house, was nothing. and it was a disgusting nothing too. the entire dirt floor was covered in shit, trash, and some more shit and trash. you could barely even see the floor. and i don't even want to go into how many mice and cockroaches came scurrying out of that place. the walls, which are made of estrella - that bamboo stuff i talked about in an earlier entry - were rotting and basically falling down upon the house. they had chickens and cats running freely in there, and the neighbors apparently have donkeys living in the room right beside the house, which supposedly gives them diseases, or at least that's what i think the grandma of the family was telling me. anyway, i think people living in the streets are possibly better off then the large family living in this place. at least in the streets you're not living among poop. oh my, again, i can't explain very well what things are like here. it's just beyond words - or at least beyond MY words. my mother could probably do a better job at writing these sorts of descriptions, but i'm not quite up to par.

tonight i'm meeting with my girls at 8 and we're going to learn english, or they're going to learn english, or let's say we're going to attempt to work together so they can learn english. i really don't know how much will actually get accomplished. and i'll only be here for 3 more weeks so obviously, learning english needs more time than 3 weeks, but we can at least learn the basic "hello, how are you today.." phrases. hopefully. i also plan on talking to them about my project and seeing if they have any questions, and just making sure they all understand it. and honestly it's just fun to hang out with the girls, even though they enjoy joking with me about my spanish, or lack of, and how i make them speak slower all the time. it's quite an inside joke.

tomorrow i'm meeting with them again in the afternoon for artesinean classes, and then saturday night i'm apparently going to a discoteka with one of my friends, marcio, and scott. others will probably be there too, but who knows with peruvians. then sunday we're going to tortuga beach with another one of our peruvian friends, junior, who has a friend who has a beach house that we get to spend the day at, so that will be pretty awesome and good to get away from chimbote (tortuga is about an hour away... but is one of the beaches noted as the most beautiful in peru).

in any case, i need to go home and take a shower so i can be back here at the parroquia around 6:30 to hand out school supplies to the women. i hope this provided a bit of an update though so you know a bit more of what i'm doing. again, i'm sorry i can't explain it all. i wish i could bring you all here for one day so you could see it all for yourself, but alas, i can not. hopefully this is good enough though.

and i must say, although i'm over that little bout of 4 pretty crappy days, and i'm content here in chimbote, loving the friendships i've made and sad to leave them, as well as my family (who i also love by the way), i'm getting excited to come home. i believe if i were still in lima, i wouldn't quite be homesick yet, but i believe being around this poverty really takes a toll on a person. when i first came here, father (padre) juan told me he goes back to the u.s. about 3-4 times a year. i thought this was a bit excessive... but i now i completely understand. i really don't know how he has lived here for 33 years without having a heart attack. i certainly would. so, don't get me wrong. i love it here - i love the people, i love the work, i love the experience. but i'm really, really tired, and quite worn out. and i'm going to live these next 3 weeks to the fullest, but i'm going to be pretty happy to see all my loved ones faces in 3 weeks as well.