A day in the life: Peru Edition

While hanging out with a few of you, the question “what was your average day like in Peru?” has come up numerous times. Usually it’s been posed while we were out walking or shopping or something equally distracting. So I thought I’d post a completed answer:

6:00 AM (or 6:30) – Start the day
The roosters start crowing, the dawn barely breaks and, yes, I got up along side my hosts and fellow volunteers to begin a new day. Morning chores include: sweeping out the house, feeding the chickens and ducks (de-graining dried corn husks), spreading out coffee beans to dry, gathering fire wood with which to boil more drinking water, boiling drinking water, making fresh orange/mandarin/papaya/passion fruit juice (usually some combination), helping prepare the rest of breakfast, setting the table, and – getting ourselves ready to head out to the farm.

8:30ish – Get to work
Some time between 8:30 & 9:30 we’d head out to whichever part of the farm we were set to work on for the day. Given I was there at the very end of the coffee season, we spent the majority of the days on the slopes of the canyon harvesting the last of the coffee “berries” in forested fields (our coffee grows in the shade of banana, cacao, and various citrus trees).

12:00ish – snack
Typically: a brown bag “lunch” of avocado & cheese sandwiches and water crackers. This was also time to re-apply the bug spray. I used so much of my herbal bug spray that the smell now triggers an instant craving for an avocado and cheese sandwich. This craving has yet to be satisfied outside of Peru.

1:00ish – Get back to work
More coffee harvesting. Or – chopping wood with machetes, clearing corn fields, etc.

4:00/6:00PM – Return home, break bread
Once home, we’d drop our loads from the days harvest – if coffee berries, we’d often wash and peel them – and then we’d clean ourselves up for dinner. Our host seemed to like cooking on her own in the evenings, so the prep time offered room for reflection. I personally enjoyed utilizing one of the hammocks during this time. Once served, dinner would last as long as the conversation continued to flow – which was usually quite a while. When our host’s parents finally made it back to the farm, I learned where she got her talkativeness from! After all were through, we volunteers took care of the dishes, etc.

9:00PM – cafecito
Depending on how early and filling our evening meal was, we’d gather once more around 9pm for a small coffee, some bread and cheese, cracked corn, or soup. Afterward, the family often watched a bit of TV – typically Peruvian Idol shows or the news – and we volunteers would catch up on our reading.

10:00PM – Lights out.
The amazing thing is, I usually made this bed time. Yeah, I know what your thinking – without internet it’s easy! But I don’t think that was the only reason. In fact I think it had much more to do with something else: the lack of stress and looming deadlines. I spent the whole evening (before and after dinner) unwinding, relaxing, reading, journaling. So 10pm was a dandy time for some shut eye.

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Pouring through material on Nepalese culture, I came to a shocking discover: they’re morning people (gasp). Not just your average American (or Peruvian), chipper-at-6AM-morning-people, but morning people to the extreme: they get up at 4:30 in the morning, six days of the week. As many of you know, I have never really functioned well in the morning (a fact clearly made worse by night-owl tendencies).  But I’m sure I will adapt – as evidenced by my schedule in Peru!