Where in the world is the Lt. Governor?!?!?!

"Are you pinching?" the drunkard spat in my face as he pushed a bag of coca towards me. Trying to ignore the disgusting mix of pure alcohol and coca chew that had just come flying my way, I did not respond as recommended by my traveling companion.

"Where are you from [unintelligible mumbling of Aymara] you Swiss or Japanese?" It was obvious that we were not going to shake him and the multiple policemen walking around the plaza were no help at all. We jumped back into Nico's truck and drove around to the other side of the plaza to wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.

Nico, the director of The Rural Institute on Education of Juli, Chucuito, picked me up from the farm at about 8am. I had just finished breakfast, and while I wasn't really hungry it was a wise choice. It was the last time I ate until 9pm. We were headed to the district capital of Kelluyo to meet with the mayor and the local leadership of one of the communities. The trip out took a while because Nico needed to make an additional stop in his brother's house which really can only be described as located in the middle of nowhere. I know, I am practically working in the middle of nowhere...so I guess we could say his brother lived in the middle of absolutely nowhere!

Riding on the backroads of rural Puno, I got to witness the power of the truck. I felt like I was in one of those commercials for Ford pickup trucks when they somehow climb over rocks and timber, splashing through huge puddles and whatever possible obstacle one can ever imagine in the way. Thank goodness Nico's truck had seatbelts. It was fun for the first half of the trip, but during our return to Puno at about 4pm, I was praying for pavement. I mentioned that the first time I ate all day was 9pm, right? Yeah, that was also the first time I had a chance to relieve my bladder.

So, around 11am we arrive in the plaza of Kelluyo to find that the national and district flags (weekly tradition which congregates the entire community) had already been raised. The mayor was currently in a meeting with the district's lieutenant governors discussing his plans for developing the new participatory budget for the year 2007. This is a major concern of my research. In Kelluyo, over the past 4 years the district has been through 4 mayors. None of the oustings proved violent, but tensions did rise and come close to outward conflict. Previous leadership failed to involve the community through the mechanism of the participatory budget and there was a lot of mishandling of provincial and district funding.

One of the mayor's regidores or top advisor/assistant asked us to wait until the meeting ended "in an hour" to request an interview with the mayor. Let me just clarify that "in an hour" in Peru equates to "in at least 2 or 3 hours". So here we were, waiting in Nico's truck, avoiding the drunkard and staying dry from a major downpour. Once the rain let up, some of the institute's students starting approaching the truck. I felt a bit more upbeat as a few of them recognized me from the leadership workshop in early December. Scratch that...I should say that I recognized them. Seriously, having super pale skin, blue eyes, being freakish tall and wearing pants kind of gave me away at the bat of an eye. After chatting for an hour, we watched the 30 plus lt. governors march back to their office. Finally, it was our turn to meet with the mayor.

Five minutes tops. We introduced ourselves to the new mayor, Nico described the agenda he needed to address with the mayor for continuing projects into 2007, and I was able to present my project and request an interview. Great! Wonderful! I got the second interview in the region I need. Now, all I have to do is wait another week and a half.

*Sigh*- Trying not to waste the trip, we decided to try to coordinate with the community lt. governor about visiting his community so I could conduct my focus groups with members in the area. The question was, where in the world was the Lt. Governor!?!?!? We had just seen 30 plus walk through the plaza. They were dressed identically: all wore black with a silver baton connected to a colorful strap, and black hats. In Nico's truck we stopped next to each leader asking if they were from community X (I am not able to name the community as it is part of my research and must maintain anonymity of the proyect's participants). After asking about 8 males leaders, we found out we were looking for a female lt. governor.

This made our search a bit easier as there are very few female leaders, and most of them head to the market after the meeting. Once we found her, I saw another challenge awaiting me. She doesn't speak much Spanish. Luckily, I had Nico to translate for me, but once I conduct the interview with her, I am going to have to translate from Aymara to Spanish to English...as well as transcribe the interview which takes five hours to write one hour of speech (and that's just in English!) Again, I was happy to receive the thumbs up from the Lt. Governor to visit her community, but again I would have to wait until next Sunday.

So, here I am in Puno once again because I have to wait a week to organize with the leadership to enter the community. Being a punctual, time-oriented person, I am a tad frustrated that I have lost a week in my research. Hopefully things will go well over the next week's visit, and I will avoid the Sunday drunk to the best of my ability!