i miss you

extrañar

1. to surprise (sorprender)

• me extraña (que digas esto) -> I'm surprised (that you should say that)


• no me extraña nada que no haya venido -> I'm not in the least surprised he hasn't come

2. to miss (echar de menos)

• extraña mucho a sus amigos -> she misses her friends a lot

3. to find strange, not to be used to (encontrar extraño)

· he dormido mal porque extraño la cama -> I slept badly because I'm not used to the bed

4. to banish (desterrar)

Isn´t it interesting how vast the differences there are in definitions of the same word. Surprise. Yearning. Unaccustomed. Hm.

Every day I feel a little more anxiety towards leaving Peru because with each passing day, I learn more about San Isidro, about the children, about their families. Faces and names are becoming friends and family. It’s a real community with normal community problems…grudges, lies, suspicions, nut cases, and biting dogs (more later) just like any other. It’s nice to be a part of it. Being so young, it’s difficult to compare it to another time in my life, when I was part of community, because for the past 5 or so years, my community has changed by semester and with the seasons. Now, as an adult, I am working with parents to organize various activities. It´s with their permission and their help that we can function in San Isidro. The children have so much more responsibility than I think we give our children at home. They are far more independent in many ways, and to remember a simple dentist appointment is an enormous task for anyone under 12, but many of them pull it off.

One of my main concerns here is- are the children going to their appointments at the right time, the right place, with the right person? Most of the time, the answer seems to be no. My thought process- Someone´s missing. Someone´s incredibly late. Someone forgot. Dammit. I forgot my jacket, and now I am going to freeze. I am starving, again. Do I have enough change to get home and buy something to eat? Is there enough time to go home, relax, do my laundry, sleep, hang out with friends, go out, call home, write emails, organize appointments, pick up the bread, and the yogurt, and make it on time to the dentist? Somehow, that answer has been yes. Minus the sleep. I am forever tired, and falling asleep on the bus. It´s a terrible place to try to sleep. I am always at the point of closing my eyes, wow this is so nice…and asleep for 5 seconds before my chin reaches my chest and I am jolted awake by my own body torturing me. One of these days, I will fall asleep, and I will miss my stop. I did it more than once in San Jose on the train. It´s much more comfortable to sleep on a train than a bus, I have to admit.

Speaking of the lack of sleep, I will depart for Coporaque once again at 3 30am…the four hour drive will get us there just in time to freeze our asses off in the rising sun, sit for another 45 minutes in a combi (plus the time waiting for the combi to depart, full, unless you want to pay the extra 2 dollars) and then when we arrive in Coporaque, eat some bread and butter, and off to rally children. The good news is, lunch will be delicious, and we end around 1. After, there is time to relax, and we generally go to sleep around 6 to make up for lost time, plus there is nothing to do in Coporaque at night. This weekend, we might go to Chivay, where we catch the combi to go to Coporaque, which is where the bus station is, and lots of shops, restaurants and a few bars. If that´s the case. I will be ridiculously tired. I can sleep when I am dead, right?

So, back to the biting dog, which I am sure you are curious. As always, I was waiting for two kids at the regular meeting spot, when I became a little impatient and decided to go see where the kids were and if they had left their school or not. So, I take off down a semi-populated dirt road towards the school, right next to the prison. What a nice scene. Anyway, I spoke with a few adults and children about when the kids get out of school, and did they know so and so, and did they know where they were. Without finding the kids, I returned back to the meeting spot, along the same, now deserted road in the middle of the bright, hot dry day. This time, accompanied first only by a truly disturbed man wearing two pairs of pants, the second layer of which was open completely, as he mumbled and stumbled to himself. Odd, I thought. I continue on, and then my new favorite friend, a standard San Isidro dog, starts barking at me and running towards me…I have had very good luck in general with the dogs, read, none of them have attacked me…most of them are nice, or only bark and don´t chase, or are asleep or dead, the later two of which are preferential, honestly. Not this time. I was a bit worried, since the road was completely deserted, but I stayed as calm as I could (truly, they can smell fear) and talked calmly to it (in Spanish, to be sure he understood) and walked away slowly and meekly. It didn´t work, he continued to bark, take a few steps toward, than back, over and over, until I really did get scared, and he ran up to me, and bit me in the side of my thigh. Well, he made his point. I won´t ever go back on that road. I was too afraid to even pick up a rock to scare him off. He was close enough more than once for me to kick him, but I was terrified it would make him angry and then he would tear my leg off, which is really want I was trying to avoid. No, I don´t have rabies, he thankfully did not break the skin. But, he did break my faith in those stupid dogs. I really hate them even more now. I know it’s not their fault they keep having millions of babies every few months, and that they are all starving and stealing food from children’s hands if they can…but really, we have to have exceed some capacity. But who is going to fix the dogs? And feed and care for the ones that are injured? Nobody has the money for that.

Nuestra cancion

This is likely the strongest emotional attachment I have ever had to a song. I hope it finds a place in your soul too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbKDUPh-IFI

INTIWAWA:Ninos del Sol:Children of the Sun

INTIWAWA has a very special place in my heart, and I have only been here for two months. As you know, working with any group of children will change you. I am learning how necessary it is sometimes to step aside from your own desires to make way for the needs of someone else, especially children. We work with over 130 children in three locations. Our everyday site, San Isidro, is where we are most active. We provide breakfast two about 35 children every morning in a kindergarten and primary school. Of all of the children we tested for nutritional deficiencies in San Isidro, every single one of them is clinically considered malnourished. They have high sugar, high protein, high starch diets. Very little vegetables, fruit or dairy are consumed on a daily or weekly basis. We have a very special woman who lives in San Isidro and who has two young boys, 13 and 6 approximately, who volunteers her time on a daily basis, often all of her time. She prepares breakfast and lunch for the children, goes shopping for the weeks amenities in the town center with one of our volunteers, as well as picks up whole wheat bread (an incredibly difficult task in itself to organize!!) and her modest home is essentially of a hub of compassion in San Isidro. She is currently the only parent in San Isidro that has committed more than a few days.

The lunch we provide is what I would call snack, but is actually referred to as lunch, is for about an equal number of students that are in primary and secondary school who choose to come to homework help Monday through Thursday. We work in the community center, which is shared by many other activities, has no running water, a toilet, nor much storage space for our modest library and school supplies. The children work on their home work alone, in partners or groups, or with a volunteer and are rewarded with lunch which includes includes some calcium, and as of just last week, now will include some vegetables. The children are as rambunctious as any other group despite their situation.

The gravest situation of the children of San Isidro is perhaps their home life. 45% of the children interviewed in San Isidro experience domestic abuse-mostly at the hands of an alcoholic father. Currently on hold, we have a group of psychologists who come to homework help to meet in small, private groups with the children to work on boosting self esteem as well as discussing their home life. The psychologists work for free.

In San Isidro, we are planning to construct a home for INTIWAWA. We currently have no united space where we can store all of our belongings for the children and for our projects. We store things in the home of our San Isidro volunteer, some in the community center, and most of it in our apartment, an hour away from the children. We have had a lot of complications with sharing the community center, as there is a lot of suspicion amongst the community as to why we are even in San Isidro. We continue to have meetings, and try our best to keep the communication lines open, but many parents have expressed their dissatisfaction and suspicion. I hope to be a part of a change here in communication lines. We want nothing more than to support their children, but even in our own lives, when we incite help, we often feel others are judging us. The violence in the homes, the poor diets, as well as the 100% of children tested who tested positive for parasites. This are all very intimate subjects.

We also have a large project running for the children of San Isidro to take them to the dentist. Most of the children need to visit at least four times, often much more, for various treatments. Tooth removal and cavity fillings being the most prevalent. We pay for the materials required to work on their teeth. We have yet another heroin, our dentist. She has committed to start and finish the project, alone. An enormous task.

Most of the children have rotting teeth due to the high sugar content of their diet. It could be that a lack of calcium is weakening their teeth as well. We just started to buy water for the children of our homework help project to wash their hands before they eat. There is no running water in homes, and the assumption is that they are still drinking water containing parasites. It has been suggested by the doctors that they are reinfecting themselves because of their dirty fingernails. With the threat of the swine flu tearing through a third world country, we are trying to be more careful. Children without good nutrition have difficult resisting illness that the rest of us could survive, nor can they afford the treatment if they were to become ill.

In addition to these projects solely existing in San Isidro, we have our intercultural project, which spans across our three sites. This involves recognizing the beauty in ones village, the differences that exist, the traditions, histories, songs, food, etc. and sharing them with other children. Once a year, we have a congress for the children. It is a big event, bringing 120 or more children together in one place to share their culture. The three sites that are several hours away from the city are indigenous communities, and there is often racism towards these groups. Part of the idea is to raise consciousness that it is okay to live in an indigenous community, and that is something to take pride in. Little by little, indigenous communities are disappearing. As I look out the window, travelling to three communities, I can see empty villages, homes without roofes, and nothing left but weeds.

I know we are all facing difficult times financially, and I am the last persons to solicit donations from anyone, but my heart has found a home for now, and I would love to see INTIWAWA in your heart as well. If you can find the time, I would ask you to send this to others whom might find our story interesting, and if you can find a little extra money four INTIWAWA, we would be eternally grateful. You are welcome to use the website to donate money. There are no administrative fees in INTIWAWA.

Please feel free to view our website at http://www.intiwawa.com/ in English Spanish and German! The English version has much less information than in Spanish, unfortunately. Please feel free to email me with questions at abarker1006@gmail.com. Thank you for your patience and interest in reading about INTIWAWA.

My Best,

Amanda Barker

La luna

Every night I wait for the moon to rise. It comes up late, and leaves me wondering what it´s doing while I am waiting…and every day, the moon appears different. As the moon changes, the world follows in her footsteps.

Peru is changing me, but I am not sure how exactly. I feel a bit different sometimes. I feel good. Strong. But still lost.

I wrote an incredibly long entry, and then accidentally deleted it as I was about to post it. The story of my life! The furthest back I can remember of things to share is last weekend. My trip to San Juan and Salinas. It began with a night of drinking and being merry, staying up until 4, then waking up late, in a crazy hurry, at 6, to be at our bus by 6 30. I was panicked, not knowing what to expect. I was told to prepare well. The sun will be brutal, the altitude very high, and for the love of god Amanda don’t get sick. I was mentally prepared for the apocalypse I think. Except for being late. We made it to the bus in plenty of time, because everyone was busy loading what seemed like a life time supply of everything. I was welcomed on to the bus, with nearly front row seats, by smiling seemingly familiar faces. I was accompanying Leonel, and they all know him from so many trips to San Juan. It would be a four or five our bus ride…with bleached blue curtains to block out the beating rays of the morning sun. I didn´t know the sun could be so intense, even when it was still cold.

Although the bus seemed full, more people climbed in, sat on eachothers´ belongings in the aisle, children at on laps, bags sat on childrens´ laps. The roof was piled to the sky. This is a weekly trek for the people of San Juan. They live at such a high altitude that nothing grows except for Alpacas, Llamas, Vicunas and people. How the animals and people are surviving is beyond me.

I could feel the excitement of fervor of returning home from what was probably a hectic time in the city, collecting their necessities. Everyone I have ever met always has something special they´ve bought that they know won´t last long…like a reward for shopping. This time, I spotted a cake in a woman´s lap, and people were selling sweet tamales and hard boiled eggs and potatoes in a bag for breakfast. I was far too sleep deprived to consider eating anything. So, we finally went on our way. The sun was bright, but the view was too beautiful to keep the curtains closed the whole way. I felt like a little kid peeking around someone to see what they have in their hands as a surprise. Between the curtains, and tops of heads, I could see a really beautiful land. It is an odd tint of green and yellow. As we made our way what seemed like thousands of miles, leaving behind dust and city life. The trip there was mostly filled with cat naps abruptly ended by quick jolts to the neck from the bumpy road, or smacking heads with Leonel, or some other unpredictable event. With a bus filled with the conversation of friends and family, I couldn´t help but feel safe and sound.

When we finally arrived, I realized how cold it was despite the sun, especially indoors. There is absolutely no insulation in homes but the cement it´s made from. When we arrived, the driver climbed up top of the bus and tossed down our belongings. We made our way to the hotel (believe it or not) that we would stay in. My guess is the hotel is there primarily for the workers of the salt mines nearby. We met two little brothers hanging out in the center, and we chatted with them for a while. We would meet them later, after lunch and a nap. Shortly after, we had a nice lunch of a fried egg, white rice, french fries and tea. Very typical Peruvian food! There is nothing like two pounds of starch to fill your belly.

Two boys came to our room to wake us up with the sound of the dribbling a soccer ball like a basket ball. The echo was really quite impressive.

We chatted with the boys as one sloppily ate jello, and pumped up some soccer balls. They seemed happy and content to be together and chatting, like two old men. These two boys witnessed Carlito´s accident just a week or two before. They replayed it in gruesome detail for us, including sound effects. They seemed removed from it.

I could go on for hours about how beautiful the rest of the trip was…including the salt flats and salt lake (which I had no idea existed in Peru!!!) and the second day, including a festival in Salinas. All was spectacular! I was happy as a clam.

So, after this experience, among many others in my last two months, I have decided to extent my stay another month, to return on July 14 instead of June 11. Hopefully by the end I will have some money for a snack in the airport…but we´ll see.

We have very few volunteers here now…so things are changing rapidly, and we are all trying to fill in the blank spots. I am the only person who has been here longer than two weeks that is involved in the every day projects. So, it´s a bit crazy and busy, but I feel I can thrive on this.

desconocida
article
1. Strange, unknown, ungrateful.
Por razones desconocidas -> for reasons which are not known
2. Much changed.
Está desconocido -> he is much altered
noun
3. Stranger. (m & f)

This word, in all forms, describes many of my experiences in Arequipa. I will leave it to you to interpret.