Once Again

I´ve finally gotten myself together enough to write here again. It was a rough journey from the Northern Hemisphere down to Arequipa. I can´t even count how many modes of transportation it took to get me to the apartment I stayed in before. When I arrived, it was full of german chatter, save one American girl who has lived in Germany for five years, so the majority of the time, the volunteers speak German. It was quite uncomfortable at first, but we have gotten to know each other a Little better and I am more at ease. There have been so many people I decided to move to the roof top apartment that is a single room. I love it. It´s small, prívate, and mine, for two weeks! I am truly beginning to learn the value of solitude. The room reminds me of the one I stayed in in Puno. Basic, compact. After preparing for a few days and later and celebrating Christmas eve in San Isidro, things quieted down.

Organization and a sure-fire date for the beginning of vacation camp for the kids in San Isidro has been lacking, so I decided to head to Coporaque alone to see the family I had become accustomed to, including Christian, Antonella, Shamira and Little Ruby, who now walks and says a few recognizable words (like ma, for mama, and more, convenient, right?) I spend three days with them, recuperating from a nasty cold that has been spreading like wildfire in our apartment. The clean air and the higher altitude definitely helped, but I managed to wear myself out entirely but going fishing one day, and to the river the next. Two insanely arduous journeys, especially with a cold. Fishing was really fun, save for the fall I took walking on slippery rocks, gouging my shin bone. A week later, it´s still swollen. I mostly watched Chocolate (his long-held Nick name), the father of the children I mentioned, use his beloved net. He was bouncing back and fourth on these enormous river rocks in sandals made from tire rubber, throwing this next, pulling it back in, and there would be a few shiny, tiny trout. I was bummed they were so tiny, thinking how much of a pain it is to deal with so many Little ones instead of a few big ones, but it turned out that the Little ones are preferred, for their small, digestable bones, and their stronger flavor. I was later served the bigger ones, as the bones are more managable to take out, and I tried both, and like the bigger ones better. The taste was less fishy. Four two hours of walking to and from the river, plus the two hours of clammoring over rocks, dealing with their yelping puppy in training who was more of a wimp then you could possibly imagine, I returned barely alive, it felt like. I crashed after eating lunch the first two days for at least a couple of hours, plus the early bedtime of around 8 or 9, as there´s nothing to do, you are completely exhausted, and the roosters will soon begin to roost around 3 or 4, not that that will stop me from sleeping 12 hours. It was good to see the family, but strange to see how the town has changed over the last 6 months during my absence. It´s a fever of tourism, as Chocolate described it. People are fixing their houses, their walls, the plaza in the center is completely torn up for repairs, but there is still only one restaurant, which I´ve never been in, a few small stores with essentials, and a few family homes to host tourists. I hate to say it, but I really wouldn´t recommend this place to all types, as the walks to and from the beautiful sites are dangerous and tiresome I can´t imagine trying to run a business out there with so little information, or experience, risking injury to my guests, being so far from anything, and the incessant possibility of the food unsettling your guests stomach. As much as I love it there, I feel sick half the time. I suppose with time, and if I knew what I was eating, and really was able to determine all that I was doing, eating and drinking, it would probably be better. Complete with an awful stomach ache, I made the journey back to Arequipa in the early evening, and things just becamse more of a struggle.


After returning to Arequipa, and still no sign of the approaching preparation for vacation camp, and after arriving to a house FULL of people, I was overwhelmed, and knew I had to do something. I had decided at that moment, that I wasn´t going hanging around waiting around for who knows what. I thought about where to go, and finally, after talking to friends about a managable trip, I decided on Cusco. So, after a few days, food poisoning or god knows what, the most horendously painful, freezing cold 10 hour bus ride, I arrive in the rising sun in Cusco. I feel awful, and have to sit in the bus terminal for a half hour to regain my strength to begin my quest for a place to stay, and a trip to Choquequirao. I think to ask a bus business how much I should expect a taxi to be to the center, so I confidently leave read to not get ripped off. He told me I need to go further away from the terminal to get the cheaper Price. There was a group of four girls asking for prices, and I told them what I had Heard about prices, so we continued to search together. These girls were very nice, from Argentina, travelling for two weeks during their summer break from university. We were all so tired and delerious from our long bus rides, we slowly but surely moved around the city with our heavy packs, looking for places to stay. Two of the girls dropped their packs, and the other two and I waited for them for what seemed like an eternity to ask around. They finally found a place for the four of them together for a reasonably Price, and nearby, I finally found my sanctuary. A Little room, reminiscent of Arequipa and Puno. Just wanted I needed. It´s at a hostel, so there is a community kitchen. A holding ground for people from all over the world. It´s somewhat clean, the kitchen is a few steps away, and there´s a lock on my door. I can´t really ask for much more. I havealready fallen in love with Cusco. I feel even more at home here then in Arequipa because of its manageable size. The streets are narrow, and quite steep. It´s an earthen-colored versión of Arequipa in some respects. I´ve already been to their big market to buy some vegetables for lunch, and made a nice peruvian meal of veggies and potatoes complete with one of my favorite spicy green sauces. My favorite part so far is the lush green forest surrounding the city. Cusco is tucked inside a valley, with tall, sweeping eucolyptus trees. The mountains from here aren´t as tall as in Arequipa, but this place is full of beautiful, historic Incan ruins like Macchu Picchu and Choquequirao. It´s just so nice to see green again. The suni s intense, but the air feels cleaner, like in Coporaque. There is less dust, and clouds move about, blocking the suns rays on occasion, and you can feel the drastic difference in temperature. It´s a welcome respite in the face of Equatorial sunshine during the summer.

In the next two days I´ll set off for Choquequirao, starting with an early morning , several hour bus ride to the next city over, where we will take another combi up to the trail head, and embark on a four day trek to see this awesome, still being uncovered, archaeological wonder of the world. I know I will be blown away. I just hope my health improves and stays stable for the next week. Why beautiful things have to be so difficult?

After a semester in gradúate school studying international development, and then plopping myself back into a ´perfect´location for some development, I can see first-hand some of the crazy things I´ve been learning, that until now, have really just been vocabulary words. Spare parts, for example, is one that sticks in my mind. In my development economics class, this is a term that roughly alludes to equipment, machines, factories, etc. That have been exported to developing countries for use in industrialization or other such favorable types of development…and here we are, in Peru, with nearly everything we use, broken. Faucets, Windows, cars, toilets. Nothing is as it was in the beginning. It´s frustrating, to say the least, and it´s also a shame, that everythign has to be more complicated than necessary. Simple things are rendered unusable, and simply go to waste. The ingenuity I see here, selling and making new things out of used things is common and impressive. But there is still so much waste. And where is it going to go? I haven´t seen a landfill here, yet. But I do see the piles of trash people burn, the plastic, the chemicals, in the street, or near wáter that will be used for irrigation. The dead stinking dogs, the smell of urine on every street corner, the piles of trash that get picked up several times a week by trucks that say ¨Together, we can improve Arequipa.¨ But is picking up trash really improving a place? Isn´t it simply moving the problem to a new location? A former co-worker introduced me to an organization in Guatemala that Works with the children who live at-on-near the dump. The disease, the risk, the filth, is unimaginable. The chronic, long-term exposure of whatever is in these dumps, smoldering, seeping into ground wáter, is incalculable. What do we have to say for ourselves? I am embarassed to be part of a species that creates and changes nature for its own purpose with out a second thought.
I happened upon a book the other day, thankfully in English, in our apartment. It´s about what the world would be like if the human race ceased to exist one day. The first parts are about the deterioration of our homes and our cities. Much of what we´ve created will quickly be overcome by nature. Much of what we´ve created will also stay, perhaps indefinitely, like aluminum, and other nearly impenetrable materials homo sapiens have created. Think of all the buildings we´ve built, and then destroyed, in the name of progress, practice, or what have you, only to be send to landfills. All of that concrete, that metal. The author leaves Little to our imagination, as most of what would happen is easily seen by what has already happened in the past with abandoned homes, natural disasters, etc. It´s something to think about. What have we done? How do we feel about it? And what are we going to do about it? These are the things I think about every day, no matter where I am. Ask yourself, where is ¨away´ when we throw something away?