Peru

Cusco

2010-01-11T13:48:00.001-08:00

Well! Another week has flown by. I don’t even know how long it´s been since I left Arequipa for Cusco…a week? The week was full of adventures. I cannot imagine being a tourist for very long…it is absolutely exhausting. All the near disasters, the crises, and the meeting of all sorts of people…good and bad. It is an absolute roller coaster! I will try to start from the beginning. I decided to go to Cusco because there was no INTIWAWA, and I couldn´t bear the thought of staying in the city for any longer doing nothing…so I went to one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The city of Cusco is stunningly green this time of year, reminiscent of Coporaque. I arrive in Cusco at 5 in the morning after a arduous bus ride of about 10 hours. I am delirious, tired, and have to regain my strength inside the bus terminal for a half an hour before I can embark on the journey…first to find a hostel. I meet 4 lovely girls, who at first I assume are from Europe or something. They turn out to be from Argentina. I was later told this is the season of Latinos in Cusco. It´s their summer, and they are ready to travel, and it seems like half of Argentina´s young folks are in Cusco going to Macchu Picchu and other such sites. I went to Cusco to go to Choquequirao, which is a archeological site similar to Macchu Picchu. They say it´s older, and bigger, than Macchu Picchu, yet most of it is still covered in hundreds of years of overgrowth. Only in roughly the last 10 years has it been open to tourists. It´s cheaper, too. I decide to stay two nights in Cusco to prepare for my journey after I learn it is possible to travel solo on the trail. I want to go backpacking, and leave all this craziness behind. After recuperating from the long bus ride, I start getting all of my things together for a 4 day trek, food, tent, stove, etc. I get it all down to the last minute, and the next morning, I heard for Cachora. This is a miserable four hour bus ride. Because I bought my ticket an hour before departure, I get the blessing of having the worst seat on the bus. Number 3. This is the seat that went you open the door from the cabin to the seats, if you are my height, your knees get knocked, and then the person leasons on you to pass by, and shut the door. Normally this wouldn´t be a problem, but because there is very little transit in this area, it turns out to be a bus that stops every 10 minutes, like a combi, to drop people off in front of their homes on this main road and pick up more folks. Great. I realize shortly before my stop, that I´ll have to ask to get off, as it´s not a main stop. I thought Cachora was a big place. Turns out, it doesn´t even take you to Cachora, it takes you to the crossing where you will then take a collective-taxi for an hour down the most rocky bumpy road of my life. When I realize this, I think, I should get my back, so they don´t leave me with out it, or it becomes a big ordeal to get it out from underneath the bus at the last minute. I ask to get my back at an earlier stop where the bus driver decides he wants to he breakfast for 45 minutes, so we all get off, they put some water somewhere in the engine to prevent it from overheating…and this is the moment I lean my backpack, with everything I need for my trek, is not on the bus. It´s 5 hours behind us, left in the terminal by some incapable young worker. I naturally flip out, and demand a solution. They call back to the terminal, and luckily, we call a half hour before the next bus is due to depart from Cusco. They tell me it´s on the next bus, and I should wait where I get off, and flag down the bus, for my backpack. I hesitantly depart from the bus at my stop, Ramal, out in literally the middle of no where. There are 10 houses, and the rest is farmland. There is no where to go. I back in the sun, and then freeze when the clouds pass over the sun, for 6 hours. I meet a really nice young girl a few years older than me who is waiting for a ride down to the bottom of the valley to Cachora. She is Cusquena, and decided to come to Cachora after a trip here 13 years ago with her school, where she met a woman who is a friend of an aunt, or something along those lines. She was just going to show up after 13 years to see the woman. She kindly waits for my for some hours, until my backpack arrives, and we find a ride down to the bottom. It was so bumpy and loud, we couldn´t even speak in the car. At this point, my backpack is missing my nalgene I just hesitantly purchased for 10 dollars in Cusco. I am enfuriated at the situation, but we continue on. She helps me find hostal (there is literally nothing open, at this is apparently not the season for tourists, because it rains like you would not believe, everyday). Good to know. Wrong season. Check. Hostel, 10 soles, for a private room, and hot water. That is like $3.50 a night. Perfect. We have lunch, which we had to beg someone to make for us, as no restaurants are open this time of year. We get some greasy chicken, some shredded lettuce and of course, a mound of white rice. It is always a struggle for me to eat all of my food. We happily chat, and then go to the newly opened tourist agency with one young guy working there, Martin, who looks at me like I have completely lost my mind when I tell him I want to hike to Choquequirao alone. My new friend also thinks I am crazy. They tell me it´s impossible, dangerous, especially for women, and that I absolutely have to hire a guide and a mule. At this point, I am so overwhelmed and worked up, I want to head directly back to Arequipa to escape this mess I´ve gotten myself into. After a little while of weighing my options, having a good cry, I decided to do it. It will cost 240 soles for four days. $83. Whatever. I have no choice. I am too scared to go on my own after all of these bad omens, the bus, the backpack, the waterbottle, and later, I think my camera has been stolen from my backpack as well. They tell me they´ll get it arranged. I go to bed to 7 waiting for them to tell me they´ve found someone to go with me (it was bit of a challenge, as most of the guides have left Cachora for another city to work during the offseason is mines or other farms). No one shows up, and I have a worried sleep. I wake up early, at 530, to figure out what to do. I planned on leaving the day before, so I didn´t want to delay it any further. I search for the two people who said they´d help me out, and finally have to knock on Martin´s door (he is still sleeping) to ask him what the hell is going on. Oh yes, I stopped by your house, and they said you were sleeping! Alright, so what´s happening, then? It´s all arranged. The guide and the mule will be here at 7. Super. I eat as much as I possible can for the long journey, meet the guide, he piles my stuff on the mule, and we head off shortly after, him in sandals made of old tire rubber, and a small backpack, and no food. I think, my god, we are never going to make it. I later learn that there are little houses on the trial that offer food. (During the tourist season). The whole time, I am worried he is not going to get enough to eat, and then I´ll have to share, and then neither of us will have enough. Am I going to starve on this trip? Is he? I will not be the cause of someone else´s suffering, even if it is originally self-inflicted, just so he can make some money. That is crazy. At times, Paulino (the guide) and I have lively conversations about our very different lives and histories. Other times, we walk in complete silence, sometimes for hours. Sometimes we walk together, other times, I am alone, ahead on the trial, while he tends to the mule, and her seemingly tiny hooves, as they make their way up and down the mountain on the rocky, steep, slippery switch backs.
After 15 intense kilometers, the last two hours being in the high heat of the day, we finally arrive at our camp site. I meet a lovely young guy named Julian, who lives up in this seeming jungle, by himself, with a bum leg. He calls himself a mystic. He studied in university some kind of spiritual studies, still unclear of exactly what it could be equated to in English. Kind of like training to be a shaman, or a buddist…we have lively discussions all night long. We are nearly same age, and after a day with Paulino, it´s really nice to meet such a vibrant spirit up here in the mountains. I make my dinner on the ground on my little backpacking stove, Paulino makes his over the fire somewhere else, and slowly over the next few hours, a few more travelers and their guides arrive, exhausted, having taken hours longer than Paulino and I to travel the same distance, which means they were in the heat for even longer. They don’t eat dinner til 9, but I am in bed by then, after having heard some insanely creepy stories about ghosts, zombies, and other terrifying occurrances these locals have personally experienced. I lay in my tent, half asleep, and two cats start fighting intensely, ramming into my tent, scaring me enough to make me scream. I have imaginings of a possessed cat t hat has it out for me. Turns out, it´s Julian´s cat, which he calls little son, (hijito) and the cat from up the mountain, his aunt´s cat I believe, that weekly tries to kill his cat. Julian has tried to kill intruder a number of times, injuring it enough for it to lose an eye. He can identify it easily in the night now, he said. Dear god, I thought. Where am i?
I also have the pleasure of meeting an arrogant guy from Lima, 31, who is seems desperate to speak English. He lived in Florida for 7 years, and no matter what I do, he continues to switch back to English. It annoys the hell out of me, but is only the beginning of our journey, in which we will continue to butt heads and argue. He rudely corrects my Spanish continually, and switches to English when he doesn´t feel like asking me to explain myself in Spanish. I am irritated. I try to remain polite, but in the final hours of our trip a few days later, he asks me why I don´t like to be corrected. I said I didn´t mind, as another guide and I were correcting each other´s English and Spanish with no problems. It´s just that I don´t like to be corrected by you, I tell him. Oh, he says. And he finally stops correcting me. It only took 3 days!
On the second day, we arrive at Choque. I feel like crap. I didn´t eat enough for breakfast, it´s raining on and off, it is straight up hill, I´m slipping in the mud. I am miserable. Paulino takes me around to some of the sites, tells me what he knows about the Incas and their history here (some of which turns out to be entirely incorrect). The nostalgia is incredibly strong for the days of the Incas here. I feel for their nostalgia, but also am sure that they ran their society with just as many injustices as we have today. One empire for another. I am sure that that some of what Paulino is telling me is not correct, but I listen just the same, take photos and walk around, wishing I was alone, back in my tent, or somewhere dry, left to just look at this enormous valley which seems to continue forever. All you can see are mountains, covered in thick semi-jungle forest, and even further out, snow capped mountains. These mountains give me comfort for some reason. It´s good to know, perhaps, that in some places in the world, no one lives there. It´s just the rocks and the snow, and whatever else nature allows to thrive. It´s a comfort to know that some places are unreachable, insurmountable…that the impossible does exist. If everything was possible, I guess, you´d have to keep outdoing yourself. Besides the mountaineers and climbers that challenge the snow, glaciers and mountains, no one lives in these places. Only the sun and the moon reach the farthest reaches.
After a long trek back to the next camp, I settle in, meet some new people, play with too little boys, Jan and Juan Carlos, brothers, who are only a few years apart. I share my snacks with the little one, Juan, who is four, and has no fear of asking for a hand out. We share toasted corn together, and later, he even gets hot chocolate from another group and some crackers. He´s ridiculously cute, is learning to whistle, and his little nose continuously runs without bothering him. He shows me his scribble drawings of butterflys and houses in a newspaper from the new year, now a week old, and presumably, the only written news this family will see until their dad comes back from Cachora, attending some other farms. This family tends a few chickens, pigs, mules and the bathrooms, supposedly which have been put in place by the French Government. A French guy discovered Choque in the early 1900´s. There is an insanely strong French influence in Peru, from the NGO´s, the French language schools in the city, tons of young people who dream of travelling to France, and now, these bathrooms. They flush and everything. I have never been to such a remote place that still had some of the basic amenities we are used to at home. They are squat toilets, don´t get me wrong, but they flush. They have this crazy gravity system for a shower, using the toilet as the drain. Inventive. They journey back to Cachora is pretty intense. It´s a valley, so you have to descent one mountain down to the river, and then back up the other day. My legs are destroyed by the time we get to the river. And we aren´t even close. Luckily, the ascent and descent use different leg muscles, and I manage just fine up the other side, no thanks to the intense sun. Paulino and the other guides are worried about the tourists and the sun. They decide not to push them too much and we camp where the others must camp, as he is also short on places to eat. I graciously accept dinner made by the cook of another group in this little ramshackle structure, realizing I could use a change from the quinoa and rice i´ve been eating for every meal. It´s the last night, so I give him the rest of what I´ve got, carrots and oat meal, to share with augment when he´ll make for his group. The cook, Edwin, and the guide, Benji, of the the other group, one Peruvian guy (who I theorize is some kind of shaman in training) with his two German girlfriends who always sit on either side of him. The three of them speak German quietly, to the point you can´t even here them to determine what language they are speaking, and then run off for hours by themselves…which I also theorize they are smoking pot…which is fine, but why so secretive? Why so quiet? It´s a mystery to all of us.
When we finally arrive in Cachora on the fourth day, we are all pooped, Edwin, the Lima guy, and Benji and I walk most of the way together, arriving in one group of tired, filthy, stinky young folks. It feels SO good to know I can sit down soon. Paulino has gone ahead, presumably sick of hiking too, especially slower than he probably can hike on his own, as he does this some times five times a month with other groups, which he tells me about, laughing about how out of shape the tourists are, and how unprepared, some to never make it to Choque. He´s even had to carry someone´s baby on the trial! We decide to meet at the information agency so I can pay him. I get there, and I realize, after not having thought about money for four days…that I do not have enough to pay him. Not nearly enough. Less than half! Shit. I know Benji and Edwin don´t have anything to lend me because we just changed the Shaman guuy´s Euros so they could stay at a hostel an extra night. We are stuck with Euros. Completely useless until we get to Cusco. I am not coming back here, I decide. No way in hell. The journey is too long. I ask if I can leave money in Cusco for someone to take back to Cachora. Nope. Not possible. One option left. The Limean. The guy I did not get along with the entire trip. The only person I would rather not see again, and he´s the only one who can save me. I ask him, and he thinks he can lend me some of the money, but not all. He´s worried he won´t have enough, either, to get back to Cusco. But I know he´s fine, because he doesn´t have to buy anything until Cusco, because he and his group have a private van back to the city. He kindly offers me the money, finally, after I think I am completely screwed. Benji and Edwin and I stick together, barely scraping by enough money for the collectivo to the top of the mountain to Ramal. We know we don´t have enough money to get back to Cusco. We have to find a car that will take us, and let us pay at the end. Not happening. There are no cars to Cusco, only half way. They say we can get another car there. We manage the fee (all with Benji´s money) to the next town. We´ve got a pile of stuff, as Benji and Edwin are responsible for bringing back tents, a bottle of propane, some stools, and pots and pans back to Cusco. The rest stays in Cachora with some agency or somebody´s home. In the next town, drive, sunny, and crowded with people desperate to get to Cusco. Nobody´s driving there. They know they won´t get passengers back, so they choose to just drive between the towns out in the middle of no where, rather than make the 3 or 4 hour journey to Cusco, to return with an empty car. After more than an hour, we finally find a van, and cram in the back, our stuff behind us. This vans windows barely crack open, I have to keep mine open with a water bottle, and I sit, feverish, in the back, bumping along, desperate to sleep, terrified we are going to crash with this moronic driver. As the sun finally eases up, and the day passes, the rain begins its daily descent to the earth, it cools off. We run into traffic (in the middle of no where??) because two drivers, a bus and a small car, collide. The bus has tumbled to a halt off the side of the road, into a small farm, just 15 feet below. At the moment of the accident, the road is flat, straight, and it hadn´t begun to rain yet. Who knows how it happened. These drivers are so desperate to drive fast, they risk their passengers and their own lives every day driving like lunatics. I have been scared for my own life a number of times. This is the status quo. Everyday there are major bus and train accidents in the paper. You can tell someone has happened again when you pass by the little news stands, with the various news papers hanging for all to view, with a dozen people standing in front, chins up, reading what tragedy another bus has caused. The major causes of accidents (as was in the paper), starting with tired drivers, then driver negligence, then drunk drivers, I believe. Don´t quote me on that, but that´s roughly what I remember. The trips are so long, and I presume the businesses can´t afford to have two drivers in every car, taking turns, which is really what is absolutely necessary for anything over 9 hours, I think.
After s pending two more days in Cusco, hanging out with Benji, and meeting up with two friends from Chewonki who were visiting Cusco at the same time, which was completely surreal. Easier to meet in Cusco, Peru, than in Utah? Crazy. I departed, for the final leg of my journey, back to Cusco. I buy a more expensive ticket, with a seemingly fancy agency, as they have nice tickets, well dressed workers, and I someone advertising for them convincingly in the terminal. I was completely dooped. It started to rain in the early afternoon, and didn´t stop until we got out of the range of the storm, 5 or 6 hours down the road. The bus was not made for rain. Water was pouring down from the windows, the emergency exists, and the air vents. I was lucky enough to have a seat next to an emergency window. Completely permeable to the weather. I had to wear my rain jacket, the man next to me with a plastic trash back covering him, and a blanket over my head to keep from getting soaked. When the rain picked up even more, after hours of suffering, sweating to death in my rain jacket with this blanket over my head, I demanded a solution. They told me I could come sit in the cabin with the driver. I finally accepted, and sat up front, watching the crazy driver drive with a drink in one hand, wiping the window´s condensation with the other, driving this massive machine. All I could do was try to sleep. As we got up to higher altitudes, I started to freeze. We stopped somewhere to add water to the engine ,and they left the door open, and I couldn’t´take it anymore. I was so cold, bundled up with hat, scarf, many layers , a blanket, and even someone´s jacket draped over my legs. I had to leave the cabin. But I didn´t want to sit in my wet seat again. I asked the attended (like a flight attended, who hands out food, blanekts, etc.) what to do. She was sleeping on the floor in this little cubby between the cabin and where the passengers sit on the first floor of the bus, and there was another small cubby I could curl up in, but not for long, as my feet would fall asleep. I managed that for a while, but then, I was too cold there, and ascended to my seat on the second floor. It was just beginning to get light out, and people were starting to wake up. I felt a small, internal applause from those who were awake when they saw that I had survived the night. It was good to be back with them. I sat again next to Elmer, this old, political man, the former president of some collctive farming business, who rambled on about the state of things, haciendas, latifundios, the US, the Spanish, etc. All food for thought. But Elmer, seriously, I am tired. Can´t you tell I am not interested!? We finally arrive in Arequipa. I am exhausted, and so pleased so be off that bus. Back to…´reality´? Vacation camp starts Wednesday. I leave Thursday night for anther 16 hour bus ride. This time, I spend the extra money to get on a better bus to Lima. Cruz del Sur. I hate that there are only one are two businesses, who charge an arm and a leg, that can manage a decent bus trip. Grr. Oh yeah, and NEVER ride on Enlace. You´ll regret it. Don’t be deceived by their fancy tickets!! Until next time…

Once Again

2010-01-02T12:06:00.000-08:00

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?

What does it mean when you google your own name?

2009-08-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

I should be showered, in bed, dreaming of stealing BMW's and torrential floods like last night, desperately searching for my beach house??? What is this pathetic existence I lead? I shouldn't be publishing this.

I found this, entitled Amanda Barker:

Henry got me with child,
Knowing that I could not bring forth life
Without losing my own.
In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.
Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived
That Henry loved me with a husband's love,
But I proclaim from the dust
That he slew me to gratify his hatred.

Poem by Edgar Lee Masters

I knew about this poem a long time ago, and had forgotten about it. After revisiting it...it's all becoming so clear

Henry gets me pregnant despite the fact that he knows I will die as a result...everyone back home things he loves me...I think he killed me because of his hatred? Is this a love story? Did he choose baby over me? Was he fulfilling the inevitable...or purposely ended my life?

quick bio on edgar:

Edgar Lee Masters (Garnett, Kansas, August 23, 1868 - Melrose Park, Pennsylvania, March 5, 1950) was an American poet, biographer, and dramatist. He is the author of Spoon River Anthology, The New Star Chamber and Other Essays, Songs and Satires, The Great Valley, The Serpent in the Wilderness An Obscure Tale, The Spleen, Mark Twain: A Portrait, Lincoln: The Man, and Illinois Poems. In all, Masters published twelve plays, twenty-one books of poetry, six novels and six biographies, including those of Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Vachel Lindsay, and Walt Whitman.

this poem sums up my life, doesn't it?

some connections we share...he died in pennsylvania...his wife's name was emma, and i was almost named emma, he is heavily tied to legal realism...and well...that one just goes without saying.

i will continue to investigate this, and i expect you to do the same. any rumors about him, i want to hear. something good. all these brief bios have been less than satisfying.

More photos

2009-08-11T12:19:00.000-07:00

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1724151007/a=47625438_47625438/

Alright folks, if you want to see these pictures, you've got to sign in. Use the email address ABarker1006@gmail.com and password amanda. If that doesn't work, email me! Happy photo perusing.

Pictures

2009-08-04T14:06:00.001-07:00

http://www2.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=1490460007/a=47625438_47625438/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=snapfish/

La Playa!

2009-08-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

Here I am updating again at a terribly slow pace. I am home searching for jobs on the internet. It all seems to irrelevant and stupid compared to my mentality while in Arequipa. I just reread my last entry, and realized I should clarify what I meant, towards the end, when I said that the information I learned in the nurse’s station in Puno would soon change someone else’s life. After 3 or so months of working every day of the week, I travel to Puno. The following Thursday, we are out listening to jazz music late at night. We all realize we have a free Monday coming up, and, one by one, we convince each other it is a good idea to escape to the beach for a few days. I am one of the last ones to be convinced in the initial group of people, Edwin, Leonel, Estiv, and I. After a mountain of organizing who will do what, when, and how we’ll get there...we leave the next day, Edwin, Leonel and I. This couldn’t be a stranger trio.

It’s only a few hours by bus, and the bus is pretty nice. The windows don’t open, which means there is clean, cool, dust-free air to breath. The windows are enormous, and I share Leonel’s music as I stare out the window for four hours watching the scenery fly by. I am thoroughly. We arrive in Camana, a small city a few miles from the beach. It seems just like all of the other small cities in Peru I have been to, only this one has sea food, though it’s winter, and there are no tourists. The three of us with our backpacks, sleeping bags, tents and a few bags of food and Pisco head off for the beach. We have to take a colectivo, or group taxi, to get there. We cram in the car with our packs. These people look at us like we’re crazy. When we arrive, there is only one restaurant open, and the beach is empty, save for a few fisherman in their underwear, and the occasional group who comes to enjoy the tranquility of the beach in winter. It’s not cold, but it’s not hot most of the time either. A few hours of cloudless skies during the day heat us up enough to go swimming. The water is some of the coldest I have felt.

We make a fire, eat bread and fruit for dinner, and chat away the rest of the night. Only this doesn’t seem to me to be an ordinary camp fire with ordinary people. These are two of the most passionate, giving and emotional men I have ever known.

We are expecting our friends in the next few days, but we have no idea when they’ll come. Leonel and Edwin’s phones are dead, and I left mine in a taxi...so we are completely isolated. So, the next day, we eat, swim, roam around the beach, sleep, argue over who will go back into town to get more food and Pisco...and make a fire in the evening.

At some point we meet two very interesting men. One is a young guy from Argentina who has come to take care of a friend’s hotel during the winter months, to relax, make some connections, and learn to fish with a net. We have a hard time communicating at first with his Argentine accent, but we manage toward the end of our trip to understand one another. The other man is the owner of the lone restaurant...Dudu, is his nick name. He used to be the governor of this little beach town, which, by the way, looks like the apocalypse has come and gone.

About 10 years ago there was a Tsunami that hit here...and no one was prepared for it. I suppose no one ever is, but it completely devastated the little beach town, and many are too afraid to return, and have left fallen down houses. Others have rebuilt, and close down or move out merely for the winter. Dudu has two penguins, and lives right in front of where we’re camping on the beach. A convenient bathroom and fried fish supplier. He only remembers my name, so when we order food, he screams my name, and motions for us to come in. He reminds me of a Peruvian version of my grand father a little bit, with his big belly, and big heart. Both Marco, the Argentine, and Dudu, are philanthropists after our own hearts. Marco works with street children in Argentina, and Dudu works with groups like Marco’s, networking his business friends to donate food and put on events and what not. Dudu offers to host our children’s intercultural congress in November at the beach, during a festival time, when he knows his friends will be here and willing to donate and help out. Leonel accepts his invitation. These kids are going to die of excitement to hear they get to go to the beach again, I think. Most of them never travel unless it is with INTIWAWA. Few of our children we work with on the weekends outside San Isidro, which is only an hour away, go to Arequipa. Some have never been. They only know one place. Most of these children have never been to the beach either. Only the kids from San Isidro had that privilege last year.

The second night, after Dudu and Marco have gone to their homes, it is just Leonel, Edwin and I again. We always have INTIWAWA on our minds, and talk about it quite a lot. Our hopes, dreams, frustrations and disappointments. We tell stories, and learn more about each other. We have all shared some difficult and trying times together, and this weekend seems like a culmination of this. Part of this trip was a going away and reorganization trip for my departure. We knew when we both Leonel and I left INTIWAWA, things would change. I told the guys my uncle’s story about his little fluffy white dog that chased an adolescent boy down the street. The boy, to protect himself from this ferocious pooch, jumped on a neighbor’s car, and dented and scratched the roof and hood. My uncle would have to pay the damage, and received a fine from the police for not having control over his pet. They laughed at the ridiculousness of it. I also told them my story about Puno, similar to what you’ve read in my blog here. Leonel was hearing it for the second time, but wanted me to tell Edwin. Edwin is the most cynical person I have ever known. He has no hope in adults what-so-ever because they are selfish and blind and ignorant. He only believes the future is purely in the hands of the children and that hardly anyone in the world wants to help. We had a nasty argument over this in the past, but managed to move on despite our differences. This time, things would change. When I told him that 25 of the 30 children at the hospital in Puno were receiving free treatment, he cried. He didn’t know, he told me, that there was help. He thanked me and hugged me and told me I had given him hope. I cried too. We must have looked like lunatics out there on the beach, just the three of us. I will never forget that night.

Our friends arrive, and it's nice to have the new faces. We play soccer, eat at Dudu's restaurant...swim, and play music with odd instruments we've created. Water bottles, rocks, pens...someone has the idea to read a paragraph from a book as the lyrics of a song. The rest of us sing back up or play instruments, others just watch. It was fun making music with friends...something I am not personally used to. Normally I am a spectator. I think that speaks to my how comfortable I was around these friends. I still won't sing solo, but at least I piped up a little singing nonsense songs.

For now, this may be my last blog entry. I do plan to return to Arequipa and INTIWAWA (though I haven't really left, still dreaming, worry, and writing to volunteers making sure they're alright and answering questions) as soon as possible. I hope to be one of the few who returns.

"There now, steady love, so few come and don't go
Will you won't you, be the one I'll always know
When I'm losing my control, the city spins around
You're the only one who knows, you slow it down" - the fray

Puno

2009-07-21T13:03:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for not writing!!!!!!!!! I am back home now, but I will attempt to write this collecting all that I can from my memory along the way. I will start with where I left off. I was heading to Puno on my own. After hearing on the news what was happening in that region, I decided on our first weekend off, I would go to Puno with clothes for the kids at the hospital. Puno is not only a city, where Lake Titicaca is located, but also a region. The region of Puno has seen some seriously high death rates, which repeats itself with out failure, every winter. Puno is high, and in the winter, it’s dry, and freaking cold. Generally all they raised up there, like in San Juan and Salinas, are llamas and alpacas. The vegetation is low to the ground, and there isn’t much to eat otherwise. The problem the people face there is sickness from the cold. I’m not a doctor, but the changes in temperature are pretty drastic from night to day, the cold can get really intense, like 18 below zero C, and the generally population in these areas is seriously under funded, and nearly forgotten. There is no insulation in the homes, they are made from dirt floors, thatched roofs, brick, and are generally windowless (well, yes, there are holes for windows, but no glass). So, I go to the used clothes market with Leonel, and we find fleeces for about 15 children, plus mittens, and whatever I can find in the box we keep in our house which is overflowing with clothing which will be donated during Christmas time. I fill a potato sack and a big shopping bag full, plus my belongings, and headed off to Puno at 7am on an 6 hour bus. I paid 5 dollars for the trip there, and it felt like I was riding first class in American Airlines. It was the nicest bus I’d been on. I curled up and slept well most of the way. I had only caught a few hours of sleep the night before.

I arrived in bright, “wow I am way overdressed for this sun,” Puno in early afternoon. First task, find a place to dump this immense amount of luggage and get something to eat. Went to an internet café, found a neat sounding hostel, lugged my stuff there, full. Walked around in circles, sweating to death, hungry, tired, and increasingly more frustrated and angry. Stopped in probably 5 hostels, too expensive...too fancy. Where is the cheap stuff? Oh, there it is. Let’s have a look. Oh god, no. Too cheap. I do not want to be the only person staying in this place, and it has shared bathroom stalls, no hot water. Please, this is my weekend off. Give me something! 150 places later, I found a cute little hotel type set up, not exceedingly nice, not terrible, reasonably price, friendly old man showed me the way. Door locks, hot water all the time, they even give you a towel. 10 bucks. Sold. Dump my stuff, and head back out to find some food. I didn’t get further than a block, found something interesting, one lonely tourist eating by himself in there...whatever. I am hungry. I order, oddly enough, coconut curry veggies and rice. It was amazing!!!! Fresh tea. Wow. I am in heaven. Leave there, roam around the touristy shops. Jesus, everything is so expensive. It seems worse than Arequipa, just smaller. I meet a nice girl in a shop who is struggling to communicate with the vendor lady, help her out with her expensive sweater situation, and we chat about what we are doing here by ourselves. She has a neat story to tell. She just quit her well paying job fixing the eyeballs of rich people. Literally, she is an optometrist. She says at first she is a doctor, but specializes in eyes. I don’t know their system, but I don’t bother to ask. We network a bit about INTIWAWA, and she promises she’ll contact us when she comes back to Peru. She’s traveling with a Peruvian guy she met in Mexico who has organized the whole trip. They are off the next day to check out the Islands in the lake. I have a tinge of “someday I am actually going to travel.” Whenever I meet tourists who are seeing everything, that tinge comes knocking on my door. I hate it. I love what I am doing, and I wouldn’t trader it for all the cheap hostels with hot water in the world. We part with smiles, and meet again 10 minutes later in another street looking at knitted hats. Finally we part for good. I manage to find my way to the lake as the sun is setting. It’s really big, but nothing terribly impressing. The good stuff is in the middle, away from all this algae and the taxi drivers and bicyclists.

I head back on foot, mostly to demonstrate to the taxi drivers that dammit, I can walk, even though I am white. I walk a few blocks, and here I am in another market. Fruits, veggies, rice, potatoes, shampoo, cheese, ceviche, raw meat, and lots of wide open eyes. I am the only white person here...I assume because it’s dark, and tourists have no need for these fresh food markets. They eat at restaurants. Alas, this time, I am essentially a tourist. I really don’t have any need for any of this. I buy only apples, avocado, and bread. Dinner. I head back home. It’s nearly 6. I should be in bed soon. I should be doing as much sleeping as possible on this trip to make up for lost time. I make avocado and apple sandwiches, after borrowing a butter knife from the front desk to make this situation a little easier, using newspaper as my plate, but still turns out to be a terribly unavoidable mess. Anyway, it was delicious. I surprisingly have a television in my room, and it has a remote. More than I could ask for. I flip through the excessive amount of stations a few times, get bored, and switch off the light. Here I am. Me and me, just hanging out for the night, and it’s probably 7pm. I am tired. I wake up the next morning, and decide to venture for a shower. I’ve noticed how awfully small the bathroom is. The whole thing is about as big as my bathtub at home, but also includes stand up shower, sink and toilet, all conveniently located in the same place...literally. The sink is actually in the shower...there is no tub. The entire room is tiled for protection. First, I have to shut the shower curtain, which now separates the toilet and the “shower.” Then, I have to stand on the toilet so I don’t soak myself or stand in the freezing cold water while it waits to warm up. I forgot to close the bathroom door, so water lakes out a bit into the bedroom. Tight quarters. wow. I finally manage myself into the shower, and the water is hot. This is the first hot shower I have had in a long time. Not to mention a shower. Excellent. I pack my stuff, and head out. I don’t have a lot of time to waste. I leave at 1pm for arequipa. 24 hours in Puno doesn’t seem like a lot, but it was packed with Amanda adventure. I walk out my hotel door, turn right onto a pedestrian/tourist only type street, walk a block, and find a moto taxi driver half asleep in his motorcycle. He pulls around, I load my stuff into the very back...and OH MY GOD he’s driving away!! Those things don’t go very fast, so I run to catch up with him and I’m there in just a few leaps, I’m banging on his door, “I am not inside!!!!!!!!!!!” “Oh oh, sorry sorry.” Idiot. He felt all the weight bear down in his taxi, and assumed I was in, too. This is really what happens when you assume. I get in, half freaked that he was actually trying to steal my stuff, and to the hospital we go. We arrive at the front entrance in a few minutes... “It’s closed, you know.” (Sunday). “Wow, REALLY?! You knew that before? You couldn’t have told me that before???” How the hell is a hospital closed? I think to myself. Okay, “So what if there is an emergency, what do people do?” “There’s an emergency entrance that’s open on the other side.” Then what the hell are we doing sitting at the closed front entrance if there is another entrance? This guy is killing me this morning. “Let’s go!” He drops my annoyed butt off, and all of my things, at the emergency entrance. There are people loafing around, as usual. But, they are very helpful, and one man offers to help carry my things, and escorts me around the hospital looking for where we need to go. After a few flights up and down the stairs (and it is really cold in the hospital stairwell), we arrive. The nurse’s are scampering around talking to parents and kids, making tea, preparing cotton balls by hand from a mountain of cotton...she’s brought clothes for the children, the man explains. They are very excited, and want me to wait here in their office/everything else room a minute while the visiting nurse finishes up. We are going to deliver the clothes personally to each child. Oh my. I was just thinking of dropping them off, I think to myself. Here we go. We separated the clothes into Mom size and baby size. Two nurses and I set off for all of the rooms. There are 30 children in total. All are under the age of 3, it seems. They are really tiny, all bundled up in these big beds. Three children to a room. Many of their mothers are their by their side. I feel very out of place here, like an intruder. The nurse’s take care of everything, explain what I am doing, take clothes out of my arms according to the size of the mom and child, toss it on the bed or to the mom, and off we go! Wow, this woman knows what she’s doing. Scarves, mittens, fleeces, and in minutes, our arms are nearly empty. One room is a steam room, it’s like 200 degrees in there and 99 percent humidity I think. Another room has two itty bitty infants sleeping. I ask how many months this one is, she looks at her chart, and says one year. Sepsis and pneumonia. I would have guessed 6 months old. She’s way too small. Sepsis is an infection in your blood, and a baby with pneumonia is never a good thing. She’s very sick, but she is sleeping pleasantly, and looks like a little doll baby. I choke back tears. Every one of these children is suffering from pneumonia or another cold weather related illness. We head back to the nurses’ station to wait for the visiting nurse to do her thing. After about an hour of waiting, we finally get to hang out the last of the clothes to the rest of the children. The mothers nod and smile in thanks, and I can’t say anything or I know I’ll cry. Despite the coughing and the crying, half the children are asleep, or are calmly lying in their beds with their mothers sitting in a chair next to the bed. They look at me in wonder.

While waiting with the nurses, we chatted about the health care system a bit. What happens if the families don’t have money?, I ask. They don’t come, she answers. They don’t receive treatment. No one? I clarify. Well, most people, no. You can petition the government, she explains, for help. Most people are lazy and stupid and don’t write to help themselves or their children, she explains resentfully. And the children here? Does the government help any of the children here? 25 of the 30 children here are here free, she tells me. I am shocked.

Most of the people I have talked to in Peru have no idea this is possible. They think there is no hope. These children don’t receive much here in the hospital, but at least they are in a warm bed, receiving fluids. The one’s who don’t receive any treatment out there in the cold are the one’s who don’t make it. This information has changed my life, and will soon change someone else’s. I leave sad and confused and sorry I couldn’t hang out with the kids and play with them. Back to Arequipa I go.

One month to go

2009-06-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

I ran passed a hand painted rock wall this morning that said-

Vecinos, Juntos Somos Diferentes. Neighbors, Together we are Different.

(there was no sponsorship on the wall to be found)

There are some really crazy things happening in the world, as always. Together we strain to be different, to maintain our cultural and territorial dignity, as well as to remain united. Recently, the Prime Minister of Peru has said he will step down from his position because of his irresponsible actions-that of allowing the passing of legislation which will permit the degradation and separation of land in Northern Peru, the Amazon Jungle, from it´s indigenous inhabitants, without consulting them. After what has become a small war between the native people and the police fighting for the access to roads and water ways. The indigenous people want to close down access to areas the government wants to develop and exploit for it´s natural resources. The trouble is that Peru needs the money...but ironically, will sell this land to foreign companies.

Just a quick fact-From 2002 to June 2008, the portion of territory in Amazonas (north), San Martín (central) and Madre de Dios (east) granted to mining companies quadrupled, from 4.65 percent to 17.35 percent. Wow.

Friday I will travel to Puno, the site of Lake Titicaca. Yes, it does exist. It´s the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. I learned that in the Highlands in Puno, it gets to -18 Celcius, or 0 Fahrenheit. Mother of god. The trouble with cold like this is kids are catching pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses…dying from lack of medical treatment, oxygen, vaccines, warm clothes. My plan is to travel to the hospital and give whatever I can gather together from my neighbors and room mates that they no longer use. I am scared to arrive in a new place with no place to go with no real plan, as I am always scared to start something new. I will only stay the weekend, but I hope that I will be able to see some of what it´s really like there…

A briefing of last weekend…another in Coporaque. This time I was accompanied by a recent graduate of psychology, Renato. The first day, we directed the children to write instructions for games they play (other than soccer and volleyball). The trouble with writing with these kids is that half of them are really little, some don´t know how to write, and the few that do cannot necessarily be relied on. From what I can tell, these kids really lack a sense of creativity. It´s very hard to see a community full of children, and the majority of them either aren´t acquinted with INTIWAWA, or don´t have the time to come. Nearly all of the older boys, from age 11 to 13 could not make it one day because they had to collect the town garbage. The enormous truck drives around in the intense sun with 10 adolescent boys in the back…they are having a blast, and it is quite a sight…an older man walks along, grabbing the trash cans and passing them up to the boys to dump. After writing their ´traditional´ games, which the children have no idea what is traditional, what´s not…only, what it is that they do, and whether or not it´s fun. That is why I would prefer to work on cultural exploration with the older kids…but really, we had one older girl who was older than 13…and no boys…they are working on their farms, helping raise their younger siblings, washing clothes. It´s troublesome.

On Sunday, we cooked! This time, maz amorra de maiz…it´s a soup complete with really squishy potatoes that are dried, then soaked like beans, carrots, onions, alpaca meat, some peppery liquid, abas, kind of like huge lima beans, salt and powdered maiz. It was really good! It was cooked on a fire in a ceramic pot. I carried it up hill for quite a ways…it was very heavy, and lacks real handles (they are smaller than tea cup handles). The heat was so intense that we had trouble keeping the kids attention…but they did enjoy helping prepare the ingredients. I was hoping the kids would be excited about this dish as they were about the gelatin cake…but alas, they were not.

Saturday in Coporaque was another day of another Saint. That said...this one included a parade with a ridiculously shrouded box complete with garland of fruit and flowers...sitting a top was Senor Saint. After the parade, they had a mass, and then after that, the drinking began. I have never witnessed so many drunk people in my life. They had a good four hours of drinking before I joined the scene with Renato. The tradition it to go from house to house, eat, drink and be merry. It´s incredible, with what little some people have, they were feeding everyone full meals (two plates). People bring bags to take their left overs because it´s more than enough. They have a special drink called Chicha which is fermented corn juice, more or less. It didn´t have that great of a flavor...but apparently lots of people reeeallly like it. When we first joined the procession, it was just the stragglers in the back. Turned out to be Chocolate, the father who I went fishing with last weekend, and a few of his relatives, and a few other bizarre men. One woman was crying, falling over herself, and another very leathery man fitted with an enormous cowboy hat was hiding his teary eyes, tucking his chin to his chest...we finally made it to the actual party, the majority of the women are in their traditional beautiful dresses, the men casually dressed, ready to drink and fall down. There is a small brass band with a big bass drum....playing popular songs that are on the radio, not sure how old they are though. Those guys played for two straight days, starting early in the morning, around 8, playing late through the night, and were still playing when I left on Sunday at 2pm. Chicha must be some kind of energy drink...and apparently they make a lot of money. You can´t have a party without a live brass band! After this non sense, we headed back to our house, took a lap, ate half a dinner (tepid fish head flavored soup) and headed down to the river. I missed the hot springs like crazy but it is really quite an effort to get their and back.

Down their in the aguas calientes, the sky with lit up with stars. It was so bright you could see the silouhettes of the tips of the hills and trees. Like searching for figures in the clouds, Antonella and I passed the time making up what we thought the shadows were...animals, cowboys, families, tigers...it was really magical just flopping around in the hot water, pitch black besides the stars. The hour walk back was killer...everything is less defined now that all of the barley and corn have been harvested. It is a good thing I didn´t go down there just with Renato. I am sure we would have gotten lost.

Until next time!

Hecho con Manos

2009-06-09T17:28:00.000-07:00

The last two weekends I have spent in Coporaque. I forgot to mention my fun farming experience. We made the slippery trek down to the river after working with the kiddos two Saturday´s ago...the sun was still strong and it felt good to be walking, free of worries. After finally reaching the little plot we were headed for (no one every says how long it will take to get somewhere) we find ourselves first in front of the borrows. They are being prepared to be loaded up with corn stalks and huge sacks filled with dried maize to carry back to the village. The weight is enormous, and takes 2, nearly three people to pick up the bag and heave it on to the back of the donky. None of the three donkeys is excited. After watching them pull the final donkey´s by the ears as hard as humanly possible into submission, loading this one up with less weight because he is in training, we went to the next little plot. There we met our enormous pile of recently cut corn stalks. They are all piled together like a sequoia. The task is to shuck the corn. The corn stalks are about 4 or 5 feet long, and lay in a pile (the system I chose, because you get to sit). You sit on the pile, and pull stalk after stalk out one at a time, find the corn cob, take it in one hand, use the little fat tool sharpened like a pen cil to pierce the top of the leaves, split it in half, rip the leaves off, then throw it in the pile. Most of the corn is semi dry. They harvest the corn much later than we do. What is really cool is that every cob is different. Some are purple, some are purple and white, some are orange, red, yellow or plain old white. My favorites, and of course the rarist, where the red ones. The next day, in the morning, we picked out the still fresh ones and pulled off all the kernels. The kernels were then boiled and we used them to make a delicious salad (nearly the same as a pasta salad, only with corn instead, flavored with cumin and black pepper, yum!)

I can´t remember the last time I was truly so content, sitting out their in the sun, chatting away with new friends, shucking corn. I surrounded by nothing but land, mountains and sky, with the river just a ways away. The only trouble I had was that I was wearing someone else´s shoes, which were entirely too small. Long story short, I brought only street shoes...and thought smaller sneakers would be safer than my clogs. I still can´t say what would have been better. Maybe bare feet.

AFter the long trek back up the mountain, and a long wait for our dinner, I had one of the best sleeps of my life. Nestled up in my sleeping bag, and piled on top of me was 5 or 6 more wool blankets, I didn´t want to leave my little nest the next morning.

My second experience, full of surprises, was fishing with the father and son of the family we stay with. Complete with a huge fishing net, a couple of sacks, and an truck tire inner tube. What the hell are we going to do, I wondered. This was after we walked an hour straight down the side of a mountain to get to the river...a different part of the river than I had been to before. This path is not nearly as...clear. I carefully made my way through many spiny plants...and shortly before arriving at the river, I slipped, fell on my ass, and caught myself on a cactus...just the left hand. OW not again, I thought. I looked, and there were just three or four 1.5 inch spines sticking out of my hand...I quickly ripped them out...whined for a bit...and then carried on. Now, we are at the river. We need to cross, they tell me. I look around, up and down stream...there´s not a really great place to cross rock hopping, I think to myself. Meanwhile, both father and son are rolling their pant legs up. They have sweatpants on, and sandals that stay on well, made of recycled tire rubber. I have my hiking boots on, and jeans. No matter how well prepared I am, I am never fully prepared. I can´t roll my pants like you, it doesn´t work, what can i do? I can´t soak my pants or I will freeze. Right...off with boots...and the pants. Here we go, holding hands with a grown man, father of 4, so I don´t slip on the river rocks...jeans and boots around my neck. I cannot believe my life, sometimes. It was cold, but not freezing...the freezing would come later.

So, we´re on the proper side of the river now...in a canyon. Cool. Ah, and windy. Here are some hot springs...very small. Might come in handy later. By now, its about 3 30pm. They lay out all the stuff we´re to use...including the net that looks like a tangled mess. The top half is connected with little white pieces of styrofoam. The bottom has litte rubber bands to tie to rocks so the net stays upright.

Christian, the son, who is 14, blows the inner tube up while we deal with the net. Then, he ties the two sides of the tube together to make it more oval shaped, puts a tarp on top, brings it to the waters edge, fully clothed, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, belly down on the make shift boat, and Chocolate, the dad´s nickname, as it were, shoves him off into the river. My god, I think, I Hope he knows how to swim. I do not want to go in there after him. The walk home would be horrible. So, little by little, we send off the net...one hour later of swimming and squirming arond in the river...still not sure exactly what he was doing moving up and down the river...one can only assume he was getting the net just right, he swims down stream (paddling with hands and forearms, rather) with the rope of the net in his mouth, makes a big circle, Dad grabs the net, and painfully slow, pulls the net in. During this time, helping, holding the wet rope, wet rocks, etc, my fingers are going numb. I watch him pull in the net, fetch what fish we have trapped (they are all tangled, yet relatively calm), and in the bag they go. 9 the first time. well, I think, at least I know there are enough fish to feed us all tonight. (4 family members, and me).

Half the reason we are even fishing is beccause Rosio, the mom, is in Lima, working on a artisan vending project...and Chocolate doesn´t know how to cook very well, he says.

So, I tell him I want to go home, because my hands are numb. Just 20 minutes...half hour more, he says. I know I can´t leave...I don´t know the way, and it´s getting dark. Dammit. Warm your hands in the hot spring, he says. Good idea. I do so, and a half an hour later, my hands are finally getting their feeling back...but they are still multi colored.

I go back during the second, faster round of netting the fish…4 more. Sweet…I have to say it was really exciting to see him pull the net in, little by little, to make sure they don´t escape. And just barely befote he pulls them to the beach, you can see their shiny silver skin. Trucha…Trout. They are spotted trout.

Quickly we gather our things…and set off, straight up the mountain. I asked if we were going to take the same route, because I know how hard it was comino down…literally sitting on your butt to asend various drop offs. He considered an alternate route, and decided it wasn´t worth the risk…there are bad dogs, he says. They are big, and bad. Oh Lord…I don´t know which is worse…the route we took, or the dogs. I had no choice. We took the same route back. It was really dark, but it was a full moon. I actually had to shield my eyes at times from the blinding Light. Despite being terrified I was going to grab on to a cactus, the walk home was incredibly beautiful. I will never forget it.

Devil´s Seat

2009-06-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

This past weekend with the children of Coporaque, we prepared food together. It´s always a treat, of many of you know, to watch 20 children with knives, fruits or vegetables prepare what you are about to eat. He´s eating, her finger is bleeding, and this one is waving a knife around. Oddly enough, I ask far fewer questions here than I do at home. Often, it´s because I am too tired to care enough to think of how to say it in Spanish, or, more often, there really is no answer to be found, so why bother? I am learning a new kind of patience. Hours and days pass without realizing it. An hour bus ride half asleep, sweating, with my ass half asleep seems normal, though still a tad uncomfortable. Waiting at the dentist for 3 and a half hours with the kids also seems trivial as time passes. I did escape the dentist for a little while to write this and check my email.

Back to last weekend...it has to be one of the best weekends of my life. We pulled off both days of working with the kids with out to many problems, none of which were serious. After working on Saturday, I played with our host family´s kids. We all piled into my and my room mate´s bedroom, starving, freezing, but content. The quick dinner we were told to expect came over two hours later...and I ate two full plates of rice, salad and chicken and two mugs of tea. Wow. After a meal like that you can do nothing more than sleep. We all crawled into our cold beds, and I slept soundly for what felt like a century. After working with the kids on Sunday, we departed Coporaque for Chivay to send off our friend in the bus...we had decided to wait for the 1 am bus so we could go to the hot springs. This time, the hot springs were more of a public pool situation, and not in the river like the one´s in Coporaque. The benefit to these is that the walk there isn´t nearly as treacherous (but perhaps more beautiful and longer). We walked there as the sun was setting, along Colca River, watching the light change the forms of the massive rocky plateaus and mountains. After two hours of prune-ating in the hot water (which was deep enough to swim around and play in!!!!) we were rushed out as the last taxi was about to depart (we were planning on walking back, and didn´t get what the rush was...then i realized, it´s the last taxi for the workers too...oops). We walked back, the moon half full, lighting up the road, making crazy shadows. Earlier, I was told about the Devil´s Seat (in the light) centered in a big rock slab, where a cross now sits, and when we passed it on the way back, I admit I was a little freaked out. Later, we decided to take a rest on the side of the road and stare up at the stars. You can see the milky way...Via Lactia...so clearly. As I am enjoying the view, I hear a rustling in the bush right next to me, and look over...I see a small black form...oh god, I think, an animal! I picture it getting freaked out, jumping on me, screaming, and me losing my mind. I froze...said to Leonel, what is that!!?? I cautiously took the flashlight, and shone it on the mystery object...a black plastic bag rustling in the wind. I hate that I am so freaked out about potential animals now after that damn dog in San Isidro. I think what I need is another attack, only this time, I win, and I scare the thing away. Merely to regain my confidence.

This weekend, I will be returning to Coporaque, but solo. We will have an extreme drought of volunteers, and we have to change things around. Our volunteer who has been switching every other weekend in our two sites (like me, but opposites places) cannot do it on Saturday´s because he has to take classes. Crap, one Peruano down. Anyway, I am familiar with Coporaque, so it won´t be too much of a stress...and I won´t have Leonel to tell me, Amanda, tell the kids a story. Sing them a song. People, I need time to prepare. Give me a minute. I am good, but not that good.

i miss you

2009-05-29T14:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-18T14:41:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-15T19:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-05-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

2009-05-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

2009-04-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

Photos, Phinally

2009-04-30T08:51:00.000-07:00

2009-04-29T09:44:00.000-07:00

Things have certainly improved over the last week or so, but nothing will ever be quite the same. Yesterday, as I walked out of the community center to retrieve the afternoon snack the children are given after homework, my heart nearly stopped. It was the same scene all over again. There was 50 people crowded around the pedestrian crossing, and a bus from the line I ride on everyday parked in the driveway leading to the center. Oh no, I thought, not again. It was too similar a scene to believe that it could be anything else but another accident. But, it was simply a gathering of loved ones paying respects to the young girl and the location in which she was killed.

I feel like I cannot escape death here. Everyday I go running, I smell the stench of rotting carcases of dogs. There is almost always a new dead dog somewhere along the sandy path that hugs the closely knitted fields of corn, potatoes, onions, and other essentials here. There are always new bags full of trash strewn everywhere. Not a single day will pass without me seeing someone throw trash on the ground without a thought, even in the presence of others, and even on community owned property. No one seems to care.

Fortunately, there are people in this world who do care. I visited the office of an organization I would like to work with, roughly translated as the association which specializes in sustainable development. The modest office was located in what looked to be a house. Unbelievably enough, it´s on the same line I take everyday, so it wasn´t too troublesome to find, thanks to a very friendly taxi driver who even went up to the door with me to make sure I was at the right place. I spoke to two people who work in the office-a woman named Christiam, and a man named Jose. Jose spoke most of the time, just explaining the projects, what AEDES does, and where they are located. I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they are working in three areas. Their first place, which they have been working with for 14 years, is the most soundly impacted. They have organic agriculture, product exportation, young student projects and education, and other biodiversity and natural resource conversation. So amazing! They have now started in two other areas, in Puno and Condesuyos (large provinces in Southern Peru) as well as the original in La Union in South Western Peru. They are replicating their projects. It is actually working. And it is not solely lead by extranjeros, either.

The trouble, for me, lies in my commitment to INTIWAWA, and pull I feel towards getting at least a feel for this project. I told them I could at least commit to a week (they had said 6 weeks is a very short time, which is all I have left). It is twelve hours by bus to Cotahuasi, in La Union. I believe I have to take two buses, the second of which, for 5 hours, is nothing but turbulent travel. But, if I stay for a week, by the end of the week, I hope I will have forgotten how horrible the bus ride was, and be alright to get back on! Now that my stomach is feeling better, a bus ride doesn´t seem so impossible.

To be a bit more specific, after going to the hospital for a third time (the second of which was only to sit in the waiting area and learn that I was there on the wrong day), the doctor looked at my results, and told me they were all negative. But, he said, he was sure that this is a parasite, as it is common to have negative results even with parasites present. He told me what medicine to get (anti-protozoal) and I was on my way. $10 US later, I had my meds...and the symptoms went away within a few doses. I have to say that I am not completely recovered, though I believe that must be what causes all of my problems. I learned parasites can come not only from water, but from street food as well. Oops. I like the street food. It´s simple, inexpensive, and I feel better buying it than I do walking into some overpriced restaurant while there are street vendors out front barely able to scrape out a living.

Sunday and Monday were filled with excitement and swooning over the children. Sunday was the third birthday of the annexation and association of San Isidro from a larger entity. We arrived around 9 with a box full of 120 ham cheese lettuce and mustard sandwiches we had made for the children. We roamed around, as nothing was happening, hung out with some of boys we work with who are always roudy and causing trouble. They were sitting around like a bunch of old men. We joined them, and we all just made fun of each other.

I kept being reminded by the one volunteer that according to the people, last year was way better, there were more people, and it was more organized. I wanted to be satisified with whatever I was about to experience. 18 year old boys get really annoying sometimes. We saw two poorly played soccer games and 5 traditional dances performed by our very own ninos. I felt like a proud parent, welling up with tears, so see how adorable and innocent they looked doing their dances in brighly colored glistening costumes which were surely hot, uncomfortable, and ill-fitted. They all have a story to them, which is generally about daily Peruvian life, mostly flirting, drinking, and being merry. I was so proud of them. I am reminded how diverse the mind is. Some of these children find it impossible to do, but they can dance. They can remember the moves, who to link arms with, where to go. I have to say that I think I might be better at homework than dancing!

Monday, after spending several miserable hours in the post office waiting for my package my Mom sent, I headed over to a really beautiful gallery in the Spanish colonial tradition white stone building with high domed ceilings, with a central stone square to host events and a small, really neat museum mostly featuring massive machines to make molded metal plates with letters on them, ultimately to print newspapers. Normally, with a little imagination, I can understand Spanish on paper better than spoken. This time, I could hardly understand a word. It was mostly technicaly language. I relied on the pictures, the actually machines, and the progression of products created by these machiens on display. So the point of me being there was not to see the museum, but to help set up for what was essentially an opening of the display of the mothers´of San Isidro´s knitting and crochet work. Scarves, children´s clothes, women´s sweaters, hats. Really extensive handi-work, I thought. Most everything did not fit me, as one can imagine. We started hanging signs, photos, and the actual work around 9. The event did not start until 5pm. Myself and a Peruvian volunteer who is new went out for lunch in the center. After some confusion, we ended up at a Chinese food restaurant which looked just like the ones at home. I tried Arequipenan soda, which tasted like cherry soda. Estiv was very proud of the Arequipenan-ness of it. This is a common sentiment here. The regions pride is really intense. He even told me how ridiculous he thought it was that Lima is the capital of Peru, and not Arequipa. Wow. We talked about sustainable development among other things over two somewhat standard Chinese dishes that were more expensive than the faster-food Chinese restaurants that are everywhere, where the food is still cooked fresh, and you can actually watch them make it. I think we were paying for the fish tank and the nice white table clothes. I suppose we call that atmosphere! It was really a nice change from tamales and empanadas that I eat almost every day because it only costs between 30 and 60 cents to fill my belly. This was a whopping $3! Wow!

Once we returned, the chairs had already been set up (our assigned job, oops). We had to rearrange them anyway to make more room for the dancers. After some waiting, rearranging and putzing around, over 50 children, and more than 10 mothers with their youngest children came by bus with some of our volunteers. Someone was to have arranged a combi solely for INTIWAWA, but that didn´t work out. This was a publically available bus. There are only about 25 seats on these busses! I never imagined that many people could fit on one bus. They told me how squished they were, but they arrived smiling and excited to be in the city and surrounded by people excited to see them perform. We saw three of the traditional dances they had performed on Sunday in the same outfits. It was really great to see them so up close. We passed out strawberry Pisco drinks to the adults, and soda to the kids. There were mini appetizers, and then everyone dispersed to see the exhibition. Everyone was pleased, the kids chased and pushed each other around, and everyone seemed to have a great time. We finally cleaned up and closed the doors around 7-30. It was a long day. I will try my best to post some pictures I took on someone else´s camera. My camera is kaput now. It eats batteries in only 20 minutes.

Last but not least, last night, I went to the massive convent of Santa Catalina. It is a small village encased in high stone walls. It´s beautiful kept, with huge red geraniums everywhere. It´s one of the few plants that grows in this intense sun. I went with a room mate of mine, Carolin, from Germany. We had fun poking our heads into the dark rooms lit only by a single candle, an oil lantern or a fire in the stone stoves used for cooking. We saw the quarters of the nuns and their servants. Most of the grounds are open to the public, and are simply something like a museum now. The furniture is beautiful, old, and often ornate. This particular convent was deemed excessively corrupt at some point. There were several bishops or popes who had come to reinvent the wheel, allowing only 1 servant per nun. The ceilings were high, the beds uncomfortable, but the place was spacious. My favorite part was an aquifer which poured water into huge ceramic urns laid on their sids, split in half, placed to collect water for washing clothes. My second favorite thing was the water purification system. They had a huge ceramic or stone bowl more than an inch thick, filled with water, and a bowl underneath to collect the water that dripped down. No moving parts, no chemicals, only pure genius! Just like an underground aqufier, the water takes so long to drip through the thick, semi pourous material, that by the end, it is fit to drink.

I learned a great deal about Santa Catalina herself, a devoted nun, of course. These women lived very intensely devout lives, mostly restricted from the outside world except to exchange some goods through either slatted windows or one tiny little entrance where a market could be set up. We spent two hours going through all the little rooms. Many of the women entered into the convent at my age or younger, never to see their families or friends again. Some did see theirs only after people sought refuge there from the devastation of earthquakes. Really fascinating stuff. But what I am more interested, I think, is seeing some more indigenous Ruins. The Spanish really had it good, invading Peru. Perhaps I will see more.

2009-04-21T18:47:00.000-07:00

I have written and deleted several first words here tonight. It´s clear that I don´t write often, and when I do, it´s because I am moved to. Both Friday and today have brought unspeakable tragedies to two families in two villages Intiwawa works with. On Friday, a little boy of just eight years old was playing on a slide in San Juan. The slide had been unattached from its original structure to be moved to another play area. Although unstable, the children played on it anyway. This little boy fell off the slide and hit his head on a rock, and the slide fell on top of him. The doctor´s told the community that they would have had just one hour to operate in order to save the boy had they been able to reach him in time. They are four hours from Arequipa, the nearest emergency care that may have been adequate. It tears me up inside to think of the what if´s.

Today, during tarea, in broad daylight, a fifteen year old girl was struck and killed in the road right in front of the community center. Hundreds of people walk back and forth across this main street, one that contains speed bumps to slow the many busses, taxis and construction vehicles that pass through every day. With the confusion of the event, my initial reaction was ¨I can´t do anything.¨ I thought someone had hit a car with their bike. When I heard what really happen, my instinct was to run to the scene. I knew she would be horribly injured, but I was prepared to help. I braced myself for what I thought would be the worst case scenario. Blood and broken bones. I can handle almost any injury, I tell myself. I am confident of this. There were fifty people lined up along the busy road, staring in disbelief. She had already been covered by a small green tarp, concealing only her torso. I thought she was a grown woman, and thought of her children. One of the volunteers, only his second day of helping, had gone to see what had happened. I came shortly after, tearing down the drive way, and he met me in the street. It was too late. I wanted desperately to make sure she was dead. I didn´t want to leave it to chance, but there was no way I would be allowed near the girl. I asked, and he told me he was sure there was no pulse, no breathing. She was gone.

No words can describe the despair this village must feel. The anger, the resentment towards the driver. The driver was driving one of the many construction trucks that normally carry bricks and sand. He was drunk. For more than two hours, this young girl lay in the street as the sun began to set. There was still an air of disbelief. A very sweet girl the same age, whom we work, was sobbing on an elder´s shoulder. The smallest children still played, clueless. A policeman stood near the young girl, guarding her body, waiting for an ambulance I suppose. She was later covered further only by poster sized advertisements from what looked like an ice cream brand. This isn´t the first time this has happened here. There are no side walks, only a V shaped gutter to walk along the busy truck ridden road. She was killed just feet from the cross walk. Little children of just 2 and 3 years old run through this street on their own. One of our young ones, probably about 7 or 8, had been struck once before, but made it out unharmed, this was referred to by Leonel, the president, as he said a few words about the danger of the road, and then a prayer like I have never heard before.

I must admit that the terror I felt subsided only a little by signing the cross and saying a short prayer. Perhaps I have gotten swept up in the incessant signings of the cross here in Peru, in which people sign at every hospital, church and cemetary very publicly. Or maybe this is what happens to people when death lies directly in front of you.

2009-04-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

Well, my god...where to start? I am back from Coporaque (that should be obvious, I have no access to the internet or time to search it out while there). I feel like the trip to Coporaque, the two days with the children, and the trip back are trials of survival for me. Both tests of patience and of sound stomach. Miraculously, I enjoyed myself for most of the time, going only with the president of our organization, Leonel, to draw and paint two murals of Coporaque on sheets of fabric. I find myself a complete mess after painting, usually, and this was no exception...times about 24 children. We had a local woman prepare meals for both Saturday and Sunday lunch...two big plates of food, plus an AMAZING cake called torta helado. Helado is normally ice cream, but this was gelatin mixed with cream, in three layers, with real cake in the center. They pour it into a mold, let one layer set, and then the other two, at some point tossing in the pound cake. The cake is a freak of nature, but it is good, I have to admit, despite its brightly colored layers that almost make it look like a cake the Barbie factory would make.

The children worked well together, were relatively attentive, ate most of their food and didn´t fight hardly at all. There is now paint everywhere, and will probably remain for all eternity. Because we had only four paint brushes, and about 50 Q Tips, some of the children took to finger painting (including myself) because we had such a vast expanse to cover in the short two days. Home life at the part house part guest rooms where we stay was really nice. I was so excited to see Antonella and Zamilla, their two little girls, the second and third youngest of four. They are so affectionate, so sweet, and love everything I do. Zamilla (Read-Chamilla) is quite a fire cracker. She had a hard time remembering please, and orders me and others around to tie her shoes or pick her up and play with her (she´s four or five). The first morning, over breakfast, I asked her where her puppy was, since I normally see it poking around, hanging out with the chickens in their pen. Zamilla told me, with a dead serious face, that Ouicho, the dog, had eaten a chicken, and they had had to kill it. I was speechless...I looked at her, as she was surely serious, and said feebly, ¨How sad.¨ I didn´t want to have a conversation about it, mostly because I faced this inner conflict of, my god, that is really harsh, but when it comes to your livelihood, a pet is less important, right? But he was so cute...Toward the end of breakfast, I´d managed to stop thinking about it...the family had sat down to join us over bread (literally, the only thing we ate for breakfast both days, wow), and in enters cute fuzzy filthy little Ouicho. ¨Zamilla!!!¨ I yelled! Her parents looked immediately at her, and her mouth fell open. Busted. I told them the story, and they were not surprised. She is their bad child, they have admitted before. They don´t know why she´s like this, her mother says. The older two never were like this...perhaps it is middle child syndrome, I think to myself. Little Shit. Mierdita? I wonder if that is acceptable to call a child in Spanish? I don´t think I will risk it!!

I had the pleasant opportunity to return to the hospital yesterday after first stopping in at another gastroenterology clinic across the street...only to find out that despite their hours of attention from 6am to 7pm, they dont have any appointments until 6pm. Every week day. Often I stumble over myself in conversations here because I am overcoming disbelief, and not sure if there´s been a communicative error, or it really is that ridiculous. It really was. Where are the doctor´s all day, then? At the hospital, of course. So, I go over there, shuffle through the waiting elderly and mothers with babies...wait in this line, then another, then another...back to the first...no appointment, not in the system, have to pay first...upstairs, downstairs, left, right, through this hall...you get the idea. As I am standing at the window waiting for this woman to sort through whatever mess is on her computer, she hands me an appointment. Afternoon. There are no options? I ask her. Options for what?, she baffles. Options for appointments you nut ball! I can´t in the afternoon, I have work. Surely there is something else. Waiting waiting waiting...ah yes, afternoon afternoon...hmm...no tomorrow in the morning! No, Wednesday. Okay, fine. I escape before the mob sets in of impatient Peruvians who are all very pissed off at each other, presuming their issue is more important than the person in front of them, or the other twenty people...and barge in at my window more than once with their papers. Sometimes they are rejected, sometimes their persistence is heeded. I think in the US if someone did that, they would be injured instantly. I wonder if they have unemployment here...imagine that line, if the hospital is this bad.

Some good news...the parents of the children in the school we serve breakfast at called a meeting to be held yesterday. Chris, the American, attended. We hadn´t a clue what the meeting was about, other than breakfast. We were very worried, but confident that if they don´t want breakfast they way we do it, they don´t have to have it at all. We all have short fuses these days, knowing the impending doom of lack of manpower is coming in just one week. So, Chris reports back that the mothers love what we´re doing, hated the way it was just a few weeks ago (due to one particular German girl who has a very short temper, apparently, and little room for criticism), and one to help. They all agree that it´s crazy to have people from other countries do everything for them. I agree too. The trouble with this organization is the seeming lack of effort to create sustainable, long lasting programs for change...Feeding kids every morning back they don´t have good nutritious meals at home is just nuts with out education for the parents or the children...I am learning, thankfully, more about what I want to see and don´t want to see in the development of impoverished areas. Dependency is of course the last thing I want to see, but it can happen so quickly. So, beginning next week, we will go with them on Monday´s to the market to buy everything in ridiculous bulk so it will last longer, be cheaper, and will not have to be trekked to San Isidro by bus every friggen day by us. This is the best organizational news I have seen yet.

The second piece of news, unrelated to Peru for the most part, is that I was accepted into Clark University!!!! I found out last night, and called home right away. Better yet, they have offered at 40% discount for my tuition. I have never been offered anything like this before. I would be stupid not to take it. Nevertheless, I am sick with worry about the lifestyle I have chosen for myself for the next two years. I decided I am going to try to make it as hospitable as I can, despite it being Massachusetts. I will try to find a living situation that truly suits my needs...study hard, and really invest myself in this community I will be a part of. The disappointment of all of this now is that I won´t be travelling to Belize in November, as I had anticipated, assuming the worst from Clark. I will try my best to integrate the organization I found into my studies...Organic farming, international development, renewable energy...self suffiency and growth. Everything I can think if that I am looking for in my life. I have a lot to do.

La Hospital

2009-04-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

Well, since I returned from the beach, everything went back to normal. We have tarea in the afternoon, and we are very short on volunteers, so we are all helping each other out with all of the projects. There are five core people who volunteer with the projects every day, plus the two psychologists, and occasionally the president...we had a meeting yesterday, and we realized how clear it was that we are walking a very fine line between complete coverage and insanity. For scale...the biggest of our projects is the health project, most of which involves taking 50 odd kids to the dentist for a check up, and any further treatment that is needed. All of the children need at least two appointments but most of which need 4 or more. Some of the kids appointments are so long (three hours or more), that only one child can to go the dentist at a time. That involves four hours on the bus (to collect child, take to dentist, return child, return home). So far, Sabina has been doing all of it. Occasionally, now, three of us will fill in for her, because we need to make sure she doesn´t lose her mind, and as well, can work on her bachelor´s thesis, and plan for other projects she is involved in. I admire her involvement, but at this point, do not envy it so much.

As for me, I will deliver breakfast for two schools, each with sixteen kids, twice a week...and go to the dentist about twice a week (it´s a full seven or eight hour day!) as well as homework help every day. It still leaves me time for Capoeira, some running in the mornings, some sleeping in, and time to go to the center to shop for food or whatever. I am currently in pursuit of finding this enviornmental organization that runs both in Arequipa and another region in Southern Peru...I have a map, but it´s not helping. The addresses are very confusing, even for homes, as they don´t have street names most of the time, they are only by district and building name and number. I am sure I will get the jist of all this nonsense by the time I leave, but until then, I am running around like a lunatic, not knowing which way is which.

So, after the beach, I decided I would go get tested for parasites because my stomach problems have not subsided entirely, which worries me a bit. I walked to the hospital in my district (which is a nice one) and couldn´t believe how many people where milling around in there. It was as crowded as a DMV on a Saturday morning. I didn´t see anything graphic that I can remember...so I presume the emergencies enter somewhere else. The hospital is set up a bit differently, and it feels more like a massive doctor´s office with lots of walk in appointments. Apparently you can get appointments, but for some reason, the man helping me assumed I wanted one right that very second. I ran around different offices for an hour or more, clueless as to what the hell was going on. All I could do is trust that he knew what he was doing. Part of the reason I didn´t want an appointment at that very moment was because I didn´t have any money. After the stolen wallet, I was living off 100 dollars, thinking that would be adequate until I got my cards in the mail (It lasted two weeks, I think). I was on my way to the bank when I thought, yes, appointment, how civil and orderly this could be. Well, it was, sort of. I did see a doctor (who, according to my helper,speaks very good English.) Wow, not so. So, we spoke in Spanglish, or mostly him speaking English, me speaking Spanish. He ordered tests, and told me near the city center, there is a laboratory I need to go to. Super. They don´t have a lab at the hospital, or can´t send off samples to the lab...I have to go. Three times. Today is my last day, and tomorrow I will get the last of the results. The women who work there are very nice, prompt, and patient. Compared to so many of the places I have been, the one woman who worked there really made me question...What the hell is she doing here? Her aura just seems so incredibly confident and smart...more so than the creepy gastroenterologist, or all of other crazy people of whom have no sense of professionalism.

So, I decided to go to Coporaque again this weekend. We will leave at 3 30 am for the 3 and a half hour bus ride to Chivay, plus the combi ride to Coporaque which is a bumpy, isolated, one track road through the beautifully vibrant farms. Fun word- chacra, which is farm. I am both excited and nervous to travel to Coporaque, as there are no stops or bathroom breaks included, at at 3 30 it´s really cold on the bus. It will be really great to see the family again that we stay with when we travel (a make shift hostel-traditional home). Everything is so close to everything (because mostly, there is nothing) that it makes learning your way around very easy. It´s always much easier to settle in if you´ve already been there once. The children will feel more comfortable, and they will better understand my level of Spanish compared to a stranger. I know I have so much more to learn, it seems an insurmountable task with out an exsessive amount of energy and time spent soley on studying. When I go back, if I get accepted into Clark University, I think I will continue my studies in Spanish. I am working on very little it feels like. Why are there so many conjugations? The good thing about Spanish is that most of the words are some kind of cognate with English...and that there is a set structure for changing Spanish into English, or vice versa.

Well, I am off on the long walk to the lab, and then I will try to find someone who knows where the hell this environmental organization is. I will go to the dentist today instead of tarea. I am not bored with this, because it is still a challenge to get everything organized. Right kid, right bus, right time, right dentist office...yowsers.

Oh yes, and yesterday, as I was walking home, I thought I´d take a peek down into the little stream where sometimes there are cows tied up, peeing pooping sleeping and eating in the same 25 square foot spot, only to see some kind of hide. I thought, wow, another dead dog. Super, that can´t be good being right in the water like that. Then, I looked harder, and realized, my god, that is a huge dog. No, no. It was a cow hide. A cow must have died right at the watering hole type spot, and no one thought to drag him away from the water to decompose, as cows are very heavy as it is, I suppose a dead one would be impossible to budge. They are maltempered, even in death. How stubborn.

La Playa-The Beach

2009-04-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

Things have improved significantly since The Day from Hell (it´s only up hill from here!). Two days ago, my room mate from Germany and I travelled to the beach, a taxi drive to the terminal, three and a half hours by bus, then a motorcycle-taxi-box ride to the beach, and we arrive as the sun is setting. It was so beautiful, but we were panicked because we had no idea what this beach would be like, and knowing how difficult it would be to set up my tent and get a fire going in pitch black, without a flashlight. We were told we could walk from where the bus dropped us off (we were the ONLY two people left on the bus at this stop, the end of the line, I presume), and with the rapidly setting sun, we booked it, but realized how far it really was, and eventually, with some luck, a taxi came by and picked us up. With so many possibilities to go wrong in this two day trip, nothing, besides some serious sunburn, did. Another girl was supposed to join us, but she had planned to go on another trip the next day, and ended up having to leave at 3am on the bus, so she didn´t come. Just Sabine and I, the roaring ocean, and thankfully, A LOT of lights (it looked just like any beach front, with the sidewalk, the pool, public restrooms (for which you have to pay) and the bright lights. There was also a caravan of people with their own tents, music, dancing, etc which we steered clear of. You never know what you´ll find in these places. We stuck to ourselves, chatted the evening a way (in English, thank god) and went to bed around 1 or 2. I hadn´t been in a tent since Maine, so it was a nice change of pace.

I woke before the sun came up, stumbled to the sea side to pee, and then back to bed for a few more hours...to be woken by some incredibly loud bang RIGHT next to the tent, which turned out to be a trash can they place out in the morning. Was it really necessary, I don´t know. I think the guy wanted to scare the shit out of some people early in the morning. Maybe that is how he gets his days started...in place of coffee. Much cheaper. We decided later in the morning to search for breakfast...which was more difficult than anticipated. The restaurants were just opening at 9am...and thought we were crazy to ask for breakfast. They serve only fish. Duh. So, we went to one of the semi open restaurants, asked for coffee. Nope. No coffee, okay, tea? Yeah, sure. Tea. Bread? No. Wait, yes. Butter? Cheese? Jam? Yes, no, yes, no, yes no. We ended up with two coffees, already prepared with milk and sugar. More sugar than you can possibly imagine. I can´t be sure there was even coffee in it. Then, two buns with cheese. At least we got something. We had been subsisting on bread, cheese and fruit, but mostly fruit, for all of yesterday , and we knew we could use something different, because that was all we had back at the tent. Oh well. We left with semi-full bellies.

After 9 am, we knew we wouldn´t survive with out one of the many umbrellas some vendor set up, of which hardly any was being used, so we rented one. They set it up right next to the tent. such service! We kept switching between the sun and shade, because the temperatures are so extreme, that ´staying in one or the other for too long can be terrible (freezing or scalding). Once the sun was unbearable enough, we went to the water. It was ridiculously cold. I felt like a little kid again, not wanting to get in for swim practice because it was just too cold. Once you get close enough to the water, the wind is so strong, you don´t even need to go in anymore to cool off. The sand is black, and the waves bring in teeny carcases of crabs, trash, and really black water. The pull of the water is so strong, I would be a basket case if I had to lifeguard something like that. You can barely stand up if the waves are above your knees.

The bus ride was beautiful, because we got to see a long stretch of Peru´s desert, which is one the West half is, for the most part. It is really quite bizarre, because for hours you see only desert, and than, once we get really close to the ocean, it becomes so green. There is a decent river, tons of agriculture (which is always so cool to see because the means of harvesting are so basic), grassy wetland areas, but this area isn´t safe from fires either. We saw one on the way, with firefighters, covered in soot, fought to put out the brush fire. I suspect it was from a cigarette, or burning trash, because it was right next to the road.

We saw beautiful flowers enveloping houses, acres of red peppers growing, potato plants with their innocent little white flowers, grazing fields for cows, and there is always a farmer never too far from his cows. They dont have fences, and instead tie their cows to corkscrew type things in the ground (similar to what people have for dogs in their yards). The cows can only graze in a small circumfrence, and therefore are moved every day, or half day. It´s a very controlled grazing technique, which can preserve land a lot better, otherwise they graze a little bit everywhere, rather than a lot in only one tiny space. One the way home, we realized how hard it must be for these farmers. The sun is so brutal here. They work every day, it seems, and harvest by hand...many of the farms are quite old, and look very fragile. There are as many women as men out in the fields.

The town neighboring the little beach we went to is highly agricultural, with nothing more than a school, homes, some little stores, kiosks selling candy and other random things, bicycles, and many cows being walked in the streets. They hate being led through the streets-no one likes to be the spectacle. Surrounding all of this are the many fields.

At the beach we also got to see some men in speedos, or their underwear, hard to tell, fishing with big nets. We´re not sure what they were catching, though there was an abundance of crabs running all round. What I liked best was how exciting it was for the kids. The trailed behind the men wherever they went, like seagulls flocking behind lobster boats in Maine.

It was a pretty relaxing trip to the beach, although the return trip took longer than arriving. We waited at several stops for far more time than we needed, and as we pull away, still more people are chasing after the bus to get on, and of course, the driver stops for everyone. They try to get as many people on the bus as possible, as it is more profitable, I am sure. By the end, the bus was full, the sun was setting, and I was ready to get home. I don´t know how people spend so much time on busses without even giving it a thought. I get so uncomfortable so quickly.

Now that we´re back at home, we have our Peruvian visitor, and she is really lovely. Sabine, Chris, the other American, and I went out with her to a few bars. We nearly got trapped in one after deciding not to stay, but to use the bathroom first before heading out, when about 50 police filed in without letting anyone out. This was a discotec, with tons of foreigners from all over the world. It seemed like a fun place. They wanted to see our ID´s, which of course I don´t bring with me, nor do I have a copy, and my Peruvian friend (we don´t know her name! ahh!) didn´t have hers either. They initially told us we couldn´t leave, but she talked to them, and I did, telling them we only came for the bathroom, and we didn´t drink anything. They let us go. There were police everywhere in the street. She suspected it was for drugs...but in my experience, it´s because there is underage drinkers (which is 18 and over here). I guess I will have to wait to see it in the papers, if I am lucky. Who knows how long we may have had to wait. Yikes.

What is so cool about this girl is that she is so independent. She´s on holiday, she lives in Lima, and decided to come to Arequipa to do some of the touristy stuff. She´s at the huge convent now (she missed the bus to go rafting because she slept late), and before that she went trekking in Colca Canyon, one of the deepest in the world, which has massive condors. All by herself, all without regard to needing a companion to go around with...Her profession is basically teaching pedagogy to teachers in Peru. She studied education, works for a textbook printer, and works with teachers about how to use the text books and how to teach children properly. Many of the teachers here in Peru are really below par. They lowered the standards so they could get more teachers, but the standards were already quite low. It really depends upon the salary, of course, as to what level of competency a teacher has.

Anyway, once I get more money (still don´t have my debit card) I am going to visit the convent, which is considered a citadel...and is one of the few buildings in the world that is permitted to wave the Vatican flag, which is kind of cool. There are still nuns cloistered there...about 2 dozen...as well as shops, restaurants and religious stuff all intermingled in this very very very old structure. I can´t wait. It´s right in the city, too.

After last night, I am convinced it would be a good idea to go to Lima. Maybe I could stay with our new friend when I go. Both Sabina and friend agree that there are way more cultural activities to attend and participate in...Lima is considered the London of South America. It´s really noisy, filthy, and a big ugly, but the content is really what matters. Music, art, museums, dance, educational facilities, historical sights...all in large quantities. We´ve got that stuff here, but just not as diverse. Apparently you can hear every language on the street. There is always someone you can talk to in your native language.

Next up on my agenda is to go to the Doctor. I am having some stomach problems that aren´t going away, and antibiotics didn´t do the trick either, making it impossible to travel without a bathroom nearby. That should be difficult, confusing, and probably will take a long time...but maybe by the end I will have some tests, and a conclusion. Hooray.

I will also be serving breakfast to the children twice a week in San Isidro, which means I get to go there twice in one day (four hours on the bus!). I may also help with going to the dentist...and on Tuesday´s and Thursday´s, I will go to Capoeira in the evenings. I really like it, but it´s really hard. This last practice, I just couldn´t muster the energy to finish the whole class. I had to leave early anyway for our weekly meeting. After a while, unless we are learning something new (of course, that depends on the group, not just me!), it gets really repetitive. They teach very rapidly, and if you don´t get it, they teach it to you again...but the demonstrations are often difficult to follow because they are so fluid and fast. The good news is, I am challenging myself, and there´s nothing wrong with that.

The Day from Hell

2009-04-04T11:48:00.000-07:00

I am not sure where to start. The last few days have been discombobulated due to some extenuating circumstances. In short...my wallet was stolen. For those of you who don´t know what happened...here is a brief glance into the beginning of the worst day yet so far in Peru.

First, after realizing a few days before how unaware I really was while I was purchasing a cell phone, totally in Spanish, I have to force myself to go back to the store to clear things up. It was stupid of me not to ask if the guy spoke English, and so I went ahead in Spanish. It was clear that I didn´t speak Spanish fluently, but he never asked what language I spoke. Odd. Anyway, I buy the phone, mostly for the purposes of calling home at a reasonably low rate. This so-called promotion I was receiving turned out to be the most ridiculous calling plan I have ever heard of. I misunderstood one simple thing-the numbers I choose as my most frequently called, including one international, 5 Claro to Claro (the company) and 1 other cell phone company, must be programmed in advance, and then I must wait 24 hours for it to come in to effect, for the promotional rates to take place. I only learn this after speaking to the to the same salesmen again for another hour in the store. I have grown resentful of that store, and that man. I only learned there was a problem because it is a pay as you go phone...I put 100 soles, or about 32 dollars...which is A LOT of money in Peru...and after speaking with my parents for 20 minutes, it cut me off...creditless, powerless and furious. That turns out to be over a dollar a minute to call home...when it was only supposed to be less than 25 cents. So, long story short, I try to remedy this, again, in Spanish, and all I get is an I am sorry, I told you so...etc. I leave, pissed.

Then, I go about my business doing other things in the center...it´s hot and sunny as usual, and on my home, I buy an ice cream. I am headed home, which always takes a bit of brain power, as I often lose track of where exactly I am and how to get home...I cross the street onto the sidewalk, and feel something wet on my face. Ugh, a pigeon peed on me? Gross, and I take a napkin, step to the side of the crowd to wipe my face in disgust. I look up, and a woman walking in the opposite direction points at me and shouts ¨tu billaterra!¨ I look down at my tiny purse...and my wallet is gone. I am stunned. After a second to balance myself, I ask who, and she tells me someone in black pants. I look quickly around for someone scurrying away, but I just see people milling around aimlessly. A traffice police officer sees the commotion between us, and asks the woman who, she points, and he runs after him, her, or nothing. After a block, in the most populated center of the city, La Plaza de Armas, the tourist capital, my wallet has disappeared. I am hysterical, and police swarm me. I tell them what happened in Spanish admist my hysteria. I have never felt so ashamed and powerless in my life. It was less losing the money, the hassle to cancel cards, find a western union, than it was my embarrassment. It is difficult to explain, but I am sure anyone who has been a victim of pickpocketing knows what I mean...it just so repulsive and disrespectful. I have never been treated so poorly before...by a complete stranger. I realize shortly after the incident that a bird had not peed on me, someone had spit on my face. I had read in the Lonely Planet guide book about how common it is for pickpocketing to occur, and that someone usually spits to distract you. I never imagined it meant they spit ON you...it´s bad enough when someone spits right in front of you on the ground.

It has been a few days since all of this commotion, and as always, my mother managed to pull off the impossible by dealing with all of the bureacracy with the banks and the money. I could not believe how difficult it was to function with out money in such a time of need. There was no possibility of calling anyone, let alone internationally. I learned that day that the embassy is in Lima...and that no one has phones that can call Lima. Not even the police. I can´t imagine the police in the US not being able to use a phone to call Washington DC in some kind of emergency. The thought just boggles my mind. What they do have is a radio...which I presume can contact Lima that way. No one thought to offer that. Luckily when I finally made it home (long story short, the police escorted me to a VISA office, which was useless, and gave me an international number to call in Baltimore to cancel my credit card, and then home) I was able to use my room mates calling card to call my mother. The connection was atrocious. What a shitty day.

It is finally evening, and I think everything will sort itself out soon, but my nerves are shot. A few of us are sitting around the kitchen table chatting after dinner, and low and behold...the house starts shaking. I am terrified. What could this possibly be, I ask myself? I am dumbstruck. It is my first earth quake. We stand up, confused as what to do, and head towards outside. I can only remember something about standing in the doorway...but I think to myself, this isn´t going to work, there are too many people. Someone says, should we go outside? And we push each other to the front door...we are on the second floor. We only make it outside on the landing before it stops. There is a family with a few teenage girls starting up at us. They are freaked too.

I don´t know how strong it was, but there is a semi.active volcano off in the distance. The risk is very real, as Arequipa has been destroyed in the past by a volcano. Now people are nervous whenever small ones strike. The ambience after this tremor is difficult to describe...similar to conversations had after crying at a funeral. You have managed to pull yourself together, but are still shaken up and knowing that this wave of reality will hit again unexpectedly.

I hesitated to write anything in here about the tremor to save my mother and grandmother from further worry, but it was too strong of an experience to keep it in. After this day from hell, I realize how easily my rhythm of life can be thrown off, and how little control we have over the events in our days, despite a full sense of control.

I am doing better now, and have decided that I am not happy here in Arequipa, and need to make some changes. I hate the city, although I need it to have some control over my diet and my social life...I need to find a project I am passionate about. Time is ticking by so quickly. Nearly all of the volunteers here at present are leaving in the next week or so...which leaves the organization is dire straits...but I am afraid to take on the responsibilities in which I despise. One of my main problems is that I hate travelling on the crowded, horribly hot, dusty buses for one hour each way, every day, to help the children with homework in San Isidro for 2 hours. It just seems insane to me. While the children are doing their homework, others play loudly and distract me and the children...and still others go into a separate room with the psychologists to talk about their familial situations...and domestic abuse. It is pretty powerful stuff, as a nice chunk of the students have admitted to being abused in their home. To see that these families have more than one child, and that all of their children admit to the abuse breaks my heart. Often it is due to alcoholism. I can see how dangerous low incomes, tight budgets and alcohol and mix so dangerously. There are children in the program that hug tighter than you would expect, and still others are very uncomfortable with being touched at all. I don´t know all of the children´s names, or their stories, so for now, it is difficult to tell which ones are abused, and associate their behavior with this abuse.

It is difficult to see how stuck some of these children are. Their parents have very little money, and send them to the neighborhood schools. How could a child possibly grow up to further their education, or even more away from this village, with low budget schools, miserably unqualified teachers, and inadeuqate supplies. It is a rarity, I am sure. Don´t get me wrong, I feel passionately about getting these children the help they need for a successful life...but I just don´t know what it is I can do, or anyone really, besides kidnap them and give them all my money and put them in a really good school. And the reality is that no one can do that.

Cities

2009-03-30T09:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I spent almost the entire day in the city center of Arequipa. With a population of just over a million people, it´s more than bustling. Although there are many ¨touristic,¨as they call it, ammenities, like restaurants, hotels, hostels, travel agencies, etc. people still stare at this tall white girl walking through the streets. The Plaza De Armas is a tiny park in the center, where most of these touristic things reside...and where what seems like a zillion people and pigeons come to hang out, half in the sun, half in the shade...There are police everywhere blowing their whistles and vendors to stop trying to sell in the Plaza...a humorously familiar sound, after life guarding most summers of my working life. All sorts of women and children are selling gelatin, ice cream, candy, bubbles for the kids, and bird seed (why do you want the pigeons to stay, and to poop everywhere???) Yesterday, there was a man shouting about the Bible and Jesus to the people in the shade, including me. I was bumping elbows the entire time with someone or other...there is never a spare seat left in the Plaza. Conveniently, I am able to block out what I normally wouldn´t be able to...it takes concentration for me to understand what people are saying, so without that, I am just lost in the noises, as if it isn´t even happening.

I sat on a park bench in the Plaza for hours, reading this poorly translated book called The White Masai, translated from German. I don´t often read travel literature...so this is interesting...A woman goes on vacation with her boyfriend in Kenya....and ends up marrying a year later, a Masai, some kind of indigenous tribe...the culture is a complete 180 degree spin from her life in Switzerland...its an incredible feat in patience and I suppose a bit of insanity to be able to adapt...from typical European standards...to living in a really tiny hut with her husband, his little sister his mother, and later what sounds like their daughter. Wow. Crammed.

Later I talked to a local woman who works selling glasses in an optometrist´s shop...and wants to become an architect, or an optometrist...Both of which she would need to move to Lima for...She wanted to know about the English language...and whether there were many kinds to learn...I talked about environmental education...and was able to manage a bit of environmental philosophy, despite my struggling Spanish. The Spanish English Dicctionary has become quite a presence in my life. Sometimes the words I hear aren´t in there, and then I am completely flustered. The woman seemed about my age I guess, or older, and told me she didn´t have a career in anything but selling things, and I said that can be a career, and in universities people study business and marketing. I hope she follows her dreams.

I decided to walk home yesterday, despite my lack of really knowing exactly how to get there. I have a general sense of direction as to where my house is, but I overshot it by a few blocks last night. I wanted desperately to get home before dark, and I arrived just as the sun was setting. I don´t know whether to feel safe or not walking alone. I do know that the smell of alcohol on a dark, desolate street terrifies me. Sunday seems especially bad, because people seem to return early to their homes. There are police on the busy streets, and are willing to give directions and stare fervently at the gringo...but so far, I feel I can trust them.

My walk started in the bustling center, and as I wandered further away, I realized how many bizarre things you can see in a city. I like to peek in every open door to see what I´ll find. I learned that playa, which I recall as beach, also means parking lot. In these dirt parking lots, which are empty lots crammed in amongst the buildings, the tenants also wash cars. I thought this a bit odd, due to the dirt floor of the lot, the excessive pollution in the air, and the chickens walking amongst the cars. And not just any chickens...I saw the most enormous chicken of my life, and that is saying a lot, considering I have been to the Pennsylvania Farm Show...it was the size of my dog. A few blocks later, I peeked into a little restaurant, which had lime green walls in the inside, was dimly lit despite the rapidly setting sun, and four men sitting around a table, one facing directly towards the door, holding as you would hold a 2 year old in his lap, his hairy, dirty, undeserving dog with a pony tail on the top of its head. It was both grotesque and entertaining at the same time. I don´t think I will ever forget that.

There was also the nicest man who reminded me of happy, wine saturated Italian, selling wine in a little shop. I asked where the bridge was, he corrected my Spanish, and then asked me which Bridge. I told him which one I thought I needed, and he warmly gave me directions, most of which I could not follow. I was led to the highway...so I turned back, and found I was only a few blocks off. If it weren´t for major landmarks...I would have never made it home.

In Arequipa there seems to be a lot of sitting around. I don´t know what everyone is doing, whether is warming in the sun, waiting for a bus, chatting with friends, watching the chaos, or just avoiding home life...there are people sitting everywhere. It might have something to do with the astronomical rate of unemployment...its 16 % in Arequipa, and only 7% in Lima, and is about the same for the entire country...I don´t know how they track this accurately, because there are so many little pueblos tucked into every little corner of Peru.

Saturday, I wondered around the city center as well, and ended up in one of the very highly covered Alpaca shops, with a young girl (very difficult to tell peoples ages here), everyone looks significantly younger than they are, mostly because of their size. I asked the girl for what I was looking for...and they didn´t have it (a weaving to use as a bathmat...which through her off a bit. When I told the Germans this later...they thought it was ridiculous too. Why the hell am I going to buy something I cannot use????? If someone could please explain the so called practicality of impractical things...it might help. Why not buy something I know is sturdy, beautiful, made in Peru of Alpaca and relatively inexpensive to USE, rather than hang on my wall to collect dust? Tell me, what is more impractical? Anyway, that rant was not the point of this particular story...the girl I spoke with was excited to hear why I was in Peru, for how long, and whether I wanted to be an English conversation partner...I told her I don´t teach English, but, somehow I managed to get her to come the next day as a volunteer to San Isidro. She connected with a few of the kids, got to see the village, and played some volleyball with them. It worked out quite nicely. She had to go early because she is a very busy girl with only a short amount of time to see her cousin who is in town, and left on the bus, but promised to be back either for homework on Wednesday, or next Sunday. We are confident she´ll return. Her name is Noelia. While we were collecting children to come play for Sunday activities...I got to see my first rigamortis dog. It was white, and looked exactly as it did in life...minus a few details. My first instinct was the urge to get this thing out of here. It´s in the path, and it doesn´t seem safe to me to have children running around with this animal here to contaminate things. It seemed to well preserved, which is I am sure due largely to the bountiful sun that shines here almost constantly. At least it won´t be contaminating a water supply. Another volunteer asked the children what will be done with the dog, and he was told that they will just let it there to die. There are so many bony, mangey, dehydrated, starving dogs running around, it amazes them how any of them survive. I was also a bit disconcerting to see one adult dog chasing around a pregnant, or mother dog, trying to steal some milk.

This same day, as if this wasn´t enough of a spectacle...the children grew tired of volleyball, couldn´t organize themselves for soccer and could really not focus enough to do group challenges like I am used to doing, started wandering off...and I began to panic. Chris, the American, suggested we leave, but I knew were were schedule to be here for three hours...so I asked the children if they wanted to walk through their village...and they all excitedly pointed to the top of something halfway between a hill and a mountain, to Los Tres Cruces...The Three Crosses. Religious icons are very prominent here...even at the top of a ridiculously steep incline. So we all set off for what ended up being an hour to the top. The kids were wearing everything from sneakers, rubber tire sandals, flip flops to knock-off crocs. I was amazed. Half of them ran up, the other have could barely make it to the first cross, which was only halfway, because they were so tiny. We left them behind, and continued to the top. It was quite a view. No camera, of course. But it was such a vast view. In one direction, was the scrub covered low lying mountains with nothing between us and them but more scrub, rock and sand. Down below, we could see the village. It is nothing but brick buildings, many of which are only half build, a small mining sight for the material they must use for the bricks, and than off in the distance in another direction, it´s green. Trees, pastures and farms. Socabaya, the town next to San Isidro. It is absolutely dumbfounding as to why these people live here. Other than being close to the mines and the brick making industry...there is nothing. No water. Why can´t they live in Socabaya, and work in San Isidro? Why did they settle in San Isidro to begin wtih? No one who volunteers here seems to know the answers. I am going to ask Senora Martina, the women who cooks the food for the children in during homework help. She is the most well off looking woman there, complete with clean clothed, white teethed children who go to a good school. I was told she gives her children everything she has. They live as others do, but with more water, and what a difference it makes.

El Mercado, y La Fiesta

2009-03-27T07:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to the most immense farmer´s market I have ever seen...there were more fruits and vegetables that were unfamiliar to me than I could have imagined...and instead of spreading out wide, the vendors have what looked like stairs up at least twenty feet into the air, packed with produce, the bright colors, textures, and smells and crammed with diligent local Arequipeñas...there was raw meat being processed, sweets being pawned on the innocent, a three piece traditional band, loads of pungent cheeses, unidentified sauces, infinite types of potatoes and all without refrigeration, a bit disconcerting for with the meats...and it was incredible how much food you could buy for so little money...which made me a little uncomfortable...It just seems like these people work just as hard for their money, but receive so little in return for their work...I struggle daily with the confusion between the disadvantaged, lowered standards, simpler, better or just plain different. My mind begs for a value classification on everything I see...but there seems to be none.

Last night almost all of the volunteers attended a birthday party and going away party for one of the german boys here who speaks impeccable English and Spanish, is tall, skinny and squeaky clean, with gelled hair, brand new suede shoes, slim jeans and a black collared western-style shirt...what a style. He is living with a host family...and because we waited for EVERYONE to be ready at the same time, before cramming 11 people in two mini-taxis, we were an hour and a half late for the 8:30 arrival time...I felt incredibly rude...and everything seemed a bit forced...When we walked into the house, I was impressed by the formality of their parlor, was it was referred to as...with overstuffed furniture, the white building stone, sillar, which rubs off on your clothes like chalk if you brush up against it...a white faux animal fur carpet atop ornate, patterned multi-shade wooden floors, which seem to be common, because they are also in our apartment...Jacob, whose party it was, told me that the rest of the house is normal, this is simply for first impressions...and what an impression it made on all of us...it was almost embarassingly formal for such an occasion. But, once we all had a few drinks, things lightened up a bit, and jokes about language and culture in our current and shared shared situation arose and everyone was merry...the problem was that we all had dinner before hand...and came to this house...expecting simply dessert, but there was also way too much on the side of hors d´oeuvres...after a few hours of being force fed by guilt and unsuredness of cultural expectations, a few of us left to go home and sleep off the food hangover...it was a marathon, and my stomach was exhausted. What I liked best is that we sang Happy Birthday in three languages...and the host family looked so pleased so see all of Jacob´s friends there. It was very sweet.

Overall, my Spanish is improving as I grow more comfortable speaking my mind, and making mistakes in front of native speakers and others who have had more practice than I. Because I like to be such an active participant and contributor to whatever I am involved in...I can´t help myself but to speak my mind at our weekly meetings for INTIWAWA...tonight we have a meeting with all of the parents of the children who attend the afterschool homework help and snack...I see a lot of problems with the students...especially unpreparedness for homework, weather that is a problem with the child and her motivation, or the teacher and their lack of fulfilling their duties to provide adequate information for the students to be able to do their homework. Often the students have advanced homework, with very little understanding of the basics...like expondents, without knowing how to multiply properly...or filling a basics of chemistry worksheet without a textbook, or prior notes from class. One school we work with might close...the parents think the school is so bad due to the teachers, that they are sending their children elsewhere...and there is certainly no shortage of schools...each little village has at least one...all are Catholic and private, where the parents get money to pay for school is still a mystery...the community we work in produces bricks, has a federal prison and a bull fighting ring just a few miles away...but this doesn´t seem to be enough to support everyone...because so many of the children have mutilated shoes, decaying teeth, and a generally poor education.

As everyone says here...vamos a ver...we will see.

Until next time.

Brazos

Cuerpa Failure

2009-03-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

I am back in my apartment after a treacherous 3 days which began at midnight on Thursday. I met up with the only other American to take the three hour bus ride to Chivay, which is the drop off point for gringos a plenty to visit Colca Canyon, as well as Cruz del Condor, something about massive condors (I saw a picture, and they are sadly large vultures). Anyway, the three hour bus ride, everyone was sleeping but me. I simply cannot sleep on buses. We get into Chivay, which is obviously dark and dead, as it is 4 in the morning. We take a motorcycle type vehicle with a box on the back for your things and your butt, inhaling the fumes from the exhaust. He drops us off god knows where, and we get a combi, (about the size of a VW van) who promises us10 soles, which is good (for the whole ride, for both of us,right? right!) and later charges us 10 soles each. Bastard. This apparently happens all the time. He drops us off in Corporaque after a 30 minute very bumpy, very dark, very unfamiliar terrain in the town center, just a 2 minute walk from the house we will stay at. Chris, who I traveled with, does this every Friday to meet with the kids. I am still unsure of what he was doing before this Friday, because it was his first English classes with this school. We arrive at the house in time for about an hour nap, woken up with rapid Spanish, bright light and a home made breakfast. I am sick with exhaustion. We eat breakfast, and walk to the school...6 grades, 40 minutes each, of the alphabet. I have never wanted to teach English, and it was confirmed. I feel like I have other things to offer besides my language. By the end of the school day, I could barely stand up, and I hated the alphabet. That day, Chris left in the afternoon, and I was left there to fend for myself with a family who speaks only Spanish, and the indigenous language, Quechua (no idea of the spelling). I did learn that Intiwawa, means children of the sun (I guess it was more of a reminder), but Inti means sun, and wawa means child. Nice, huh? The family has four children, the oldest of two are 14 and9 and get along perfectly. As far asI could tell, there wasn't a single problem amongst the family this weekend except for the fussy one year old who eats dirt and rocks. The two oldest take my mal-adjusted self up the side of a mountain with the most specatular views of ancient, Incan terraced walls, beautiful shades of green, which turned out to be small fortressed plots of farm land (explanation soon). At the top, there was an Incan cemetary, which had piles of human remains inside, a few recognizable skulls, two of which were in the windows of this little building. Kind of creepy, but so old, it is hard to believe it is still there. The children, Christian and Antonella told me that the Spanish had looted all the good stuff, and left the bones. Our hike was a few hour loop, in which I stopped a lot to avoid tripping over there puppy, or to take pictures. At the bottom of the mountainside, was more ruins, the bare bones of homes. All without roofs. My guess is that they were all thatched roofs, which many of the homes in Corporaque have now. After a few hours of playing with the children at their school the next day, in which Chewonki would be proud to know that I introduced a few games I learned there. They loved them, even if they were not introduced in the clearest way. They had fun, and I laughed at the irony of coming all the way to Peru only to teach them games. I cant remember why I have come, but just the same, I am enjoying the experience. After playing, we ate lunch with the family, and walked to the river at the bottom of the valley, an incredibly steep decline. I knew coming up would be hell. I paused at one of the terraces to look at the wheat bending in the wind, and put my hands on the top of the rock wall, only to jump back in pain. I had put my hand firmly on a cactus, and leaned in with my stomach. I pulled away, looked at my hand, and had 10 1 inch spikes sticking out of my palm and fingers. My hand still hurts! That was a great point of humor in the trip down. Later everyone was warning me of the cacti ahead so I wouldn't injure mzself. After a few hours in the hot waters, or hot springs, right next to the river, we all got out, changed under towels in the brisk cool air, and began our ascent. This included the entire family, with the mother carrying the plump infant on her back, an incredible feat. Christian was running up ahead of everyone, and once we caught up huffing and puffing, he was relaxing in the grass with his puppy. Show off. The last third of the ascent nearly killed me. Altitude sickness set in, I think. My hands turned white and cold, I was flushed, out of breath, overwhelmingly tired. I still feel like crap two days later. For a point of reference, for the last week, I have been stazing at 2325 m, or 7000 ft. Coporaque is 3957ft,or 12985 ft. I had no idea. Apparently altitude sickness can set in days later. I am back in Arequipa, with a stomach ache, back ache, switching from sweating to chills. It is entirely possible that I am simply dehydrated. This week, I get to sleep in a bed. Last week I slept on little kid mats, worse than at Chewonki. Last night was a terrible nights sleep, but I stayed in bed for at least 12 hours, and have been sleeping on and off all day today. The backache could be attributed to the insanely bumpy ride back to Chivay to catch the bus home in the back of a pick up truck with a bunch of other people, with nothing to hold onto. Ow. When we got to Chivay, we were surprised to hear that the bus tickets were sold out. The next bus won't be until 1am. This was very bad news, especially for me, because I could barely make it to the bus station. All this while I wasn' t sure I could even take this bus because I felt sick, but managed to make it anyway. The only possibility of getting home at a reasonable hour would be to take a taxi for 200 soles...50 bucks. Ouch. No friggen way. It is a three hour ride, and I guess that would cover his costs back to Chivay, but we just could't do it. After we stood around in disbelief for a few minutes, a taxi driver came abruptly over to us, speaking to the male Peruvian we were with, to tell us he could get us on a bus right now for a little more than we would have payed for the 1am. 20 soles, 5 bucks. Much better. we hop in his taxi, and I am thinking, there are no other towns, where the hell is he taking us? He drives for a few minutes with a Peruvian man scrunched in the back with our belongings, and pulls up behind a bus with its four ways on! The taxi driver had called the bus driver to tell him he had 5 passengers, and he pulled over to wait for us. What are the chances? I got on the bus, and it was FULL of tourists from all over the Northern Hemisphere. My god. We made it.

2009-03-18T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hello! I added a post, but it seems to have failed itself. There have been numerous complications with communication, as in I don´t know how to use my cell phone yet, I don´t have a calling card, the phone in our apartment is broken, and as a result, so is the internet. The stove was even on the fritz, and last night there was no water coming out of the faucet when you turned on the hot...they are replacing the solar hot water heaters I guess. The apartment is just a half hour walk from La Plaza de Armas, a small but beautifully lush park surrounded by historical buildings and is bustling no matter what time of day.

My arrival into Arequipa was breathtaking-the view from the plane was absolutely stunning, vast desert cayons, ocean, islands, mountains and villages that fill in the crevaces of the lowlands...when I got off the plane, the sun was setting, we talked on to the tar mac into the tiny airport which was surrounded by some of the biggest mountains I have ever seen, snow capped Picchu Picchu, El Misti and Chachani, which is 6075meters, or nearly 20,000 ft. I was told that up until a week ago, the mountains were fully cloud covered, and you couldn´t see them at all. I arrived at just the right time. The weather is perfect, warm all day and cooler at night. I went to Tarea, or Homework help, from 3-5pm yesterday, my first visit to the Center (Intiwawa´s Community Center). The building is bare bones, simply brick, mortar, cement with a thin aluminum roof complete with the tap tap tap of pigeon feet at all times above you. The children are adorable...all different ages, many personalities, and they all greet and depart with a kiss on the cheek to ever elder in the room. They are patient with our language, I am not the worst, but I am not the best. We will see how I feel in a few days, and perhaps I will take language lessons. A teacher comes to our apartment to work with three different people, so I might join in, or have a private lesson. Most of the people I know speak German to each other, and English and Spanish are at about the same level of understanding...I do have the relief of speaking with my room mate who is an Australian dietician. People are constantly rotating out of the apartment I live in, on the floor, and I may move into a private room for a little more so we don´t anger the land lords. The set up is in an apartment building, with families all around, and apparently they complained about constantly seeing new faces and not knowing who to trust. We are trying to work it out. So much has happened in the few days I have been here...I managed a few minutes at an internet cafe in a random mall in the city where there is a dentist giving free checkups for the children...I left the house at 615am, took the bus to the Center to retrieve 2 kids and meet another volunteer, and then another hour back to the city. The first appointment took over an hour and a half...we think it is a check up with some education as well, but there is no telling. I think they are doing fillings so, which the kids probably need, because they drink more soda than they do water. Water has to be trucked into the villages from what I understand. There is a massive river bed that is dry...and a 9 year old girl told me that she remembers it having water...I will find out more. Maybe it was dammed for power or irrigation upstream, or maybe it is a natural occurence. I better get back to the waiting room. There is a lot of waiting to be done.

Brazos

I've made it!

2009-03-17T06:42:00.000-07:00

After a solid 14 hours of travelling (really not bad considering I am in Southern Peru!!!! I woke up, climbed the beautiful, finished stairs to the roof to see massive snow capped mountains, a cornfield a block away, two cows living directly across the narrow, dead end road, as well as zillions of homes. An odd juxtaposition,especiallz because surrounding me on the westísh is a low lying, rocky, post-apocalyptic evaporated ocean floor. So far, everything is beautiful in it's own right. There are dogs barking, chickens clucking, and German English and Spanish are all intermixed here. I have some time explore before I go in to meet the kiddos, from kindergarten to sixth grade. It feels natural to be here!

Just a few more days

2009-03-11T13:20:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for Peru at 6:30 am on Monday...I haven't figured out how I am getting to the airport yet...I want to see everyone I can before I leave, I quit my job a few days earlier, thank god! so now I can do more. I am writing my personal statement for graduate school, but I have no idea what I'm doing. I want to finish it before I go. I read somewhere online that says "tell a story." So I am, and mixing in all the requirements. Fortunately, and unfortunately, it's a maximum of 800 words. Any advice?