(Note: My pics of this trip are on cds in North Carolina. I'll add them toward the end of the month.)
My apologies to all of you who have been faithfully checking my dormant blog. I am now back in Texas, and have not had a chance to update (and finish) this blog since early July. There is far too much to cover all of my last month in Peru, but here are the highlights.
Our time in Huancayo ended well. We graded papers and tests and assigned final grades in time to get on the bus at 8am July 17. We both had to buy new bags to transport all the stuff we bought. When our supervisor showed up and saw us each with four times the amount of luggage we’d brought, he laughed his head off.
It was sad to leave, because our time in Huancayo was wonderful. It is going to be odd not to wake up and see the same mountains every morning. It’s going to be even more odd to go to a grocery store, to speak English, and to not have to worry about getting electrocuted by the shower.
Stephanie went home the next day, but I met up with my friend Melanie to travel for about two weeks. Our friends the travel-agent couple had put together a trip for us, so we had a route completely planned and pre-paid. It was a bit of a new experience to travel like that, but not altogether unlikeable. It was extraordinarily low-stress because we didn’t have to worry about anything. No waiting in train stations until midnight trying to find a place to sleep!
Our first bus left at 4:30 am on Friday, July 20. At 1:30 am on Friday, July 20 I woke up puking. That’s right, good old food poisoning again. This time it was some bad orange-pineapple juice that I’d drunk the night before. In case you’ve never had the experience, let me just inform you that vomiting nothing but orange-pineapple juice is one of the more painful types of food poisoning you can get. It was so acidic that I think I actually burned my throat, as it hurt to drink for the next day or so.
And of course, we were supposed to leave at 4:30. I dragged myself out of the room and into Raul’s van. I puked up the last of the orange-juice in the bus station, but found myself without any water or tissues. Let me just say that life at that moment sucked.
We got in the bus, and I thanked God that we had paid the extra $6 for first-class: big, reclining seats and blankets. I bought some water, curled up in a blanket, and went to sleep. I didn’t even bother looking at the itinerary to see where we were going.
At 7:30 we arrived in Parracas. I staggered off the bus, and was all ready to tell the pleasant-looking guide we met that I was sick, and that I would rather just find somewhere to lay down, and that Melanie could go on whatever tour we had planned, and that I would really like some Gatorade. I had time to say none of this. We were whisked off the bus, and put directly on a BOAT. That’s right, a boat. A little speed-boat that was going to take us on a two-hour tour of the Ballesta Islands.
As it turns out, these islands are home to all sorts of interesting things like penguins, sea lions, pelicans, and many species of birds. I think I was the only one on the boat who didn’t particularly care. Rather than appreciating the first time I’ve seen wild penguins in my life, I was instead curled up in the fetal position in the back of the boat, repeating over and over “don’t throw up don’t throw up don’t throw up.” To make things worse, I hadn’t brought any warm clothes with me, and the boat was freezing. My hands quickly turned white, and I could only keep my teeth from chattering by huddling into a ball.
Luckily, I looked miserable enough that someone took pity on me. Two Madrid guys who had just come off two weeks of mountaineering were sitting behind me. They kept giving me clothes, until you couldn’t really see my face.
Finally, one of them asked if I was sick, and very handily produced a pill that keeps you from throwing up. Isn’t medicine amazing? So I took this pill, and life just started to look so much better after that.
We spent the rest of the day looking at the national reserve, where the Parracas culture grew. It’s one of the driest coasts in the world, as the ocean current is extraordinarily cold. As such, what should be a tropical paradise is actually quite literally a desert pushed up against the ocean. It was beautiful in a way, but it was a cold, windy desert. We got into the bus at the end of the day, and I slept a good four hours all the way to Nazca.
Nazca is a tiny town in Peru, made famous only by the discovery a few decades ago of the Nazca lines. These are lines etched into the hard sand of the desert by pre-Incan cultures, visible only from the air. They are still visible partly because the sand is packed in so tightly and partly because there is very little harsh weather.
So the thing to do at Nazca is to pay about $7 to go up in a little airplane with three other people (including the pilot) to see these lines. And yes, tiny means tiny. You can barely fit four people in these planes.
It was actually quite fascinating. The drawings are still clearly visible, and enormous. There are about fourteen total that the companies fly over, but the entire valley is crisscrossed with lines that this culture drew.
By this time, I was feeling terrific, and was really interested to see everything. Melanie, on the other hand, started feeling a little nauseous after the second drawing. See, a four-seater airplane really begins to feel like a roller coaster before too long, which is quite fun if your stomach is feeling strong. If, however, you start feeling sick, it kind of sucks. Melanie put her head between her knees and held her stomach for the last 15 minutes of a 35 minute flight. I knew how she felt.
The next major stop was Puno, where we spent a day on Lake Titicaca. This was possibly the most beautiful part of our trip, though at first the elevation of 12,500 feet gave us both some problems. We went out on a boat and saw the floating islands of the Uros (read this for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uros), and then had lunch on the island of Taquile. The water was a deep, bright blue, and we spent about five hours just getting back and forth from the islands.
From Puno we went to Cuzco. By this time, I realized that I had officially entered what Peruvians call “gringolandia.” Remember how in Huancayo we never saw other white people? In Cuzco, we could basically walk down the street and speak English to everyone.
Of course, I could understand why it was the most popular tourist spot: it was gorgeous. It reminded me a little of Seville, or maybe the prettier parts of Madrid. The main plaza split off into a half dozen small, winding alleys, each of which were filled with tourist markets. My resolve not to buy any more souvenirs quickly disintegrated, and I had to buy another bag to carry it all in. Beautiful experience of nature on Lake Titicaca, and then unbridled materialistic frenzy in Cuzco.
We saw the ruins and major sites of Cuzco before spending a night in Ollantaytambo, the capital of the sacred valley of the Incas. The next day we took the train with the rest of the gringos up to Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu (a newly named world wonder) is the most famous part of the trip, and clearly the most popular. There were so many people that you had to wait in line for everything and you almost couldn’t walk without tripping over someone. Don’t get me wrong, it was still pretty spectacular, but it reminded more of Disneyworld than the lost city of the Incas.
By the time we were done, we were absolutely exhausted. Melanie and I spent our last days in Lima sleeping, reading, and watching movies. (Not kidding…we slept most of the entire first day!) I ate my last Peruvian food, did laundry, and helped Melanie plan out the rest of her trip. It has been a wonderful, wonderful three months, but by the time I boarded the plane I was quite ready to come home.
Aug 14, 2007
Jul 1, 2007
Enjoying Peru
(pics of this entry available here:)
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064495&l=29cad&id=1313457
We’ve gotten to the point in the summer when we suddenly realize that we don’t have very much time left. In my case, this means that my class on Revelation has started an all-out sprint to try to finish the book before the term is over. Stephanie is drowning under the amount of work the students have turned in, and entirely frustrated over the amount of work they haven’t. Both of us, though, are realizing that we’ve had very little “tourist” time here, and really haven’t seen much more than the area between our house and the seminaries.
Luckily, one of our classes (we were each teaching two) ended recently, giving us two free days a week. Steph and I have begun to take the opportunity to get out a little and see the Huancayo area, which is much more beautiful than we can see from our apartment.
Friday morning, we went out to an interesting place on the outskirts of Huancayo called Torre Torre—literally “Tower Tower.” (And no, even after much debate Stephanie and I have been unable to figure out why they would name a place “Tower Tower” instead of just “Towers.”) It’s kind of like a miniature Grand Canyon: water has eroded away the ground, leaving enormous earthen towers and deep crevices in the middle of nowhere.
Stephanie and I walked up to the edge of Torre Torre and looked up. The formations went all the way up the mountain, widening and narrowing farther than we could see. We saw a small foot path that seemed to go down through some of the larger towers, but it looked steep and unused. While we were arguing about whether or not to follow it (I think Stephanie’s exact words were, “Meredith, I don’t want to die today”), we heard shouting from behind us. A little girl was running toward us, shouting “Hola, gringas! Hola!” It turns out that she, like all the other children who live in the area, act as guides for any lost-looking tourist that happens to wander through.
So, cameras in hand, we set off with our ten-year-old guide, Edith, down the foot-path into the heart of Torre Torre.
It didn’t take us long to realize that Edith was leading us around her playground. She had grown up playing hide-and-seek around the rock formations, and was more than comfortable running up and down the tiny path. As she led us up higher and higher into the towers, we became distinctly aware of the fact that we were not quite as agile nor sure-footed as she. I don’t think we were ever actually in danger of dying, but there were a few moments when I pictured myself flying back to the states with a neckbrace. In one particularly memorable moment, Edith told us, “Look, it’s easier if you run and then jump. Run, gringa, run!” And then to top it off, she stands on the other end of a worn-out section of the path and offers her hand to help us up. I heard Stephanie mutter behind me, “Right, kid, you’re about the size of my thigh.”
Perhaps it was the terror of dismemberment, or perhaps it was the fact that we were trusting our lives to a ten-year-old child, but the morning turned out to be purely delightful. We finally reached the top of the formations to find an open meadow, which Edith promptly instructed us to run across. We spent the next twenty minutes chasing each other around the meadow like children, slowly making our way down the side of the formation—running, of course, all the way. Edith made us stop once so she could pick some flowers to bring back to her mother.
We made it back to normal ground safely, and bade farewell to Edith as we started walking back toward Huancayo. We were covered in dust, bruised, and mildly sunburned, but ridiculously happy.
Another day, Stephanie and I visited several of the nearby pueblos. Peru is traditionally a very artisan-centered culture, and every pueblo around Huancayo has its own particular craft. In one pueblo, the entire town specializes in weaving. We visited a workshop one Saturday and the owner showed us how they made thread from raw alpaca, dyed the thread with plants, and then wove it into tapestries, blankets, and sweaters. Most of the woven objects around here are made with alpaca, but there are also things made from sheep wool, llama wool, and even rabbit fur. They grow the specific plants they need to get different colors of dye. For the deep red, they even harvest a kind of plant that grows on cactus.
Other pueblos specialize in silver or in furniture, but our favorite was the mate pueblo, Conchas. One of the oldest Peruvian crafts is called mate: a dried gourd that is painstakingly carved and colored with charred wood. When Stephanie and I arrived at the workshop, we walked into what was apparently the courtyard of a house. The entire family was seated on rocking chairs in the middle of the courtyard, carving. I suddenly began to understand exactly how much tradition was involved in this art. The old man sitting in the center had been trained by his mother, and he was surrounded by his daughters and his daughters’ children whom he had trained. All of them spent all day, every day, sitting in this courtyard carving the gourds.
The process goes something like this: gourds are dried in the sun and then sent to the artisans’ houses. When I walked upstairs in that workshop, I found a whole side of the house completely filled with gourds. Gourds were piled to the ceiling in three rooms, and then laid out on the balcony as well. They ranged from about the size of a small boulder to ones you could use as keychains or necklaces.
The artisans take a gourd and clean it, and then carve it with what looks like a nail with a wooden handle. This makes an outline of a drawing on the gourd. They then take a charred piece of wood (still smoldering) and rub it over various parts of the drawing to add color. Depending on how hard they blow while coloring, they can get four or five different shades of brown. It’s amazing how precise they are with this part: a woman’s hat is a dark brown, and her face is a lighter shade.
There are several other techniques they use to get white, black, and reddish colors, but all take an extraordinary amount of work and patience. One particular gourd (which told the story of the prodigal son in pictures), took a full week to complete. They make boxes, bowls, keychains, necklaces, centerpieces, instruments, and just about anything else you can think to make with gourds. (And yes, in case you’re wondering, some of you are totally getting these as Christmas presents.)
In our last two weeks, we hope to go visit some nearby ruins and the glacier that overlooks the city. One of these days I’m going to have to grade tests and figure out how to get through the rest of the class in two weeks. But—for at least a couple of days—it has been nice to just enjoy Peru.
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2064495&l=29cad&id=1313457
We’ve gotten to the point in the summer when we suddenly realize that we don’t have very much time left. In my case, this means that my class on Revelation has started an all-out sprint to try to finish the book before the term is over. Stephanie is drowning under the amount of work the students have turned in, and entirely frustrated over the amount of work they haven’t. Both of us, though, are realizing that we’ve had very little “tourist” time here, and really haven’t seen much more than the area between our house and the seminaries.
Luckily, one of our classes (we were each teaching two) ended recently, giving us two free days a week. Steph and I have begun to take the opportunity to get out a little and see the Huancayo area, which is much more beautiful than we can see from our apartment.
Friday morning, we went out to an interesting place on the outskirts of Huancayo called Torre Torre—literally “Tower Tower.” (And no, even after much debate Stephanie and I have been unable to figure out why they would name a place “Tower Tower” instead of just “Towers.”) It’s kind of like a miniature Grand Canyon: water has eroded away the ground, leaving enormous earthen towers and deep crevices in the middle of nowhere.
Stephanie and I walked up to the edge of Torre Torre and looked up. The formations went all the way up the mountain, widening and narrowing farther than we could see. We saw a small foot path that seemed to go down through some of the larger towers, but it looked steep and unused. While we were arguing about whether or not to follow it (I think Stephanie’s exact words were, “Meredith, I don’t want to die today”), we heard shouting from behind us. A little girl was running toward us, shouting “Hola, gringas! Hola!” It turns out that she, like all the other children who live in the area, act as guides for any lost-looking tourist that happens to wander through.
So, cameras in hand, we set off with our ten-year-old guide, Edith, down the foot-path into the heart of Torre Torre.
It didn’t take us long to realize that Edith was leading us around her playground. She had grown up playing hide-and-seek around the rock formations, and was more than comfortable running up and down the tiny path. As she led us up higher and higher into the towers, we became distinctly aware of the fact that we were not quite as agile nor sure-footed as she. I don’t think we were ever actually in danger of dying, but there were a few moments when I pictured myself flying back to the states with a neckbrace. In one particularly memorable moment, Edith told us, “Look, it’s easier if you run and then jump. Run, gringa, run!” And then to top it off, she stands on the other end of a worn-out section of the path and offers her hand to help us up. I heard Stephanie mutter behind me, “Right, kid, you’re about the size of my thigh.” 
Perhaps it was the terror of dismemberment, or perhaps it was the fact that we were trusting our lives to a ten-year-old child, but the morning turned out to be purely delightful. We finally reached the top of the formations to find an open meadow, which Edith promptly instructed us to run across. We spent the next twenty minutes chasing each other around the meadow like children, slowly making our way down the side of the formation—running, of course, all the way. Edith made us stop once so she could pick some flowers to bring back to her mother. We made it back to normal ground safely, and bade farewell to Edith as we started walking back toward Huancayo. We were covered in dust, bruised, and mildly sunburned, but ridiculously happy.
Another day, Stephanie and I visited several of the nearby pueblos. Peru is traditionally a very artisan-centered culture, and every pueblo around Huancayo has its own particular craft. In one pueblo, the entire town specializes in weaving. We visited a workshop one Saturday and the owner showed us how they made thread from raw alpaca, dyed the thread with plants, and then wove it into tapestries, blankets, and sweaters. Most of the woven objects around here are made with alpaca, but there are also things made from sheep wool, llama wool, and even rabbit fur. They grow the specific plants they need to get different colors of dye. For the deep red, they even harvest a kind of plant that grows on cactus.
Other pueblos specialize in silver or in furniture, but our favorite was the mate pueblo, Conchas. One of the oldest Peruvian crafts is called mate: a dried gourd that is painstakingly carved and colored with charred wood. When Stephanie and I arrived at the workshop, we walked into what was apparently the courtyard of a house. The entire family was seated on rocking chairs in the middle of the courtyard, carving. I suddenly began to understand exactly how much tradition was involved in this art. The old man sitting in the center had been trained by his mother, and he was surrounded by his daughters and his daughters’ children whom he had trained. All of them spent all day, every day, sitting in this courtyard carving the gourds.
The process goes something like this: gourds are dried in the sun and then sent to the artisans’ houses. When I walked upstairs in that workshop, I found a whole side of the house completely filled with gourds. Gourds were piled to the ceiling in three rooms, and then laid out on the balcony as well. They ranged from about the size of a small boulder to ones you could use as keychains or necklaces.The artisans take a gourd and clean it, and then carve it with what looks like a nail with a wooden handle. This makes an outline of a drawing on the gourd. They then take a charred piece of wood (still smoldering) and rub it over various parts of the drawing to add color. Depending on how hard they blow while coloring, they can get four or five different shades of brown. It’s amazing how precise they are with this part: a woman’s hat is a dark brown, and her face is a lighter shade.
There are several other techniques they use to get white, black, and reddish colors, but all take an extraordinary amount of work and patience. One particular gourd (which told the story of the prodigal son in pictures), took a full week to complete. They make boxes, bowls, keychains, necklaces, centerpieces, instruments, and just about anything else you can think to make with gourds. (And yes, in case you’re wondering, some of you are totally getting these as Christmas presents.)In our last two weeks, we hope to go visit some nearby ruins and the glacier that overlooks the city. One of these days I’m going to have to grade tests and figure out how to get through the rest of the class in two weeks. But—for at least a couple of days—it has been nice to just enjoy Peru.
Jun 20, 2007
The Week
I know this is a lot of blogging for a short period of time, but last week was such an interesting week that I couldn’t just skip it. So here you go: enough Meredith blog to keep you satisfied for at least another 7 days.
The Week
Day 1: Stephanie and I got back from the jungle at 9pm on Sunday night. At 8:30 on Monday morning, we were in a car with several other translators heading out to a small town called Concepción. A church from Florence, SC had brought a dentist, a gynecologist, an opthamologist, two pediatricians, several nurses and a few pharmacy people. A local Huancayo doctor joined the group to help with general medicine, and the plan was to offer a 1 day clinic in 5 different locations.
I was assigned to work with pediatrics, and I think I got pretty much the best deal of all the translators. Stephanie was working with the gynecologist and learned a whole range of new vocabulary she never dreamed she’d need. (The title of her blog this week was something like “Yes, my ovaries hurt too.”) Jimmy was working with the dentist and had to physically restrain children who were terrified of the dental instruments and screaming so loudly you could hear them three rooms away. I, on the other hand, got to sit and play with kids all day.
This is my first time working with a project like this, I quickly learned about the benefits and limitations of having a one-day clinic. On the upside we saw far more people in one day that a normal practice could have, and we weren't constrained by people's insurance or money. On the downside, it's a one-time visit, and there's a lot you can't do in a one-time visit.
I discovered that there are three kinds of kids that are brought into a one-day clinic. The first kind, which was most of the kids we saw, had absolutely nothing wrong with them. Their parents would bring them in and say “she won’t eat” or “he’s small for his age,” when really the kid was perfectly fine. For the ones who did have a slight cold, we handed out lots of Tylenol and Dimetapp. And of course, everyone got vitamins. Vitamins were the magic cure for “He’s not as big as his brother.”
The second kind were the children that really had something wrong with them that was easily curable. One girl came in with slight pneumonia, another had a fungus growing on his head. A few children had parasites. These are the kinds of things that are easily taken care of with a little medication, but of course the families had little resources for medication. In these cases the families were always extremely grateful that they could go to our pharmacy and pick up the medicines for free. The limitation is, of course, that if any sort of complication occurred, the family would have to go to a local doctor to follow up.
The third kind of kid we saw were the kids that had serious problems that the clinic could do nothing about. We saw several children with cerebral palsy, whose mothers knew there was probably nothing to do but brought the children out of desperation. There was at least one child who needed a surgery to be able to talk. Several children couldn’t walk, and were carried around (even until age 7 and 8) by their mothers who couldn’t afford wheelchairs. I explained to one mother that if she continued to work with her son’s legs everyday, maybe by the time he was six he would be able to take steps by himself.
It’s this third kind that really accentuates the difference between “developed” and “underdeveloped” places—as inadequate as those terms admittedly are—highlighted solely in the fact that parents in the U.S. have more options and education about their children’s conditions. Not that U.S. parents know how to care for their children any better, but they have the option—for example—of getting a wheelchair and physical therapy.
With the third type of kid, the doctors would just try to be as gentle as possible. We would give painkillers for minor aches, and sometimes tums for stomach aches. And of course we would give everyone vitamins. But you could see in the mothers’ eyes that they knew there was nothing we could really do.
Day 2: San Jeronimo, a little town known for silver work about 15 minutes from Huancayo. We saw 84 children in 5 hours. Yes, 84. They moved both pediatricians into the same room, so I translated for two doctors all day. I learned words I never thought I’d need to know, like “constipation,” “bloated,” “cyst,” and “diarrhea.” Apparently word got out that we gave out candy when we finished a consultation, so we had whole streams of kids saying things like “My head has hurt for the past 20 minutes” or “I get out of breath when I run.” That night I dreamt about translating for an endless line of children and complaining parents.
When we finally got home, Stephanie had to go teach so I went home to relax and stop thinking about children’ cold symptoms. We had soaked some beans, so I bought vegetables to cut up and make into a soup with the beans. I bought carrots, tomatoes, onions, and some seasoning, but was hovering near the section that had hot peppers. I knew the peppers were really hot (they make a sauce with them, but you can only use a few drops at a time), but the vegetable lady convinced me that if you take all the seeds out of them, they’re not hot at all. I decided a little bite in the bean soup couldn’t hurt, and so decided to buy just one small one.
Stephanie will tell you that what happens next is apparently “quintessential Meredith.” I don’t know what she’s talking about.
So I get home and start cutting up vegetables. I get to the pepper and carefully start to slice it and take out all the seeds. Somehow—and I still don’t know exactly how this happened—I wiped my face and got a seed in my eye. That’s right—pepper seed in the eye.
I ran screaming from room to room until I finally found a bucket of water. (Remember they turn the water off in Huancayo in the evenings.) I pried my eye open and started scooping water into it. Unfortunately, my hands were still covered in pepper-juice, so the more I rubbed, the more the burning spread all over my face. I’ve never actually sprayed myself in the face with pepper spray before, but I’m pretty sure I now have a good idea how it feels.
I eventually got the seed out of my eye, but was then left with a burning face. Remember, this is all being done in a bucket, so at some point I’m just splashing the same juice back onto my face. I finally manage to get up enough to grab the soap and switch buckets. I washed my face over and over for about 20 minutes until I could finally stand to take my head out of the water.
When Stephanie came home, she saw me standing in the kitchen with a bright red face and puffy eyes. There were two buckets out, and water splashed all over the floor and up the sides of the walls. “Um, Meredith, did somebody die?”
Day 3: My eyes are actually a normal color the next day, which is apparently a good sign according to the doctors I’m working with. Yay, I’m not going to go blind.
We’re working in the Methodist Church at El Tambor in Huancayo, which is luckily only a few blocks from our house. It’s a pretty nice venue for the clinic. Pediatrics has the entire upstairs room, plus a waiting area. Even better, we have our own working bathroom. I can’t even tell you how upscale that is.
There are quite a few kids, and again I’m translating for both doctors. We have so many that we end up working through most of lunch. This is not altogether tragic, as most of the lunches they gave us were terrible. Someone somewhere got the idea the Americans wouldn’t want to eat a Peruvian lunch, so they gave us boxes with terrible sandwiches (we’re talking 3 slices of white bread), a piece of cheap cake, and a juice box.
Luckily, the church staff had decided to cook their own lunch. A few of us lucky ones got invited back to eat our choice of spaghetti, potatoes, and anticuchos. (Anticuchos are strips of cow heart skewered and roasted. I have yet to try one.) I accepted a plate of spaghetti, thankful that I didn’t get the boxed lunch that day.
All was fine until about four that afternoon. We were especially busy with several serious patients, and I was talking fast to try to translate everything the doctors were saying. With little warning, I walked next door to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That damn spaghetti. Not the first time it’s happened since I’ve been here, but it’s never exactly pleasant.
The doctors were, to say the least, a bit surprised. They send me home, where my festivities continued for another three hours. I was supposed to teach a class at 6:30, but around 5:50 I realized I wasn’t going to be able to leave the house for quite some time. I called and canceled my class, telling the secretary that I was pretty sick. Unfortunately, the term I used (“Estoy enferma hoy”) is the same term women apparently use to describe their menstrual cycles in Peru. To this day I am not sure if the secretary thought I was canceling classes because I had started my period.
Day 4: By this time, people had begun to notice that my Facebook status was “Meredith is wondering why the universe apparently hates her.” I have to admit, I wasn’t too pleased with the universe either. I rolled out of bed Thursday morning, grabbed 3 things of Gatorade and crackers, and dragged myself to another day of translating muttering something like, “I hate my stomach.”
Luckily, the day was quite light. Very few kids, and we even had two translators for pediatrics. I finished the Gatorade, and was even glad to see the white bread at lunch.
By this time, we had discovered that we could buy movies for about a dollar. I went home that night, slept 3 hours in the afternoon and woke up to watch “The Holiday” with Stephanie when she got home.
Day 5: It’s amazing how much better life looks when you can eat. I woke up Friday morning actually pretty darn excited to be alive and in Peru. Our clinic that day was in Cullpa, in a beautiful little retreat center in the country. We had a lovely room, and a wonderful view of the mountains.
We finished up fairly early, and hung around so the pharmacy could sort medications to donate. I taught class that night (not my best class ever, but whatever), went home, and drank boxed sangria we’d bought at the grocery store. Thank God it’s Friday.
The Week
Day 1: Stephanie and I got back from the jungle at 9pm on Sunday night. At 8:30 on Monday morning, we were in a car with several other translators heading out to a small town called Concepción. A church from Florence, SC had brought a dentist, a gynecologist, an opthamologist, two pediatricians, several nurses and a few pharmacy people. A local Huancayo doctor joined the group to help with general medicine, and the plan was to offer a 1 day clinic in 5 different locations.I was assigned to work with pediatrics, and I think I got pretty much the best deal of all the translators. Stephanie was working with the gynecologist and learned a whole range of new vocabulary she never dreamed she’d need. (The title of her blog this week was something like “Yes, my ovaries hurt too.”) Jimmy was working with the dentist and had to physically restrain children who were terrified of the dental instruments and screaming so loudly you could hear them three rooms away. I, on the other hand, got to sit and play with kids all day.
This is my first time working with a project like this, I quickly learned about the benefits and limitations of having a one-day clinic. On the upside we saw far more people in one day that a normal practice could have, and we weren't constrained by people's insurance or money. On the downside, it's a one-time visit, and there's a lot you can't do in a one-time visit. I discovered that there are three kinds of kids that are brought into a one-day clinic. The first kind, which was most of the kids we saw, had absolutely nothing wrong with them. Their parents would bring them in and say “she won’t eat” or “he’s small for his age,” when really the kid was perfectly fine. For the ones who did have a slight cold, we handed out lots of Tylenol and Dimetapp. And of course, everyone got vitamins. Vitamins were the magic cure for “He’s not as big as his brother.”
The second kind were the children that really had something wrong with them that was easily curable. One girl came in with slight pneumonia, another had a fungus growing on his head. A few children had parasites. These are the kinds of things that are easily taken care of with a little medication, but of course the families had little resources for medication. In these cases the families were always extremely grateful that they could go to our pharmacy and pick up the medicines for free. The limitation is, of course, that if any sort of complication occurred, the family would have to go to a local doctor to follow up.
The third kind of kid we saw were the kids that had serious problems that the clinic could do nothing about. We saw several children with cerebral palsy, whose mothers knew there was probably nothing to do but brought the children out of desperation. There was at least one child who needed a surgery to be able to talk. Several children couldn’t walk, and were carried around (even until age 7 and 8) by their mothers who couldn’t afford wheelchairs. I explained to one mother that if she continued to work with her son’s legs everyday, maybe by the time he was six he would be able to take steps by himself.
It’s this third kind that really accentuates the difference between “developed” and “underdeveloped” places—as inadequate as those terms admittedly are—highlighted solely in the fact that parents in the U.S. have more options and education about their children’s conditions. Not that U.S. parents know how to care for their children any better, but they have the option—for example—of getting a wheelchair and physical therapy.
With the third type of kid, the doctors would just try to be as gentle as possible. We would give painkillers for minor aches, and sometimes tums for stomach aches. And of course we would give everyone vitamins. But you could see in the mothers’ eyes that they knew there was nothing we could really do.
Day 2: San Jeronimo, a little town known for silver work about 15 minutes from Huancayo. We saw 84 children in 5 hours. Yes, 84. They moved both pediatricians into the same room, so I translated for two doctors all day. I learned words I never thought I’d need to know, like “constipation,” “bloated,” “cyst,” and “diarrhea.” Apparently word got out that we gave out candy when we finished a consultation, so we had whole streams of kids saying things like “My head has hurt for the past 20 minutes” or “I get out of breath when I run.” That night I dreamt about translating for an endless line of children and complaining parents.When we finally got home, Stephanie had to go teach so I went home to relax and stop thinking about children’ cold symptoms. We had soaked some beans, so I bought vegetables to cut up and make into a soup with the beans. I bought carrots, tomatoes, onions, and some seasoning, but was hovering near the section that had hot peppers. I knew the peppers were really hot (they make a sauce with them, but you can only use a few drops at a time), but the vegetable lady convinced me that if you take all the seeds out of them, they’re not hot at all. I decided a little bite in the bean soup couldn’t hurt, and so decided to buy just one small one.
Stephanie will tell you that what happens next is apparently “quintessential Meredith.” I don’t know what she’s talking about.
So I get home and start cutting up vegetables. I get to the pepper and carefully start to slice it and take out all the seeds. Somehow—and I still don’t know exactly how this happened—I wiped my face and got a seed in my eye. That’s right—pepper seed in the eye.
I ran screaming from room to room until I finally found a bucket of water. (Remember they turn the water off in Huancayo in the evenings.) I pried my eye open and started scooping water into it. Unfortunately, my hands were still covered in pepper-juice, so the more I rubbed, the more the burning spread all over my face. I’ve never actually sprayed myself in the face with pepper spray before, but I’m pretty sure I now have a good idea how it feels.
I eventually got the seed out of my eye, but was then left with a burning face. Remember, this is all being done in a bucket, so at some point I’m just splashing the same juice back onto my face. I finally manage to get up enough to grab the soap and switch buckets. I washed my face over and over for about 20 minutes until I could finally stand to take my head out of the water.
When Stephanie came home, she saw me standing in the kitchen with a bright red face and puffy eyes. There were two buckets out, and water splashed all over the floor and up the sides of the walls. “Um, Meredith, did somebody die?”
Day 3: My eyes are actually a normal color the next day, which is apparently a good sign according to the doctors I’m working with. Yay, I’m not going to go blind.
We’re working in the Methodist Church at El Tambor in Huancayo, which is luckily only a few blocks from our house. It’s a pretty nice venue for the clinic. Pediatrics has the entire upstairs room, plus a waiting area. Even better, we have our own working bathroom. I can’t even tell you how upscale that is.There are quite a few kids, and again I’m translating for both doctors. We have so many that we end up working through most of lunch. This is not altogether tragic, as most of the lunches they gave us were terrible. Someone somewhere got the idea the Americans wouldn’t want to eat a Peruvian lunch, so they gave us boxes with terrible sandwiches (we’re talking 3 slices of white bread), a piece of cheap cake, and a juice box.
Luckily, the church staff had decided to cook their own lunch. A few of us lucky ones got invited back to eat our choice of spaghetti, potatoes, and anticuchos. (Anticuchos are strips of cow heart skewered and roasted. I have yet to try one.) I accepted a plate of spaghetti, thankful that I didn’t get the boxed lunch that day.
All was fine until about four that afternoon. We were especially busy with several serious patients, and I was talking fast to try to translate everything the doctors were saying. With little warning, I walked next door to the bathroom and puked my guts out. That damn spaghetti. Not the first time it’s happened since I’ve been here, but it’s never exactly pleasant.
The doctors were, to say the least, a bit surprised. They send me home, where my festivities continued for another three hours. I was supposed to teach a class at 6:30, but around 5:50 I realized I wasn’t going to be able to leave the house for quite some time. I called and canceled my class, telling the secretary that I was pretty sick. Unfortunately, the term I used (“Estoy enferma hoy”) is the same term women apparently use to describe their menstrual cycles in Peru. To this day I am not sure if the secretary thought I was canceling classes because I had started my period.
Day 4: By this time, people had begun to notice that my Facebook status was “Meredith is wondering why the universe apparently hates her.” I have to admit, I wasn’t too pleased with the universe either. I rolled out of bed Thursday morning, grabbed 3 things of Gatorade and crackers, and dragged myself to another day of translating muttering something like, “I hate my stomach.”
Luckily, the day was quite light. Very few kids, and we even had two translators for pediatrics. I finished the Gatorade, and was even glad to see the white bread at lunch.
By this time, we had discovered that we could buy movies for about a dollar. I went home that night, slept 3 hours in the afternoon and woke up to watch “The Holiday” with Stephanie when she got home.
Day 5: It’s amazing how much better life looks when you can eat. I woke up Friday morning actually pretty darn excited to be alive and in Peru. Our clinic that day was in Cullpa, in a beautiful little retreat center in the country. We had a lovely room, and a wonderful view of the mountains. We finished up fairly early, and hung around so the pharmacy could sort medications to donate. I taught class that night (not my best class ever, but whatever), went home, and drank boxed sangria we’d bought at the grocery store. Thank God it’s Friday.
Jun 19, 2007
The Selva
(Those who wish to view my photos of the jungle and are not on facebook should go to this link. Not all are actually my photos--my camera ran out of space pretty quick so I included some of Stephanie's photos also.)
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061893&l=bf9dd&id=1313457
My apologies to all that it has been two weeks since I have visited my beloved blog. These have been perhaps two of the busiest, craziest, weirdest weeks in my life. I have visited the Amazon, bathed in a river, eaten more rice in one sitting than perhaps in an entire month of life back in home, given myself semi-serious burns to the face with a hot pepper, gotten food poisoning, gotten over it, and translated for two doctors seeing 84 children in one day. This is why I haven’t blogged.
As this is far too much for my already-long blogs, I’m going to try to take it in bite-sized chunks. First bite: the Selva.
First some background: Stephanie and I are here as Duke Divinity students for our summer internship. The school has a relationship with a Peruvian Methodist pastor named César Llanco, so they send students down to help him. César is brilliant (which the District knows), and therefore highly overworked: he’s the chaplain of the very large Methodist high school, the head of the ecumenical seminary, and the pastor of a local church. He also coordinates most of the work groups that come in from the U.S.
Stephanie and I teach classes at San Pablo (the ecumenical seminary that César heads) and also at Probitem (the local Methodist seminary). Both seminaries charge very low tuition, and hold their classes at night since most people have to work during the day. In an attempt to offer a seminary education to rural churches, both seminaries also have extensions into various towns in the jungle. Teachers travel from Huancayo and give a week-long or weekend-long workshop to the extension churches in the jungle.
This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to a town called Pucharini as part of the extension program of Probitem (the Methodist seminary). The plan was to give two courses over the weekend: I taught intro to the Old Testament and Steph taught pastoral leadership. Most of the students in these classes have little to no education. They can read, but many have not finished high school. Thus we were encouraged to keep the level very simple, and not to lecture for too long at a time. (Which is, by the way, the only reason in the world I’m qualified to teach an introduction to the Old Testament. Keepin’ it simple.)
So here begins the real story. Friday morning, Stephanie and I packed ourselves into a fairly large bus and headed out on the five hour bus ride to La Merced, a main town in the Upper Amazon. If you ever find yourself on a busride in Peru, try not to go during the night. In the first place, I’m never really sure that those drivers (who are already taking the turns several hairs faster than I would) can actually see the road. But in the second place, you miss possibly the most incredibly view in the world. The trip from Huancayo to La Merced begins in the sierra, passing hundreds of dry, rocky mountain towns spotted with cacti and eucalyptus. The people raise cows and potatoes, and their faces are damaged from living far too close to the sun, making a 30-year-old woman sometimes look 50.
As the road goes lower, the mountains start to be covered in vegetation. We started passing entire mountains that were terraced, crop fields cut into the sides of incredibly steep earth. Many times, there would be a house built into the side of a mountain, alongside the terracing. We could see people going up and down the mountains to work in their fields, people who apparently lived their entire lives on a sharp incline.
We were surprised that the mountains never actually stopped, they just started to be covered more and more by thick vegetation. As you move into the jungle, the temperature changes and the mountains green, but the landscape doesn’t flatten in the slightest.
We arrived at LaMerced, ate lunch, and wrote another hour to Pucharini. Because the area is so mountainous, the road follows the river. Towns, then, spring up alongside the road and spread up the mountainside. Pucharini is one of these towns, with about a mile of houses between the river and road.
As soon as we stepped out of the car in Pucharini, I started having flashbacks of the 3 months I spent in rural Nicaragua. Same houses, same food, same weather, same beautiful scenery, same endless stream of curious children. I remembered suddenly what it’s like to not have any sort of distractions (or even communication with the outside world!) all day long. Everything moves a little bit slower. We would spend the hot afternoons just sitting in the shade and watching the river because there was really nothing else we needed to be doing at that time. It’s an entirely different—and not altogether unenviable—style of life.
Stephanie and I stayed with a family of 5 in Pucharini—Moises and Ruth, and their children Sadith, Dan, and Brion—who let us have one of the 2 bedrooms of their thatched house. Like all houses in this area, one side of the house was built open to the river, to get the breezes during the day. The rest of the house was simple wood with a dirt floor and a few windows. It’s actually a very practical design and it works wonderfully to keep cool during the day.
We taught all night Friday and most of the day Saturday. The classes actually went quite well, attended by a few students and a horde of local children. We discovered quickly that lectures could not hold attention very long, and we soon learned to intersperse them with group work and storytelling. Stephanie and I both learned a method of storytelling at Duke called Godly Play, which proved extraordinarily useful with the group.
I remember when I was a little girl that I would sometimes watch Disney jungle movies and then pretend for the next week that my bathtub was an Amazon river and my bed was a hammock in a treehouse somewhere. As we were bathing in the river Saturday morning (and by bathe, I mean rinse off face, legs, hands, and hair), I was a bit shocked to realize how close I’d gotten. This place really was a paradise of sorts. Children make rafts from palms and spend the afternoon playing in the river, people pick their breakfast off the tree every morning, and children pick flowers to put in their hair Sunday morning. Despite the fact that I was absolutely filthy—the natives know how to keep clean in rivers, but Stephanie and I were a constant mess of sunscreen, repellant, sweat, bugbites, and body odor—it was a little exciting.
Of course, I don’t mean to over-romanticize things. Stephanie and I were bitten by every kind of insect in the book, and slept on beds that were probably alternately used as torture devices. On a more serious level, the community is struggling with poverty, lack of education, sanitation issues, domestic violence, and devastating environmental change. It’s just interesting to me that those things are paired with so idyllic a location.
Saturday evening we lost a game of volleyball to some Peruvian girls. Apparently a requirement of being Peruvian is being freaking incredible at sports. We were on a team of four, and at first our teammates were excited about our height, thinking it would surely make us win. Little did they know…
Sunday morning we rode a little cart attached to a motorcycle up the side of the mountain to the church. The church is a simple concrete building, perched to overlook the mountains sloping down into the river. The kids put flowers in our hair, gave us fruit off the trees, and played Stephanie’s camera until the service started. Because the church is almost half children, we spent probably the first 45 minutes of the service singing songs that involve lots of clapping, jumping, and sometimes turning around.
As we were waiting for a car to come take us to the bus station, Brion—the youngest of Moises’ children—set to work trying to amuse us by throwing a chick in the air and watching it flap its wings as it fell to the ground. Sadith brought more flowers for our hair, and asked if we would ever come back. We said we would like to, but in all likelihood—probably not. As we drove away, I found myself wishing we were wrong. Maybe someday…
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2061893&l=bf9dd&id=1313457
My apologies to all that it has been two weeks since I have visited my beloved blog. These have been perhaps two of the busiest, craziest, weirdest weeks in my life. I have visited the Amazon, bathed in a river, eaten more rice in one sitting than perhaps in an entire month of life back in home, given myself semi-serious burns to the face with a hot pepper, gotten food poisoning, gotten over it, and translated for two doctors seeing 84 children in one day. This is why I haven’t blogged.
As this is far too much for my already-long blogs, I’m going to try to take it in bite-sized chunks. First bite: the Selva.
First some background: Stephanie and I are here as Duke Divinity students for our summer internship. The school has a relationship with a Peruvian Methodist pastor named César Llanco, so they send students down to help him. César is brilliant (which the District knows), and therefore highly overworked: he’s the chaplain of the very large Methodist high school, the head of the ecumenical seminary, and the pastor of a local church. He also coordinates most of the work groups that come in from the U.S. 
Stephanie and I teach classes at San Pablo (the ecumenical seminary that César heads) and also at Probitem (the local Methodist seminary). Both seminaries charge very low tuition, and hold their classes at night since most people have to work during the day. In an attempt to offer a seminary education to rural churches, both seminaries also have extensions into various towns in the jungle. Teachers travel from Huancayo and give a week-long or weekend-long workshop to the extension churches in the jungle. This past weekend, Stephanie and I went to a town called Pucharini as part of the extension program of Probitem (the Methodist seminary). The plan was to give two courses over the weekend: I taught intro to the Old Testament and Steph taught pastoral leadership. Most of the students in these classes have little to no education. They can read, but many have not finished high school. Thus we were encouraged to keep the level very simple, and not to lecture for too long at a time. (Which is, by the way, the only reason in the world I’m qualified to teach an introduction to the Old Testament. Keepin’ it simple.)
So here begins the real story. Friday morning, Stephanie and I packed ourselves into a fairly large bus and headed out on the five hour bus ride to La Merced, a main town in the Upper Amazon. If you ever find yourself on a busride in Peru, try not to go during the night. In the first place, I’m never really sure that those drivers (who are already taking the turns several hairs faster than I would) can actually see the road. But in the second place, you miss possibly the most incredibly view in the world. The trip from Huancayo to La Merced begins in the sierra, passing hundreds of dry, rocky mountain towns spotted with cacti and eucalyptus. The people raise cows and potatoes, and their faces are damaged from living far too close to the sun, making a 30-year-old woman sometimes look 50.
As the road goes lower, the mountains start to be covered in vegetation. We started passing entire mountains that were terraced, crop fields cut into the sides of incredibly steep earth. Many times, there would be a house built into the side of a mountain, alongside the terracing. We could see people going up and down the mountains to work in their fields, people who apparently lived their entire lives on a sharp incline.We were surprised that the mountains never actually stopped, they just started to be covered more and more by thick vegetation. As you move into the jungle, the temperature changes and the mountains green, but the landscape doesn’t flatten in the slightest.
We arrived at LaMerced, ate lunch, and wrote another hour to Pucharini. Because the area is so mountainous, the road follows the river. Towns, then, spring up alongside the road and spread up the mountainside. Pucharini is one of these towns, with about a mile of houses between the river and road.
As soon as we stepped out of the car in Pucharini, I started having flashbacks of the 3 months I spent in rural Nicaragua. Same houses, same food, same weather, same beautiful scenery, same endless stream of curious children. I remembered suddenly what it’s like to not have any sort of distractions (or even communication with the outside world!) all day long. Everything moves a little bit slower. We would spend the hot afternoons just sitting in the shade and watching the river because there was really nothing else we needed to be doing at that time. It’s an entirely different—and not altogether unenviable—style of life.
Stephanie and I stayed with a family of 5 in Pucharini—Moises and Ruth, and their children Sadith, Dan, and Brion—who let us have one of the 2 bedrooms of their thatched house. Like all houses in this area, one side of the house was built open to the river, to get the breezes during the day. The rest of the house was simple wood with a dirt floor and a few windows. It’s actually a very practical design and it works wonderfully to keep cool during the day.
We taught all night Friday and most of the day Saturday. The classes actually went quite well, attended by a few students and a horde of local children. We discovered quickly that lectures could not hold attention very long, and we soon learned to intersperse them with group work and storytelling. Stephanie and I both learned a method of storytelling at Duke called Godly Play, which proved extraordinarily useful with the group.
I remember when I was a little girl that I would sometimes watch Disney jungle movies and then pretend for the next week that my bathtub was an Amazon river and my bed was a hammock in a treehouse somewhere. As we were bathing in the river Saturday morning (and by bathe, I mean rinse off face, legs, hands, and hair), I was a bit shocked to realize how close I’d gotten. This place really was a paradise of sorts. Children make rafts from palms and spend the afternoon playing in the river, people pick their breakfast off the tree every morning, and children pick flowers to put in their hair Sunday morning. Despite the fact that I was absolutely filthy—the natives know how to keep clean in rivers, but Stephanie and I were a constant mess of sunscreen, repellant, sweat, bugbites, and body odor—it was a little exciting.Of course, I don’t mean to over-romanticize things. Stephanie and I were bitten by every kind of insect in the book, and slept on beds that were probably alternately used as torture devices. On a more serious level, the community is struggling with poverty, lack of education, sanitation issues, domestic violence, and devastating environmental change. It’s just interesting to me that those things are paired with so idyllic a location.
Saturday evening we lost a game of volleyball to some Peruvian girls. Apparently a requirement of being Peruvian is being freaking incredible at sports. We were on a team of four, and at first our teammates were excited about our height, thinking it would surely make us win. Little did they know…
Sunday morning we rode a little cart attached to a motorcycle up the side of the mountain to the church. The church is a simple concrete building, perched to overlook the mountains sloping down into the river. The kids put flowers in our hair, gave us fruit off the trees, and played Stephanie’s camera until the service started. Because the church is almost half children, we spent probably the first 45 minutes of the service singing songs that involve lots of clapping, jumping, and sometimes turning around.
As we were waiting for a car to come take us to the bus station, Brion—the youngest of Moises’ children—set to work trying to amuse us by throwing a chick in the air and watching it flap its wings as it fell to the ground. Sadith brought more flowers for our hair, and asked if we would ever come back. We said we would like to, but in all likelihood—probably not. As we drove away, I found myself wishing we were wrong. Maybe someday…
Jun 3, 2007
Being Extranjera
Stephanie and I have realized that extranjeras (foreign women) are allowed to do whatever they want and commit all sorts of social errors that Peruvians just couldn’t get away with—like buying just one piece of bread or ordering yogurt at the wrong time of day. And it’s days like today that make me extraordinarily glad for that.
We woke up this morning to the sounds of the evangelical Catholic church on the corner. It seems that anyone in Peru who can afford a megaphone has the right to use it, so they project their services starting at about 6:30 in the morning and ending around 7 at night. It woke us up the first morning, but there are so many megaphones around that we’ve kind of gotten used to it by now. Not kidding: the palta (avocado) guy starts at 6:15: “palta! palta! palta! palta para el desayuno!”
As luck would have it, I actually had a great shower this morning. I took my shower first, and experienced what some might call hot water. It was awesome. Stephanie, unfortunately, was not so lucky. I knew things were bad when I heard here trying to coax the hot water out of the shower with a kind of whiny, sing-song voice. (FYI, we definitely talk to the inanimate objects in our apartment. Whoever said talking to water doesn’t make it boil faster has never lived in Peru.)
Things did not improve. Electricity was sketchy, and hot water was completely on strike. Worse, we had just gotten back from a retreat the night before, so we were both sunburned and disgusting. I decided to go buy veggies for lentil soup (we learned how to make lentil soup!). As I left, Stephanie was standing next to the shower in her underwear and a T-shirt, verbally pleading for warm water and wondering if a cold shower was really all that bad.
The market outside our house on Sundays is especially busy. We’ve discovered the avocado guy, and we also discovered that avocado goes with everything we cook. So we regularly buy enormous avocados (seriously, about the size of a small child) for 30 cents a piece. I visited this man first, then went down the street to get tomatoes, onion, and a carrot.
On my way back, I stopped by the store beneath our apartment (the one owned by our duena’s daughter-in-law) to get bottled water and pasta. I briefly considered buying beer, but then realized we didn’t have a bottle-opener yet.
As I was checking out, someone came up and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find my supervisor, César. As background, you should know that César is awesome. Seriously, maybe the best supervisor I’ve ever had. However, both Stephanie and I have something of a complex about the fact that we can never manage to get grammar quite right around him. He actually probably thinks we’re retarded by this point, but figures he’s got to put up with us for the rest of the summer so he might as well not mention anything.
So César is comes up to me while I’m checking out, and I am suddenly quite glad I decided not to buy beer. Not that I think he’s a teetotaler, but still: in a country where most religious folk prohibit drinking, it probably wouldn’t be great for a seminary teacher to be buying beer at 9am on Sunday morning.
We small talk for a few minutes, and I consider making a joke about how Stephanie didn’t have water, something like “Stephanie’s standing outside the shower in her underwear waiting for the hot water to start.” I decided not to because I figured I’d probably screw it up and say something like, “I’m wearing Stephanie’s underwear right now.”
Luckily, the small-talk chat ended harmlessly. He probably still doesn’t think much of my intelligence, but at least I didn’t accidentally lead him to believe Stephanie and I regularly exchange underwear.
Upon entering the apartment again, Stephanie was still arguing with the shower, and it looked like the shower was winning. I probably would have given up and just braided my hair that day, but Stephanie is much more persistent than I. And apparently perseverance pays off: as I was making tea in the kitchen I heard a scream midsentence from the bathroom that apparently signified the hot water was working.
Stephanie finished her (hot) shower just in time to get to church. We go to the smaller of the two Methodist churches in Huancayo: a congregation of about 50 that meets in a rented room about three blocks from our apartment. Services are usually about an hour and a half, and consist of several songs (which everyone else knows the words to, because there are no songbooks), a pretty long sermon, and at least 3 “greeting times.” During these greeting times, people walk around and greet everyone else in the sanctuary by kissing them on the cheek and saying something meaningful—usually “God bless you” or “Peace be with you” or, in my case, “Hi.”
There is an art to the cheek kiss that I seem not to have mastered. I learned in Spain that it’s more of a touching cheeks than actually kissing, but here it seems to be somewhat more complicated. After much observation, Stephanie and I have come to the conclusion that the men actually kiss cheeks, while women touch cheeks and make a kissing sound. Which means that when a woman greets someone in this manner, she aims with her cheek rather than her lips. This is the part I don’t seem to be able to get. For some reason, I am unable to control the velocity of my head, so that I either miss completely (leading to an embarrassing do-over) or accidentally inflict a head-butt with my cheek (leading to an embarrassing apology and—depending on how old the victim is—an offer to go get some ice).
This morning was communion Sunday, meaning that we all filed up front and had yet another “greeting time.” I managed not to injure anyone this time, but did startle an older woman when I accidentally hit her with my cheekbone. After greeting time, César and the other pastor (Jaime) walked around the circle to give communion. They served by intinction, so each person took a piece of bread and dipped it in the…whatever that was. (I think some sort of juice…definitely not grape juice or wine). Great, I finally know what’s going on. I took my bread dipped it in the cup, and put it in my mouth. It was at that moment that Stephanie elbowed me in the ribs and pointed out that everyone else was still holding theirs. Apparently, Peruvians wait for everyone to be served before eating the elements.
My first instinct was to spit out the bread that I hadn’t swallowed yet, until Stephanie pointed out in a loud English whisper that that would be disgusting. The second best option was to hold it un-chewed in my mouth, and then pretend to eat something when everyone else did.
Unfortunately, by this time Stephanie (who had not eaten her bread) was cracking up, which was making me crack up. This was not good, both because I had a piece of bread in my mouth and because the rest of the church was praying. I tried to stifle it, but—unlike Stephanie—I have not been gifted with the ability to laugh silently. My stifled laughter tends to sound somewhere between a horse snorting and a goose being chased by a wild hog, a hard sound to pass off as crying or some other pious activity. This made Stephanie laugh even more, which made me laugh even more, which made the congregation think that perhaps I was choking. I held my hands in front of my face, partly to mask the sound and partly to make it look like I still had my bread.
Luckily, communion ended soon and Stephanie and I were free to go to the back of the church and laugh to our hearts content. Nobody mentioned anything, although I did notice that one lady shook my hand instead of kissing me goodbye.
We woke up this morning to the sounds of the evangelical Catholic church on the corner. It seems that anyone in Peru who can afford a megaphone has the right to use it, so they project their services starting at about 6:30 in the morning and ending around 7 at night. It woke us up the first morning, but there are so many megaphones around that we’ve kind of gotten used to it by now. Not kidding: the palta (avocado) guy starts at 6:15: “palta! palta! palta! palta para el desayuno!”
As luck would have it, I actually had a great shower this morning. I took my shower first, and experienced what some might call hot water. It was awesome. Stephanie, unfortunately, was not so lucky. I knew things were bad when I heard here trying to coax the hot water out of the shower with a kind of whiny, sing-song voice. (FYI, we definitely talk to the inanimate objects in our apartment. Whoever said talking to water doesn’t make it boil faster has never lived in Peru.)
Things did not improve. Electricity was sketchy, and hot water was completely on strike. Worse, we had just gotten back from a retreat the night before, so we were both sunburned and disgusting. I decided to go buy veggies for lentil soup (we learned how to make lentil soup!). As I left, Stephanie was standing next to the shower in her underwear and a T-shirt, verbally pleading for warm water and wondering if a cold shower was really all that bad.
The market outside our house on Sundays is especially busy. We’ve discovered the avocado guy, and we also discovered that avocado goes with everything we cook. So we regularly buy enormous avocados (seriously, about the size of a small child) for 30 cents a piece. I visited this man first, then went down the street to get tomatoes, onion, and a carrot.
On my way back, I stopped by the store beneath our apartment (the one owned by our duena’s daughter-in-law) to get bottled water and pasta. I briefly considered buying beer, but then realized we didn’t have a bottle-opener yet.
As I was checking out, someone came up and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around to find my supervisor, César. As background, you should know that César is awesome. Seriously, maybe the best supervisor I’ve ever had. However, both Stephanie and I have something of a complex about the fact that we can never manage to get grammar quite right around him. He actually probably thinks we’re retarded by this point, but figures he’s got to put up with us for the rest of the summer so he might as well not mention anything.
So César is comes up to me while I’m checking out, and I am suddenly quite glad I decided not to buy beer. Not that I think he’s a teetotaler, but still: in a country where most religious folk prohibit drinking, it probably wouldn’t be great for a seminary teacher to be buying beer at 9am on Sunday morning.
We small talk for a few minutes, and I consider making a joke about how Stephanie didn’t have water, something like “Stephanie’s standing outside the shower in her underwear waiting for the hot water to start.” I decided not to because I figured I’d probably screw it up and say something like, “I’m wearing Stephanie’s underwear right now.”
Luckily, the small-talk chat ended harmlessly. He probably still doesn’t think much of my intelligence, but at least I didn’t accidentally lead him to believe Stephanie and I regularly exchange underwear.
Upon entering the apartment again, Stephanie was still arguing with the shower, and it looked like the shower was winning. I probably would have given up and just braided my hair that day, but Stephanie is much more persistent than I. And apparently perseverance pays off: as I was making tea in the kitchen I heard a scream midsentence from the bathroom that apparently signified the hot water was working.
Stephanie finished her (hot) shower just in time to get to church. We go to the smaller of the two Methodist churches in Huancayo: a congregation of about 50 that meets in a rented room about three blocks from our apartment. Services are usually about an hour and a half, and consist of several songs (which everyone else knows the words to, because there are no songbooks), a pretty long sermon, and at least 3 “greeting times.” During these greeting times, people walk around and greet everyone else in the sanctuary by kissing them on the cheek and saying something meaningful—usually “God bless you” or “Peace be with you” or, in my case, “Hi.”
There is an art to the cheek kiss that I seem not to have mastered. I learned in Spain that it’s more of a touching cheeks than actually kissing, but here it seems to be somewhat more complicated. After much observation, Stephanie and I have come to the conclusion that the men actually kiss cheeks, while women touch cheeks and make a kissing sound. Which means that when a woman greets someone in this manner, she aims with her cheek rather than her lips. This is the part I don’t seem to be able to get. For some reason, I am unable to control the velocity of my head, so that I either miss completely (leading to an embarrassing do-over) or accidentally inflict a head-butt with my cheek (leading to an embarrassing apology and—depending on how old the victim is—an offer to go get some ice).
This morning was communion Sunday, meaning that we all filed up front and had yet another “greeting time.” I managed not to injure anyone this time, but did startle an older woman when I accidentally hit her with my cheekbone. After greeting time, César and the other pastor (Jaime) walked around the circle to give communion. They served by intinction, so each person took a piece of bread and dipped it in the…whatever that was. (I think some sort of juice…definitely not grape juice or wine). Great, I finally know what’s going on. I took my bread dipped it in the cup, and put it in my mouth. It was at that moment that Stephanie elbowed me in the ribs and pointed out that everyone else was still holding theirs. Apparently, Peruvians wait for everyone to be served before eating the elements.
My first instinct was to spit out the bread that I hadn’t swallowed yet, until Stephanie pointed out in a loud English whisper that that would be disgusting. The second best option was to hold it un-chewed in my mouth, and then pretend to eat something when everyone else did.
Unfortunately, by this time Stephanie (who had not eaten her bread) was cracking up, which was making me crack up. This was not good, both because I had a piece of bread in my mouth and because the rest of the church was praying. I tried to stifle it, but—unlike Stephanie—I have not been gifted with the ability to laugh silently. My stifled laughter tends to sound somewhere between a horse snorting and a goose being chased by a wild hog, a hard sound to pass off as crying or some other pious activity. This made Stephanie laugh even more, which made me laugh even more, which made the congregation think that perhaps I was choking. I held my hands in front of my face, partly to mask the sound and partly to make it look like I still had my bread.
Luckily, communion ended soon and Stephanie and I were free to go to the back of the church and laugh to our hearts content. Nobody mentioned anything, although I did notice that one lady shook my hand instead of kissing me goodbye.
May 28, 2007
About that Retreat...
(For those of you without Facebook, you can go to the following sites to see my pictures:)
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059682&l=ee39c&id=1313457
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059389&l=daa88&id=1313457
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059992&l=7b41e&id=1313457
This entry was originally going to be entitled, “Why I Hate Youth.” Those of you who have never been a leader on a youth retreat may be wondering about this newfound resentment. Let me explain:
I finished teaching a 3-hour class on Friday night around 9, and I was completely exhausted. The retreat had already started, so I grabbed some stuff and headed out around 11 to the retreat center in Chupaca. (Yes, it sounds exactly like the Star Wars character.) When I got there (remember, still really tired), Stephanie informed me that we were the only two adults staying in the girls’ dormitory. Worse, we found out that someone—specifically, one of the screaming horde of teenage girls running through the halls—had taken the key to the front door.
The key allows the door to be dead-bolted, effectively locking everyone in for the night. The only reason someone would want the key is if they wanted to sneak out. (In a move of brilliant planning, the windows are too small even for the smallest teenagers to crawl out of.) We were told we had two options: find the key or stay up all night to keep them from escaping.
Two searches proved entirely unfruitful. A key is a ridiculously small thing to find, especially if you’d really rather not be looking for it. Stephanie tried pulling out her bitchy teacher voice, but to no avail. The kids were far better at looking innocent than we were at figuring out which ones weren’t. It probably would have been funny if we hadn’t been delirious with sleep.
Finally we came to terms with the fact that we were not going to find the key, and that were not going to stay up all night looking for it. Next best thing?
Stephanie and I pulled every heavy object in the room in front of the door. Fire hazard? Yes. At that point, we weren’t particularly upset with the idea of every person in that building dying a horrible, lingering death. Actually, everything we put in front of the door could be moved pretty easily, but it couldn’t be moved without making a lot of noise. When the girls saw us blockading the door, they suddenly became righteously indignant. “Don’t you trust us? Why would you do something like that?”
Yeah, and why are you wearing a jacket and high heels, twerp?
The plan was originally to sleep with the door open so we would hear if they tried to move the furniture. This plan did not take into account, however, the fact that the hallways were entirely tile and highly acoustic. We could have heard a whisper, if there had been any of those. What we heard instead was high-pitched shrieking that seemed to occur for no particular reason. Seriously, there would be a knock, a shriek (read: piercing, piercing shriek), and then a slamming door. Over, and over, and over. Apparently, this game is quite entertaining to the 15 year-old female. We gave up and closed the door pretty early on, but teenage screaming has a way of breaking all sound barriers. Again, it probably would have been funny if we’d been wearing earplugs and hadn’t been delirious with sleep.
Finally Stephanie and I decided to pull “The Adult.” Stephanie stuck her head out of the door (the hallway was dark so they couldn’t see us) and yelled something about everyone going to bed. The reaction was priceless: a full twenty seconds of screaming, at least one O Dios mio!, several slamming doors, and then hushed laughing. The quiet didn’t even last a full minute.
Repeat this scenario 6 times (no, not an exaggeration), until we finally passed out.
Needless to say, we weren’t in the best mood the next day. And to top everything off, there was no water. Halfway through the day I had the brilliant idea of buying a bottle of water to wash my face, only to discover they only had carbonated water. Eh, still water, right? Note: if you ever decide to wash your face with carbonated water, prepare yourself for a strong burning sensation and a deep flush for several minutes afterward.
The topic of the weekend was relationships, and we were trying to get everyone to talk about family relationships. It actually went okay all day, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that I decided I couldn’t wholly detest them.
It was the last small-group session, and the kids were supposed to talk about the topic (families) and then come together and present something (a skit or song or whatever) to the whole group. It was the end of the day and everyone was exhausted. Stephanie told the story of Ruth and started asking questions to get people talking, but it didn’t work. Finally one girl suggested that the group re-tell the Ruth story as a skit for their presentation.
From that moment on, Stephanie and I hardly said a word. The kids adopted the story to make 2 chapters into a complicated, 35-minute dramatic presentation. Here’s the summary, as best as I can remember it:
Naomi and Elimelech lived together in Huancayo. They had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. One day, while Mahlon and Chilion were surfing (remember, Huancayo is in the mountains), their father died. They rushed to his side, administered useless CPR, and all three characters had a highly dramatic moment weeping for their deceased husband/father. Finally Naomi regained composure and told her sons they were moving to Lima to get a fresh start.
So they go to Lima. Mahlon and Chilion enter the university, where they meet Ruth and Orpah. The first time they practiced the courting scene, Mahlon and Chilion staggered around with fake beer bottles, chanting, “Amiga! Nos casamos, eh?” When we suggested an alternate character choice, they became mentally challenged, lisping and muttering, “Tú eres mujer. ¿Tú me casas?” When we ixnayed that one too, they put on their smoothest personas, sauntered up to the girls, and said—in the most nonchalant tone possible—“Señorita, una preguntita, ¿quieres casarte conmigo?”
Of course, the girls agreed and all four walked happily offstage. Tragically, Mahlon and Chilion suffered a car accident on the way home from the discoteca one day. Ruth and Orpah rushed to the scene, but even a full 3 minutes of CPR proved sadly unfruitful.
The women met with their mother-in-law to tell her the bad news and the three had a highly dramatic mourning scene. Unfortunately, Mahlon and Chilion thought that their death—as exciting as it was—was a very poor plot choice. Thus during the following scene, they kept coming back as ghosts/zombies to haunt their widows/mother. Usually they would simply wander around and try to distract the women, but in one particularly graphic character choice, Chilion actually pulled out and ate Naomi’s heart. Apparently zombies do that.
After the mourning, Naomi told her daughters-in-law that they should go back to their families. “You’re young, you still have a chance in life.” Orpah left with a “Bueno, ciao,” but Ruth, of course, clung to Naomi with the famous where-you-go-I-will-go lines. Oh yeah, we’re talking drama. Latin daytime soap-opera drama, complete with fake tears and over-the-top facial expressions.
So Naomi and Ruth went back to Huancayo, where Ruth one day sauntered past a well-dressed man sitting on a park bench reading a magazine. She casually dropped her handkerchief in front of him—a detail which the audience adored. Boaz, of course, picked up her handkerchief and then proposed.
Which brings us to the wedding. Oh yes, there was a wedding. Mahlon had learned to play the first line of the wedding march on the synthesizer, so at this point in the skit Ruth walked down the aisle with an orange veil (don’t ask) to sound of a full organ. Unfortunately, Mahlon was so happy with himself for learning the first line of the wedding march that he kept playing it. By the third time, we realized that he wasn’t going to stop playing it until someone unplugged the synthesizer which, thankfully, Naomi did by the sixth time.
And yes, there was a full wedding ceremony. This was actually the favorite of the audience, because after all, what is a wedding without a kiss? They chanted beso! beso! beso! until the priest finally threw the orange veil over their heads to make it look like they kissed. The crowd went wild.
The moral of the story was that families don’t have to be related by blood to live together like families, and that maybe teenagers aren’t wholly detestable after all.
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059682&l=ee39c&id=1313457
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059389&l=daa88&id=1313457
http://duke.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2059992&l=7b41e&id=1313457
This entry was originally going to be entitled, “Why I Hate Youth.” Those of you who have never been a leader on a youth retreat may be wondering about this newfound resentment. Let me explain:
I finished teaching a 3-hour class on Friday night around 9, and I was completely exhausted. The retreat had already started, so I grabbed some stuff and headed out around 11 to the retreat center in Chupaca. (Yes, it sounds exactly like the Star Wars character.) When I got there (remember, still really tired), Stephanie informed me that we were the only two adults staying in the girls’ dormitory. Worse, we found out that someone—specifically, one of the screaming horde of teenage girls running through the halls—had taken the key to the front door.
The key allows the door to be dead-bolted, effectively locking everyone in for the night. The only reason someone would want the key is if they wanted to sneak out. (In a move of brilliant planning, the windows are too small even for the smallest teenagers to crawl out of.) We were told we had two options: find the key or stay up all night to keep them from escaping.
Two searches proved entirely unfruitful. A key is a ridiculously small thing to find, especially if you’d really rather not be looking for it. Stephanie tried pulling out her bitchy teacher voice, but to no avail. The kids were far better at looking innocent than we were at figuring out which ones weren’t. It probably would have been funny if we hadn’t been delirious with sleep.
Finally we came to terms with the fact that we were not going to find the key, and that were not going to stay up all night looking for it. Next best thing?
Stephanie and I pulled every heavy object in the room in front of the door. Fire hazard? Yes. At that point, we weren’t particularly upset with the idea of every person in that building dying a horrible, lingering death. Actually, everything we put in front of the door could be moved pretty easily, but it couldn’t be moved without making a lot of noise. When the girls saw us blockading the door, they suddenly became righteously indignant. “Don’t you trust us? Why would you do something like that?”
Yeah, and why are you wearing a jacket and high heels, twerp?
The plan was originally to sleep with the door open so we would hear if they tried to move the furniture. This plan did not take into account, however, the fact that the hallways were entirely tile and highly acoustic. We could have heard a whisper, if there had been any of those. What we heard instead was high-pitched shrieking that seemed to occur for no particular reason. Seriously, there would be a knock, a shriek (read: piercing, piercing shriek), and then a slamming door. Over, and over, and over. Apparently, this game is quite entertaining to the 15 year-old female. We gave up and closed the door pretty early on, but teenage screaming has a way of breaking all sound barriers. Again, it probably would have been funny if we’d been wearing earplugs and hadn’t been delirious with sleep.
Finally Stephanie and I decided to pull “The Adult.” Stephanie stuck her head out of the door (the hallway was dark so they couldn’t see us) and yelled something about everyone going to bed. The reaction was priceless: a full twenty seconds of screaming, at least one O Dios mio!, several slamming doors, and then hushed laughing. The quiet didn’t even last a full minute.
Repeat this scenario 6 times (no, not an exaggeration), until we finally passed out.
Needless to say, we weren’t in the best mood the next day. And to top everything off, there was no water. Halfway through the day I had the brilliant idea of buying a bottle of water to wash my face, only to discover they only had carbonated water. Eh, still water, right? Note: if you ever decide to wash your face with carbonated water, prepare yourself for a strong burning sensation and a deep flush for several minutes afterward.
The topic of the weekend was relationships, and we were trying to get everyone to talk about family relationships. It actually went okay all day, but it wasn’t until the end of the day that I decided I couldn’t wholly detest them.
It was the last small-group session, and the kids were supposed to talk about the topic (families) and then come together and present something (a skit or song or whatever) to the whole group. It was the end of the day and everyone was exhausted. Stephanie told the story of Ruth and started asking questions to get people talking, but it didn’t work. Finally one girl suggested that the group re-tell the Ruth story as a skit for their presentation.
From that moment on, Stephanie and I hardly said a word. The kids adopted the story to make 2 chapters into a complicated, 35-minute dramatic presentation. Here’s the summary, as best as I can remember it:
Naomi and Elimelech lived together in Huancayo. They had two sons, Mahlon and Chilion. One day, while Mahlon and Chilion were surfing (remember, Huancayo is in the mountains), their father died. They rushed to his side, administered useless CPR, and all three characters had a highly dramatic moment weeping for their deceased husband/father. Finally Naomi regained composure and told her sons they were moving to Lima to get a fresh start.
So they go to Lima. Mahlon and Chilion enter the university, where they meet Ruth and Orpah. The first time they practiced the courting scene, Mahlon and Chilion staggered around with fake beer bottles, chanting, “Amiga! Nos casamos, eh?” When we suggested an alternate character choice, they became mentally challenged, lisping and muttering, “Tú eres mujer. ¿Tú me casas?” When we ixnayed that one too, they put on their smoothest personas, sauntered up to the girls, and said—in the most nonchalant tone possible—“Señorita, una preguntita, ¿quieres casarte conmigo?”
Of course, the girls agreed and all four walked happily offstage. Tragically, Mahlon and Chilion suffered a car accident on the way home from the discoteca one day. Ruth and Orpah rushed to the scene, but even a full 3 minutes of CPR proved sadly unfruitful.
The women met with their mother-in-law to tell her the bad news and the three had a highly dramatic mourning scene. Unfortunately, Mahlon and Chilion thought that their death—as exciting as it was—was a very poor plot choice. Thus during the following scene, they kept coming back as ghosts/zombies to haunt their widows/mother. Usually they would simply wander around and try to distract the women, but in one particularly graphic character choice, Chilion actually pulled out and ate Naomi’s heart. Apparently zombies do that.
After the mourning, Naomi told her daughters-in-law that they should go back to their families. “You’re young, you still have a chance in life.” Orpah left with a “Bueno, ciao,” but Ruth, of course, clung to Naomi with the famous where-you-go-I-will-go lines. Oh yeah, we’re talking drama. Latin daytime soap-opera drama, complete with fake tears and over-the-top facial expressions.
So Naomi and Ruth went back to Huancayo, where Ruth one day sauntered past a well-dressed man sitting on a park bench reading a magazine. She casually dropped her handkerchief in front of him—a detail which the audience adored. Boaz, of course, picked up her handkerchief and then proposed.
Which brings us to the wedding. Oh yes, there was a wedding. Mahlon had learned to play the first line of the wedding march on the synthesizer, so at this point in the skit Ruth walked down the aisle with an orange veil (don’t ask) to sound of a full organ. Unfortunately, Mahlon was so happy with himself for learning the first line of the wedding march that he kept playing it. By the third time, we realized that he wasn’t going to stop playing it until someone unplugged the synthesizer which, thankfully, Naomi did by the sixth time.
And yes, there was a full wedding ceremony. This was actually the favorite of the audience, because after all, what is a wedding without a kiss? They chanted beso! beso! beso! until the priest finally threw the orange veil over their heads to make it look like they kissed. The crowd went wild.
The moral of the story was that families don’t have to be related by blood to live together like families, and that maybe teenagers aren’t wholly detestable after all.
May 24, 2007
The Apartment
Apparently, our supervisor had some problems placing the last Duke intern in a suitable location. Really, the problem was just that Duke sent her down her by herself and being here alone would really suck. But the mixup proved to be to Stephanie’s and my benefit, as everyone seems to be super-concerned about making sure we are comfortable.
Thus: the apartment. It’s pretty big, actually, especially for what we were expecting to have. It has a concrete floor that is always cold and turns your socks red, white walls, and a single window out over the street.
Our favorite part of the apartment is the little Cocina, where we have (so far) learned to make broccoli-pasta and tea. We’re working our way up to torilla, but we think we might save that for a Sunday when there’s nothing else to do. Huancayo is struggling with a water shortage, so all water is turned off city-wide at 5 pm. Thus all evening cooking/cleaning is done with water from the water buckets you see pictured.
Which also means, all showering must be done before 5 pm. This is usually not a problem, unless the hot-water is feeling finicky, which it is several times a week. After a week, we have finally managed to come to a truce with Shower: if we follow the following steps in order, Shower will usually decide to give us at least a measure of warmish water. If you don’t follow these steps, you might end up bathing with water that actually causes your heart to stop. No kidding: in my first cold shower I actually had trouble breathing.
The Steps:
1) Turn water on.
2) Turn water-heater on.
3) Wait.
4) If you’re lucky, you’ll soon being to hear a whirring sound that signifies that the water-heater is doing something.
a. If you’re unlucky, consider using more deodorant that day.
5) At this point, bathe as quickly as possible.
a. If you hear the water-heater stop, deftly step out of the stream of water and wait.
b. If it starts again, continue to bathe rapidly.
c. If it doesn’t, hold your breath and try to bathe allowing as little water to touch your body as possible.
6) Sometimes Shower will respond to a change in water pressure. For example, turning the water pressure down may lead to warmer water.
a. HOWEVER, be advised that touching either the shower knob or head will lead to mild electric shock. This is (hopefully) not dangerous, but does leave a painfully tingly sensation in the fingers or whatever appendage happened to touch aforementioned objects.
7) Turn off the shower, put on as much fleece as you own, and curl up under the covers until you can feel your fingers again.
Which brings us to the final part: the Beds. Originally, Cesar gave us the cot-type beds with thin mattresses that some people use for camping. They are actually quite comfortable at first, but after about two nights one becomes painfully aware that there is a bar right across the small of one’s back. However, as the beds were only used for watching Arrested Development and sleeping, we didn’t care much. Besides, if you fold up your fleece pants across the bar, you almost can’t feel it.
Much to our surprise, our duena knocked on our door a few days ago and asked if we wanted a bed. “Um, ok.” Isn’t Peru great? People just come up to your door and offer you things like beds! (And one time a random cardboard box with styrofoam peanuts still inside.)
Apparently, they had been feeling somewhat guilty about giving us camping cots, and had been actively looking for other beds since our arrival. So we brought in the new, bar-less bed, put the extra mattress on top of Stephanie’s bed (she’s like 4 feet off the ground now), and slept about 10 hours that night.
Thus: the apartment. It’s pretty big, actually, especially for what we were expecting to have. It has a concrete floor that is always cold and turns your socks red, white walls, and a single window out over the street.
Our favorite part of the apartment is the little Cocina, where we have (so far) learned to make broccoli-pasta and tea. We’re working our way up to torilla, but we think we might save that for a Sunday when there’s nothing else to do. Huancayo is struggling with a water shortage, so all water is turned off city-wide at 5 pm. Thus all evening cooking/cleaning is done with water from the water buckets you see pictured.Which also means, all showering must be done before 5 pm. This is usually not a problem, unless the hot-water is feeling finicky, which it is several times a week. After a week, we have finally managed to come to a truce with Shower: if we follow the following steps in order, Shower will usually decide to give us at least a measure of warmish water. If you don’t follow these steps, you might end up bathing with water that actually causes your heart to stop. No kidding: in my first cold shower I actually had trouble breathing.
The Steps:
1) Turn water on.
2) Turn water-heater on.
3) Wait.
4) If you’re lucky, you’ll soon being to hear a whirring sound that signifies that the water-heater is doing something.
a. If you’re unlucky, consider using more deodorant that day.
5) At this point, bathe as quickly as possible.
a. If you hear the water-heater stop, deftly step out of the stream of water and wait.
b. If it starts again, continue to bathe rapidly.
c. If it doesn’t, hold your breath and try to bathe allowing as little water to touch your body as possible.
6) Sometimes Shower will respond to a change in water pressure. For example, turning the water pressure down may lead to warmer water.
a. HOWEVER, be advised that touching either the shower knob or head will lead to mild electric shock. This is (hopefully) not dangerous, but does leave a painfully tingly sensation in the fingers or whatever appendage happened to touch aforementioned objects.
7) Turn off the shower, put on as much fleece as you own, and curl up under the covers until you can feel your fingers again.
Which brings us to the final part: the Beds. Originally, Cesar gave us the cot-type beds with thin mattresses that some people use for camping. They are actually quite comfortable at first, but after about two nights one becomes painfully aware that there is a bar right across the small of one’s back. However, as the beds were only used for watching Arrested Development and sleeping, we didn’t care much. Besides, if you fold up your fleece pants across the bar, you almost can’t feel it.
Much to our surprise, our duena knocked on our door a few days ago and asked if we wanted a bed. “Um, ok.” Isn’t Peru great? People just come up to your door and offer you things like beds! (And one time a random cardboard box with styrofoam peanuts still inside.)
Apparently, they had been feeling somewhat guilty about giving us camping cots, and had been actively looking for other beds since our arrival. So we brought in the new, bar-less bed, put the extra mattress on top of Stephanie’s bed (she’s like 4 feet off the ground now), and slept about 10 hours that night.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)