Trying to maintain Our Sunny Constitution

Camana, 900 km south of Lima, on the Pacific coast.  To get here from the South you have to drive 4 hours through the desert.  Helen and I drove the first two hours last night from Mollendo, another beach town on the water.  Mollendo was covered in shanties… oddly enough it cost over 50 soles to stay in any of them… we found a little place on the outskirts of town for 30 soles a night, but it had no running water.  Modern shiny-tiled floors,  new paint, a 20” statue of a porcelain saint in the corner, a quality bed with clean sheets (only the faintest odor of someone else), but no running water… the toilet is filled with foamy chemicals so when you take a dump the bacteria is neutralized.  But after an evening and night and morning of urine and definite funky defecation, the chemicals are taken over by the body’s jettison.  Our host, a 16 year old kid running the hostel with his parents away, probably didn’t know how to control his water tank and misplanned the night.

In Mollendo we played Scrabble and took it easy.  After filling the toilet and sleeping soundly, we woke up and went to the beach.  Dry Heat… the mountainous desert of sand stretches from the peaks of the Andean foothills and into the ocean.  One big extra-terranean beach.  The equatorial sun beats on these mountains and no rain falls.  In Lima they say “it never rains.”  Just a fog once in a while.  And here it seems the same.  Grass and vegetation only grow in the valleys where water accumulates as rivers.  And in the valleys farmers grow melons and fruit-bearing cacti and grapes.  Cattle graze, and fields of grain lay next to ocean beaches.

We beached in Mollendo under a rented umbrella.  Fifteen minutes in the sun here and you’re cooked…. Literally fifteen minutes.   Everyone on the beach –everyone – is under the cover of an umbrella.   Until now it has been easy to forget how close to the equator we are.  The altitude of the Andes masks the length of the days and intensity of the sun.  Down here the sun is painful and demanding for most of the day.

And at night, the sunset.

Last evening Helen and I drove towards Mollendo, but were stopped en route by a huge traffic jam.  I pulled around the line hoping for a break… a police officer stopped me.  “Donde van?”

 “Buenas Tardes senor… vamos a Camana.”

“Mm m.  You can’t pass” 

“What’s wrong? Why not?”

“There’s a huayco ahead”

“Forgive me… but what’s a huayco?”

“Uncontrolled currents in the road, and it’s the only road.  You can’t pass.”

So we turned Donald around and raced to the last hostel we spotted and got a room.  The hostel was a trucker hostel… huge, cavernous, and echoing with voices and laughter.  Men shuffled by and didn’t say a word, didn’t respond to “hello.”   So we got some food and relaxed inside the purple and yellow room.

This morning we bought fresh melons and drove to the beach.  Bad Donald sped at a velocity of 100 km/h today on several occasions. 

Today is Valentine’s Day.  Our romance is flitting from day to day, discovery to discovery.  Occasionally you open a door and behind it is something so unusual and grotesque you cant help but stare and study its intricacies.  Often these complex scaly folds aren’t pleasing.  Like staring at a body in a car accident… are they dead?  Alive?  What’s that there?  A foot protruding from a blanket.  Surely that’s a dead man’s foot.  And this foot is so inspiring… a flood of ideas and memories, realizations and tappings into your darkest imaginations.  What will his family think?  His wife?  Children?  When will I be under a blanket?  How can I prolong the time until this inevitability?  Who can I save?

I have seen a dead man on this trip.  A motorcycle accident in the rain.  A group of twelve or fourteen men in raincoats, huddled around a swaddled man laying still on the pavement.

But today no humans dead… a living truth in the form of a poem so real and devastating to behold.  A letter typed to an old lover.  A lover still with talons in the now.  A snake slowly digesting its prey.  I had to stop and stare.  And the poison seeped into my flesh, from my eyes and towards my center of organs.  But I have built a wall… my cells turned cold and spit and writhed the venom out as anger and maltrition.  And it only bred fear and violence, good for nothing but more of the same.  A bitter battle between old lovers in the desert hurts.  And we saw many vultures and whipped each other while the tornadoes spun and spun for miles into the baking sand.

Helen is soft and strong, and comforted my pain, uneasy, sickness and I started to heal because of her.  She can make you feel better when you really need it.  I was bleeding less into the car.  We made it to Camana, found a room, went to the beach which was being played by a few beautiful families.  Little boys in cowboy hats tugged bottle-boats on string, soccer and splashing.  I covered myself in mud and Helen found round stones… marbled, purple, blue, and black as coal, all smooth.

Dinosaurs lived here 150 million years ago.  Back then this desert was a jungle and prairie and the ocean was very different in its boundaries.  We didn’t exist then.

I’ve been worried on this trip more than ever that we won’t exist in several generations.  Can we handle life with no petroleum and no potable water?  Do we really want to expend all the energy it will take to kill other civilizations (possibly drawing lines within the “United” States) in order to secure life-sources such as water and air?

When the shit hits the fan, the most “civilized” nations may very well be the least prepared… the people here regularly live with no electricity, petroleum, or running water… they survive as they have for millennia.  They are Native Americans.  But here is another example of talons and prey… petroleum is a drug needed by the engines of modernity.  The more we civilize these people with our modern cars, chemicals, and materials (including media and information technologies) the more they become dependent upon the resources that fuel these conveniences.  Do I think we should limit their right to cars and technology?  No.  But we should reconsider our involvement in their economy.

To get to Camana we drive through the coastal desert.  The roads are new and freshly paved, a wonderful improvement over the tedious rocky dirt roads that are much of Peru’s transportation network.  But every once in a while you see more and more giant trucks weaving around bends carrying huge vats of minerals and chemicals…. Then around a corner out of the sand and sea looms an enormous structure of steel and smokestacks stabbing the sky and fuming the air.  Huge pipes lead ominously into the water.  All the signs are in English… “CAUTION”  “SECURITY ZONE 1”  “SouthernPeru Refinery.”

Southern Peru is a Canadian corporation… Canada is one of the other members of the G8 summit… the most powerful countries in the world.

You can see from our pictures that this is a unique environment.  Certainly there are geological features and compounds here that the modern world wants.  And if North American and European companies (Bechtel, Halliburton, and other large engineering firms) decide they can profit from these minerals and resources and prove a benefit to the American people, then the government will work with them to open doors.  Perhaps we’ll lend Peru money (we already have) and use it to build  more industries (we’ll build them… no problem.  They just have to buy the help with our money) and operate them and run them with petroleum.  Then we’ll have a share in the product and license to break regulations when they fail to pay the impossible debt.

No internet for a while, gonna post this for now, more coming.  Don’t lie it?  Say why, please.  We need an open discussion on this.

Bless everybody. 

And We're Off

Ok... from here on in I am turning this page into a shared creation between Helen and me.  We are traveling together, and will write together.  Occasionally we might post our own blog but for all intents and purposes take this from us both.   :)  We will make a facebook album of pictures... more to come!

The view from the chakra of our untrusty steed, "Bad Donald"

For ten days we’ve been living in a “chakra”, or farmhouse. It is in San Jeronimo, a mountain town 30 minutes north of Cusco. The chakra is a concrete house covered in white stucco. It has wooden floors, no running water, and a dysfunctional fireplace that was built poorly and now spews smoke into the house when you try to light a fire. Most of the heat at night is from the gas cooking-stove (two burners and propane).  Water comes from a spring outside, and the bathroom is a concrete toilet in a little outhouse. A flush consists of pouring a bucket of water or two into the toilet to drain your waste. Josh is very proud he went 6 days without a shower. We left for 10 days to go to Puerto Maldonado, where we worked on a farm in the jungle, rode motorcycles in the tropical rain, and did an ayahuasca healing ceremony with a shaman named Don Ignacio. We came back exhausted, but ready for our journey south in our “new” 1971 Volkswagen cucaracha.

Helen and friend (his name escapes us right now) after Helen was attacked by wasps on our  5 hour boat ride up the Tambopata River, to the farm in the Amazon.  More on the jungle later.

Wednesday morning, we woke up at 6 for an early start. We drank instant coffee, fried a couple eggs, and packed the rest of our stuff. The rooster crowed at 3 in the morning because Josh went to the outhouse and woke it up. It was raining and we had everything ready to go. While we were outside packing the car, our neighbor Yolanda, a farmer with two kids, a husband, three cows, a lamb, various chickens dogs and cats but no car, asked us for a ride down the hill. We said we’d be ready in twenty minutes. 

An unknown person had pilfered our gasoline tank that we’d stupidly left next to the car. The battery light was dim when we turned the key to the ignition, and sure enough, nothing. Not enough electricity to start the car. Josh had a little J-pats freak out, and kicked the plastic gas tank into the woods, claiming to fucking hate everyone. He was pissed. Really pissed. After a cool down and discussion, we decided to attempt to push the car down the mountain for a jump-start. Josh pushed, Helen steered. After half an hour we moved the car 15 meters through a grassy muddy stretch from where it was parked to near the road. We still had 50 meters of uphill muddy pushing, before we reached the beginning of the downhill. Finally Helen convinced Josh to ask the neighbor, whom he suspected stole the gasoline, for help. He said, “ I fucking hate Julio, I don’t want to ever fucking see him again”. Julio is Yolanda’s husband. Helen on the other hand was convinced we needed the help of another man. No one in the village owns a car. Finally, Josh admitted he wasn’t strong enough to push the car by himself. In the cold drizzle, steam was coming off his body. Grunting, convinced and beaten by gravity, wishing he was a lineman in the NFL, he knocked on Julio’s door. Julio’s son, a14-year-old boy whose name we can never remember, opened the door. His rich dark skin always has a smile. He has beautiful white teeth and dimples. Every few days we would come home and he’d be re-painting the windowsill where the rooster liked to sit and shit down the side of our house. His parents no doubt told him to do this, but he always did it with a smile on his face, and also collected the rooster nightly. Of course when we said we needed help he immediately was ready and stepped out of the door into the rain. More than ready, he seemed honored to be asked.

 With a great deal of effort the three of us pushed the car 50 meters up hill through the mud, ankle deep in cold puddles. Helen's shoes would be wet for a week.  We thanked him profusely, although we failed to jump-start the car on the first downhill. Then we coasted down the mountain fifteen minutes in neutral. We made it to the bottom with the engine off where we hoped to find a jump-start from someone else with cables. Luckily, we found a shop at the bottom that charges batteries. An old man raced around with tools, full of energy.  Unable to jump our battery, he lent us one of his with no deposit. He took ours to charge, and told us to come back in two hours.

We headed to the market to pass the time. We got a plate of vegetables and baked potatoes from a Quechua woman for a dollar, and got some snacks for the road. We bought instant coffee and went on the hunt for a thermos. There were four stands in a row that sold thermoses. Each vendor made sure to unscrew the top and hold it up to her ear and then ours. “Listen”, they would say. As with anything that shape you can hear a humming like the ocean, but I guess here in Peru that means the thermos works. The ocean test is their standard to ensure quality. We finally bought one for 5 bucks. It passed the ocean test, and does keep our water hot. On our way out of the market we stopped by a stand selling coca leaves. People here have told us that if you mix limestone with coca leaves you get a better effect, more like cocaine. There were many options- white square stones, grey round stones, and black tar-like stuff. The women there thought something was hilarious as we questioned them about which to buy. Were they all stoned? We got a grey and black ball you bite pieces off of, and a sticky square of something resembling licorice. Then we headed back to the car.

As we pulled out… the clutch petal seemed to disappear. It was on the floor. We had broken the clutch cable. Off to a good start? So, Josh pushed the car, put it into first and started it and we drove without a clutch, to a repair shop. The owners referred us to a shop across the street, and an hour later we had a new clutch cable. We paid the guy with a banana and 15 soles (about 6 bucks). We now have wires holding the clutch and brake up off the floor. From there we drove to get our charged battery, a Kola Real, a sparkling clear sugar-free pear beverage, and 20 pieces of gum the texture of Bazooka Joe and flavor that lasts no more than 2 minutes. From there, we started off towards Julliaca.

It was 3:30pm. The road to Julliaca is the same road we took by bus to get to Puerto Maldonado. The difference is a turn off 100 kilometers down the inter-oceanic highway that runs from Peru to Brazil. By highway, we mean a two lane, freshly paved road that winds up, down and around mountains, valleys and prairies. A compañera at the English language institute informed us the drive to Julliaca would take 5 hours. 4 hours into the journey we saw a sign; “Julliaca 163 kilometers”. We were traveling uphill and the Volkswagen was maxed out at about 40 km/hr. And then it started to rain as the sun went down beyond the mountains ahead. The Volkswagen has no heater and no windshield defrost system. The faster you drive, the faster the windshield wipers swipe. This is humorous for the first five minutes of rain. Then the windshield fogs, tractor-trailer trucks rattle the car as they rush by roaring. Buses and trucks are coming at you with high beams on. The sun goes down in the mountains, and it starts to get very cold. Cold, tired, wet, and (Josh) stressed, we stopped the car by the side of the road and smoked a cigarette. Hmm, the exhaust smells a little like gasoline. Putting it to the back of our minds we got in and continued on, in search of the nearest hostel. Downhill we made great progress, but uphill we couldn’t go more than 30km/hr. Finally we came upon a stretch of road and in the distance we saw a field of orange lights. Perhaps a place to rest for the night. We continued on the main road, which didn’t bring us into the city, the city we so desperately wanted to find. We stopped at a grifo (Petro-station) for a fill up. Out came the attendant, an old woman in classic Quechua attire, and we asked her if there was a hostel nearby. She pointed to a dark dirt road, which led in the direction of the lights, and she said “Santa Rosa”.

We were very close to continuing on into the rainy night, but instead we turned around, pointed our car up the muddy dirt road and drove for 2 kilometers into the center of the little town. We stopped at the first “hospedaje” sign we saw. From a small store selling fruit, bread, soda and canned goods, a man came out to the car to greet us. It was raining hard, and the street was empty. All the stores, except for this one were closed. This means all the doors were shut and the streets were dark. Not even dogs were out in this weather. The man came up to our window and said “hospedaje?” We said “Si, por favor”. Helen was freezing, and we wanted a warm room as soon as possible. The man put wooden ramps next to the curb and we drove inside his stable to park the car. The room cost us 20 soles for the night, about 8 dollars. Before we went to sleep, the guy from the hostel led us to a where he said we could get some hot food. He walked us through the rain to the doorstep of a restaurant. They were about to close, but welcomed us in none-the-less. Treated like family everywhere we went, we felt like we’d been part of this small town for years. We had a warm bowl of soup. Helens opinion of the soup; broth and pasta with chunks of unknown meat left uneaten. Josh’s opinion; ziti in hot broth with beef cubes. Following that was a plate of rice and fried potatoes, and a cup of hot tea. The man who served us was extremely curious about the U.S. and our opinion of Peru. We chatted a while then left and walked around the corner back to our hostel. In our room were three small beds and one large poster of a badly drawn smiling cartoon boy holding a notebook. The notebook said “Nuestras cuentas” (our stories).  The family’s kitchen was the door next to ours, and their bedroom the next one down. The bathroom was across the way, and the sink outside. A crooked mirror hung on the cement wall outside. We went to bed, huddled close for warmth. Josh had nightmares, woke up at 3 in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep. As usual, Helen stole all the covers.

On the Road

Shamans and Chancho among Old Stones

How long has it been since I've sat down to write?  A few weeks... too long.  Today is my 29th Birthday... woke up this morning, took a run, did some pushups, washed my clothes, and had a shower.

Then, as I turned on the radio and started for the broom to sweep my room, my host father (whose name is Jorge) called up to me (about 7:30 this morning): "Joshua (pronounced Ho-Sway)! Desayuno!"  So I came downstairs and there on the table was a perfect little cylindrical brown cake with my name on it.... "Happy Birthday Joshua," in English.  And a candle.  So at 7:30 this morning I got hugs from Coco, my 22 year old host brother, Veronica, my 26 year old host sister, their parents, Jorge and Maria Luisa, and a big kiss from my host grandmother, who is 92 years old!  Then they all sang happy birthday, in first in English and then Spanish, and we had coffee and cake for breakfast.

I know it must sound strange to hear "host father, host mother," etc.  But these people have taken me into their home and given me a bedroom for 130 dollars a month.  And they have given me so much more!  A little 5" TV/Radio (color), Wifi, and.... LOVE.  They always offer me food, hugs, kisses.  Help.  We speak a mix of English and Spanish.  My host mother is fluent in english and her children are as well.  With Jorge, my host father, and my grandmother, we speak Castellano, aka Spanish.

Today I sit in the Library of ICPNA, Instituto Cultural Peruano NorteAmericano.  One of the finest institutions of my professional career.  Very well organised and well-respected.  Students spend 3 years hear as a night school and leave, almost without exception, fluent in English.  Most of the teachers are Peruvian graduates.  A little Microcosm of intellectualism in English.  ICPNA was established by the States and Peru.  The best educational professionals in the States continue to refine the techniques here... it feels a little like an educational laboratory, and I am entering the experiment in its refined stages.  The curriculum is honed to a T.  The students are supposed to talk most of the time.  My main goal as teacher is: talk much less than the students.  I am a guide through the idiomatic universe.  And the tourists are the students, who will have everything I ask memorized by tomorrow.  They all call me "Teacher" and they wait at the door for me to allow them to enter.  Perhaps a taste of Japan?  I can get used to this reverence.  Part of my duty, though, is to break them of this culture of pure obedience.  I am asking them for more independence.  An American cultural injection.  This is my new school where I work 7 days a week until December 23, my last day here.  

For every class I teach I am required to produce a lesson plan.  This is a wise philosophy.  I do my school preparation in the living room with my host mother, also an English teacher at the institute, and my "grandmother," who sits next to me doing word searches and occasionally whistling to herself.  She talks to me in Quechua, the native language of the ancient Incan civilization.  I don't understand any of the vocabulary, but the feeling's there.  She's 92!  I must say it's quite nice to be babbled at in an ancient tongue by a tiny wonderful woman who's been on the Earth a long time.

WHERE AM I?  Cusco, Cuzco, Qusqo, Qosqo.  They all work.  This is the capital of the Incan empire.  What happened to the Incas?  This place was taken by force in the late 1530s by Spanish Conquistador Francisco Pizarro and a small army of 168 Spanish troops with 27 horses.  How did such a small force conquer a hugely powerful native population?  Coercion and trickery.  Also, Peru was in the midst of a civil war between two brothers vying for power.  Pizarro was lucky.

Cusco is teeming with majestic Cathedrals and quiet monasteries, grand stone giants and nestled-in sanctuaries of prayer.  I would call the latter "humble," but all of them are decorated in the highest European style (built by the Spanish to impress the indigenous people).  When you enter them you feel as if you're in a spiritual palace.  The stones absorb energy and give it back to equally.  The ceiling looms above you.  Christ and his colleagues peer at you from the walls and from within 400 year old elaborate carvings and spirals, glittering with gold.  The Man and his disciples are carved of wood and Christ wears real hair.  All around are the finest examples of wood carving and gilding.  And then there are the paintings and candles.

I took my first communion at La Catedral, started in 1560 and finished 100 years later.  I felt drawn to the priest and followed the masses down the aisle to take my cracker.  On the way out of mass (La Mistra) I was hit by holy water the priest lofted into the crowd from a bouquet of tiny flowers.  This and the incense took me higher.  And into the streets...

Outside in the plaza you can see the work of the Spanish all around.  They dominated the center of the city with their architecture.  This is beauty in our European sense.  Order.  It was here I met my first Shaman, who was consulting my Italian friend, about to engage in an Ayawasca trip in the hills.  The shaman invited me to come along but I declined.  I had work to do at school.  My job, he said, could be to watch with him and learn.  The Italian told me the Shaman sits and smokes cigarettes, keeps you together, talks you through your journey.  Many people puke for hours their first time and never feel anything.  But then you try again.  How I wanted to walk with the medicine men and learn their craft.  But I have faith in fate.  That day my journey was to teach.  Perhaps another day I will meet the medicine man sent to me.  Something about this journey he invited me on felt flawed.  Why?  There was money exchanged.  His shamanism was a business.  Perhaps it has to be.  How does the church survive?  We need to feed the priests, pay for the books, the artifacts.

Then you can leave the center, a river of gringos.  Follow the stream into the narrow roads a thousand years old.  You hear calling from the corners and shadowlands: Cocaine?  Marijuana?  Charlie?  Masajes Senor?  No gracias no gracias.  Bongiorno, Bonjour, they try to guess your language and call out to you to buy... choo chine? says a little grimy boy of 7 or 8, carrying all the necessary tools to make your boots sparkle in the sun.

Let's go another way.  Everywhere outside the city center are the remnants of the Incas.  Massive dark stones form the walls and foundations of enormous buildings.  The stones are cut to fit perfectly together with no mortar.  You can't get a piece of paper between them.  No mortar involved.  How did they do it?  These gargantuan structures have survived earthquakes.  The Spanish put their buildings and palaces right on top of the old Incan work.  And they tried to outdo the Inca in the process.

Helen is living here too.  Did I mention that?  Almost every day we met at 6 AM at the Cathedral and walk to the market for breakfast as the city rises out of the stones.  Where is she now? In the Selva, the jungle.  The Amazon.

Before she left we would go to the market, el mercado, and visit the breakfast booths.  There's a long row of stalls, all affronted by a continuous white counter.  You sit on a bench of your choosing.  The women will call at you to sit at their station "PASA PASA!" And when you find the food, or the woman, you like (the food is more or less the same) you take a seat and order up.  I like cafe con leche, hot, fresh-squeezed creamy milk with a touch of dulce and infiltrated by espresso.  Then pan con queso y pan con huevo.  Little buns with fried egg and cheese, all fresh from the cows and chickens in the hills.  Helen and I early on chose a favorite, a large older woman who looks like Mother Earth.  She is a real native (as in Native American) with a big apron and long black braids.  She serves up the biggest queso.  And she always gives me the "pansito papa?" I'm looking for ;)  All the women, I should say, are delightful.  Every one of them helps you smile.  They want you back every morning.  That's half the business.

One morning after breakfast Helen and I walked by a booth full of steaming vats, of plastic and metal.  This booth had many locals so we decided to try it.  It's a medicine booth!  They can heal all your illnesses with hot concoctions.  So we stepped up and the woman asked us our problem.  All behind the counter are herbs, spices, fresh plants.  And her sons are constantly leaving and returning with fresh vegetables and roots and herbs, etc.  She asked what's wrong and we said "nada."  So she examined us and started handing us drinks of different colors, mixed with other liquids or not, hot or not.  The first was dark green and tasted mossy, verdant, earthy.  Then you hand the cup back and we got another one without asking.  This tasted like an animal.  Like boiled hair.  And while I was drinking the women were laughing and pegging us in Quechua.  This is a fun joke that happens here.  Even if you're from Spain or Argentina, bastions of the white Castellano,  the chance you'll speak the ancient Quechua as a white man are slim to none.  All I heard as I finished this mysterious hot beverage with the color and consistency of water after you boil corn and hotdogs in it, was "Chancho."  This means pig.  Helen had already started in on hers.  I didn't know if she knew that word.  After all, she's a vegetarian.  She took the whole thing down and looked at me innocently.  I think both of us felt a bit odd, or off.  Yes, we drank some pig extract.  Oh well, what next?  The woman gave me the next drink, but not helen.  It was also gray and thick and wet and dry and heavy and luke-warm.  I finished it and there was a clay or or silt at the bottom of the plastic cup.  Hmm.  Then the older kid behind the counter said something to me.  I was trying to figure out the feeling in my body and had no clue what he told me.  Helen said (she often understands more than I do), "I wonder why you shouldn't eat breakfast for an hour."
This experience cost $1.65 for 5 drinks between the two of us and I feel pretty good three weeks later.  I haven't been back.  Maybe Helen is invincible against Amazon mosquitoes right now.  It's that chancho she drank.

Settle In Hombre

I lay on my bed, thankful for this siesta.  My door opens to the roof, where the sun shines and the wind blows clothes on the drying lines and pulls at the sheet metal roof of the building next door.  A loudspeaker in the distance blasts a man’s voice, chanting and singing no discernable language.  If I didn’t know better it could be prayer time in the Middle East.   A parade marches by and it sounds like Native Americans, drumming and chanting.  The Natives still live here!  The Spanish came and gave and took, but the vibrant cultures of the Andean people resonate powerfully everywhere.  By the way, the Chinese live here too.  Chinese food here is called “Chifa.”

Across the street from the front door of my building are several Juguerias, where you can get juice of any variety, as well as food… you can get a hotdog sandwich if you’d like.  From one of these cafeterias, called “Jugueria Chompa ‘Jack,’” I watched a big Quechua woman scoop soup and morsels from 5 gallon buckets.  She was constantly surrounded by Camposinos… countryfolk, from the hills.  They’ve got gold teeth and bright dresses of infinite color and variety.  They are beautiful women, old and young, and strong dark men from ancient stock.

Eating with these women is a treat.  They laugh at the gringo but they love me because I love them.  They call me “Caballero” and “Papa.”  They are a piece of home – perhaps my grandmother from another continent.  They know that food can cure more than hunger.  They help me find what I need.  Today was soup with tender morsels of beef.  I cracked the bones with my teeth and took the marrow as salve.  I opted out of the cuy – guinea pig.  The women pass raw meat to and fro.  I sit on a small wooden chair on the sidewalk and take my bowl of soup.  Treats.  When you are hungry all food becomes easier to fathom.

I eat here with them after I leave work.  Work is preschool in the hills of Monterrey, a minibus ride from town.  An American boy and a Belgian boy, 5.  Two 4 year old Peruvians, girl and boy, and a couple 7 year olds.  Also, an 8 year old with Downs syndrome.  The owner of the preschool charges his family less than the other children’s families.

I speak three languages at school – English for the American, French for the Belgique, and Spanish for everyone else.  Spanish is a huge problem because it is so unnatural for me.  The textbooks cut it into hard syllables but when I listen to suave speakers it glides like water – like Portuguese.  And the American and Belgian boys speak in Spanish.  If you want to ostracize someone it’s easy – just speak in a language to them that noone understands.  And this is not fun.

So I go Silent-Jim through the school day, listening the children speak and interjecting only when necessary and possible.  And Cole, the American, helps me translate here and there.  Ruth, the Peruana I work with, is lovely to be so nice to me.  She does almost all the talking and teaches everyone, including me, Spanish. 

Our school is located a kilometer from hot springs… every Thursday we walk to them and spend the day swimming in hot water and having a picnic.  I double here as a swim instructor.  Mateo, the little Peruvian 4 year old, is terrified of going under and holds my neck for dear life the entire time we’re at the pool.

There is a population of well-to-do expats here.  The American student’s family invited me to their house for a barbecue.  They run a brewing company and are expedition and climbing experts.  Because of them I have a bicycle and friends.

Huaraz, Ancash, Peru could be a small New York City in the 1970s, surrounded by snow-capped world class mountain ranges.  Couples kiss and love is in the air.  Laws are discretionary, and the biggest law seems to be self-preservation (so long as you respect society).  Social respect is a curious animal here.  People pee in the streets.  I saw a guy piss in another guy’s car two nights ago.  I’m assuming he wasn’t pissing in his own car.

Small business are the rule.  Yesterday I ordered a pair of cowboy boots.  The leathersmith, proprietor of the Zapateria, traced my feet and took the order.  The boots on display are among trophies.  The leather and stitching is of the finest quality.  They will take 2 weeks and will cost about $150. 

What do I miss?  I miss all of my friends and family.  I miss breakfast at the kitchen table with my parents.  Sitting around watching a movie with my brothers.  Hanging out with Helen, who is somewhere in the Jungle right now, studying agriculture with the natives (as far as I know).  I can’t help but chuckle thinking of what kind of situation she’s in right now… that girl is someone special.  YOU are someone special.

I’ve gotta go pick my bicycle up and transfer this information to the internet.  My new humble abode is a concrete room on top of a 3 story building.  I can’t stand up straight in here.  I’ve chipped a tooth on the doorway.  No internet.

I bought an electric oven-top for 6 dollars.  Imagine an electric burner on your stove that is portable and plugs into the wall.  It heats up red hot, a furious little hairdryer on your table.  It’s made in China!  The first time I plugged it in my room filled with smoke and plastic fumes.

My toilet has no seat.  That’s typical.  Also, my agua caliente, hot water for showers, is agua not so caliente.  But that’s ok.  I stay pretty clean and can take the temperature, or lack of it.

No sickness, save the sickness of the heart here and there, which is temporary and passing.  It’s amazing the conversations you’ll have with someone just because they speak your language.

I got drunk the other night at a “medicine shop” that sells hot syrup in a glass mug for 40 cents a mug.  I almost bought a motorcycle but thought twice.  Speaking of drinking, I’ve been drinking the water and eating food in places that smell like feces.  The feces is unavoidable.  No diarrhea, no illness.

To my family and friends, you know who you are, I miss you!  This is wonderful place full of rich culture and good people.  They can’t substitute your love.  Take care of yourself!  Kiss someone you love and give them a big hug.

Hasta Luego.

Honest Boom Box Man

A guy in his fifties, gray and balding, sits on a stool on the sidewalk.  In front of him are hundreds of CDs he has burned.  Two-disc sets of salsa, meringue, ranchero, etc.  Musica Latina.

He shakes my hand as I approach.  I get the feeling he's a gentleman.  He's got a discman wired to a powerful, South American Boombox, running off a car battery.  He only chooses grooving salsa.  Trumpets, etc.

I want to find Mexican Opera that I heard in the street the other night.  A quechua mini-taxi driver named Victor played it.  I listened in the road to it and he called me in with his friends and we passed around shots of rum and coke and now I'm invited to play soccer with them.

The opera is not to be found.  I've heard many CDs.  Finally I found Nicola Di Bari, an Italian guy singing in Spanish.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjmW2aKMkA4&feature=related
El Corazon es un Gitano (The Heart is a Gypsy)

I dug it but 10 meters down the sidewalk another CD man was blasting Latin Dance Salsa.  I could not focus.  I was mad at him for "pushing" the cd on me.  I was hard sold and paid the guy a 5 sole coin for the CD.

I was walking down the street with my new CD and he whistled.  "Hey!  Hey!" What did he want me for?  Maybe I gave him 2 soles instead of 5.

"Hey, look this."  He flipped the coin, 5 soles, in his rough hands and pointed to it.  Then he gave it to me.
"This not real."
"What?"
"This.  No Real."

A counterfeit?  Looks very real.

I gave him back the coin.  Twenty steps later I thought, what a dolt.  He could have pawned this coin over on somebody else easily as change.


He knows I'm not in love with the music and he wants me to come back so we can listen to the goods together.  That coin's as real as day.  I made a friend.

Peruvian Camel Toe

Fluorescent lightbulbs, neon, chicken-smoke, street vendors, handsome teenagers embracing on the sidewalks.  Three wheeled mini-taxis (125cc motorcycles with three wheels and a backseat) buzz around and honk their horns.  Quechua women walk with their citified children (young adults) who carry their babies the same way the Quechuas do, swaddled in a blanket and strapped to their backs.  Digital cameras, tape recorders, TV sets, and smiling faces everywhere you go... Huaraz is alive!

A baby cries, a man walks by and opens his case to reveal hundreds of shining metal pens.  Cakes for sale!  The city is cool at night.  The mountains surrounding us are capped in ice and the air falls down into the valley.  We all wear a nice sweater and cruise the city.  I feel safe and less lonely than I used to.  But of course loneliness exists and so I occupy my eyes and fall into a gazing trance.  And just when I'm comfortable, in the now, invincible and radiant, I catch my eyes drifting down and I'm staring into the nook of a wild Peruvian camel-toe.  They are everywhere here.  Black polyester, jeans, warmup pants, purple nylon.  I don't know if it's a conscious decision to create such an attractant or not, but camel toes are easy to find in Huaraz, Ancash.  I'm writing a good book: Huaraz Camel Toe.  Urban Outfitters would buy that.  Save the world.  Speaking of which: when do you draw the line on how to spend your time?  Say We could make a million books, a million bucks, all about camel toe.  120 full color telephotos for the coffee table.  Art?  Please tell me what you think.

Everyone here in Peru is beautiful.  Perhaps because they are part of a spectrum I've never seen.  All these villages and cities coming from a bloodline of Incas and Spaniards.  I've seen two natives with blue eyes.    The black hair, thick and shining.  The noses, so many varieties!  The butts, the beards, the teeth.  Ay Caramba!

Send me that camera quick mom!  I've got time and bail is cheap.

For pre-orders, please send some love in your next prayers.  Love's the best commodity.

The Bull Fight in Marcara

The Bull Fight

In a town called Marcara, in the Ancash province of Peru, everyone knows each other.   Spanish and Quechua are interchangeable in the local market.  Quechua is an old language with clicks and guttural pops.  The Quechua people are direct descendants of the Incas.  They live in small adobe houses in the hills and they farm and work the land.  Their feet are brown and cracked from years of walking with sandals made of tires.  

You get around by paying a couple dollars and jumping into one of many combis that race between villages and towns.  The combis are minivans filled with peasants traveling the highway to trade and work... Carhuaz, Caraz, Mancara, and big cities.  I am writing from Huaraz, Ancash, a large center of climbing.  In the not too far distance are snow capped peaks.  We are in a bowl surrounded by some of the biggest mountains in the world.  In Huaraz, from where I'm writing, city life is prominent and pollution from old cars gets in your eyes and lungs and you have to get into higher parts of the city and windy alleys to escape being suffocated by car and motorcycle exhaust.  I came to Huaraz by combi.  The combis smell like farm animals - goats mostly, and urine and human body odour.  I'm becoming immune to the smells.  Am I a smell?  I packed Antonio Banderas cologne.

Back to Marcara, a small village.  Cows, pigs, goats, chickens, burros (donkeys) are everywhere here.  The women wear elaborate colored clothing and seem very wise.  The people are dark and have deep brown eyes, black hair.  Their skin is the color of earth, and they have rosy cheeks and they seem to be in very good health.

A former mayor of Marcara, a 71 year old man who stands straight and is Protestant and has big bushy eyebrows, has 10 children.  He is now an agronomist, working to help the quechua campositos (farmers) responsibly use modern chemicals to boost production.   One of the mayor's daughters is Carmen, perhaps 28 years old.  She is westernized and looks like a short New Yorker and she is a flirt and loves to dance and grab and twirl.  She plays between the cousins.  Gabby is 18, and Federico is 40.  

The first festival I wrote about on this blog took place in Marcara.  We met Carmen there and she took us into her world.  We drank and shared glasses with all the people on a grassy field lit by brass bands and fireworks.  I woke up with a pounding headache and a brass band and fireworks were drowning the tiny town.  Everything is adobe and concrete in the town, and the farms surround it and extend along dirt roads into the mountains and hills.

I have been called gringo many times.  I stand at least a foot above the crowd everywhere except for in Lima, and there I am bigger than average.  But Marcara and its people accepted us.  I have danced with old women and I have seen the Quechuans huddle under their elaborate rainbow dresses in the dark and then slowly metamorph into the party, spinning and dancing little local jigs.  They love the way we dance.  I broke a fist fight between two teens and a friend I was drinking with grabbed me and said, "No, this is not for you."  And everyone watched them fight until it ended with a kick to the head.  Dominance.  

In Marcara there was a bullfight in an old circle enclosed by a high wooden fence.  A company comes in with bulls and matadors and the stands are filled, packed to the gills by the townspeople and anyone else who wants to come.  There are people everywhere, standing on houses to see into the mini arena without paying the 7 soles ($2.70).  And there is a parade.  This is all festival... fireworks by crazy men who may have fought in Peru's civil war in the eighties and early nineties.  Loud fireworks are always going off here.  Dynamite at 2 AM, 7 AM, 5:30 AM.  1 PM.  All of the sudden you're jumping and thinking a gun is shooting.  

The Procession is led by the Mayor Domo and his wife.  They are the organizers of the bullfight.  It is a great honor.  The whole bullfight is to the music of a brass band from Lima in blue jackets and they cost 20,000 soles to rent for the day.  That's about 8,000 dollars.  Who knows what the bulls and matadors cost.

The Procession has the Mayor Domo and wife on two great steeds.  The honored hosts are wearing crowns of flowers.  This bullfight is to honor Jesus Christ, so there are Christ t-shirts thrown into the crowd.  Candy, cans of soda and beer, plastic bowls, balls.  They are thrown into the crowd.  And then the matadors, Argentinians and Spanish and Chilean.  This is a Toro Meurte fight.  Bulls will die.

The bulls are tortured with blades.  They have no chance.  All the great excitement of Hemingway's bullfights is predicated upon the artful skill of the matador.  He is always close to death and can kill the bull with skill and finesse.  These matadors were traveling salesman of torture and death.  I wanted to see the matador die a painful slow death.  They went for the kill of the first and third bull, a quick hard jab to the spine, right behind the head, with a trident shaped blade.  And they missed and missed and missed.  And when they finally dropped the lolling bull, they bowed and we whistled.  Whistling is booing in Peru.

The second bull was a beautiful white animal.  He came out of the stall with a slit eye.  His eye was bleeding and hanging out of its socket.  They tortured him to anger.  And he did not fight.  He was too terrified to fight and shit himself continuously.  They twisted his tail, kicked him, stabbed him.  He would not fight.  Finally they got him back into his stall.

I hated Peru.  I wanted to kill the matadors and everyone for miles.  I am superior to you.  But what of our American chicken factories?  They do not exist here.  And our slaughter factories?  They also are not here.

Church called me in.  A big old Spanish church with wide open doors and flowers among candles.  I walked into this ship, old hard wooden beams above.  The priest, an old Italian man who looked like Hemingway, sat among his flock in the pews.

Outside there was a party with beer and fireworks and a big brass band.  Inside was me and my God.  And my God is everyone I’ve ever met.  And the bulls were floating up in the rafters.  The bulls who were tortured and stabbed, eyes cut out, struck down by Spanish matador cowards to make a buck.

Crying, sobbing in the pews, wishing I could be home, wishing I could be with my love, wishing love and peace to everyone from my little socket in that Spanish church amplifier.  Could you feel my waves?

So what is an adventure?  What the hell is my purpose on this rock?  Patience melting away and under all the wax is just bony old me, sick and tired of these backward brown people and their comida… chicken, trout, pig, and cow.  Rice and beans and lettuce that gives me the shits.

Maybe I should get on a bus and go as far away from what I know as possible, disappear entirely, never come back.  But hey, what about Lima and Helen?  Hang on sloopy, hang on.  Be here now.

What I’ve learned is: family trumps all.  It is what you make it.  These people have families who stick together, as far as I can see.  Am I ready to become the pillar of a family?  Am I working hard enough?  I am sad because I’m so alone.  I can’t talk to anyone in my own tongue.  I just want to be held.

So then I talked to the locals as best I could to understand why they liked the death.  They didn't.  They were very hurt by the pain of the bulls.  I believe they too prayed for the bulls.