24 Agosto 2010

Today is my last day in Arequipa city before I head out to the rurality {is that a word?} of Madrigal and Colca Canyon. The other volunteers and I have been shopping for the few items we know we will need once we get to site: gas camping stove, baby wipes for those days you just can't get into that freezing cold water to shower, surge converters so we don't fry the town with our electronics, mattress, etc. The one thing none of us hesitated to do was A. talk to a couple family members and friends before we disappear into oblivion for a couple weeks and B. eat tasty food. A 3rd year volunteer that is heading back to the states took us to the least expensive and most delicious restaurants he has staked out around town. Juiced Strawberries for less than $2, turkey bacon avocado sandwich with every spicy sauce in the country for less than $3, actual ice cream for less than $1, and the kicker: pizza! I feel like a couple of these delicacies need explanation. Ice cream is hard to come by for a couple reasons, 1) milk is sold, not eaten. A Peruvian company named Gloria comes to the rural towns and pays decently for their farm raised cows' milk. 2) no one has a fridge, let alone a freezer. The second explanation is pizza I am sure. Enjoy your 24 hour pizza joint. "Why," you might ask "is pizza so hard to come by?" Once again milk. Cheese comes from milk, milk is valuable. I have found that many Peruvian restaurants use whatever white melty substance they can find to sprinkle on their pizza. Coming from a forever cheese lover, and with all due respect, yuck. But there is this one joint off the main plaza of Arequipa City that sells delicious pizza, reasonably priced ($5 personal pan) and if you catch a deal day they will serve you DRY RED WINE!! Also very hard to come by as the Peruvian palette is very sweet. I had ceased from wine consumption until we discovered this little establishment because I just couldn't handle sipping communion wine over conversation.

Loving on Arequipa city for its Europeanism {is that another word I just made up?} With much fear and excitement we headed off to the Canyon. With all the excitement I packed my bus ticket inside my passport somewhere inside 80lbs of luggage and my dear friend America calmed me down and got the bus line to write up another ticket for me and counseled me into the bus mattress and all. I was flustered, and she was efficient and soothing. I am very thankful that her town is only one hour away from mine walking.

That evening on the bus I was feeling exasperated. Not having had time or privacy enough to meditate for about a week I could not sift through the emotions of fear and excitement properly. To what should be no one's surprise a 5-year-old worked them out for me. Her mother was in the bus seat across from us, with a baby nursing in her lap. The 5-year-old was standing between the window, her mother's legs, and the seat in front of her. Looking at me like the alien that I am I invite her to my lap with her mother's permission. Fully aware of the 4 hour bumpy, smelly ride we have ahead and the potential for her to be there for the duration, my heart allows the invitation regardless of my logic's resistance. She looked at her mother's eyes imploringly, and got the nod. for the remainder of the ride we pointed at the nature we passed and named everything, then Sumi drew them in my journal. Because there was only one horizon in her drawing, and we passed through so many landscapes, they all meshed into one in her tiny sketch. Mountains, fields, trees, even a sun and moon in the same sky. Excercising her coordination through hand clapping games I rembered my mother playing the same game with me as she drove when I was little. My mother would lay her hand palm up, and I would tap her hand with mine and she would try to close her hand around my fingers before I pulled away. Requiring little to no concentration from the adult, this brought never-ending joy to my little body, and the same to this little one. Sumi's obviously stunted growth and wispy thin hair screamed malnourishment at me as I thought of the chocolate covered raisins in my bag. She brought me back down to earth as we munched on the raisins together and sipped just enough water to rinse our throat, but not enough to make us have to pee, because restrooms only awaited 4 hours away unless we wanted to stop the bus and squat on the mountain side.

I arrived in town after nightfall. My steardy little house father got out of his bed 6 hours before he had to wake up and head to the fields. He carried my mattress on his back and wouldn't let me help. I pulled my inappropriately large suitcase along the cobblestone road. It bounced uncomfortably and my foreign-ness echoed down the streets.