25 Septiembre 2010

Today we returned to planting another set of three"chacras"- terraced fields. The only thing on my mind is how lucky I have been for the past handful of months for not having back pain. One single pang shot down my right leg yesterday but left as quickly as it came. Today, I am astonished at the strength and agility of my 60-year-old host father as I hobbled around like I am 200. I took enough breaks no one noticed, except my sister. I caught her eye as I dropped my shovel in pain and she glared with worry, "Give yourself a break." she insisted over the bull's whacking tail. Thus, on the walk home she inquired about the obvious discomfort and got my life story. All my family and friends will be happy to know there is a Peruvian in my house keeping an eye to make sure I take care of myself.
Not I sit in bed wishing I had access to ice with my feet up and a cup of tea. Like I said, 200 years old.

But, above that, I feel great. While my body is exhausted, my motivation is recuperated and I look forward to tomorrow. These are some photos of our lunch break today between plantings, and then the walk home. I have to admit I am becoming buddies with the donkeys and one of the bulls (I bet that sounds weird).*****

Some random observations I wanted to write about:

If I didn't like spicy food before I moved here, I sure do now. The hottest ricotto pepper will cover up any potato and alpaca stench.

Today when we were feeding the pig and picking up the bulls to hike out to the chacras I seriously thought one was having a hernia for a minute. Something was obviously wrong, there were muscles popping out of his side like I had never seen before. Then his two foot penis popped out as well and he started humping the air. Yeah, not a hernia.

After discovering that my host sister had never heard of WWI or WWII and didn't know who Hitler was, I decided to do a mini investigation of adults in my town. A cousin from the City of Arequipa (a college populated city) had come into town to help with the planting for the weekend. He is my age and studying in college. He had never heard of this guy, Hitler, or WWII.
More than a little heart broken I came home tonight and put on recorded NPR podcasts while I made some soup. Thinking of how Holocaust stories such as reading the Diary of Ann Frank shaped a part of my adolescence, a story came on Talk of the Nation that discussed that "Higher Education" is a waste of money. A professor talked away bashing the United States higher educational system with points that I might have thought valid a year ago today. He ridiculed lecture halls being too large, tuition being too high, and training taking place for vocational jobs instead of libral arts studies. Today, I just want to scream and stomp and throw a little hissy fit in this mans face. Who gives a damn if all of those things are true in our country. Guess what, our citizens know the history of the world, they can perform basic to complicated mathematic equations, they understand the science behind the water cycle and medicines, they know who dies at the end of Romeo and Juliet and have read classics and can read a newspaper that is printed and delivered to their door every day. By leaving our country I have become more patriotic than I ever expected to be in my life. I was taught as a child to wash my hands and brush my teeth so I didn't die of diarrhea before I reached the age of two, and I just might keep all of my teeth until the day I die. And, I don't care if there is no market for jobs in the US right now because everyone has a "higher education" and it is devalued. That is FABULOUS! That means, all of our citizens are educated. That is a BEAUTIFUL fact and something to celebrate. So go, spread your knowledge, continue to learn. Stop complaining about the beautiful gift you were given upon birth. Or at least, not to me. I promise I won't listen. But, I will use my higher education to go rake entire fields in the Andes with locals and tell them stories of what happened to people in Germany 60 years ago.