25 Julio 2011

Around the time that my host family decided it was best for Elvis to live with us instead of his family on the ranch we received disturbing news. Elvis’ mother had traveled down from the ranch for two weeks to sell some llamas and alpacas. While she was on this trip, she had left her 12-year-old daughter on the ranch, alone. Somehow, the department got wind of this and removed the daughter from the house. Honestly, probably for the best.

Elvis’ father has been staying with us and the alpacas for the past week. He has been belligerently drunk everyday, all day. From time to time I have come across him crying. I don’t ask, I don’ comfort, I walk by. I have no desire to bring myself close to any drunk man. But, one morning while I was washing dishes under a slowly dripping spout he decided to come to my side and share his woes. Trapped, I listened to him cry drunkenly and tell me about how his wife doesn’t want him anymore. How he doesn’t know what to do. I nodded, didn’t say a word, and scurried away with my clean dishes as quickly as possible.

Today, knitting with Roxana we watched him stumble into the compound, crying again. There were some words he had used the other day that I hadn’t understood, so I asked Roxana. She explained far more than I needed to know: Elvis mother was upset when they took her daughter away, and she went down from the ranch to the city of Tapay drinking. She didn’t come back for days, and her husband didn’t know where she was. When she finally returned, he hit her. Apparently, pretty badly. So badly she couldn’t make this trip down to Madrigal with him. For this reason he needs to hurry back to take care of her and can’t help butcher another handful of alpacas. He is also fearful of going home because his wife doesn’t want him anymore, apparently.

I am only thankful that Elvis is here with us, and can’t wait for his father to get the hell away from us.

A conversation I had today as my knitting kneedles are clinking away,

´´Elvis, do you know how to knit?´´

´´No, my dad says that if a man knits then his sons will be gay.´´

´´I promise you that that is not true. It is as important for a man to know how to manage the thread as it is for the woman to manage wood. I would be happy to teach you anytime, Elvis.´´

24 Julio 2011 take two

Just ate alpaca intestines filled with boiled blood for lunch.

24 Julio 2011

Today the town is still in a drunken fiesta, so I hide out in my room working on my checklist.

While cleaning and cooking I almost always have a podcast playing. These recorded radio shows in English are my way to keep in touch with what is happening in the Western world. It is how I continue to learn of up-and-coming musicians, how I monitor politics, how I exercise my mind with philosophical conversation, etc. Basically, it is my main line to keep in touch with what is happening and what is to come.

What I never expected from podcasts, was the way they can make me nostalgic. Instead of taking be forward, from time to time they bring me back…

Bobbi McFerrin was featured on Krista Tippet’s Speaking of Faith podcast a couple months ago. Immediately my mind jumped to sitting in the passenger seat of my mother’s station wagon. My feet sticking straight forward because my legs are too short for my knees to bend into the proper sitting position. The cassette tape of Circlesong echos in the car. So young, I know every tone. Every hum. Every harmony. Then, through a wormhole, I am in the studios at Butler University. Around 20 years old, still sweaty from the warm-up class, we form a U around the edges of the room as Bobbi McFerrin enters for an improve class and audition. With his graying dreds neatly tied back, my heart jumps with only his simple gaze at my movement.

The kindest, funniest, most incredible beat-boxer/ rap artist I have ever known does an improve session on the podcast RadioLab. Immediately I am in the forest of the Austin Art Outside Festival in my artists’ wristband. Reggie Watts has been introduced to me, and he is quiet and clever under his massive afro. On stage his genius can’t be held back by his farouche nature. My body can’t help but bounce to his rhythm interrupted by uncontrollable fits of laughter from his simple, canny lyrics.

I am hiking in the canyon with my ipod in my ears. I scroll through the recently updated World Café podcast to find, as the next up and coming artist, “Phosphorescent”. Always having known them as an underappreciated, unknown, underground band my body leaves this South American mountain range, and I am immediately sitting in front of the record player, on the floor in the Navasota house. A pile of to be dusted records on my left, a pile of recently dusted on my right as the album Pride spins slowly under the needle.

I don’t really know what this means; my intention to connect with the future bringing the past into the present. Maybe it is just a reminder that everything I connected, circular and such. Or maybe it just means I miss home. Maybe it means I miss music.

Even with a 7,000 something songs or 85 day music collection, I find myself missing music dearly. The music here just doesn’t do it for me. Last night I lay in bed, every ounce of me including my face under heavy alpaca blankets, awake, dreaming of my piano. From time to time I try to play through pieces in my mind. Debussy, Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Gershwin; but they become harder and harder to hear. Harder and harder to see the keys that come next under my imagined hands. I can only hope that the memory sits in the muscles and nerves of my fingers waiting to show itself when I bring them to piano keys again. It has been 1 year and 48 days since my finger tips had the freedom to roam strings of a piano.

Funny how this feels like one of the biggest sacrifices in my peace corps experiences. I can make due with the food, the dirty, limited water, the cold nights, the distance, the challenge of the work itself; but, I cannot, for the life of me get used to living without my piano by my side.

So, I will continue to download music every time I am in the city, and I will utilize the best coping method I know: forget the piano, for now.

23 Julio 2011 take two

I found a woman who will sell me chicken!

It took me a year to discover that there is more buying and selling happening in this city than what happens in the little tiendas. You just have to find the right person and offer the right price. No more canned chicken!

Today, Roxana and I cooked a masterpiece if I do say so myself, and the only external influence was parmasean cheese and spinach noodles. Locally grown and provided garlic, onion, milk, chicken and oregano made for a delicious alfredo dinner (and when we say locally grown we mean pulled from the backyard… good stuff). I was so pleased with the meal Roxana pantomimed opening a bottle of white wine for me and I played along sipping her dry blanc the whole meal. It is amazing how my brain allowed me to taste the imaginary wine on my tongue, perfectly pared with our fettuccini alfredo.

Completely content we sip on anis tea and munch on vanilla cookies while I clean the kitten. Today, she got a little too curious and ended up covered in dried sheep’s blood. She purrs in my lap, now, keeping me warm as I stroke her fur with a warm rag mimicking the tongue of her mother.

Soon it will be time to put on some CW Stoneking and ball some alpaca yarn for a kntting session.

23 Julio 2011

As the father is here, there are three weddings in town today. As you can imagine, there is not enough room in this small town for three bands. The arguing bad wind music is mildly torturous.

When I emerged from my room my host family was killing one of the sheep that came down from the ranch with the llamas this week. Immediately, my father requested his favorite: fried liver. My host mom went to work as I did dishes and fed my dog sheep blood (yes, somehow this street dog has taken to me and follows me everywhere, I have love/hate feelings about this relationship).

I have to admit, the liver with spicy aji pepper, rice, and onion, was absolutely delicious. They served me my normal portion size (tiny), and I asked for more… twice. Admittedly, I was hungry. I remember being a vegetarian and hating the smell of liver when I was in Russia, but today, this sheep liver tasted great.

After cleaning the guts and blood off of everything I could so I could wash laundry, I hide in my room again. Today’s to-do list:

-Balance the VALE badget from last week’s purchases, confirm what is left to purchase from supply lists

- Write training session for incoming Peace Corps volunteers on communicating with impoverished communities.

- Write talk I will be giving August 2 in Arequipa City at the International Conference, Exito y Emprendimiento- Mujeres que cmbian el mundo: “Building Success- Women who change the World”. Aside: Cristina Reyes Hidalgo is the main speaker. She is an attorney from Ecuador and known for being a Master in Political Action. The conference is meant to bring powerful young women together and discuss how to be successful. The NGO CoPlan is one of the head organizers, and their president and good friend of mine, Raul Jimenez, pulled me aside when I was at a Peace Corps meeting last week and we had this conversation:

“So, can you be here on the second of August to speak?”

“At this point, I cannot confirm for sure. You see, in my line of work I need to help the family I live with in the fields and be in site as much as possible. I need to see where we are in the farming and then I can make a decision. I need to know if they need me first.”

“But, the young women of Arequipa need you here.”

Not sure if that was a sleezy latino line or not, but Raul really doesn’t seem to be that. Extremely flattered, I was left speechless, called Roxana, and the following day confirmed my ability to speak. There is something to put on the resume! And what a great opportunity to meet people.

- Edit the Liderazgo en red- “Leadership Network” program’s mentorship curriculum. Another aside: I met their coordinator, Michelle Davis, because I wanted to talk to her about bringing mentors to Madrigal. As many of the adolescents here aspire to be professionals, I want to help them reach that goal, however, a lack of role models that live here produces a gap in the ability to know how to act in order to receive a better education and become an attorney, nurse, engineer, etc. As we were chatting she expressed a need to develop their program a little more before expanding. Some frustrations came out as it seems that they are at a roadblock with curriculum development. “I am your lady” nearly burst from my lips. While in Arequipa, I met with Michelle’s psychology interns that are struggling to develop a way to get the mentees in the program to enjoy their meetings with their mentors, and still reach the leadership and self-esteem goals the program has set. It was empowering to meet with this group of excited college students. In the meeting Michelle called, she presented me as a tool to help them develop and organize their ideas. We started with questions. Somehow, I was able to answer their questions about child development and stimulating these urban, impoverished youth they work with. For this, I am surprised and proud. The best part of the meeting was when I could see these intern’s eyes sparkle with new ideas and their pens scribble down as quickly as possible while the eureka moments came flying through their heads. We concluded the meeting with them requesting me to read their curriculum and add any ideas or modifications into the margins to get back to them within the month. With a pile of paperwork that didn’t weigh me down in the slightest, I floated out of the meeting. That morning reminded me of the quote,

“When you get the right people in a room, the impossible becomes imaginable. We want to find the right people. Then we want to stimulate their collective imagination and harness it for real world progress.”

Richard F. Schaden

- Then, I need to start really familiarizing myself with the VALE curriculum I wrote about a year ago now. I need to memorize the classes and get ready to teach. We start in three weeks!

- Sometime soon I also need to finish the last two talks for the teacher workshops and then meet with Hirma to plan the parent workshops/library open house.

I also wanted to take a moment today to request patience from you, my friends and family. I realize that I have been more distant than normal this past month, and I have felt frustration from you. Please know that you are still very much in my thoughts, but my responsibilities here are taking up much of my personal time right now. Once VALE gets off the ground I am sure I will slither back into grasp. I love and miss you.