26 Enero 2012 take three

There is something about these festivals that is particularly healing. I have written about the music and the dancing. I find myself bouncing around with them not wanting to stop. Even if my group stops, I want to keep going, keep the rhythm going. You could say it is the dancer in me, but I think it is the dancer in all of us. There is something particularly healing about vibrations that many meditators, drummers, chanters, and dancers can corroborate.

eg: "t is the vibration of our voice which is so important in our Buddhist practice. It is said the voice does the Buddha's work (2). This is why we chant Nam-myoho-renge-kyo aloud, rather than performing a silent meditation. 'Kyo' is the interconnectedness of all phenomena; and how our prayer or the sound of our chanting can affect people and situations out of our immediate sphere."

These people that have some of the most hard and depressing lives in the world release every trouble with the drums and the horns (probably unconsciously). While I find those drums and horns particularly obnoxious when I am not out dancing and drinking with them (especially when they decide to conveign in the corral that runs up to the wall that is the back of my house. Just imagine a full blown marching band on the other side of your bedroom wall when you are trying to sleep. Seriously). When you are in the group, dancing with them, it is hard to keep your day’s worries in your mind. You are released. It becomes a congregational meditation.

Adam was dressed up tonight. It was the first time I have ever seen him not in one of the three outfits he owns that don’t fit him right. As usual, he was by himself, but he didn’t care. He is one of my most loyal students, as any eight-year-old downs syndrome child would be.  Roxana wasn’t feeling well tonight, so she was keeping a particularly tight grasp on my arm. But when I was finally fed up with the drunk men flirting with me and the visitors from lima and arquipa taking my picture I left Roxana with a friend and went and danced with Adam. He is unaware of the crowd staring and pointing because he is at the head of the parade. So I come up and start dancing next to him in the middle of the street.  As if he had been waiting for me all night, he grabs me by the waist without missing a step and dances with me proper huititi style. Stunned, I pull out my very best huititi skills. The two freaks, dancing together at the front of the parade had some women looking away, and some jealous men whispering, but most were clapping and smiling awkwardly. It was a horribly beautiful moment. I coaxed him back into the group of boys dancing and told him to stay there and keep dancing so well, that I was going to find my family. And for a few minutes he did. But, when I looked back he had made his way out of the group again in his unending spins. As long as he is happy.

Roxana didn’t look well. The rain had picked up and we were wet. Mamai Juana had bought us both juice to keep us occupied while she went and danced in a circle of friends. Roxana did not look well. She is usually shy and not into dancing, but her grasp on my arm had weakend dramatically.

“We should go now. Your mom is alright. She is sober. We should go home.”
“but, I wanted to bring her back with us.”

I understand. Leaving Doña Juana at a festival alone is only asking her to get drunk. And it was rainy, cold, and late.

We stand there for a little while until roxana turns to me and says, “Can we go now?”

Stunned, and confused at the sudden change, “Of course.”

She tells her mom, Mamai Juana says she will follow shortly. Roxana heads straight for an alley in the wrong direction. ‘Damn it.’

I send her friends away as I stroke her back and she vomits in a dark corner where teenagers usually make out at festivals.

I am thinking, how many times a year is this girl going to get sick? When I arrived from Sibayo and asked Doña Juana how she was,  she told me bad and asked for pills. Somehow, I have turned this completely organic and pill hating woman into a bit of a pill popper. Somehow, those little capsules I hand her always make her diarrhea, vomiting or headache go away.  Now Mamai Juana is feeling better, and Roxana has picked up the same symptoms 5 fold because of her tinyness.

I was trying to think back. How many times in my childhood did I get sick? Like vomity sick with diarrhea. I can only remember 4^th grade a day home from school vomiting, then strep throat in high school that kept me home for a week due to an allergic reaction to penicillin. That is what, twice between the age of 5 and 18? This girl has been ill that much in just a year.

 When talking to Doña Juana about what they had eaten she says paneton and gaseosa- a pre-packaged cake and a bottled soda. Obviously not the culprits. It must have been some unproperly boiled water or some of the meat from the two sheep we just slaughtered. But, since I wasn’t here for the slaughter, I have no way to know.  Or perhaps it was just because Mamai Juana doesn’t wash her hands after she goes to the bathroom and then fixes the family’s lunch. I restocked the bathroom with toilet paper (as there surely was none while I was gone) and soap that Dave and Linsey brought back from Brussels for me. Then I poured bleach water over the toilet and soil. Then gave new tooth brushes to Roxana and her brother Washington and a tube of toothpaste courtesy of Lisby and Dave (Juan and Juana don’t brush their teeth, partly cause they have none).  I got Roxana some medication and Emergen-C the oncologists left behind after their last campaign. I asked her to sleep in my room with me because I worry about her and I know my room is warmer, and she looks at me longingly but knows that would upset her mother, I can see that in her eyes, and don’t ask twice.

So many mixed feelings so quickly. Belongingness first.  I love when the children run up to me one after the other, “srta. Luuuuuuuz”. Anomalousness second. I despise it when Peruvians walk up to me during festivals, especially men, and try to teach me about the ways of Madrigal. These are usually people who were born here but left for the city as quickly as they could, leaving their family behind, often. My new tactic is to respond in quechua, “managn intendichu” which means, ‘I don’t understand what you are saying’ in the local dialect.

But, more than anything, I love that I can predict. When they say, “we are going to the festival tonight.” I know that means they will come into my room between 6 and 8 and expect me to be ready to hit the streets in that moment to dance in the rain, have some shots, and return around 10 wet and tired. If I want to buy from any street venders, I need to bring a couple soles for picarones. These cultural things that no one can prepare you for, I can predict now. It is kind of like when I used to go to high school football games as a teenager. We didn’t actually watch the games. Middle-schoolers and young high schoolers who weren’t dating the players were expected to congregate next to the stands and gossip and attempt to flirt with or kiss the boy you liked. A strange social norm that everyone just knows… unless you aren’t from Midwest Ohio. 

So, now madrigaleñamanta (from the land of madrigal), I work and hurt with them, then heal with the vibrations and bouncy dancing with them as well.