13 Octubre 2010

As I drove away from the city last night all I could do was stare at the mountain we had scaled the days prior. My lungs aching from physical exhaustion yet continuing to rise and fall to send oxygen to my toughened heart only sent a message of calm. The strongest muscle in my body was not softened by the beauty of the climb, but fortified. Made stronger and more passionate. Feeling our planet is as much a part of why I am here as is teaching and learning culture. I continue to flip through the photos of the ascent as if I am trying to convince myself it really happened. I stare at my tired smile at the summit. Not forced, but labored from the climb, true happiness. Even though my body was crying for air and rest everything overflowed with respect and joy for the world we live on.

I played a podcast on my ipod of Being (previously titled Speaking of Faith) from NPR with an interview of Joanna Macy. This woman is an eighty-year-old everything I could dream of being. Multi-lingual, worked for the CIA in Europe during the Cold War then moved to India with her husband (the head of the Peace Corps there) and worked with Tibetan refugees, became an environmental activist, and then became a Buddhist scholar.

She discussed her wild love for the world and living in the moment. When talking about her life when she was my age and I couldn’t identify with her more. Translated to English:

I live my life in widening circles

That reach out across the world

I may not complete this last one

But I give myself to it

I have been circling around god

That primordial tower

I have been circling for thousands of years

And still I don’t know

Am I a falcon

a storm

or a great song?

some quotes from her interview,

“my world itself is sacred”

“rather, not to be afraid [of grief]. Because that grief, if you are afraid of it and pave it over, you shut down … … our world stems not from callous and difference or ignorance so much as much it stems from fear of pain.”

“[Our use of the world] relates to everything… …That became perhaps the most pivotal point of the landscape of my life. That dance with despair. To see how we are called to not run from the discomfort, and not run from the grief or the feelings of outrage or even fear, and that if we can be fearless to be with our pain it turns, it doesn’t stay static. It only doesn’t change if we refuse to look at it. But, when we look at it, when we take it in our hands, when we can just be with it and keep breathing, then it turns, it turns to reveal its other face. And the other face of our pain for the world is our love for the world. Our absolutely inseparable connectedness with all life.”

“Say you are taking care of your mother and she is dieing of cancer, and you say you can’t go in her house or her room because you don’t want to look at her. But if you love her you want to be with her. If we love our Earth you are able to see the scum of oil spreading across the golf, we are able to see what it is doing to the wetlands and marshes… … when you love something you don’t say, too bad my kid has leukemia, I won’t go near her. It is just the opposite.”

Rilka on darkness as a part of life. The last sonnet to Orpheus

“Quiet friend who has come so far

Feel how your breathing makes more space around you

Let this darkness be a bell tower, and you the bell

and as you ring what batters you becomes your strength

Move back and forth into the change

What is it like this intensity of pain?

If the drink is bitter turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there

And if the world shall cease to hear you, say to the silent Earth, I flow

And to the rushing waters speak, I am.”

As she read this sonnet I felt as if Rilka was talking to me directly through her. I often don’t present in my blog the biggest challenges here in my service as something painful. I take the challenge in my step and feed off of it. I rejoice in the ability to nurse on them. While I express my experiences with humor and delight, it doesn’t mean the vitamin doesn’t taste bitter in the moment. Volunteers couldn’t do what we do if we feared the pain, complained, and locked it away somewhere else. Instead, we are here, with the challenge and we chew on all the sustenance it has to give.

Rilka to God: “Just give me a little more time. I just need a little more time because I am going to love the things as no one has thought to love them. Until they are real and worthy of you.”

Joanna Macy, “I am not insisting that we be brimming with hope. It is OK not to be optimistic. Buddhist teachings say that the feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out. So, just be present, The biggest gift you can give is to be absolutely present.”

“is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days”

11 Octubre 2010

I did something amazing that I can´t blog about. Call, write, or e-mail me if you want to hear about the beauty that I discovered this past weekend.

7 Octubre 2010

I am adjusting to my life here in Madrigal with flying colors. I returned from the city of arequipa with a bed frame and a table for my stove so the room is now livable. I took fruit crates and made a bookshelf where pretty much anything I need sits. The room feels like mine. Having built everything from the roof to the window it couldn´t be more me and peru smashed together. Yup, it´s an adobe hut, but it is my adobe hut! One wall is covered with maps and thanks to you all the other is papered with notes and pictures from The States. It is so cozy I have invited the other volunteers to a house warming party, my host parents can´t wait to get the Americans tipsy on pisco and chicha.

Now that I have a stove I feel like I have been eating like a queen. I have never had time to cook like this before. If I want to, I can literally spend all day over the stove preparing a soup. Getting to know and use local ingredients has become quite a challenge when balancing nutrients, but quinua trumps everything. The stuff tastes great and has so many preparations! Sweet oatmeal or savory soup or even spicy rice, it´s good stuff. My sister has made a habit of coming to my room around sundown when we used to do homework together to inquire about what I am cooking. She almost always gets in on the weird gringa food, even if she has to pick all the green stuff out. She is learning food by food the vitamins in each ingredient and how to make complete proteins. Tonight I told her I wanted to use her kitchen to change things up and she lit a candle for us to see by as we built the wood and cow poop fire. We made spinach, chicken, and rice soup with a little bit of fresh cream. This dish, unlike others I have prepared with lots-o-veggies, the family loved.

Meetings with what peac corps calls ´socios´or local coutnerparts is picking up. I discovered that they have a small computer lab without internet, and a space for a library near by. I am meeting with the teachers next week to discuss teaching non-formal education methods, and will begin my curriculum very soon, just a few more tweaks.

I

3 Octubre 2010

Having worked about 10 hours a day from Thursday through Sunday I am about half way through the first of three sections to my curriculum.

Multiple people have told me I have bit off more than I can chew, but with all my heart I truly believe I can do this. I have decide (with healthy influence from my mother) to break the three sections apart. Write one, teach it, write 2, teach it, write 3, teach it. The whole thing won't be done to begin, but it is a bit more reasonable.

So far we have just gotten through the sun, planets, earth, countries, and world history. Within the next two days I need to complete days on differing cultures, then arts, then languages.

paso a paso

2 Octubre 2010

I travelled to the City of Arequipa at 3am Thursday morning and have been working and attending meetings ever since. I am stuffing my body with yummy food, sending out mountains of e-mails, researching like a crazy person as I write a 6 month curriculum, and loving it. Getting lost in my research and my head while developing fun and informational activities makes me feel like an car rollin down the open road. The mechanisms in my brain are cranking and moving ever forward on to road that goes on forever. I conquer one mile (or kilometer in this case) at a time.

29 Septiembre 2010

Today was the first day since I moved here that I set an alarm. I got up at 3:30 and layered myself as much as I could. I don't actually know how cold it gets at night because I don't have a thermometer (and it isn't like there is local news) but if it doesn't get below freezing you could have fooled my toes. My host father and I set out with the donkeys and huge piles of corn husks for the bulls breakfast. It was slightly anticlimactic as we were deep in the canyon by the time the sun came up and any reds or golds that might had been there were hidden behind the mountains, but I know my host father appreciated the company. He is kind of like Tiffyn in the sense that he really is a strong, hardworking guy and at the same time he has one of the biggest, most loving hearts I have ever met. He misses his wife who always accompanied him, and he appreciates having me around.

Around 8am we came back from the fields to sip some tea, chomp some bread, and head back out to the neighbor's field who helped us yesterday. First more offerings and drinks that I can't stand, and then back to weeding, raking, and then... they asked me to lead the bulls. Quite the appropriate way to end the 5 day planting weekend. Me leading the bull that when I first moved to Madrigal was being trained and made my life flash before my eyes. In a fit of anger he had run right for me and the baby Diego and sent my first dose of culture shock down my spine. But today, I rubbed my knuckles between his and his partner's eyes to help them relax then grabbed the lead stick and wove them back and forth across the chacra. I had to leave the fields after a half day of work (yup 8 hours, left at lunch) and successfully avoided another round of chicha.

The joys of perception have been treating me well. Lately, when I am really craving something that tastes good I chew on something of a similar texture and try to taste what isn't there. Like the other day I convinced my brain for just a second that the alpaca inards and rice were steak and mashed potatoes. For a milisecond I actually tasted A-1 and butter. It makes eating what I don't enjoy a game I do. Today, pachamama-mother earth, threw me a bone... or rather FRUIT! To my delight, the local bodega got mangos in. Instead of soggy black potatoes and rice in the chacra, I lunched on 25cent mangos and vanilla yogurt. I ate 4 whole juicy, ripe, sweet, tangy mangos. No creativity needed, every second was heavenly.

28 Septiembre 2010

Wednesday was a long day of work in the chacra. There were lots of community members there to help, and for the first time since I have been in Madrigal I felt the force of unwelcome. I have been showered with Madrigalenians passion about what I have to offer, but that day some women made it very clear the only thing I am to their cliq is an outsider, a clown that is parading around their city. It is true, I am knew to this culture and don't know very little about their life. So I kept my mouth shut as they mocked my white skin and weird shoes (work boots instead of sanals made from tire). The weeds were better company and I focusses on my day-long date with them instead.

People around the canyon call Madrigal "the broken bell town". One large bell in the center of each town is used to call attention when announcements need to be made, like a wedding or a death. I didn't understand the analogy, and a Peruvian friend from Chivay explained that it is due to the Madrigalenian gossip. They announce everything and are all up in everybody's business all the time. I will need to learn to keep my curtain pulled and my door locked. Show them only what they want to see. As they say, "pueblo pequeno, infierno grande"- 'small town, big hell.' I am just a fish swimming around in their bowl for all to watch.

I came home feeling like the day had actually beat the crap out of my physically and emotionally, but my host father's smil and thanks could cure any wounded soul. He invited me to join him to feed the cows at 4am. Excited about the idea of watching the sunrise over the canyon I agreed and fell asleep when my head hit the pillow.