11 Agosto 2011

the mountaineera

The morning following the wedding became a mad dash back to Madrigal to hike up to the llama and alpaca ranch.
This is about a 12 hour hike straight up that concludes at about 5,300 meters altitude.
Bitter cold, but less dry, once we arrived we spent the days either being shepherds or offering "tingachi" or "payment to mother earth".
Part of the ceremony is cutting the ears of the young alpacas with the family's mark and taking the year's birth count. I was placed as the official counter (probably because I was the most sober and reliable). My host father treated me like a daughter, and gave me the responsibilities associated with that position. As exciting as it all was for me, it was kind of 'everyday' for them.


Doña Juana's brother, the owner of all those alpacas and llamas.
my host dad, elvis, his drunk father, and an aunt.

The other part of tingachi involves placing coca leaves, llama droppings and dried body parts carefully in a circle of stones, then doing a burning while shaking cow bells. I have to admit, when they perform these ceremonies after days of continued drunkenness, it loses it's rapture. At moments, it almost felt as special as being given the chore of putting up the christmas tree with the drunk uncle you don't get along with.

One particular day will hold a special place in my heart. This is Elvis' family that we were staying with up at the ranch. I was told that because Roxana couldn't come up, I needed to take her place with Elvis herding the alpacas. Elvis said something about "animalitos" or "little animals". I didn't understand. We rode the donkeys out with the alpacas to a river. He then took a handful of half frozen clay from the riverbed and suddenly I understood. We molded little animals out of clay as the big animals grazed...

None-the-less, it was amazing to sit back and just look at where I was, who I was with, and what I was taking part in...

6 Agosto 2011

Today was the wedding of Stefan and Mila.
Stefan is a frenchman that was building a house with his Peruvian bride-to-be in the village of Corporaque in colca Canyon.
They have a vision of their space being a community center and library for locals, and living space for international touring volunteers. Gray was hired by them a couple months ago to help finish the living space before they were to hold their wedding there. They are a beautiful couple that have quickly become some of Gray and my closest friends.

Naturally, I spent a majority of the wedding playing with kids from town that I have come to know and love...





I have to say the most touching part of the service was the interculturality. Naturally you had the bride's family (Limeñan), the groom's family (French), and the culture of the Colca Canyon itself (Kayawa/Quechua). Then, you throw in their friends dentists from Doctors Without Borders (Chile and Colombia), a group of boy/girl scout volunteers (Swiss I think), Gray (England), and myself (US), and you get this beautiful blend of language and understanding.
The afternoon started off clicky. The french smoking to the left of the patio (no joke), the locals sorting corn, bean, and grain gifts to the north of the patio (also, no joke), the traveling doctors keeping their distance but taking pictures of everyone who looked interesting, then Gray and I bouncing around making conversation with everyone we could communicate with in our English/Spanish/French capabilities. It felt strange, and a little forced. But, then once a little alcohol got in their systems, the intercultural conga line began! As the sun went down and the coats came out everyone seemed to begin to adjust to the local culture.
It felt good to be there and with this company.

3 Agosto 2011

In a whirlwind trip to and from Lima I got to visit with and give a couple talks to the incoming volunteers.

I gave a quick talk on generational poverty and how to communicate effectively. I found the topic fascinatingly relevant, and I can only hope they did too and are able to use this new information in their two years of service.


I then set out on a fruitless adventure to purchase an encyclopedia set for the after school program and library space. When I say the phrase "encyclopedia set", what image pops into your head?
probably this one


there is a series of books that sit on a shelf. One letter per book. Before you had internet, when you had a question, you went to this row of knowledge to find your answer.

To almost every bookstore worker I talked to, when I said the word "enciclopedia" they pictured:


One book, on one topic.


the idea of a row of books that could answer all your questions was foreign.
I have now searched all of arequipa and lima to no avail and will have to ship a set in from spain or the us.
great.

It would be mean of me to say, "no wonder".
no wonder there is so much confusion and myth that passes orally. If you don't have internet or encyclopedias, how would you find answers to your questions?

2 Agosto 2011

Last night was the going away party for Russ and Jean. A wonderful married couple that had been serving as volunteers close to me in the canyon. A couple words about this lovely pair...
Jean was/is a Small Business Development volunteer. She did a lot of English teaching in the schools. Her main project was called "Warming Wawas" (wawa meaning baby in quechua). In this project she worked with an NGO from the states and the local government to pay local artisan knitters to knit baby blankets and clothes. These items were donated to the health post and given to mother's of babies entering families of the lowest economic status.
Russ, as a Small Business Development volunteer also did a lot of English teaching, but with local tour guides (this is how all of us volunteers got the hook up for testing new tour routes via raft, horse, or foot: good stuff). His primary project was called "Comprale al Colca" which menas buy it Colca. It is a program for artisans to register their work to prove it was maid in the canyon. It keeps people from buying stuff from the outside and trying to sell it as local to unknowing tourists. There was a very large festival celebrating it's beginning in Arequipa city.

They both are incredible individuals that all the volunteers will miss dearly. We will all feel a void in the Russ and Jean advice and support line (which we have encouraged them to make into an actual telephone line once they are back in The States so that we can contact them as needed).



Now, I am back in Arequipa City. Giving the presentation in the woman's convention today. A little nervous. Then quickly hopping on a bus to Lima to give the talk tomorrow on communicating with generational poverty.


Now, it is time to study powerpoints...

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.