Day 2 - Home Improvements

I felt a little suffocated, like I was wrapped in a burrito.  Where was I? There was a loud knock on the door to the room outside my room.

“Señorita!” Celina called.  Oh, right.  I’m at site.

“Si?” I groaned, shifting and feeling the aching imprint my straw mattress had left on my body.

“Tome desayuno.” She called.  Breakfast time.

“Ya, voy a venir.” I called back, groggily making myself vertical.  I felt squeezed too tight by the layers of twisted clothing I had piled on myself the night before, but I’d survived my first night and felt a little proud of myself.  I got up, took off my Northface and threw on my baby blue crocs, and walked outside to breakfast. 

Breakfast was two hard-boiled eggs and what they call “cafecito”, or “little coffee” for lack of a better translation.  Adding “cito” on the end of things is pretty common here.  Don’t be fooled by the fact that it is called coffee.  What it really is, is a murky brown liquid that is so heavily sweetened by Celina that it actually almost tastes like not fully refined sugar they put on sugar on snow at sugaring houses in New England.  I’m a little weirded out by it, and a little concerned about the sugar intake, but it reminds me a bit of home and that makes me happy.  I ate breakfast and then got my things together to head down into Chota. 

Celina decided to come with me to help me find a mototaxi, and we walked to the “central hub” if you will, which consists of a tiny store, the primary school, a church, and the health post all within about 100 ft of each other.  Other than this little area, the whole town consists of just houses on the side of the mountain.  We walked down there, by tons of people just sitting around.  (I always feel naked when I walk through groups of people, because they stare so intently at me!)  We had zero luck, so we walked a little further down towards the health post.  I thought it would be appropriate for me to duck in and say hello to the workers there, since one of them was my community partner.  They were super friendly and happy to see me.  One of them started chiding me for not wearing a hat – I was going to damage my face because I have the “skin of an angel”.  I blushed a little at that, and knew she was right about the hat.  Celina ended up leaving and I was told to sit and wait on a bench outside the post with some random woman I didn’t know who had a big bucket of milk with her that she needed to bring down into town.  I sat for a while, and the woman wandered inside, until I heard the roar of a motorcycle engine and hoped it was a mototaxi.  I shouted a quick goodbye and went running out to the street. 

A mototaxi - weird sort of motorcycle-gocart hybrid. 

It was a mototaxi, and it already had two people in it but there was room for me.  I jumped in and found myself with an older woman and who I thought must have been her 30 year-old daughter.  We rode in silence for a while until we stopped outside a house and just waited.  Without the roar of the engine I asked if they lived in Iraca, and we started up a conversation about Barbara, the previous volunteer, and my plans, who I was living with and if I had “acostumbrarme” or become accustomed to living in Iraca.  I mentioned that I’d only arrived the day before, which didn’t seem to strike them as a great answer.  Just as I started to wonder how much longer we were going to be sitting there, a woman came running out of the house with sopping wet hair and a brush and jumped into the mototaxi.  As we started moving, she started combing her hair, droplets of water flinging into my face.  I scooted a bit away from her to avoid being hit by her hair as she chatted away with the two other women in the mototaxi. 

            “Que comes?” What do you eat? The lady with the wet hair asked me out of the blue.

            “Pardon?” I responded.

            “What do you eat to get so fat?” She asked me.  I tried to control my facial expression and brushed it off with a forced laugh.

            “American food.”

            “Is everyone in your country as fat as you?” She asked me. I ground my teeth together.

            “No, only some of us.”

            This then segwayed into a conversation that lasted most of the ride down the hill (approximately 20 minutes) about whether I was fatter than Barbara, the volunteer I replaced.

            When we finally got into Chota, I was relieved to get out of the mototaxi and away from that conversation and decided to just shrug it off.  As I was walking through the central Plaza de Armas on my way to Anita’s for breakfast with Kate and Diamond, I found my path blocked by a group of kids preparing for a parade.  There was no way around them, so I decided to walk through them.  Just as I was about to escape the cluster of munchkins, some little boy a foot away from me pointed up into my face and screamed, “Look at the Giant Fat Gringa!” and I felt a hundred little eyes turn into my direction.  Rather than stay and gawk at whatever giant monstrosity or Godzilla type creature they had apparently discovered somewhere in the Plaza, I kept walking.  My morning was not off to a great start.

            I had a lovely breakfast with Kate and Diamond at Anita’s, our favorite restaurant, and then we made a plan for what to buy.  Our first stop was going to be Serpost, because I really wanted to check the mail.  When we got to Serpost, the woman said there was nothing there and I felt a bit disappointed because Mom had told me to expect packages.  We headed towards the market to buy some of the other things on my list.  About a block away from Serpost, and about 10 minutes later, the Serpost lady came running down the street and grabbed the hand of Diamond.  Apparently I had a package!! 

There were two pleasing things about that moment.  First, I had a package, obviously.  Second, our plan of sucking up to the Serpost ladies was apparently hugely effective!  Rumor has it, if the Serpost ladies don’t like you, you will never, ever, receive any of your packages because all of them will get stuck in customs in Chiclayo.  That means that you have to write a letter to customs in Spanish, without any errors, and then pay to get it notarized.  You have something like 15 days to get this done and if it is not done right, or on time, you have to pay to take a 10 hour overnight bus to Chiclayo to get your package, and probably pay to get it out of customs.  Knowing this, yesterday we all went out and bought Panetón, a nasty bread thing with chewy stuff in it that they eat for breakfast.  We brought it to the post office ladies and introduced ourselves.  That was apparently a smart move because now we had Serpost ladies running down the street to give us packages!

My package was a giant and very exciting padded envelope, which I decided not to open until I got home.  After that, we wandered around Chota, I measured the length of a normal mattress so I’d have a reference for my bed to tell my host dad.  I bought a blue pee bucket with a lid and a handle, another salmon pink one to use for my garbage, yellow paint, white paint, paint brushes, acrylic paints, little paint brushes, an electric hot water heater, a tea mug, a water jug with a spout to put my clean water, and a flour sac to use for rags in my room.

It was a long day, but Diamond and Kate agreed to come up to Iraca the next day to help me paint my room.  I walked down to the paredero, or mototaxi stop, where I could catch a ride back up the hill.  I got someone to take me up and headed home with all my new things to make my room a little more cozy. 
One of the first things I did when I got home was to open my package from my Mom.  The second I had ripped off that one strip and glanced what was inside I burst into tears.  They were so sudden but they weren't sad, more bittersweet.  My mom had sent me a fully packed stocking for Xmas.  I have been so bummed that I won't be home for Xmas, and most of the time I just don't think about it, but this made me feel like my Christmas will be less sad, that I'm still thought about.  She just made me feel so freaking loved.  All the little presents in the stocking were wrapped in the same green and red tissue paper that she always wraps them in, and I couldn't help crying because I wasn't going to be home and because I was so touched by the thought and love she'd sent in that package. I'm such a lucky girl :)

Sweetest Care Package from my Mama :)

That night, instead of moving further into my room, I moved all my stuff out.  The walls were covered in grime and spider webs, so I got my trusty broom and had at the walls, literally sweeping every surface of my room: ceilings, floors, trim, shelf, walls.  In true lonely volunteer fashion, I took funny pictures of it - my attack on all the icky things in my room - spiders, spiderwebs, years of general filth, etc. 

                      

           I'm ready! ...but a little freaked out...i don't know what I'm going to find...at least I look ready...

OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!??

Ok, Hayden, don't be a pansy, you can do this. Just one quick swipe with the broom...

Get out of my room, giant spider, or I'll kill you.  But mostly I don't want to touch you because then you're going to move really quickly in an unexpected direction and scare the crap out of me...

I'm serious! I'll kill ya! 

Cue Battle Cry

I had on a pair of spandex shorts and a tshirt, and I think I seriously scandalized Griseria when she came into my room to tell me it was time for dinner.  I put on a little bit more clothing, pants to be exact, before I went in for dinner.  Her daughter was there, who I found friendly, and they served me up about six cups of rice with a fried egg.  I ate as much as I could not to be rude, and right when I could eat no more, she put another fried egg on my plate and two pieces of bread.  That just wasn’t going to happen.  I told her I was full, she told me to eat, I said I was full, she offered me more cafecito, I told her I was full, she left me alone.

After dinner, I ripped up the flour bag into rags, filled my still un-used pee bucket with water, and started scrubbing down my room.  Turns out the ugly color on the wall was water-soluble.  This would have been ok except that the color that was under it before the ugly egg-shell color was dark ugly green.  I also discovered how terrible the paint job was – big dried drips on the wall and unidentified stains on the wall.  The water in my bucket was brown and full of floaties before I’d finished with one of the small walls.

 In the midst of the madness, my phone rang and it was my friend, Katie. I was so excited to talk to her, and didn’t realize how much I had already come to miss her in the short time that we had been apart.  We were having a great time chatting when Griseria came into the room and stood in the doorway.  I asked Katie to hold on a minute and looked at Griseria expecting her to say something.  She didn’t say anything.  I waited a little longer.  Nothing. 

“Do you need something?” I asked her politely.

“You’re doing your work?” She asked nodding towards the table. 

“At the moment, I’m on the phone with my friend who lives in Ancash.” I replied.  Wasn’t it obvious I was on the phone?  She had a cell phone…it’s not like it was a foreign object.  She just nodded once and smiled, still watching me…so I went back to talking with Katie and tried not to laugh or run away as Griseria just stood in the doorway, a strange smile on her face, watching me talk to Katie for about 25 minutes until she finally left.  SO. WEIRD.

I went to bed that night, pleased with the progress I made on my room, happy to know it was spider and dirt free, and moderately sketched out by the large hole I’d found in the corner of my room that had been stuffed with a dried piece of corn.  Rats? No, not even going to think about it.  

Day 1 in Iraca Grande

The mototaxi turned the corner and my aqua blue house stood out sharply behind the trees on top of its little hill.  Well here goes nothing, I thought.  I dug into my backpack for a five soles coin to pay the driver.  He came to a stop at the bottom of the grassy hill without my saying anything.  Apparently everyone already knew where the gringa lived. 

(Picture of my house on top of the hill - just imagine a downpour for the day I moved in)

“Más arriba.” I shouted at him over the clicking of hard rain on the plastic covering of the mototaxi.  I wanted to walk up the path by our chacra (farm) – word had it that it was shorter.

“Ya, aqui.” I told him and we stopped at the bottom of our farm, my house tucked up the steep muddy path, past the pig shelters and the farmland, behind some trees.  I had no idea how I was going to carry all of my crap up the hill by myself, so I started by paying the mototaxi driver. 

Barbara had told me that one of the things I will learn is how willfully helpful everyone is.  I had also learned during field-based training that before you walk up to a house, you should call from a good distance away so they know you are coming, and so they can manage whatever dog might attack you.  I decided to put all of this knowledge to good use, and as I slung my camping pack onto my back, yelled, “Celina!” as loud as I could towards the house.  I heaved my giant ice blue duffle bag over one shoulder, and yelled another, slightly more strained, “Celina!” up the hill.  I grabbed my surprisingly heavy orange bag I’d been using as a purse and my regular backpack, thanked the mototaxi driver, and started the climb up the slippery and muddy path, bellowing, “Celina!” whenever I could spare the oxygen. 

I was about a third of the way up, already puffing and sliding everywhere in the mud when Celina finally appeared at the top of the path.  She came bustling down in her baseball hat, cardigan, pencil-like skirt, and big black rainboots.  I took a couple more steps and then just waited for her to get to me.  We exchanged a quick kiss on the cheek in greeting, and I exhaled a few words of hello before she took my backpack and little bag and headed back up the little hill. 

When we walked into the big room they had divided to make my room, there were two women sitting on benches.  I dropped my wet bags on the floor and greeted them.  It’s always a little off-putting when you get someone who spends more time in bigger towns in the same place as a really “campo” woman.  Campo means, basically, rural.  One woman was wearing a pair of jeans and a sweater, sneakers, had her dark black hair pulled back in a messy bun, and was probably around 30 years old.  The other woman had a skirt and slip on, she wore typical campo sandals, which are made out of tires, and her feet were caked in mud.  She had four front teeth, all of gold that stuck out a little further than her lip could stretch to cover them.  She was wearing a cardigan and had white hair braided down her back, mostly covered by her campo hat. 

Campo hats are very common in the mountains in Cajamarca, and are a sign of status.  The taller your hat, the higher your status.  They are a strange cross between a cowboy hat and a wide brimmed sun hat and for whatever reason are outrageously expensive.

                         (This photo is an example of what a campo hat looks like)

            I sat and chatted with the women a bit, then sat there politely when they started talking too fast for me to understand.  I was politely turning my head to each person as they talked and providing the appropriate facial expression based on the inflexions that I heard, when the really campo woman started to cry.  I had no idea what I had missed or why she was crying, so I looked concerned and sympathetic and tried not to look too alarmed.  It wasn’t too long before she started cackling about something and the tension diffused.  I took this opportunity to get up and take a glance at my room.  Obviously, given my earlier response to hearing how small my room was going to be, I was dreading this moment and also hoping for the best.  I walked around the wooden divide into my still door-less doorframe and took a peak – first response?  It’s not unlivable, and with appropriate nesting, I can make it work.

There was the same small, bare wooden bed frame and little bedside table as before, the window was still not a window, and the walls were the same dead eggshell color with dark red trim as the large room.  Everything was the same as before, except there was a single bulb that had been wired across the ceiling, a tiny single outlet had been wired across my wall, and there was a huge chunk simply cut out of my ceiling, leaving me with a clear view into the attic.  What the hell did they do that for?   I walked over to stand below it and was a little freaked out when I remembered that my host grandfather lives on the second floor.  Built in peep-hole?  Well, I would get to that eventually, maybe buy a piece of fabric to put over it? 

My host mom interrupted my thoughts by walking into the room and asking me what I thought of my room.  “It’s good.” I said.  She walked around it once and then pointed out the light in the ceiling and the outlet on the wall.  I was excited there was light and an outlet and I made it clear that I was pleased.  The campo woman walked into the room also and we all stood there, looking at my tiny space.  “I’m going to need to get a different bed.” I told her, “I am very tall and the bed is short, I’ll need to go to Chota to buy it sometime soon.”  Apparently, my host dad could extend the bed for me – well that would save me some money and hassle on a bed frame.  In the end, I found out that the hole in my ceiling was to give me more light in my room, and that they had a mattress for my bed, but would help me buy a new one when Samuel, my host dad, extended it. 

We walked to the front of the house and my host mom climbed up to the second floor, reappearing heaving a tiny mattress that was apparently really heavy.  She leaned it over the side of the railing to Griseria, the campo lady, and me.  When the mattress was in range of my nose, I started coughing, the thick musk of an old straw mattress caught in my throat.  I was not particularly excited about sleeping on the rock-hard mattress, but it was better than cement floor. 

            We heaved the mattress onto my bed and then they helped me take all the strange stuff off my walls, including a dust covered giant bear they had nailed to the wall.  After that, they left me alone, probably headed toward the kitchen to get dinner going.  I brought a few bags into my room and then looked around.  I unpacked a couple things, just to start feeling more at home.  Mom always told me that to feel at home, the first thing you need to do is make your bed, so I pulled out my sleeping bag and laid it out on my bed…ok…bed made.

(This is a photo of my room during my initial site visit.  They have now since put up a wooden wall that goes just about a foot or so from where that bedside table is with the door frame on the far left.)

  I managed to find my tape measure, and promptly measured every surface of my room and drew it to scale on a piece of paper.  My room ended up being about 220 cm by 350 cm, including the width of my empty door frame.   I measured my bed and the table and played around with where I should put it.  I ultimately decided that it would go in the far corner of the room, away from my door frame, so I could have some privacy while I slept.  I moved my bed across the room and began unpacking other things, little by little.  Given the intense mud and rain outside, I decided to make the rainboots I had bought more comfortable, and set to work rolling the tops over so they would actually fit my calves.  I also decided I would use them as my latrine shoes, because I had little faith in my ability to aim and my latrine is shaped like a key hole...makes things difficult.  I also decided that these boots were never going to enter my room.  I pulled out my surge protector/stabilizer and tried plugging it into my outlet so I could have some music, but the outlet didn’t work.  I tried the stabilizer in the other room, and it didn’t work there either.  I was called for dinner and left my stabilizer sitting powerless on the table.   

Sitting at the dinner table, I was chatting happily with my host mom, when she told me that she was headed out the next day to Chiclayo, a city on the coast about 10 hours away.  Apparently her mom was really sick and needed to get medical care there.  I was a little surprised to hear that she had a mother, because her father lived with us and divorce is not a common thing.  I’m still not sure what the story is about that… Anyway, she said she was leaving but her cousin, Griseria, the campo woman I’d met that day, was going to come to cook and be at the house.  She told me that Griseria had an 18-year-old daughter also, and when I asked what her cousin’s daughter’s name was, she couldn’t remember.  She looked pretty embarrassed, and then mentioned that she only had a primary education.  This has happened a lot, that my host mom can’t remember people’s names that she sees a lot or are part of her family.  It really surprises me sometimes, especially because she always mentions her low level of education, but I always brush it off quickly because I can tell she’s embarrassed. 

I mentioned the outlet issue to her and she told Samuel when he walked into the kitchen.  He went right out to fix it, but ended up only fixing the outlet outside of my room.  After dinner Celina came in to my room to ask if Samuel could put something over the big hole in my ceiling and I happily allowed him to enter.  At this point, I had swept my floors maybe 3 times, and as he nailed a clear plastic sheet over the hole in my ceiling, little pieces of adobe falling to the floor, I went to get the broom again.  Apparently the plastic sheet is temporary, but I can’t imagine what they plan to replace it with.  My host mom brought in a small blanket for me to use as a pillow, and then said goodnight.

(this is a photo of my super ghetto "skylight")

A little while later, Kate and Diamond called to see how site was and how I was doing.  I told them it was not as bad as I thought, and that waiting to get to site was definitely way worse than actually getting there.  We made a plan for me to go back into Chota the next day and they would help me do some shopping for things I needed.  Number one on my list at that moment was a pee bucket.  There was no way I was going to be walking out there late at night, in the rain and freezing cold to pee into a latrine I could barely aim into in the daylight.  I asked Barbara if you get better at aiming...she said no.  

           I swept out my room again, then put on my sweatpants, smartwool socks, a tshirt, and my sweatshirt, and crawled into my sleeping bag to watch a movie.  Wow was that straw mattress hard.  I felt like I was sleeping on cement, and it smelled so musty I was worried there might be mold in it.  I was really tired, though, and figured it would probably be good for my back.  I went to stretch my body out, still stiff from the night’s sleep on a bus, when I realized I literally could not stretch out my body, the bed was much shorter than I was, about half a foot too short.  I curled my legs up in my sleeping bag – guess it was going to be a fetal position night.  As I watched my movie, the cold seemed to settle over me like a blanket, and before long I was shaking.  I got out of my sleeping bag and fumbled around in my bags. I found a pair of thick leggings and another pair of wool socks and pulled them on quickly, teeth chattering, and jumped back in my sleeping bag.  Didn’t help at all.  I jumped back out of bed, found a fleece shirt and my big, thick Northface fleece, gloves, and a hat and bundled up.  By the time I was ready to get back in bed, I had on one pair of smarwool socks and a pair of long alpaca socks, thick leggings and sweatpants, a tshirt, a fleece shirt, a sweatshirt, and my Northface fleece, a thick alpaca hat with my hood pulled on over it, and a pair of wool gloves.   I was so thickly bundled up that I couldn’t zip my sleeping bag.  I lay in bed, curled in the fetal position on my hard, musty straw mattress, and shook until I fell asleep.

High Tide of Craziness

We jammed all our crap into the Peace Corps car and drove to the sketchy side of town where we sat in the bus station and were stared at for a good half hour. 

The bus from Chiclayo to Chota is pretty much the Peruvian version of a Greyhound bus, the seats recline a little but are narrow and covered in hideous fabric.  The color scheme for this bus was dehydrated-pee.  The bus ride was 10 hours long, and went from approximately 8:00 p.m. to 5:45 a.m.  This bus ride would have been much more tolerable had we had seats in the front…unfortunately, our seats were about four rows from the bathroom, which smelled so strongly of urine that every time someone used the bathroom I would wake up from sleep because my nose was absolutely AFLAME.  I would have a groggy dilemma over whether it was worse to breathe through nose, which stung and made my eyes water, or if it was worse to breath through my mouth and pull whatever nasty particles were in the air, into my mouth.  It was a lose-lose, but I eventually figured I would just breathe through my sweatshirt. 

When we finally arrived in Chota, we got all our bags, loaded up a couple of mototaxis, and drove to Hostel Angel, where we left our stuff and Diamond and Kate.  Diamond and Kate both have sites further south in Cajamarca, but all the roads were blocked to their site because of the strike, so they got a room in the hostel.  Jennifer, Ellie, and I took a three hour nap, then the five of us went to breakfast. 

You could feel the tension at the table as we all tried not to think too hard about what was coming.  I kept thinking about my site visit a few weeks back and how bad it had been.  I didn’t want to get sick again and have diarrhea in a latrine (NOT FUN). I couldn’t understand anyone through their thick accents.  I missed my Lima host family.  Would my room be finished?  Had they built the division, and if so, how tiny was my room?  Did I have a door?  Did I have a window?  Did I have electricity or a light?  What was I supposed to do when I got there? Was it going to rain all day for three months?  Was there going to be enough work for me to do?  How arrogant was I to think I could make a difference?  Was this worth it? Could I even do it?

“Well, I’m freaking out…Let’s talk about why we chose to do this.” Ellie said, setting her coffee down.

“Great idea!” I said, hoping for a shove of motivation from someone else, “that should make me feel better, who wants to start?”

I found, by the time we got to me, that I couldn’t really articulate at all why I was there.  I tried, but it wasn’t the real reason I chose to come.  I felt a little bewildered that I couldn’t articulate or really relocate my reasons for being there other than the very practical, “I want to see if public health work is right for me and this is the most hands-on way I could figure that out.  And I wanted to live abroad…”  It sounded so lame and insufficient to justify my present state of terror.  Why was I putting myself through this?  Even “I want to help people,” sounded lame to me, it almost made me mad.  I could help people anywhere without putting myself through all this.  I tried to ignore this mini explosion of suppressed fear and forced myself to focus on what everyone around the table was saying, pushing the conversation forward to avoid the silence that would leave me alone with just my thoughts. 

We ended up hanging out in the hostel for a while and chatting with Barbara.  Barbara is the volunteer I am replacing who lived in Iraca Grande for the last two years, is also a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader for all of our region, and is now living in Chota for one more year with her dog Rolli.  We were asking her questions about different things we were concerned about, when she turned to me and told me she had been up to visit my host family and see my room. 

“Have they put up the divider?” I asked her.  Before, my room had been gigantic with one tiny little wooden bed without a mattress in the corner, one ceiling light, a cement floor, and no window.  They had told me they were going to put up a divider to break the room in two, and give me a tiny little chunk of it in the corner.  That side of the room didn’t have light or an outlet, or a window, and they were planning on dividing it to be as wide as my arm span.  I was really worried I either wouldn’t have a room, or it was going to be tiny.  I had asked them to make it as big as possible, but Barbara had told me they want to save the room for the one time a year when the whole family comes over and needs to sit in a circle together.  Needless to say I was a little irritated and also really stressed out about what my room would look like.

“Yeah, the divider is up.” She said.

“How small is it?” I asked her. 

“It’s…small…and you still don’t have a door, or a window.”

I felt the weight in my chest begin to rise up the back of my throat and I swallowed hard.

“How small?”

“Probably from like, Diamond to the wall.” She gestured.  That was about my arm span.

“So it’s tiny, I’m going to live in a tiny cement prison with no window and all that’s going to fit in there is my bed - What am I supposed to do with all my stuff?”  I threw my head back against the couch to try and hold in the burning behind my eyes.  The last thing I wanted to do was cry in front of Barbara. 

“I don’t think it’s that bad, honestly.  I dunno, maybe that’s insensitive…I do that sometimes.” She said, laughing a little sarcastically. 

OF COURSE THAT’S INSENSITIVE!  YOUR ROOM WAS GIGANTIC.  But I didn’t say anything.  I sat there staring blankly at the floor and hoping that I could keep myself together.  A few of the girls tried to be encouraging, telling me that I could make it work, that they had faith in me, but I couldn’t respond, afraid if I opened my mouth I would lose my grip.  I felt like I was about to rupture or implode or something.  When I thought I had composed myself enough to speak I looked up from the floor at Diamond.

“Can I borrow your room key for a second, Diamond?” I asked, convincingly pleasant and calm.

“Sure. Kate has it.  Hey Kate, Hayden needs the room key.” And Kate handed it to me. 

“I’ll be right back.” I said, turning towards the stairs. 

As soon as I was out of view, hot tears seared down my cheeks.  By the time I opened their door I was gasping.  I flew into their bathroom and closed the door, as far away from the room door as possible so no one could hear me, and I sat down on the floor.  All the panic, fear, and sorrow I had been carrying had exploded into defeated thoughts and tears and I couldn’t breath.  I hyperventilated as I sobbed until I got dizzy and the tiny logical part of my brain registered, “panic attack.”  I calmed my breathing but knew I had to let it all out.  I felt and thought all the raw emotion I’d tried to shove away.  I cried it out, and then I pulled myself together with a frantic prayer and much needed positive self-assertion.  I cleaned up my face, went back downstairs, and pretended nothing had happened.  I was still scared, but I felt better, and despite how embarrassing it was that I had just had a panic attack, I had handled it like a champ and I was proud of myself. 

At about 3 p.m., I crammed all my stuff into a mototaxi in the rain, and took a ride down the hill to the mototaxi stop for Iraca Grande.  Kate rode down with me, I think everyone knew that I was terrified.  Barbara and Diamond walked down to meet me there.  I switched all my stuff over to the other mototaxi, gave everyone a hug, and reluctantly climbed in.  This was it.  

Riding down the hill out of Chota, I felt like one of those Princesses in the movies who are forced into marriage to some random foreign Prince and have to gather all their belongings together and make a giant, scary journey to their new home where they know no one, can't speak the language, and can't imagine ever being happy.  I felt the big terrified doe eyes on my own face but couldn't seem to alter my facial expression.  I just sat in the back of the bumpy moto, clinging to my belongings and trying to feel hopeful, but feeling mostly like I was trapped.

Halfway up, there was a tiny little guy outside walking up the hill in his rain boots with a big tall campo hat on his head about twice his size and a blue sheet of plastic tied around his neck like a cape, dragging slightly on the ground.  I burst out laughing.  The grown man looked like a little boy playing dress up.  I was grateful to him, because the moment I started laughing, the tension broke, and I made the rest of the ride up the hill in a serene state of acceptance.  I could do this. 

"The tide is high but I'm holding on." 

Killin' Time in Chiclayo

Woke up the next morning to meet a Cajamarca volunteer who was also stranded in Chiclayo.  She lives somewhere between Chota and Chiclayo.  I discovered her existence when morning number two in Chiclayo, I went to the room a couple of my friends were staying in and discovered tech exchange frenzy.  Turns out all the new stuff was from Courtney, who promptly made her appearance with a head of super long wet hair and a comb.  She had apparently just watched a video on the internet on how to cut and layer your hair yourself.  I immediately thought of my friend Annie Pope, who is a complete beast at that and felt a small pang at the rush of memories I have under the Annie Pope file in my head. 

Courtney asked if any of us have scissors, and I lent her the ones I used to cut a bunch of people’s hair at the end of training.  She walked out in the hallway and just hacked it off.  I couldn’t help laughing at the sheer nonchalance of the whole thing.  It was super crooked, and she just started cutting at it.  I told her I could make it straight if she wanted, but she was having a fine time all on her own.  We spent the rest of the morning watching strange things on TV and tech-exchanging. 

Still with no idea when we were supposed to leave, we made a trip to the mall for some last minute stuff.  I continued to fret over my lack of elected color scheme.  I wanted to run with a sage green, salmon pink, and yellow to be bright, happy, but also soothing.  The problem was, those colors pretty much don’t exist in Perú, and I’d have a hard time making that happen.  So while I stressed about that, we wandered around the mall looking for things.  We discovered a store that is the Peruvian equivalent to Pier 1, and we were all so excited.  My excitement soon vanished with the sheer persistence of the store’s employees.  If I picked up something to show my friends, someone would appear out of nowhere with a basket and tell me they would hold it at the front for me.  They kept popping out of the bedding section with carts and baskets and other products.  I didn’t know how many times I was going to have to say, “NO GRACIAS!” or “We’re just looking!”  In the States I avoid employees like the plague unless I have a specific question because they make me feel so awkward, and sometimes I just don’t know what I’m looking for, and I usually don’t want to buy the more expensive version of what I’m holding.  They have NOTHING on this store’s employees.  There was a giant cluster of them trying to hard to get involved.  As a general rule, Peruvians don’t really take “NO” for an answer.  Persistence…it must be genetic. 

After that little adventure, we wandered around a bit more and then went to see Breaking Dawn at the movie theater.  It cost $2.50, so we got a giant popcorn and some drinks.  We laughed pretty much the whole way through the movie.  There are some REALLY ridiculous scenes in that movie.  Nonetheless, it felt good to forget the waiting and anxiety and laugh our way through an American movie in English.  We found out that we were leaving for sure for Chota that night, so we headed back to the hostel and waited to be picked up by the regional coordinator of Piura.  We drank the rest of our Gato wine on the roof with Courtney then went out to our Last Supper for about the tenth time, where I had a Pisco Sour (classic Peruvian beverage).  About halfway through my way too strong Pisco Sour, I realized in about two hours I was going to want to take a Dramamine.  I had been getting so ridiculously car sick everywhere I went in Perú that I knew I needed to take that Dramamine.  However, I was scared about mixing the two after a scary purchase of Midol in the States.  I had gone to Walmart to buy myself some Midol before I left the States for Perú, and the cashier decided it was a good time to tell me her cousin had taken Midol, then drank hard liquor, went into a coma and died.  That’s a hard tidbit to forget. 

I decided to play it safe and texted the Peace Corps doctors’ number.  To put this in context, we are all on an intimate level with the Peace Corps doctors, and they all have a really great sense of humor and are used to being asked stupid questions.  They also, conveniently, have a Peace Corps Medical Officer phone that we are allowed to call at any hour.  It was only 7p.m. when I texted and asked if I would be safe taking Dramamine if I had been drinking, I got a text back that said, “Probably not the best, besides, the alcohol will help put you to sleep J” Knowing my motion sickness tendencies, I asked if I stopped drinking and waited an hour if it would be ok.  I got the go ahead so I quickly downed my Pisco with a shiver and grimace and started my watch timer.  

Lima Fun and "Getting Peru-ed"

Turns out my move to Cajamarca was going to be a little later than I thought, and the five Super Caja Chicas (the five of us going to living Cajamarca – we earned the nickname during field-based training) were stuck in limbo between our training adventure and our service adventure.  Limbo at this point was a small room in Hostel Amigos in Miraflores with five beds and far too much luggage crammed into it. We had said goodbye to all our friends, who in various shifts pertaining to their future geographic locations, had piled all their crap into cabs and headed off to various bus stations.  Saying goodbye, again, was brutal.

We’d been in Lima for two days, and had enjoyed every moment of it – hitting up Downtown, the local gay club, for the sake of our gay guy friends and it’s close proximity (we females hadn’t anticipated the number of lesbians that would also be there and I ended playing body guard against some very persistent Peruvian ladies for more than a few people); 3 a.m. McDonalds because there is nothing more delicious than 3 a.m. McDonalds in a foreign country (I hate McDonalds in the States); Starbucks Frappaccinos (I wanted a pumpkin spice latte like it was the Cup of Salvation but they don’t have them here); skyping, because we had good internet and my friend let me use her account to actually call people’s phones from my computer (SO EXCITING!); and excessive amounts of time shopping in the local Inca Market, which is where you go to get a bunch of awesome artisan touristy things (I bought alpaca slippers and socks to provide foot-happiness despite my future cement-floored bedroom, and a green alpaca sweater with a hood that is too small and has llamas all over it.)  It’s not much, but I was sincerely stressed out about the potential color scheme of my future room, which prevented me from buying a lot of stuff.  That sentence is really wordy, but it’s how I talk…so I guess that’s fine.  I will inevitably be going back to Lima, and when I do I will buy lots of happy things. 

After two nights and three full days, we finally got in a couple of cabs with our piles of crap and I fake called Alonso, the assistant to our Assistant Peace Corps Director (APCD).  What does that mean?  I picked up my phone, pretended to call Alonso, “told him” the license plate numbers for both cabs, where we where going, and when he should expect us to arrive.  I always feel super stupid doing it because I have to do it in Spanish and I’m bad at it, plus I’m not talking to anyone, but I do it so our driver can hear, and that way we will hopefully not be robbed, beaten up, raped, or worse…if there is anything worse.  It’s a good preventative technique and for whatever reason, among the Caja Chicas, I’m always the one who ends up doing it. 

Happy to report, we made it safely to the Cruz del Sur bus station, waited a bit, then boarded our bus to Chiclayo, Piura.  We usually take a 15 hour bus ride to Cajamarca City in Cajamarca, then take four hours worth of combis (tiny little van/bus things with no leg room) to the regional city by our sites, and then I take a half hour mototaxi ride up a mountain to my site (mototaxi = glorified go cart).  However, all of our travel plans had been screwed up because there was a strike going on in Cajamarca against a mine called Newmount, which is a gold mining company from Colorado that has been draining glacial lakes and replacing them with reservoirs.  People here are really pissed off because they are worried the mining companies are going to completely deplete their water source, and because a mining truck got in an accident and spilled ridiculous amounts of mercury all over the place.  I’m pretty sure people died…  The strike is being led by the President of the department of Cajamarca (department in Perú=State in US).  Part of the strike also has to do with presidential politics.  The newly elected President of Perú promised during his campaign to help the underdog, especially in issues with foreign investment.  I think the President of Cajamarca is trying to see what the President of Perú is made of, since he has allowed the mining companies to start a new project.  Cajamarqueñas are calling for a complete change.  You can start to get the idea of the conflict.  Well, I am not allowed to voice an opinion about any of this, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to guess who I sympathize with. 

Anyway, point being, we could not take our usual route through Cajamarca city, and instead rerouted to Chiclayo, which meant driving straight up the coast for 10 hours overnight.  Going straight to Cajamarca City would be a diagonal route to our sites from Lima.  Going to Chiclayo and then to Chota (a big town/TINY city an hour walk from my future house) was going the right angle route.  Straight up to Chiclayo and then dead East to Chota.  Bus ride was relatively uneventful.  I downed some Dramamine and fell asleep right after dinner.  

These buses have bathrooms, but you’re only allowed to pee in them, and I’m always so afraid I’m going to need the bathroom for more than it is equipped.  The five Caja Chicas have discussed the use of a “poop sac” as a crisis tactic, but those buses do switch backs and I’m really not sure I’m that skilled.  We’ve also discussed throwing it out the window that is always left open in the bathroom.  I had to be the voice of reason and suggest they just tie the bag tightly and put it in the trashcan.  They didn’t think that idea was as fun until I asked how they’d feel if they were on a sidewalk and got hit in the face with a fast moving bag of feces.  That put it in perspective.  Because I am hoping to avoid use of said “poop sac” and accompanying dilemma of “to throw or not to throw”, I usually down Dramamine before dinner and hope I pass out before my body decides it wants to make space.  Worked like a charm, although my effort was almost null and void when the steward guy was going to wake me up to play bingo…luckily my friend was sitting behind me and caught him before he poked me awake.  That’s a Peruvian issue though, zero respect for sleep. 

Ten hours and a dire need for a poop-friendly toilet later, we pulled into Chiclayo at 5 a.m..  When the head of Peace Corps security, Enrique, arrived to pick us up, we found out that all the roads to Chota were blocked and closed because of the strike.  So, we hung out in Chiclayo, in Hostel Amigos, with absolutely no idea how long it would be before we actually got to go to our sites.  We call this "Getting Peru-ed".  This applies to many a situation, and is often used in tandem with "I just got Peace-Corps-ed".  Waiting for an unknown length of time in the wrong place far from your destination due to another strike in Cajamarca was a perfect example of "getting peru-ed". 

I tried to make the most of it, but struggled a bit on the first day. I did a lot of sleeping, and freaking out.  Anxiously waiting to get to site, coupled with a heavy case of PMS, was turning me into an absolute psycho and I had a less than pretty freak out on skype to my mother.  That heavy weight was still trapped in my chest, only now it was accompanied by the chaotic fluttering of panic. PMS plus preexisting anxiety is like a shut down of all forms of transportation that go anywhere other than the capital city of Worst Case Scenario. 

Next day, after wandering around, taking a deliciously hot shower, and eating a terrible dinner of whatever Peruvian’s interpret to be Asian food, I did whatever an of-age PMSing American female would do, I walked to the nearest tienda (read: hole in the wall) that sold alcohol and bought myself some boxed red Gato wine for a grand total of $3.70.  Compared to all the other wine they have around here, boxed Gato might as well have been a vintage merlot.

We went back to the hostel and up onto the roof where we found some of our Environment Peace Corps friends who were heading to their sites that night.  We also happened to encounter two handsome Canadians drinking beer.  Turns out these guys were Canadian biologists who decided to ride their motorcycles from Canada to the southern tip of South America and had made it to Perú in about a month.  We Peace Corps Volunteers, a little starved for home, started interrogating them about which states they had been through in the US, each person irrationally desperate to hear if these guys had ridden through their home state.  We all hung out for a while chatting, and I think the most clutch statement made all night was when one of the Canadians stated in a slightly weirded out, slightly admiring tone, “You guys sure know a lot about parasites…”  We all laughed pretty hard at that.  I think we freaked them out a bit...especially when we told them they could get parasites from walking barefoot in the sand...

That evening on the roof put me to ease a little bit, because it reminded me that I’m on an adventure, meeting random and interesting people, and it’s supposed to be fun.  I love those kinds of moments, chilling on a hostel roof and running into some guys doing a Canadian rendition of Motorcycle Diaries.  Wish I had something really exciting to report from that encounter, but there was merely some much needed flirting (almost all the guys in my training class were gay), and I gave one of the guys a pair of extra, and crappy, headphones I had taken from my bus ride to Chiclayo because his had broken.  He kept telling me how sweet I was, and that was enough for me. :)

Goodbyes and New Beginnings...again

            As I washed my dinner plate in the sink, I wondered how I was going to say goodbye.  It was too cruel that I had said goodbye to my family and friends, and my whole life in the States, only to have to build everything anew and say goodbye again.  I was so comfortable with my Lima host family; I knew I could make it if I lived with them for two years.  I had found a way to be myself, to be happy, and I was so scared to start it all over again in the mountains of Perú. 

            My host mom sat at the table with her hands clasped, unable to make eye contact with me.

            “Voy a usar el baño…” I blurted out and hastily made for the bathroom.  I had a heavy weight in my chest, the kind of hollow weight that with enough breaths seems to squeeze up the back of my throat and burn behind my eyes until tears run down my face.  But I didn’t feel the burning, or the thickness in my throat; it was trapped under my rib cage.  I didn’t know if it was fear for where I was going, or sorrow for what I was leaving behind, but I was surprised that I, notoriously weepy at goodbyes, felt no tears coming.  Had I just said too many at this point? Or was it just too much to feel right now? 

            I walked back into the big room, home to dining room table, computer table, TV area, and kitchen, to find my host mom in the exact same position at the table.  I looked at Sheyla and we both looked at Mamá. 

            “Necesito salir, Mamá.” I said softly, my cab was probably already waiting for me down the hill.  My host mom turned her eyes to me but still couldn’t look me in the face.

“Ya, hija.” She said, quickly looking away from me as a tear ran down her cheek.

“Ya, vamos.” Said Sheyla hastily, jumping up from her chair and running around the table towards the door.  “Puedo ayudarte.”

 I wanted to thank my host mom, I wanted to tell her how much she meant to me, but felt my tongue tied with too small a Spanish vocabulary.  Sheyla also was trying to hustle me out the door, and felt like I should follow her, like she knew how my host mom would prefer me to leave.  But it didn’t seem right to leave without saying anything so I left Sheyla anxiously standing in the doorway and went to my host mom. 

She took my head in her hands and hugged me close, tears pouring down her face.  She told me I was a beautiful and good daughter, she was proud of me, that I had to visit and call, that she was going to miss me, and that she loved me very much.  I said what I could, that I would visit and call, I would miss her too, I was thankful for all she had given me, and that I loved her too.  She gave me a kiss on the cheek and let me go. 

“Nos vemos, Mamá.” We’ll see each other. I said to her, and followed Sheyla out the door.  In the dark outside, I felt the heat in my throat and a few tears fell between blinks.  It was just a small piece of the boulder resting inside my chest; I guess I was only biting off as much as I could chew. 

             Sheyla helped me carry my bags down around the corner to where the cab waited.  We loaded my stuff into the back and waited for Lauralee and Alli to come down the hill.  Once we all had jammed our hiking packs and giant duffle bags into the way back, I turned back to Sheyla.  She had started to cry.  I opened my arms and she squeezed me tight, mumbling into my shirt as I bent to rest my cheek on her head.  When she finally let go, she turned and walked quickly away.  I heaved a heavy sigh and got into the taxi.  As we drove out of Chacrasana, I tried to cover up my regret at leaving the best host family ever and my absolute terror for what was coming, with excitement for my last night out in Lima with my friends.

Learning Spanish In a Nutshell

To demonstrate my experience in my four hours of spanish class everyday, I give you four words.

mesa
masa
misa
mosa

Question:  What do we notice about these words?

Correct Answer: They are only different by one vowel.

Their meanings:

mesa - table
masa - pie/cake crust
misa - Catholic Mass
mosa - waiter

I think that should just about wrap up that whole explanation.

Good news - I have been working hard and on week 4 (last week) we had individual 30 minute interviews with the spanish teachers to reevaluate where we were with spanish.  They recorded them, which was a little intimidating, but Monday they posted the results and I jumped up 2 whole spanish levels!  I have already passed their requirement so I'm cruising.  Feels good and I'm still learning a lot.

Downside - I am already forgetting words in English.  Example:  Today we had a sheet of pictures of things typically found in the kitchen, like frying pans, mixing bowls, spoons, etc.  I learned the word "licuadora" and wrote it down next to a picture of something you would use to make fruit smoothies but I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was in english.  I stared at the picture for a minute before I asked my friend what it was called in english.  "Blender" she said.  Wow.

So that about sums up my spanish.

xo