RVA (random voluntary activities) continued

So I started out not being able to find enough to do, and now am super busy all the time. I'm not sure if I spend more time volunteering or sitting in meetings about volunteering, but both are a necessary part of the work I suppose. The Robin Hood summer camp went a lot better this week than it did last week-- lots of games, sports, dancing, tae kwon doe... the kids loved it. I also wrote new words to a popular song here called "Que levante la mano", figured out the guitar chords to it and presented it to the kids on Wednesday and Thursday. I was surprised at how well it went over. I was expecting maybe a few of the girls to be excited about it and the boys to just be embarassed about singing, but instead pretty much all of them tried to sing all the words, and when it came to the chorus they really didn't even need me there. They all sang really loudly and enthusiastically waved their hands in the air. Jennifer suggested that they take the lyric sheets home and learn the words so that at the end of the camp they can all present it together, and I think that's a great idea but the one problem is that I'll be gone by next Wednesday, so I guess the only thing to do is teach another volunteer to play guitar in the span of a week. Hmm.

Meeting with Chiry was a wild goose chase. He's a great guy, and seems to be well-respected in the community, but he's also painfully unreliable. We had set up a meeting with him at 1:00 on Monday, but when 6 of us volunteers arrived at his hair salon, he wasn't there. Gaby called him on his cell phone and it turned out he's gone to the center of town. He said it would be better to have the meeting at 5. Well, at 2:30 Alia and I went to another meeting in Cancas (about a half hour from Mancora) about the special needs kids there and how the community can improve their situation. We weren't really sure why we were there other than to be physical (if not vocal) representatives of PaM, but it was interesting. We had to leave early to get back to Mancora for the meeting with Chiry, but again, when we arrived at his hair salon, nobody was there. Not even the other volunteers. So we stood there and waited for awhile. It was one of those moments where you suddenly think, "What the hell am I doing here?" Two gringas standing on the side of the road on the outskirts of Mancora, waiting for a flamboyantly gay Peruvian man to arrive in a moto-taxi so they can talk to him about gay sex and prostitutes and handing out condoms, in his hair salon. How did all the random events in my life lead up to this?

After a few minutes a moto-taxi passed, and Chiry was in it. "There he is! There he goes!" said Alia. I couldn't believe it. "Chiry!" I cried, as if calling after a lover who just walked out the door (or something like that). I don't know if he heard me, but the moto-taxi stopped and started to turn around. A couple minutes later it stopped in front of the hair salon, but instead of getting out and talking to us, Chiry just seemed to be avoiding eye contact. He started talking to the moto driver, then to a friend who was with him in the moto, then to some woman who drive up on a motorcycle to say hello. We just kind of stood there thinking, "He hates us, he totally despises us, he wants us to go away and leave him alone." Then Chiry got a call on his cell phone, and handed it over to me. It was Gaby. She said she had called Chiry earlier and he said today wasn't good for him to meet, maybe tomorrow, at noon. "Oh," I said. I got off the phone and apologized to Chiry.

"No, excuse ME for being in this state," he said. "A little drunk!" He giggled like a girl. "It's just that Saturday, Sunday, Monday... are rest days!"

"Haha, it's OK. So, we'll see you tomorrow at noon?" Chiry looked at me apprehensively. "You WILL be free tomorrow at noon, right?"

"Oh YES, I'll be free, don't worry about THAT. Just give me a call beforehand though, OK?"

Surprisingly, we actually did end up meeting with him the next day at noon, and it went pretty well, though we still couldn't quite figure out to what extent he really needed or wanted our help with his work. The one thing he seemed to really want us to help with was giving out condoms and information on the beach. Evidently he goes to the beach sometimes in the afternoon and finds groups of teenagers playing soccer or volleyball, and uses that as an opportunity to give them some "chocolates" as he calls them, and a quick informal lesson on why you should use them. He said that as many of us could come along as felt inclined. So that's what we did, on Thursday. Me, Alia, Sarah, and another Sarah that just arrived a few days ago. The problem was that Chiry showed up for that rendevous a little late (he'd been busy cutting hair) and by the time we got to the beach it was almost 5, and most of his targeted population had already left. Instead we targeted an older crowd who sat around plastic beach tables drinking beer. I couldn't help laughing when he told the first guy that the four of us girls were from the United States, we were living in la Casa de Calzado and he could also come to us for anything he needed. I don't know, in the context of handing out condoms and of us being a bunch of young gringas, I think that "anything" could easily be taken the wrong way.

One thing we noticed was that even though a lot of women kept asking him for condoms, Chiry was focusing more on handing them out to males and didn't give as many to women. Afterwards Sarah asked him why that was. Chiry said that he usually doesn't offer them to girls because they often take it as an insult.

"But what about the women who were asking for them?"

His response to this was that he gives more to men because men are more promiscuous. They're more likely to go out and get drunk and do something stupid. Whereas women are more controlled. To me, that sounds like even more reason to give condoms to the women. When it comes down to it, if the man is drunk, who's more likely to pull out a condom? But there's really no arguing with Chiry. Anyway, you've got to admire a guy who stands up and does the kind of work he does in such a conservative, homophobic environment. And manages to be respected at the same time.

We arranged another group meeting with him on Monday at his hair salon, followed by another trip to the beach, this time earlier in the day. Actually, he was the one to request these activities, which surprised us because we thought Mondays were one of his rest days. But I guess we shall see.

Random voluntary activities

This volunteer program is funny, because whenever someone asks me what kind of work I'm doing, I don't know exactly what to say. If I were able to stay for longer I would be able to focus more on one or two projects, but since I'm pretty much here and gone I've just been trying to do as much as I can. I decided to dedicate myself to the kids' summer camp that just started last week, which is Monday- Thursday from 9-11 am and includes about 30 10-year-olds. The first week went OK, but a lot of the volunteers including me had issues because Gaby, the volunteer coordinator who has also for some reason taken it upon herself to be in charge of the summer camp, did not really communicate to the volunteers what we were supposed to be doing to help, so a lot of us just ended up standing around while the kids just sat there in their chairs waiting for the grown-ups to all get on the same page. The first couple days of the camp involved way too much sitting and listening for the kids in general, and indeed was way too similar to the classroom style these kids are used to, always with someone lecturing at them and little to no participation. The goal of the camp is to give the kids an opportunity to do something different, and to participate in activities more actively and creatively, and the first week didn't really live up to that. The second two days were a little better: the group was divided up into two groups of 15 (from now on Group A comes Mondays and Wednesdays, Group B Tuesdays and Thursdays) and one group went to pick up trash from the beach while the other cleaned up the market. Afterwards the mayor came with a truck to collect the garbage, personally thanked the kids, and gave them each a soda. I'm not sure how much the lecture the previous day about the four R's of recycling had really sunk in, but at the very least the kids felt that they had worked hard and done something good.

After the first week of the camp we had a big volunteer meeting with Gaby and Jennifer, who is a primary school teacher from Mancora who's also helping direct the camp, and I was practically expecting punches to be thrown considering how upset some people were, but it actually ended up going pretty well and Gaby and Jennifer seemed open to most of our suggestions. The theme of next week is sports, so I can't imagine that not going better than the first week. We also divided up different parts of the day and put different volunteers in charge of them, so now everyone will know what's expected of them and the kids won't ever be sitting around waiting for something to happen. Also, Shelly suggested that I write a song on guitar to have as the camp theme song, so I think I'm going to write something to the tune of a popular reggaeton song that all the kids should know. And then sing and play it in front of a fairly large group of people, I guess? (I've had nightmares to that effect, haha.) We'll see how that goes.

So this week I worked at the camp in the mornings from Monday- Thursday, so couldn't go to "dengue" as people call it, and on Friday they didn't need us there, so instead I went for a couple hours on Saturday and found myself helping to poster the town with cautionary information about malaria and spider bites. I wasn't even aware that either of those things were an issue in Mancora, and I'm not really sure why we didn't have a poster about dengue, but whatev. The dengue squad now finally has gotten money from the municipality for the little pieces of cloth they needed to hold the pesticide that's used to treat water in people's houses and prevent the growth of larvae, so as far as I understand all this coming week they will be doing nothing but preparing the pesticide bundles. Hopefully I'll be able to help them with that at some point.

Another thing I did this week was go with Maria, a therapist at the Center for Special Needs Kids, to a couple of house calls she was making. I kicked a ball around on the beach with a 17-year-old girl named Luzmila, and all was going well until her eyes started to roll back in her head and she started tipping over backwards. I was terrified and darted over to catch her before she hit the ground, and luckily she regained her senses before she fell because I don't think I would have been able to support her weight. I kind if wish someone had warned me about that, haha. The center also has a recycling program that they're just starting up-- they take the kids out to collect plastic and glass bottles, then sell them or make other things out of them, like flower vases that the kids have fun painting. I would probably be more interested in working with them if it weren't for Ernesto, the other head guy who is apparently a perfectly good person during the day but a bit of a creep on a Friday night for instance, when he's drunk and comes out dancing with you and your friends. Yeah. It kind of makes having a professional relationship with him a bit awkward.

The most useful thing I've accomplished since I've been here was a matter of pure luck. On Thursday last week I was sitting in the office with the dengue squad when someone walked by the door and one of them called out, "Chiry! Come in here and say hi!" When Chiry walked in I couldn't believe my eyes. He said something I believed to be the Spanish equivalent of "Hey guuuurrrlllzzz" and after kissing everyone on the cheek started affectionately playing with one of the woman's hair. No different than the behavior of a flambouyantly gay man in the United States! He also had an incredibly high-pitched, effeminate voice. I had never seen an openly gay Peruvian before (I'm sure there are lots of them, but in Cuzco it's really hidden) so the discovery of this one pretty much made my day. The dengue team briefly introduced me to him, and after he left they explained that he was the sexual health promotor. He works in brothels giving out condoms and giving charlas about STD prevention. He also works with gay men and even lesbians (for some reason it's even harder to imagine there being lesbians here than gay men). I asked someone on the dengue team if he'd been working with Sarah, another volunteer who has been working on writing grants and getting support for a planned "brothel project." But apparently neither she nor past volunteers who's been working on the project had any knowledge of Chiry's existence. It's incredible the obvious connections that don't get made, sometimes. They were all worried about getting support from the municipality because of the taboo about premarital sex in this culture and the stigma on sex workers, and it turns out the municipality is already hiring someone to do exactly the thing they've been wanting to do.

Anyway, after I got done with the dengue work for the day I immediately went to the doctor and asked him if there was any time I could sit down and talk with Chiry. Ironically, all the other volunteers had just left for vacation so I couldn't even find out for sure whether they knew about Chiry and I wasn't exactly the choice spokesperson for the brothel project, but I figured it couldn't hurt to sit down with him and have a conversation and figure out how we could help. But no one was able to get ahold of him until the following Tuesday, when Alia and I both came to the clinic to meet with him. I guess because of the totally different context, he was a lot more reserved than I'd expected him to be. After talking for a couple minutes about where we were coming from and explaining that we'd like to try to figure out how we could support him in his work, there was an awkward silence and at first I was afraid he wasn't going to say anything. But then he invited us both to come to his hair salon (yes, hair salon!) to chat a bit more. He ended up telling us that he'd have to consult the brothel owners before he brought either of us along with him, but he seemed pretty open to having us tag along one day. The other volunteers would be arriving that night so we exchanged phone numbers and I told him we'd arrange a meeting with everyone interested once everyone else was back. Then for the next few days I couldn't get ahold of him (turns out he'd given me the wrong cell phone number), so eventually Alia and I went back to his hair salon to find him, this time accompanied by Gaby, who was very professional and managed to set a time for a meeting with him and the group this Monday, at his hair salon.

I will report back on that later. For now I have many other things to be busy with.

Para el Mundo Mancora

I have been in Mancora now for about a week. Things have been interesting, to say the least. There are more than a few organizational and communication problems in this NGO, but nothing more than I was expecting. I am living in a volunteer house with 6 other volunteers: Sarah and Rachel, who both are recent college graduates from the US; an older lesbian couple from Canada, Maggie and Michelle; Caitlin, who I just learned is Maggie's daughter from her first marriage; and Alia, from Alaska, who just arrived the other day and who I was alone with in the house for a few days because all the other volunteers had just gone on vacation. I feel like we're already close friends; it's a little scary actually, how much we have in common. Then there is another Canadian lesbian couple, Shelly and Stacey, who are also volunteering but since they are staying for a whole year, have rented a house to themselves. I don't have any gripes with anybody, it's a good group of people, if a bit lacking in maleness. As for the town of Mancora, it is nothing spectacular, although it is a bit of a hot spot for Peruvian tourists at this time of year because of the nice beaches. It's basically a very impoverished town whose economy depends on tourism.

The main challenge so far has been trying to find things to do. PaM is an organization that has lots of alliances with community institutions but mostly relies on its volunteers to come up with their own projects. I don't really feel like I'm staying long enough to start a major project, so I'm trying to just latch on to a bunch of other projects. This week I should be pretty busy because we are starting a summer camp in the mornings for 40 10-year-old boys, and also the center for special needs kids is just beginning a summer session. In the week since I arrived though, the only thing I was able to find to do was help out with a project through the medical center whose aim is the prevention of dengue fever, a disease carried by mosquitos. Helping with this project involves me accompanying one of four health promotors to several houses each day, to inspect the water deposits in the house and make sure they are not filled with mosquito larvae, which they often are. In Mancora, most people have some source of running water, but the water supply frequently gets cut off for periods of several days. For this reason, most people have to fill up trashcans with water when there is water, or buy water from vendors who bring it from the nearby Tumbes. Even when boiled the tap water is not good to drink, because it is full of heavy metals. So needless to say, the whole water situation makes things pretty difficult for people. Even though they are constantly advised to keep their water buckets covered and wash them out frequently with detergent, people often leave their water sitting out uncovered for too long, creating a perfect breeding ground for dengue-carrying mosquitos.

The project has been interesting for me partly because of my interest in public health, but mostly because I have had the opportunity to go inside a lot of houses. It is really sad to see the filthy conditions that most people here live in. Many of the houses are made of a straw-like material (that sounds funny in english, but I don't know how else to describe it), but most are some combination of bricks, cement, mud, cardboard, scrap metal... pretty much any available material. Besides the water situation, people often have farm animals in their houses, and sometimes leave food and dirty dishes all over the place, so there are flies everywhere. Usually when we find a water deposit with larvae we just dump it out and clean out the inside of the container, but this changed from Wednesday-Friday last week, because the community was without water for three days. People are sometimes unwilling to dump out even water that they know is breeding mosquitos, because they can't get it anywhere else. In this case the health promotor will just tell them to use it as quickly as possible, and then they will come back the next day to make sure the water is gone. Once, a woman told us she could not dump out her larvae-filled basin because she needed it for bathing. "But are you going to bathe even with the larvae??" said my compañera, Felicitas. The woman just shrugged. She was probably used to bathing with larvae.

But the thing I've seen that has made the strongest impression on me so far is a single mother Felicitas and I chanced upon in her house the other day. This woman was the mother of a 5-month-old baby, but her husband had left her and wanted nothing to do with the child. The woman had to wash clothing to make money to support herself and her baby, but she said the people who were supposed to pay her hadn't paid her in awhile; maybe she'd get paid tomorrow. She didn't have any water deposits, either. When we came in the baby was wrapped up in a hammock in the center of the room, looking around but perfectly still. The mother told us the baby had a fever, had had one for two weeks actually, and hadn't wanted to eat anything, not even breast milk, in 15 days. 15 days!! In all that time the baby had only wanted water. I guess this was probably a slight exaggeration, and the baby must have been getting nutrients somehow or it would have been emaciated or dead, but even so... 15 days had gone by and this woman hadn't brought her baby to the doctor, because, she said, she didn't have money. The problem with that rationale is that here, every baby born into poverty has health insurance covering the first two years of his/her life. The woman brought out a document in a plastic cover, which was the baby's health insurance. She had assumed for some reason that it had expired, but it hadn't. An examination for the baby would have been free. Felicitas told her that she should bring the baby to the doctor right away, and I wish there was some way to find out if she ever did. I couldn't help but wonder if there was some small part of that mother that hoped that her child would die, just to make her life a bit less hard. Desperation is the biggest killer I think, because when people lose hope, they lose everything.

Eco Truly Park

While staying in Lima I took a side trip to Eco Truly Park, about an hour north of the city. It´s kind of an organic farm slash hare krishna (a branch of Hindu) commune, which was of interest to me partly because I found it online while I was looking for volunteer opportunities (they have some kind of volunteer program) and partly because I then figured out that my friend Carlos lived there for a couple years. While traveling there by bus, the 3 hectare farm suddenly comes into view from the road above: a kind of spacy looking cluster of dome topped adobe buildings surrounded by a lush green organic farm. I was expecting the experience of staying there for a night to be an interesting one, but I don´t think I was quite prepared for what I´d find. Mostly I was surprised by just how religious these people were. They´re kind of like evangelicals who instead of going door to door, just wait for tourists to show up at there little commune park. One of their goals is to live at peace with humanity and with nature, which no one can deny is a pretty noble philosophy, although it may be considered a little ironic that their idea of being one with nature is living in a closed in organic farm in the middle of the desert, next to a touristy beach and at the end of a serpentine road lined with dilapidated adobe houses. The park was founded 18 years ago by some German guy, and he also founded similar parks in almost every other South American country, although the one in Peru was the first.

The first thing I got there was to take the guided tour, which was supposed to take 45 minutes but ended up being almost 2 hours long. My tour guide´s name was Govinda. The first thing he showed us was a plaque with the main rules of the faith. No eating meat, fish, or eggs. No drinking or drugs. No illicit sex. To name just a few. Next he explained a bit about the methods and philosophy behind the organic gardening, which I actually found pretty cool. Since they don´t eat meat or eggs, they manage to be almost self-sufficient. Next we were led to the "Yoga Planetarium", which, contrary to what I had assumed, is not a planetarium where you do yoga. It seems they define yoga as a word describing the general practice of the Hindu faith, one of which is hatha, or physical, yoga, but which also includes things like meditation, chanting, or just telling someone about the holy krishna. So, the Yoga Planetarium is a series of temples in which these things are practiced... a kind of landscape of Vedic practices, you could say. Once the tour finally came to an end and after a few minutes of chanting, I asked Govinda why the krishnas eat dairy but not eggs. His response was that a monk had once told him that eggs are like the menstruation of chickens. After thinking about that for a couple minutes I realized that it´s kind of true, but that still didn't really seem to explain why eating eggs would be forbidden. Is milk not the lactation of cows? I suppose the argument goes something like this:

Preposition 1. Chickens often lay unfertilized eggs.
Preposition 2. Human menstruation contains unfertilized eggs.
Preposition 3. Menstruation is gross.
Conclusion. Eating eggs is impure.

Well, that was my interpretation, anyway. For the duration of the tour, the other people in my group (mostly Peruvian tourists) kept saying "Wow! That's so pretty! That's so profound!" They seemed genuinely impressed by everything. Then when I asked them afterwards if they were planning on having lunch at the park restaurant, they said, "No! We want to go eat a lot of meat."

A few of the people who had been at the park longer remembered Carlos, but not by that name. I kept describing him as "Carlos Hasti, the artisan" (using his first name and the first part of his sanskrit pseudonym) and invariably they responded, "ooohhhhh, you mean Hasti Gopal?" It was pretty hilarious. Once they all found out that I'd previously been in touch with William, the volunteer program director, they started treating me more like a volunteer than a tourist, even though I was only planning on staying one night. Over lunch I asked someone, "What do people here do after lunch?" "Would you like to do an art workshop?" he responded. I said sure. Before I knew it some sculptor guy with a sanskrit pseudonym I couldn't pronounce had put me to work drawing letters for a sign for the art gallery that he would later carve out of wood. After I'd finished he made me do it over because he said the letters needed to be smaller and farther apart. Then he disappeared somewhere, and after waiting about 10 minutes to see if he'd come back, I assumed he wasn't and left. It turned out the krishnas had called a surprise emergency meeting, which ended up lasting about 3 hours. During this time I mostly talked to a middle-aged Brazilian guy who had just arrived as a volunteer, who spoke to me in a combination of Spanish and Portuguese and thought everything at the park was "perfecho."

When the meeting had finally ended, over a bowl of esparagus soup I talked to a guy about the dome-like structure of the temples, which are for some unknown reason called "Trulys" and are an anti-seismic structure, the architectural design of which comes from Italy, of all places. One kind of cool thing that the guy told me was that a couple of previous volunteers from the park had started a project to bring "Trulys" to some of the people affected by the recent earthquake in the Pisco region. I was glad they were doing something like that, because when I saw they were constructing some more Trulys to serve as "miradores" above the park, I couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't be more useful to help pay for some of the villagers to renovate their houses. These people struck me as kind of a funny combination between being proponents of universal love and at the same time really withdrawn from the world in some ways. The whole time I was in the park I kept thinking, "Hmm...would it be sacreligious for me to leave for a few minutes and take a walk on the beach?

After dinner everyone went to bed early (yes! my kind of people) and at about 4:30 am, a rooster that had attacked my foot without provocation the day before started crowing. At 5:00 William knocked on my door to tell me that they would be starting meditation and other yogic activities, if I wanted to come by. A little before 6 I arrived at the temple, to find a monk dressed in the traditional orange robe sharing some of the teachings of krishna, mostly directed at the Brazilian, it seemed. It was a bit too early in the morning for me to be proselytized to, but there were a couple things that caught my attention. The German guy who founded the park had gone to the United States in the 60's, during the era of "hipismo", and taught the druggy hippies about a drug that was an upper that you would never come down from: the hare krishna mantras. Later in his speech the monk started talking about Coca Cola, and how it is bad because it creates a desire in people that isn't really a service to humanity. Interesting modern application of the teachings.

After that I was going to participate in a yoga class, but my stomach was feeling a little iffy so instead I headed to the bathroom and then to my room to rest. When I emerged, the krishnas gave me some kind of tea called "mate de paico", which I'd never heard of, but which is supposed to help with your stomach. I don't know if that was what did it, but I soon started feeling a lot better. I still pretended I wasn't feeling that well though because I wanted an excuse to go back to Lima instead of doing another "art workshop" or something. As I was leaving one of the girls asked me when I was coming back. "I won't have time in this trip," I said, and thought about adding, "Maybe in my next life." I didn't say that though.

The gringa kidnapper

I have a little down time waiting to meet up with a friend so I guess I'll write again. Yesterday evening I finally got in touch with my friend Vladi, who had (understandably I guess) been sleeping all day, and we walked and drove around until we finally found a place that was open and served Pisco Sours, to celebrate my arrival in Peru. Once we ordered the Pisco I insisted on also ordering a plate of Anticucho, grilled cow's heart. Peruvian specialty. Yuuummmmmm. OK, I admit, I mostly mentioned that to gross people out, but it is actually surprisingly good.

I just got done eating lunch in the house of the family I am staying with (until tonight, when my room is overtaken by another relative and I move to a hostel) and I was reminded of one of my not-so-favorite parts of Peruvian culture: being expected to gorge yourself with food at every meal. The food is good, but man, there is always so much of it. As I tried to forcefeed myself as much of my soup and giant plate of food as I could, I watched the nanny forcefeeding the two-year-old grandaughter of Cecilia, Destiny. For at least a half hour before I went out to use the internet, the nanny was goading the child to eat more and more and more, using every threat and scare tactic possible. I didn't dare interrupt to say that I thought Destiny had probably eaten enough already, but I was somewhat taken aback when the nanny told the girl that if she didn't eat, 'la senorita' (me) was going to carry her away in my suitcase. Destiny looked at me with wide eyes, and I wasn't quite sure how to act, having just been painted as an evil gringa kidnapper. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a guy I randomly met on a bus when I was travelling in Bolivia. He grew up in the isolated desert town of Uyuni just as tourism there was beginning to boom, and he said his mother used to warn him not to go near the gringos, because the reason they carry those big backpacks is to kidnap children. Or if they didn't kidnap you, they'd take your picture so they could put it on the internet and somehow make a lot of money from it. Well, apparently this kidnapping thing is a perpetuated myth in Peru. Maybe the nanny, too, was told when she was a kid that she might be kidnapped by gringos. She kept repeating to Destiny that even as she spoke I was packing my suitcase, and if she didn't eat I would put her in and take her with me to my country. Eventually I started to play along, just because I figured the damage to my reputation was already done. I'm not sure if Destiny believed any of it, but you could tell it was making her think. Crazy Peruvians.

Arriving Home

Well, I´ve finally arrived in Peru, after a few slight complications. The first setback was that I accidentally bought my flight for October 26 instead of December 26. No wonder it was so cheap, haha. No comments on my idiocy. Anyway that was quite a fiasco but eventually it was solved and I was all set to get to Lima the night of the 30th. Well, then my connecting flight to Atlanta arrived an hour late and I missed the connection to Lima, had to stay in a hotel and leave the next day at 5.15, so i finally arrived in Lima last night and was waiting to grab my luggage off the conveyor belt when 2008 arrived and everyone clapped, cheered weakly and shook each other´s hands. So much for celebrating. But by that time I was just thankful that I had finally arrived.

Last night I stayed at the house of a middle-aged woman named Cecilia, who is the founder of the NGO I´ll be working for in Mancora, and turns out to be really friendly and a great person to talk to. Her husband is from the United States and hardly speaks any spanish even though he´s lived here for awhile. He used to be a stock broker on Wall Street, but then met Cecilia in Florida, fell in love, came to Peru, and stayed here. He and Cecilia are currently caring for two grandchildren because Cecilia´s daughter died of cancer a year ago and her husband was abusive. They are incredibly nice people and Cecilia told me all about how she and her husband founded the NGO, their mission, and basically her whole life story. She told me she always likes to meet volunteers before they go to Mancora to see what makes them tick and give them advice, and she said she thinks I need to relax and that I am too impatient. She commented that from my very anxious, indecisive emails to her in the last few weeks she could tell I was someone ´special.´ I think she meant it as a compliment though. Haha.

It´s been great just walking around Lima and being happy about the fact that I´m here. Even though I am not all that fond of Lima-- it´s mostly just a huge, crowded, unnatractive city with too much pollution and humidity-- still there is enough familiarity that I have the sensation of having finally arrived home after spending a long time away. Is that ironic, or what? Or maybe it´s not. Maybe this country really is my other home. I´m realizing that I´ve come to think of Middlebury as a prison. Some might say that is a strong word. I don´t think so. As histrionic as it may be, it´s how I feel. Coming here I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted off my chest, it´s just an incredible sense of liberation.

One more interesting anecdote--on the airplane here I was sitting next to a missionary girl who was about to embark on a 3-year assdignment to the Peruvian jungle and hardly spoke Spanish. On the other side of me was a Peruvian guy who now lives in the United States and was going to Lima to visit his family for the holidays. We were chatting a little and I was telling him about the time I spent in Peru and my travels. I asked him what other places he had been to in Latin America. He said he´d been to Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and all of Central America. I was impressed. ´Wow! Which place did you enjoy the most?´

´Well, I didn´s see much of any of those places. I was just passing through. On my way to the United States.´

´Wow! You came all that way by land??´ He said yes. I didn´t want to ask him directly if he had come illegally, so I just said, ´And was it hard to get a visa?´

´When I came I didn´t have one.´

So yes, just by chance I was sitting next to this guy who actually hired a coyote to take him all the way from Peru to the United States, just like the Mexican migrants do, just so he could get a job. He said he prefers Peru to the United States, but he has work in the United States, so he stays. Now he has a green card, an iPod and a spiffy cell phone, and flies to Lima every holiday season to visit his family.

It is a strange world we live in.