Tag: adventures

This is how you give directions in Huaycan:

– Go about halfway up the mountain til you get to the third trash pile on the left.  It will seem like there’s only two piles, but there’s a third, it’s smaller, and you can’t see it til you really get past the second one.  Okay so pass the third trash pile of the left, then you take a right onto that dirt road.  You go three or four shacks down on your right, I can’t remember how many, but you’ll get to that one with no roof…no, no, not that one with no roof, I know the one you mean, that’s the other direction.  If you’d gone left at the trash pile.  This is right.  So you go right, get to the house with no roof, make another right there and walk down until you see the classroom.  It looks like all the other buildings but you’ll know it because of the three roosters out front.  It’s sorta hidden, so you’ll know you’ve gone too far if you see the dog with the underbite.

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The weekend for the voluntarios is actually Weds and Thursday, which apparently only means that we end up having a four day weekend.  Everyone wants to go out Friday night for someone’s last hurrah.  I’m exhausted and don’t want to go, but I’m still new and who wants to be that girl, so I go.  I’m informed that we’re going to a club called Kenko’s about a 15 minute combi ride away from the house.  I obviously don’t know much about the bar scene in Huaycan, but I’m not expecting much.  A club? Like a club?  15 minutes from where there are people who, not two months ago, didn’t have access to running water?  Well, this I’ve gotta see.

Obviously I’m not expecting much.  We get there and wait in line to pick up the free entry passes that someone has managed to finagle for us (the Jerseyin me feels at home).  They hand over a pass to each of us, which seems strange, because the pass-hander-outer is already inside of the door.  Really you should just give her your name, she should confirm you have a pass, and then you should walk right by her.  This is not the system.  What you do instead is give your name, get your pass, and step maybe six inches to the right, and hand it to another person, who then let’s you pass by.  And I kid you not, he then hands your used pass back over to the pass-hander-outer lady, who places them back in the pile of passes to be reused.  I’m simple minded, so I just tell her to keep the pass, and I’ll walk in.  This is very upsetting to all the employees involved and they make me do it their way.  Wait, am I inGermany right now?  This isPeru.  There aren’t any rules inPeru.  But okay.

We walk in, and it’s seriously the most disconcerting change.  You leave the outside Huaycan world behind: sounds, smells, noises, trash, sketchy characters, roofless shacks, and enter a very nice, very clean, very pleasant and modern indoor/outdoor club.  We could seriously be in Florida.  The dance floor is outside under a huge roof.  There are white leather lounge-y couches and chairs everywhere.  Plants all over the place.  A quieter grassy knoll area where you can sit and talk.  I rub my eyes.  This is the desert.  Maybe it’s a mirage.  No.  It’s not.  It’s still here.  It’s an oasis! We sit down at a table. One kid who’s been in thedesert ofHuaycan too long asks:

– What’s that smell?

– What smell?

– I don’t know, it’s like herby somehow.  Fresh, kind of.

– Um, I think that’s grass.

– It’s awesome.

I bring back a report from the ladies room:

– Guys, there’s toilet paper in there!  On rolls.  Provided for you!  I brought my own, but they just give it to you here.

Five voluntarios in unison:

– Woooow.

I take a bottle of water out of my purse and a bouncer walks over to me before I can even have a sip.  They don’t sell that brand here.  No outside drinks.  Really?  Here?  InPeru?  Where there are no rules?  Kenko’s is the only place inPeruwith rules.  I hand it over.  I guess this is the price you have to pay for luxury.

More rules: I walk to the bar and order a drink.  The bartender asks for my receipt.  What?  He points to the cashier at the other end of the bar.  Order with her.  Pay first, then he’ll make it.  I’m at a bar in the back completely alone.  Not a single other person around.  I figure he will start to make my drink while I pay.  He doesn’t make a move.  I walk three feet to the cashier and order my drink.  The bartender watches me, stands his ground.  I pay.  He doesn’t move.  I walk back over with the receipt.  “What can I get you?”  Um, the same thing, I just ordered from you one second ago, maybe?

Still more rules:  For about an hour at midnight ladies drink for free in a little roped off area.  They basically feed you watered down kool-aid with the Peruvian version of watered down Gordon’s vodka, the kind that comes in the plastic bottles with the handle, and can cause blindness from over consumption.  I don’t want any of those free drinks, but I walk over to stand with everyone and take my drink with me.  A bouncer stops me.  Can’t come in the roped off area with the drink. But I bought this here.  Just over there.  At this bar.  No.  If I come in with a drink, I’ll actually save you guys money, because I’m not drinking the free stuff.  No.  But it’s ridiculous.  No.  I stand on the other side of the rope and chat with the girls from there.  Crazy!

One of the girls gets tipsy quickly and wants to leave.  I go with her.  We get into a Combi.  The Cobrador starts talking to us and eventually tells me he loves karaoke.  I tell him to show me what he’s got.  He asks the driver to turn up the radio and turn down the lights for effect, and belts out whatever we’re listening to.  Other people on the Combi start singing. Then we’re all singing.  Ladies with babies strapped to their backs in blankets.  Men carrying huge bags of rice.  The loud Americans.  All of us.  It’s funny and random.  I tell him that we should make a regular event of the Karaoke Combi.  Like on nights where it’s not in service we’ll just get a little strobe light and a karaoke machine and drive around Huaycan picking people up for the party.  He thinks it’s the best idea he’s ever heard.  If he starts turning a profit on it one day, I’m hoping for a cut.

We get back to the center of Huaycan.  Our place is like a four minute walk away, but it’s too dangerous at night, so we have to take a mototaxi.  Of course those are just as dangerous sometimes, so I become the Goldilocks of mototaxistas, trying to find one that is just right.  The dispatcher points out the first one.  No.  That one has doors.  I don’t do any with doors, because I want to just be able to just tuck and roll if some shit goes down.  He points to a doorless one.  No.  The driver’s not wearing the standard garb.  He looks as if he was just walking by and decided to take a spin in a mototaxi.  A few drivers are standing around yelling and trying to get us to choose them.  The dispatcher points out another guy, youngish.  I try and do the Peruvian move where you look into his soul….I don’t know if it’s working but I don’t like the look of how eager he is.  There is an older man standing aside, not soliciting us.  I pick him.  He doesn’t kill us.  I get out and pay him and study his face so I can remember to choose him next time.

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On Saturday’s our boss eats lunch with us at the house.  The house manager is yelling at everyone to clean up the table and not to leave stuff around, because the boss will be mad.  She doesn’t like personal items on the table.  She also doesn’t like people to eat lunch at different times.  She also doesn’t like when someone gets up from the table before we’re all done.  Someone notes:

– There sure are a lot of rules in this house.

– Yeah.  I think our boss used to work at Kenkos.

There are the usual busy city sounds: dogs barking, people yelling, horns blaring.  But there are also a series of distinct sounds for everything here. The garbage man comes every morning.  He rides a little moto around and sings a sort of song into a megaphone:  “Come with your garbage.  Come with your garbage.”  People then come running to give him their trash.

There are some other words to that song, but I’m gonna need to Google the lyrics – the megaphone tends to distort.

Then, we have the mothers who use horns to call their children home.  One toot is not enough.  They toot until the child shows up.  Around sundown the mom-horns start to kick in.  Each horn is a little different, and the voluntarios who have been here long enough can even tell which kid belongs to which sound, and thereby deduce who is in a crapload of trouble for not showing up on time.  Alejandro seems to be in trouble a lot.

Then, there are the sounds of the whistles that the security guys use to ward off would-be thieves.  The sound of the lady who sells bread from her bike basket: just a standard bike bell while she yells “PAAAAN.”  The man who sells his wife’s leftovers is my favorite. He’s got a pretty good voice and he just sings about whatever she’s made.  The papas rellenas are pretty legit.  When all the sounds start to happen at once, it’s all so very Oliver Twist ala the “Who Will Buy” number.  All the street vendors singing about there wares.  “Who will buuuuuuy my sweet red rooooooses, twoooooo blooooms for a penny…”

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A bunch of the voluntarios pile into a Combi.  There are no seats and we have to stand.  I realize I’m literally the only one in the bunch who doesn’t isn’t required to be doubled over in order to “stand-up.”  In fact, I couldn’t even touch the roof with my head if I stood on tiptoes.  I feel a little bit like the Bee Girl in that Blind Melon video… I’ve found my people!  We’re all sort of short, and stout, and into carbs.  I totally fit in here.  Take that tall, fit, handsome Germans!

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The Combi system is really ridiculous.  In addition to there not being any legit stops or schedules, you also can’t actually trust the cobrador to tell you where you’re going.  They get a commission for every person they get on board, so sometimes they just lie to you about where they’re headed.  Or, actually, it’s not that they lie really, but they omit.  So if you walk up to one and ask: “Avenida de Quince?” they don’t actually say yes, they just yell:  “Sube. Sube. Sube.” (Get on. Get on.)  They bang the side of the bus and yell to people walking by on the streets trying, I can only assume, to solicit them into taking a Combi ride they weren’t otherwise planning to take.  (“You know, I wasn’t planning on spending money to be packed so tightly into a van that I’m actually covered in other people’s sweat, all just to go somewhere I don’t even need to be, but that Cobrador is quite the salesman.”)

They just act like they didn’t hear you, or that they’re so busy taking money and advertising that they don’t have time to say anything but “Sube.”  So they just keep yelling at you, and so eventually you just sube and hope it’s going to where you need to be.

So today, in Zone Z, I discover a bunch of children standing around a giant turtle….wait….let me back up and paint a better picture for you with these actual pictures.

This, friends, is Huaycan.

It’s basically a desert valley between a bunch of mountains.

There’s no water for miles. None.  Like sometimes not even to drink.  The only wildlife I’ve seen so far are stray dogs.  Animals don’t live in these conditions.  People barely live in them.  I’ve seen cacti dried out and keeled over.  So marine life certainly does not live here.  And listen, I’m no scientist, right.  Maybe it’s a land tortoise or something…. but he doesn’t live in Huaycan anymore than he lives inManhattan.

– Um, Ernesto where did you guys get this turtle?

– We found him.

– You found him where?

– Here.  (Points to mound of garbage on the side of the road)

– Here in the trash?

– Si.  We wanted to feed him something, but I think they eat leaves and we don’t have those (See above In re: no water/vegetation).

Enter another voluntario.

Other Voluntario: – What the hell?  Is that a tortoise?

Me: –  I’ve been saying turtle, but what do I know?

OV: –  Yeah, it’s definitely a tortoise.

Me: –  You sure learned a lot majoring in Spanish literature.

OV –  But how did he get up here? (Looks down the massive hill.) There’s no way it climbed up the hill, right?

Me-  Doubtful.  I feel like we would’ve seen him making his way up here for days.  This is apparently the first sighting.

OV: – Crazy.

Me: – Yeah, the poor little guy probably got on the wrong Combi and shit.  He was all like “Galapagos?”  and they were like “Sube! Sube!”

OV: – Yeah, I guess.  But once you see you’re on the wrong Combi, you just get off.

Me: – Dude, he’s a turtle…

OV: – Tortoise…

Me: – …tortoise…by the time he was able to get moving it was too late.  Now he lives here among the Zone Z trash.  He’ll probably never be able to get up enough speed to catch another Combi headed back down.

Monday

Teaching English.  Practicing sentences with “instead of”  — thought about all the “instead ofs” since I arrived here

• Instead of using lotion I use bug spray.
• Instead of the standard four food groups we have the Peruvian 4: rice, potatoes, corn, platanos.  – You can have anything you want to eat for dinner provided it contains these items.
• Instead of drinking lots of water before I go to bed, I drink almost none, because I can’t be bothered (read: am scared) to climb down the rickety ass ladder of my bunk in the middle of the night.
• Instead of loving to do things on my own, I go nowhere without a buddy.

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Teaching a Spanish literacy class to a group of women who never learned to read or write.  It’s ridiculously rewarding to see how excited they are when they read a sentence aloud and realize they can do it!  They’re reading!

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Violeta is our nosy next door neighbor.  She’s a little intense but you have to be nice to her because she could make things rough for us. When you walk by her place you can see her eyes peaking out through her curtains, following you like the creepy eyes in a portrait in cartoons. I walk by and wave to the eyes.  She comes out of her house and calls me over for a conversation.

– Hello, I’m Violeta and you are new.

– Yes, hello.  I’m Abby.

– I know.

– Are you Catholic?

– I’m sorry?

– Catholic.  Are you Catholic?

– Um. No.

– Are you something else? Jewish maybe.  One of the girls in the house is a Jew, you know.

– Um. No. Not Jewish.  Not anything.

– You believe in God though don’t you?  Because otherwise you will go to hell.

– I must not be understanding you.  My Spanish is not great.

– You understand.  You understand.

I back slowly away apologizing for my language failures….this place is actually a lot like my experience in Georgia…..

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Teaching a computer course.  Helping a very creepy man learn Excel while he leers at me and generally acts like a creepster.  He keeps typing things into the cells while I show him what to do: “You smell beautiful.” Etc.  I yell at him and tell him not to come back to the next class.  We’re learning here, we’re not a frickin matchmaking service.  I don’t know the word for matchmaking.  It probably doesn’t come across as forceful as I’d like it to sound.

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The pre-teens in my biblioteca have requested I read them Twilight, in Spanish, during story hour.  They are clearly a perceptive bunch.

A woman on the Combi is falling asleep with her baby in her arms.  She’s so tired she can’t keep her eyes open and keeps almost falling out of her chair and dropping the child.  The Peruvians take turns standing guard over her and the baby to make sure they don’t fall.  When someone reaches their stop they just tap the next person, and they take over the job.

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Every conversation I have with a Peruvian woman goes like this:

– Are you married?

– Yes.

– How many children do you have?

– None.

– None?

– None.

– How many will you have?

– (I launch into a two minute description of the reasons I don’t have children and the reasons why I don’t want them.  They stare blankly)

– So how many children will you have then?

– Two.  I will have two.

Alternate conversation:

– You won’t see your husband for six months?

– Correct.

– Amor de lejos, amor de cuatro (Long distance love is a love with four people.)

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The Combi stops are pretty hysterical.  There aren’t any actual bus stops, especially in the areas where it’s the most run down. (Um, Abby, we use the term “developing” not run-down.)  People just yell descriptive terms at the driver, which eventually become the standard stops.  My favorite stop name so far is “Two Posts” – which is exactly what you think it is –  two metal poles stuck in the ground in the middle of nowhere.

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Lowlight: Saw an adorable puppy….. so skinny, starving….. eating a dead dog.

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At night there are security guards that patrol around to try and ward off would be pick-pockets, etc.  It’s a little bit homoerotic.  Two men ride around on one motorcycle, sitting extremely erect and taking their job pretty seriously.  The first man drives, and the second man intermittently blows a whistle, which I can only assume works on thieves the way dog whistles do on animals.  The rest of us can’t really understand it or hear it, but they can’t help but be affected.

Wednesday – Thursday

Hike. Drink. Hike. Mis-communicate with natives. Have mental breakdown. Hike. Get kicked out of hostel. Swim in a waterfall. Cry. Laugh. Tasty food. Slip on a rock and into a creek ruining the sneakers that I need to wear on the overnight bus.

The miscommunication situation is almost comical. We are constantly using words incorrectly.  I was trying to tell someone to leave me alone with my beliefs.  What I really say is “leave me alone with the children of whom I am the guardian”…Um….preeeetty close. While trying on jeans in a store one of the girls explains to the store owner that she’s not sure if she wants to buy them because they are a little tight in her rocks (legs.).

I realize that in this part of the world they don’t have a lot of experience with foreign accents, but their inability to just work with context clues is hysterical.  At one restaurant for breakfast, the procedure goes:

Waiter comes to table.  You tell your waiter your order.  He looks at you without a glimmer of recognition in his eye.  You repeat it.  He makes no attempt to help you.  Then each of the other people at the table has to confirm that you’ve said the correct words.  Each person then has to try their hand at pronouncing the words in your order BETTER, and more clearly, so that maybe the waiter can understand.  We do one rotation around the table.  Nothing.  He calls over a back-up waiter.  We each take a turn trying to clearly annunciate the words in the order to the two waiters.  Nothing.  A third waiter is called over.  They understand that we are ordering eggs but the word that comes AFTER eggs is a real doozie.  Juevos revueltos.  Scrambled eggs.  I mean listen, I’m saying EGGS.  You’ve got the egg part down.  How many other words could I possibly be now using to describe the eggs?  It’s like fried, scrambled, poached.  Work with me here.  It clearly starts with “R”.  Revueltos.  Scrambled.  They look as if I might be saying ANY effing THING to describe how I want the eggs.  Eggs Bricks.  No.  Eggs Paperclip. No.  Eggs Train.  Probably not.  Think of what word might work here.  For God’s sake have you people never worked on a fill in the blank exercise?!

They finally nod and bring out a bunch of stuff we didn’t order, and none of the stuff we did.  We laugh and eat.

Thursday Night:

Overnight 9 hour crazy bus ride.  No accidents this time, though we are no warmer nor safer.

(Am not normally the type to be blogging about my life.  But think thisPeruexperience merits keeping a record. Thanks Tom for creating this blog para mi!  I will try and make you proud!)

The breakdown:

Sunday  – Fly from NJ to Germany

 Following Sunday  – Fly from Germany to NJ

 Monday   – Fly from NJ to Peru:

The weight limit is 50 pounds.  My bag is 56.

– Can I just pay extra?

– No. You can’t.  Not toLima.  You can buy another bag though and pay $70 to check that one.

– I don’t have TIME to buy another bag, can’t I just pay you 70 bucks for this one and we can pretend its two bags?

– No. Not toLima

I throw out 6 pounds worth of stuff.  It’s more than you’d think.

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“Peruvians fly differently than the rest of us,” reports the very Jersey flight attendant while we’re boarding,  “This shit happens every time.”    She and I are standing in the front of the plane watching the chaos unfold before us.  The head flight attendant repeatedly announces that people must take their seats.  Their assigned seats.  Assigned.  This doesn’t stop them.  No one will sit down, and they’ll be goddamned if they’ll look at the seat number on their ticket to do so.  Everyone is standing around and yelling to one another like we’re all up here just waiting for a bus.  And either everyone on the plane is related, or they’re pretty chill about who they pass their babies around to – a number of babies are being transferred between 15 or more different people.  I hope nobody passes one to me.

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I tell the guy at customs I’m going to be in the country until the end of May and I need a visa through until then.  He stamps my passport.  I walk away and check the stamp, it says “30” on it.  I walk back:

– I said the end of May, this says 30.

– End of May. Yes.

– But it only says 30.

He switches to English to confirm. – Yes. End of May. 30.

I walk away hoping that 30 is maybe a code for something.  Maybe it means like Special Visa Number 30.  I meet the house manager and she confirms it does mean 30 days.  “They earn money by charging you for every day you overstay your visa, that’s why they do it.”  Awesome.

The arrival hall is comical.  There is only one terminal and about 5 international flights arrive at once.  There are probably 100 people holding signs and yelling.  I look for my name.  No dice.  I scan the crowd for the one white girl.  Check.

The house manager is central casting hippie do-gooder.  She’s wearing a bandeau bra under a long loose tank top and cut-off shorts.  Colorful woven messenger bag.  She asks me where I’m from and offers that she’s from NY.  “Originally.”  Originally.  I know what that’s code for.  That’s code for: I’m not really from NY at all.  It’s the only place in the world that people want so desperately to be associated with that they have to pretend to be from there, even when they aren’t.  I’m from just outside of NY (New Jersey).  I’m from nearNew York City(Westchester.) I’m from NY, originally (‘til I was four.)  I was born in NY (my parents were on vacation there when my mother went into labor.)  This doesn’t happen with other places.  I’m from just outsideCalifornia.  What? Nevada, you mean? Mexico? Just say where the fuck you mean for god’s sake.  She’s sweet though, and she knows a lot.  And if anyone can forgive her for this slip, it’s someone who is from just outside of NY herself.