My Weekend in Photos

What I Like About Peru

Although the world is so interesting and there are always new things to be learned, it can also be said that everywhere is the same.  In every place there are good people and bad people, comforts and discomforts, hardships and luxuries, social classes, hard workers and lazy people, and of course things to love and things to dislike.  Sometimes when I get tired of having taxi drivers stop in front of me hoping I’ll take a ride with them, tired of mopping my apartment at least once a day, tired of listening to the honking traffic, tired of cat calls, tired of total disorganization and inefficiencies, I have to take a step back and remind myself of the good things here.

What do I like about Peru?

I like its fresh fruits and vegetables.  I like dancing.  I like its culture: La hora loca, traditional clothing and artisan crafts.  I like aji and rocoto.  I like its bright colors and the way people often work together.

I like the beach and colonial architecture.

I like the friends I’ve made, the warm hearts of many, the social atmosphere, the laughter of children, the ways people of all ages can interact.

I like the beautiful outdoors, the sunsets, the waterfalls, the hikes, the coastline, the ruins, the mountains, the bodies of water, the donkeys, the creativity, the resilience, some of the history.

I like being me: eating ice cream, dancing, hiking, running along the beach, talking, swinging, smiling, laughing, serving others, speaking English, speaking Spanish, listening, observing.

Stories

Life is full of stories.  In some ways our lives themselves are stories.  I’ve been blessed to have come across many storytellers in my life.  Some are part of my family, others are friends are yet others are people whose paths have intersected with mine and when I look back, I see our different paths and remember their stories and think about my own.  Some people, like my friend Gathoni , whom I’ve been fortunate to visit on 2 continents, tell stories through pictures Life Through Gathoni's Lens.  Others tell stories through paintings, poetry, sculptures and dance.  And now, I, like many others will attempt to tell some stories through words.  It’s been quite some time since I have posted anything; now the time has come to sit down and write. 

                Sometimes, as I walk down the streets of Chiclayo, as I look out at the young faces in my classes, as I see the wrinkled and worn hands of those searching through the garbage for any remains of food they can consume or plastic that they sell for a few meager cents, and as I listen to children shrieking with delight, I find myself wondering about their stories; where they have been and where they are headed. 

                In the mornings, I often buy bread from a nearby bakery.  The baker sometime shares anecdotes about other foreigners that he has met with me, asking if I know them or have been to their countries.  He seems interested in the world around him, yet is a slave to the ovens baking bread from sunup to sundown for the rest of us to enjoy. 

                I met a student a few weeks ago who is struggling in his English classes.  Yet, it isn’t a surprise.  He only sleeps about 3 hours a day since he works as a security guard all night and goes to classes all day, just to be able to sleep in a tiny room with a roof over his head, so as to be able to study at the university.  I hope he is able to make it through and finish his studies.  Without a formal education, life can be extremely difficult, as employment opportunities are limited.  On the flip-side, I’ve met an industrial engineering student, studying at a private university.  He lives comfortably with his family and gets much of what he wants, is bright and speaks English fairly well, having learned much of it from watching American TV programs and sees the world as a simple place to live.  Where will these two end up?  Will their views change or simply be reinforced?

                Having gotten involved with a leadership program for women in a pueblo joven, I get to hear their stories.  I see women who love their children more than anything in the world sweeping them up in their arms and giving them a kiss when they’ve fallen down or just want some attention.  I listened through tears to a women suffering from cancer of the uterus, who has no home and lives with her blind husband in the streets, suffering and barely able to earn a living.

                A colleague from the university married a man from Switzerland this weekend.  I enjoyed dancing at the ceremony and observing the mixture of cultures, the swirls of colors and imagined where she will be in two months when she moves to his homeland. 

                Translating letters to Canadian donors, I get to be part of telling stories of joy.  A few people received beds through the donated funds and this is what they shared.  An older gentleman suffering from TB wrote, “Although I live in humble conditions and can do little because of the severity of my illness and its contagious nature, I am grateful beyond words for your kindness, for now I no longer must sleep in the dirt like an animal, but have the bed of a man.”  A teenage girl who’d been sharing a bed with her parents and younger brother wrote, “I am the luckiest girl in the world.  You have made me a princess.  To have my own bed and a blanket was a dream that I didn’t think would come true.  May you be blessed for blessing me.”

                There are so many people we see and never know their stories.  Running along the beach with my friend Igor a few weeks back, we looked back before the tide erased our footprints and saw ours crossing with those of others, people of all ages scattered across the beach like the grains of sand, each absorbed in their own worlds, each with stories told and stories untold.     

Moments in Time

   Time is such a strange thing.  It’s an abstract noun.  It’s something we pretend to understand.  We build clocks.  We wear watches.  We write on calendars.  We say, “at three o’clock…at nine o’clock.”  The European mentality of times is linear.  Hence the phrases: wasting time, time is money, or time is not on our side.   According to previous civilizations in Peru, time is not linear, but rather circular.  What doesn’t get done today can be done tomorrow.  This helps explain some of the cultural differences throughout the world, right?

   We’re all living on the same planet, and scientists are always trying to prove the impossible: the origins of man and our planet.  Why don’t they try to prove a different impossible: the origins of “time” and what happens to it?

   I’ve lived with the Germans and their Pünktlichkeit.  I’ve seen the Koreans and their busyness.  I’ve waited and waited and waited on African time and I learned patience time and time again.  Now that I’m down here in Peru and time is flying, I just accept it not knowing from where it comes or to where it goes, nor the speeds at which it travels.  Some days go by quickly and others go by slowly.  That I’ve already been here 3 months is a bit surprising to me, yet at other times, I feel like I’ve been here much longer.  Throughout these past few months, I’ve experienced many things, including brief moments that will last much longer outside of the realm of time in my memories and my manner of thought for the ways that they have impacted me:

   One sunny day, I scrambled down a rocky dock in my jeans, a t-shirt, and my tennis shoes across the wet sand to scoop up a murmui (a little sea critter) whose hiding spot had been betrayed by the bubbles in the sand as the water retreated.  Having been enjoying the beauty of the crashing waves, I lost focus of the water as I tried to capture the little guy and got drenched by a new wave, getting to spend the rest of the day in wet socks and shoes.  I had a lovely time at the beach and also got a good reminder that it’s difficult to focus on more than one things at a time.  Prioritizing is essential.

   I got news a few weeks ago that a very happy playful little girl who was often in our house in Kenya dided a few weeks ago.  Saddened to receive that news, it got me thinking about how we need to enjoy the time we have (that is, if time is indeed linear) as we never know in what situations we will find ourselves.

   While in Ciudad Eten, as I wanted to cross a street, a Combi rumbled by and I heard the voice of a child call out, “Chiclayo! Chiclayo!  S./2.40!”  I looked at the vehicle and say a boy who appeared to be about 7 years old, standing inside with the door open trying to collect passengers to earn something for the day.  Disturbed, I asked some people nearby why the boy wasn’t in school.  They shrugged apathetically and said it’s normal.  There are too many children like him who need to help feed their families.  My heart broke for all the children being robbed of their lives by such injustices.  They’re not only missing out on their childhoods, but their futures are also slipping through their fingers.

   I bought two mandarins from a fruit peddler on my way home from work one day.  A few minutes later, two malnourished little girls with a reddish tint to what should have been dark-chocolate colored hair appeared out of nowhere.  They grabbed at the plastic sack, pleading for the fruit.  Before I had a chance to open it and hand them each a mandarin, they’d ripped it and bit into the fruit peel and all, disappearing just as rapidly as they’d appeared.

   Just the other night, I went out with a Canadian friend who is working at an NGO that I did translations for.  We went out for ice cream and had a great conversation in English where we could speak normally without the other person being confused.  :)  We bid one another good-bye with a hug.  I was reminded of the comforts of a warm North-American hug after months of Peruvian kisses for greetings and farewells. 

   We all have seemingly insignificant moments like these, but moments that are important to our personal experiences.

Where in the world is Aprill...?

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Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers!  Yesterday, I got the chance to go with the female teachers/administrators from the university to a museum and to see some ruins in honor of Mother's Day.  In the evening, I was invited to a Mother's Day celebration in a friend's home and later went dancing at a club.  More mother's day celebrating to be done today.  Here's a few pictures from the weekend.

Professora Pilar and I with a Mochica sculpture

Ruins of an adobe pyramid (from the Mochica culture)

Ruins of Señor de Sipán (as encountered in his tomb)

The DISKO

Weekend Escape

This past weekend, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to escape Chiclayo to go on a long and beautiful hike near Yaque.  Fresh air. Butterflies. Corn fields. Cows. Insects. Forest. Spiderwebs. Streams. Waterfalls. Rain. Silence.  Even though I get to escape the city for a little bit every week, sometimes I am in a rural village rather than the countryside.  I forget sometimes how much I miss the calm tranquility of uninhabited areas, how much I miss hiking and having no cell phone service, no internet access, no contact with the world apart from where I'm at.  With some fruit, humitas, bread and water in our bags, we headed off on our little adventure.  Towards the end of the hike we got rained on!  In Germany, I grew very tired of the rain.  Here, I love it.  Living in a desert keeps me in check...getting rained on is a blessing.  Here's a few snapshots of the day :)

 dragonflies

Do I or don't I swim?

 A few steps in the journey

 the final waterfall