I did try to get to an internet Cabina in Cajamarca when I rolled up to the city earlier on this week but due to the massive influx of tourists here to douse each other with paint and bodily fluids, I was relegated to eating chocolate in the plaza and wasting time.
The weeks before Carnaval were filled with last-minute things-to-do. I first continued with my new pilgrimages to far-off places and set the week off with a journey to the thriving caserillo of La Carpa. Sarcasm aside, this was one of those incredibly rural places where one looks around at the towering hills, shin-high mud and just questions; “Why here?” There are several basic things sticking out in my mind about this journey:
1.) No road. We put all of our faith into the Doctor, who led us on random footpaths through No Man’s land and managed to fight off rabid, starved dogs with an umbrella and get ourselves filthy in the process.
The Journey Up The Mountain: The trip up consisted of a shaky milk truck ride up to La Ocsha and dodging water balloons and black bathing water being doused on us by filthy locals at 7:30 in the morning at 10,000 feet.
The Journey To: Arriving at La Ocsha, we plodded down the mountain for 2 hours with Dr. Elser occasionally looking to the sky, fighting confusion and picking a random direction to plow through as we went across paths filled with water, mud and unidentifiable mammalian feces. The utter silence was astounding. We’d come to a field occasionally and Elser would point to a few shambles posing as houses in the distances and proclaim that there was where we were going. Only we didn’t advance. The mountains in this part of Cajamarca play visual tricks on the mind and kept on moving back as we got further and further.
And then there was La Carpa itself. Far be it from me to complain about this situation, but it’s out there. Like Robinson Carusoe, Captain Jack Sparrow Out there.
We set up shop at the primary school which was a thriving building consisting of 5 mold-filled rooms, a mud soccer field where I later watched a cow bump into and promptly destroy the posts and a well with no water. Eventually people began to snake their way out of the hills and came meekly to the school in order to receive attention for ailments that they should have received 4 years earlier. I’ve never seen such timid people in my life and they appeared out of every nook and cranny, much akin to the emergence of the munchkins when Dorothy landed in Oz.
The heavens have shown that my job here has been repeatedly the same: Hanging Out While Others Do Their Job. Even though this was a getting-to-know-the-area situation, there wasn’t all that much to do. So making use of myself, I interrupted the doctor and nurse and learned how to fill out some basic paperwork and attempted to get through the dense Peruvian campo accent which this caserillo boasts. It was pretty fun. I made some friends, answered some questions about Spain and watched the health process work.
To kill time, Lenin, my host brother and driver for the health post, was with us and we taught them how to play hangman and tic-tac-toe. The kids loved it. After they got bored with that, I took them around the back of the school and taught some rudimentary English by scratching phrases into the adobe walls with the random chalk lying around and when that ran out, rocks. Any given snapshot would have been Peace Corps brochure.It was a great day and we had a 3-hour hike home along the riverbed to Sorochuco where my friend Felix came roaring by in his truck to take us up the last half hour to the town. It was exhausting.
The next day I got up early, drank my body weight in Nescafe and harnessed the toxic caffeine surging through my veins to creatively write sociodramas. I think I banged out like 5. Later that day, I used that 60 grand in college tuition well spent and spent 2 hours teaching kickball and uttering obscenities at the lack of concentration and actual desire to HAVE concentration of the children attending.
I rounded off the day jamming along on my friend Henri’s guitar at his house. He’s the 18-year-old aspiring musician in the area and we listened to old school Blink 182 and 311 while blowing the dust off his guitar and trying to pick out the tunes, which ended up killing a whole afternoon. Afterwards he gave me a stack of pirated MP3 CDs to listen to in order to transcribe the lyrics. The kid has amazing potential and picks up languages very easy and as such, it is a pleasure to help him out.
The Peace Corps boasts SUSTAINABLE Development and I get bombarded with requests for projects, English classes and turn down quite a few of them. The issue is with wasting time. They love English in the campo, but dedication to learning the actual language stops with the realization that dedication to learning takes dedication. Other volunteers have opted to teach computer classes because at least that is a bit more applicable, but in areas where there is no electricity, the process remains futile. A friend of mine’s computer classes literally include lessons on turning on the machine, manipulating the mouse and not taking a Zoolander approach in tearing off the top looking for files.
What I have done is start a few English classes with some of the dedicated people who have sought me out and don’t consider me a walking ATM machine (at least outwardly). For instance, my host family’s English is rolling along with the recent acquisition of the 2 posters translating common foods and saying from Spanish-to-English which I have hung up on the wall. Their progress so far has been relegated to monosyllabic words which are of the most use such as “pea” and “beer,” but progress is progress.
The last day I spent counting down the hours to leave for Carnaval and hanging out in Salacat recording a radio program about Self Esteem with Joy. She has the kids in her Juvenile Health Promoters working and I tacked along to see how she manifests the end of her patience when trying to get things done. It was about the same.
Then I came home and packed. Carnaval will have a separate entry because it’ll be less complaining about work and more complaining about all the stuff that was thrown all over me. I can’t wait.
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