We
bonded and laughed and fully enjoyed each moment we had - in that moment. There
was an intensity that felt very vital and alive. It was vital and alive! Age
and experience, gender, color, social status were basically irrelevant to the
handling of each experience in each moment. Travel plans were spontaneous and
therefore special. In an instant a group could grow from 4 to 15 and all was
well - better than well, it was great!
Dinner plans could so easily morph from 2 to 10 and back to 3 in a
matter of hours. No matter! It's
all good! Totally bonded buddies in the moment - we will see how many
friendships deepen and last.
There
are two- three who have expressed a great deal on interest in joining me on a
walking tour of Greek ancient places next summer! We will see - first if it can
be arranged and second if they will still be able to come!
Travel - I loved meeting and traveling with lots of different people. Our mutual enthusiasm for the various adventures made every moment very heightened and special. I know about "the fragile coincidences of travel", but I hope that I can keep in touch with at least a few of the people I really enjoyed. Modern social media is a help.
I'll keep working on it.
Locals - Every Peruvian was
welcoming, courteous, helpful, appreciative, and willing. At my volunteer
placements, the medical interpreters worked really hard to help us do our work
and the workers in the orphanage were very glad for help and made us feel we
were actually doing some good.
Taxi drivers were polite, street vendors walked away if we declined
their wares.... I never once felt unsafe or unwelcome even though my Spanish is
still almost non-existent. With
more Spanish under my belt, I would be happy to go back and try my hand at
doing more work here. Easy living it is not. But good, decent, hard-working
living it is. For me that is very satisfying.
Spanish - by the end of my stay I
knew enough numbers to make sense of prices, enough about time and meals to
make arrangements, enough of the map layout to give simple directions or find
my way, and enough mutually understood body language to get by when I had no
words. Smiling and laughing made a big difference! I am very grateful to
everyone I met who met me much more than half way in my language travails. I
appreciate what an effort they made and am grateful for their hard work. I wish
I could have reciprocated better.
Another year!
I
was sad that I couldn't speak enough conversational Spanish to have real
conversations with Yvonne and Carlos. She in particular wanted to talk a lot
and we were mostly confined to the idiosyncrasies of my iTranslate app. (For
example when I once asked about a breakfast drink she made us, the machine
translated her as saying, "it is made of beans and dirty water and is very
nutritious!" Needless to say, after the initial shock of reading the
translation we erupted into gales of laughter, the ripples of which continue
even onto this page. Life is so
full of opportunities for laughter!
Streets - traffic in Peru is amazing.
I have never been driven by drivers who knew the perimeter of their vehicles to
the nearest millimeter. When there was traffic it was dense - with side mirrors
nearly touching. On the winding hairpin turns, I shut my eyes! We were so close
to the edge and so unaware if someone was coming, that I was sure that at some
point we would be among the statistics of those vehicles which took the fast
way down. Nearly every week there was news of some truck, bus, car that misread
the edge, but quite frankly I was surprised it didn't happen even more often.
Almost
all vehicles are old and well used, but their engines are not clean and the
huge volumes of black smoke spewing up as lights change at intersections, is
awful.
SIGNS Street signs are easy to decipher as they are words and
photos.
DOGS There are dogs everywhere, but
unlike some places I've been, they appear to be cared for, however that
happens. I never saw them fed, but most of the dogs I saw seemed to stay at or
near a particular place or house. Certainly they roam free and bark in loud
voices at night, but they seem tame.
I saw so few cats, it's not worth counting.
Beggars There were a noticeable number
of beggars. They didn't make demands, they sat by the side of the sidewalk,
quietly, with a small basket in front to collect money. On the last day I gave
a bag of socks and tee shirts to a man with withered legs and no fingers who
manipulated the hand pedals of his wheel chair with an amazing agility,
particularly since he was parked on a slope. He became very agitated when I
left the bag beside him, and it seems that a direct handing off of money (or
items) is not acceptable and they may lose their spot if seen accepting such
gifts. It doesn't make much sense
to me, but there wasn't any doubt of his agitation.
Clothing. I really enjoyed the colorful
clothing many people still wear every day. Mothers and older women carry
babies, or all their wears, in bright colored blankets on their backs. Women
and girls who make their living posing for photos in the Plaza have lovely
embroidered dresses and shawls or vests. Women in outlying places still wear
layers and layers of skirts - each one heavy and tied tightly around her waist.
I'm sure it's for warmth in this season, but in the medical clinics I could
sense that they are likely worn year round and not cleaned very often.
Women's
hats are notable. The best story I heard of how they happened to wear such hats
is the following: the king of
Spain was irritated by the fashion sense of Parisians, and how the king of
France teased him about the dowdiness of Spanish fashion. The king of Spain is
reputed to have said that even his slaves in the New World wore more fashionable
clothes than Parisian women. According to this tale that is when various
Indigenous
groups started wearing remarkable hats and men groups of men started wearing
vests. I have no idea if this is
true, but it makes a good story.
The hat band colors represent marriage status.
Vistas - every day I found myself
looking to the hills as a way of centering myself. I yearned for a daily
glimpse of the snow capped peak at the end of the valley. I studied the lift
angles of the mountains, the rocks of different inca ruins (so many kinds of
rock).
Saved
some small, interesting rocks from Machu Picchu and Cusco. Not the sand that I
wanted, but small geological memories.
Food. Peruvian food has a good
reputation for variety and unexpected combinations of texture and flavor. In
one restaurant in particular (Limo on the Plaza des Armas) I found all that
combined with a great presentation, but by and large the presentation was
lacking in most places and the combinations were healthy but not memorable -
except for one which had a limo sultinado empanadas to die for! Valerian cafe on Ave del Sol.
Generally
I ate at a functional level - carbs, more carbs and a few bits of vegetable
color. One famous beige and white meal was made of corn, potatoes, rice, yucca
with no other color. It was tasty and very filling, but not especially healthy.
After
I got comfortable enough at Yvonne's to feel comfortable adding to the menu, we
had some more variety. Some vegetable at every meal. Additional herbs and
spices (but not nearly the variety we have at home.) The "safe" store
for food shopping had really wilted vegetables. Only the general mkt had good
looking vegetables, but I never felt safe buying food there - whether that was
why I never got sick I can't tell, but I never got sick!
So
I supplemented the home larder with real butter, lots of fruits to peel,
tomatoes, avocados, onions, garlic and black pepper. Oh yes, and occasional Chilean wine!
Just
for the record, my absolute favorite dish was vegetarian cerviche at Limo
Restaurant. Amazing that I never took a photo of it since I liked it so much.
Accomplishments - Suffice it to say that I feel
I made a few small, long term differences and a few more short term ones. I am
proud of that. No I didn't learn Spanish, but I got by and was able to share
strong positive emotions with people even with limited language. I enjoyed
being a part of things at a distance.
Finally-
I
could have written a lot about Incan facility with building rock walls. Cutting
massive limestone rocks with hematite hand tools - then moving them into place.
I
could have written about rock retaining walls with extraordinary drainage
systems which still work even now,
I
could have written about traveling with dear friends who became more dear as we
shared (and I got better with) their light humor and warmth. But I've left that
blog note to Mary to give a new perspective to this blog. Thank you dear one.
I
could have written about each minute of each day, because every moment was so filled with new
sensations and thoughts. My only
way of absorbing all the physical, emotional and spiritual sensations is to
write about them - otherwise they will vanish.
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