Just stuff we did this week.

Pickup Soccer
In the last 6 months, we have seen the changing of the Peace Corps Country Director and the Program Director (who, along with Jen, make up the 3 American directors at the Peace Corps offices). Parmer, the Country Director, comes from his most recent post in Ecuador and is joined by his Ecuadorean husband, Aquiles. The new Program Director, Dawn, comes with her Pategonian husband Jo Jo and their two kids ages 4 and 11. We would have socialized with them anyway, but the friendship has been accelerated because Aquiles, Jo Jo, Dawn and I all have been going out to the bi-weekly pickup soccer games on the embassy field. The pickup games are casual, though things do get competitive once the ball is rolling. About 75% are Peruvian staff of the embassy, the rest a hodge-podge of Americans and international spouses. For me it has been a great outlet, so I keep going back despite being a big, old gringo who hasn't played soccer since he was 14-years old. I compensate by throwing my size around and trying to foresee the geometry of things and be a gadfly to even the best opposing players.

Aquiles brings his Ecuadorean passion to the game, Jo Jo is serene, always accompanied by his leather-bound terere jug. Paraguayans are known for carrying around this form of iced-tea (a jug of iced water that gets poured repeatedly into a metallic cup of herbs and sipped through a metal straw). Back when we first arrived in Perú, Jen and I realized we were not particularly interested in the embassy social scene. The soccer, however, has been one of my few avenues to connect socially with Peruvians and now when I go to the embassy on errands, I am greeted personally by security guards and gardeners and men in suits I've met playing on the field.

The Ambassador's Residence
Tuesday evening we attended "Jazz Night" at the ambassador's residence, a mansion on the other side of town from the actual embassy, picking up both Parmer and Dawn. Attendance was not obligatory, but everyone seemed to agree that it was best to go despite none feeling particularly so inclined. I have never understood pure jazz, so I was anticipating a slow night. Along with so many others, the position of Ambassador to Perú sits empty because of politics in Washington, but the residence continues to sit squarely in the middle of Lima and periodically host events. Carter and I had been a couple weeks previously for the Easter Egg Hunt (at which Carter and several kids stumbled upon an actual fallen egg, broken open, with a not-ready-for-prime-time baby bird struggling pathetically…the kids seemed to take it in stride though). This night, a hundred chairs had been set out in a grid, turning the jazz experience into something more like going to the symphony. Too bad, too, because the first band turned out to be a little more interesting than I thought: a jazz quintet, but playing a fusion with Andes traditional huayno music and the singer doing most of it in quechua, the language of the Andes. Huayno is foot-stomping music and, if we had been in a small smoky joint, we would have danced. Particularly surreal was the quechua version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

Leif Erickson
Carter spent the last couple weeks getting prepared for his presentation on Leif Erickson, the Viking explorer who landed in North America 500 years before Columbus. He and his classmates all stood at separate stations, dressed as their subjects, delivering short oral presentations to each new set of parents who came up. The kids did great: Einstein, Earhardt, Sacagawea, Franklin, even Jim Henson. For many of the kids, English is not their first language, but they were troopers. One girl ("Clara Barton") even stopped her presentation to explain to us that "ill means sick". Meanwhile Carter in his Viking beard, stationed right in front of Columbus, was finishing each of his speeches by pointing backwards and saying "And the thing is, I discovered America before HE did!"

Peace Corps Soccer
In additions to the regular pickup games, I also got myself onto the Peace Corps soccer team to play in the annual embassy competition, with 5 games over 3 Saturdays. The first game was tied 1-1 when they put me in for the last 5 minutes and, though they all assure me it was not my fault, the other team scored from my side of the field to win. So I was pretty pleased to play the first half of yesterday's game on defense and go into half-time with a scoreless game despite the other team being the champions the last several years running (the security guards' team). I couldn't stay for the whole game; I showered in the groundskeepers locker room and put on a suit for the baptism of our good friend Maureen's baby, Emma. By the time I came out, the guards had scored a goal and the game was lost.

Emma's Baptism

Julito is a ham just like Carter.

The baptism was small, held in the chapel of Julito's school, with a small circle of family and friends that we have gotten to know through Julio, Maureen and Julito. Julito has lost all but one of his top front teeth, and the one left is jutting forward over his bottom lip…a comical snaggle-tooth if there ever was one. Afterwards, we all went to Julio's parent's house for lunch. Jen and I lunched at a table with Julio's younger sister, Milly, and her friend who are both going soon to Vancouver, Canada, to get their Masters. It was fun to see their eyes light up with excitement as we talked about the Pacific Northwest; it's sometimes easy to forget that someplace we know so well can seem as adventurous to them as the Andes seem to us. Milly mentioned that the two of them were possibly going to a music festival that night; by coincidence, this was something Carter had mentioned to us a couple weeks prior when he saw a billboard.

Festival de los 7 Mares
It's not really like Carter to suggest something like that, so we decided we ought to do it. After the baptism, got tickets and got ourselves there. The festival was held at a park in central Lima, and I was surprised to find easy parking. As with almost all parking near anything significant, a guy had taken it upon himself to watch all the cars, for a tip at the end. Out in front of the gates to the park was a strange gathering of around 50 people trading World Cup 2014 player trading cards (I have seen these before recently, they are actually stickers and people try to collect all the players to fill up a special sticker book they have). How did this corner come to be the underground place for sticker trading? We went inside and put up our chairs and, over the next 4 hours, were treated to 4 very different bands, from caribbean rock to Peruvian creole to Peruvian rap. Good idea, Carter!

Another Day at the Hogar

Edilberto, horsing around
with my sunglasses.

I literally got peed on twice today. Getting a little ancillary pee on you is par for the course, as is wiping a few butts. But today Esly, a 5-year old palsy kid currently in full leg casts, had his lunch next to him when he started to ask for the "papagayo", the pee jugs used for less mobile kids. He seemed to need it fast, so I quickly stuck it between his legs. I should have moved the lunch because Esly just let his wiener go, and the arc not only hit my hands but he also peed in his pudding. To Esly, I think, this was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Later, one-legged Victor needed to go to the bathroom. He's 14 and pretty damn good at getting things done with his one foot, but still needs someone to pull down his underpants, getting them down over his prosthetic. I was doing just that, saying "Espera. Espera." ("Wait. Wait."), but he let loose too and hit my hands. And with him it's just possible that he did it on purpose…I think it must get frustrating to have to ask for help for every pee and messing with a volunteer like me might help him regain some sense of control. Still, it was fun to see all the kids after not seeing them for a while, for one reason or another. Jen's crew of tween girls were particularly glad to have her back and even the normally taciturn Doctor said we had been missed. Paola, a 3yr-old girl with severe club feet that was not walking when she first arrive several months ago, is walking now…albeit not far and with feet still turned far inward. Very sweet how some of the 8yr-old girls mother her, take her around with them, help her to walk. Also sweet, but heartbreaking too, is Edilberto, an 8yr-old palsy boy with a dearth of brainpower; he's spends most of his time in a chair on the landing upstairs because his brittle legs are set and reset in progressive casts and braces. Right now there are new casts and uncomfortable bolts jutting up out of his knees and I am told these casts will remain for 4 months. He would love for someone to sit and play simple games with him for hours and hours but there are other kids to see and, honestly, it's pretty boring with him. As I was standing next to him, distracted and talking to someone across the room, he took my hand and started to nuzzle it until it got slobbery and I yanked my hand away. He just smiled at me and said "Papi!" (Dad!). Now, that might seem sweet, but I know that I am not filling that role for him…rather, he just wants to be able to say it, feel it for a moment. In Perú, using 'Papi' and 'Mami' is a more generic term than in English, but it's still sad. Meanwhile, the three siblings who may not yet know that their mother is dead and their father dying, had a visit from their uncle. The youngest, Valentina, wailed when he left, but Kiara and Aldair are a bit older and took it in stride. Afterwards, Aldair simply ran in and joined Carter and I and Bruno in a game of Operation.

Trujillo

Just Getting There

The flight from Lima to Trujillo is less than an hour but, because we departed on the night before the 4-day Easter weekend, our ride to the airport took two hours. We made the flight only by running through the airport, me arriving at the gate carrying my shoes after security as Jen called out "We're here! We're here." as they were about to shut the door. The poor lady I sat next to must have been horrified; I was all sweaty, with luggage all akimbo.

Part of the stress was that our taxi-driver seemed woefully unfamiliar with the system of back streets and shortcuts that make driving in Lima bearable. He drove with Google maps open on his phone, at one point getting us stuck at an intersection with the Panamerica Highway. Sometimes at intersections here, cars spiral at cross-purposes, so close together that finally no one can move forwards or backward. That's what happened to us and, like polar ice closing in around a boat, we were frozen in place. Finally, a random hero jumped out of the shotgun seat of a different taxi and started directing traffic himself. When he was done, he ran back but mistook our taxi's empty shotgun seat as his and tried to get in our car. Our flustered driver must have thought we were being hijacked, until finally the guy outside must have noticed that ours was a car full of gringos.


Trujillo
As with so many cities along the Peruvian coast, Trujillo sits on fertile flats, at the mouth of a canyon that funnels the waters from the Andes down. Much of the town was unremarkable, but in the colonial center we found our hotel situated on the pretty central plaza, ringed by brightly colored façades with ornate white entryways. The neighborhood is dotted with old, domed churches and Moorish wooden balconies jutted out from many buildings. It is not particularly a tourist destination, though what tourists there are all come through the plaza at some point. Cars honk while ladies push little carts from which you can buy boiled quail eggs, or mix-and-match various styles of canchitas (Perú's un-popped version of popcorn). White beans seem to be a local product and a kind of cebiche is made with it (lime juice, diced cilantro, salt), and some old ladies sold this from big sacks and people would walk down the street eating it from little sandwich bags.

Our first morning, we walked around the center of town. The whole Easter week is Semana Santa (Holy Week) and each day includes different activities for the devoted. We wandered into a church after a Holy Thursday service, watching people festoon the large gilded altar with hydrangeas or stand in line for confession or ritually wash the crucifix icon. The crucifix icon and the Mary icon play a big role in all the week's festivities. Starting on Holy Friday, ladies in mourning black will follow Mary around the processions, later changing into colorful clothes in time for the 3am Easter morning raising of the Christ icon.

After looking in on the church, we found a shop recommended to us as a good place for the local specialty of hand-worked leather boots. I pointed at some boots and asked if he had them in my size and perhaps not with 3-inch soles. "Come back Saturday." was his response. Jen found a pair she loved but also flipped through a huge catalog, pointing at a pair and asking if he could make those. "Come back Saturday." And though we had to check back a few extra times, we really did have custom-ordered boots 2 days later…for half what they cost in stores. Poking around some more we stumbled upon a pet store, clearly known as the place for black-market puppies because people milled around out front with puppies in bags and baskets.We picked up some stuff for Carter's goldfish and moved on.

Huanchaco
We got ourselves 12km out of town to the local beach/fishing village, where we enjoyed a fabulously fresh cebiche. I almost had to say something when we witnessed a French lady at the neighboring table send back her cebiche because it was "not cooked". "Not good!" she said in a huff. Huanchaco keeps several of the traditional reed boats used since ancient times to take fisherman out past the surf. We almost took a ride on one, but opted instead to dig in the sand and then buy a $1 line and hook and try our luck fishing off the pier. The taxi driver who promised to pick us up for our return to Trujillo at 5pm stood us up, so we saved some cash by squishing into one of the combi vans that troll around picking up passengers.

Otuzco
Very early got ourselves out to a taxi that took us to the bus stop to go a town called Otuzco. The drive takes you 75km up from the dusty coastal flats of Trujillo, through fields and fields of sugarcane, until the farmland narrows and you start the 8,500 climb along a river canyon. The bus ride has some thrills and chills and seeing a truck flipped on its side did not help. But after winding up and up, after the hills turn from crusty brown to velvet green, we finally arrived in Otuzco. We came because a couple of Peace Corps volunteers are there and both were playing apostles in the town's Good Friday passion play. As with all rural areas in the Andes, the ladies wear hats distinctive to their community. In Otuzco, it is a tall straw weave with a huge scoop of a brim, like a cowboy hat with more swoop. We were a half hour past when the the volunteer told us to arrive, but 2 hours early for the actual start time. We found are way up the cobbled streets to the main square and got Jen a very tasty chicken-noodle soup for a late breakfast. We also had a couple of coffees: instant Nescafé, the sad truth being that in a country with some of the world's best coffee, in many places it is almost impossible to get anything but instant. The time went quickly, we just milled around the plaza people-watching. There were the ladies in their big hats, their men with baseball caps and buttoned shirts and slacks – all with muddy shoes from the dirt tracks coming in from the surrounding hillsides. Carter and his fair curls got stares, but the celebration brings people from all over and I watched as a couple of mountain ladies laughed/stared in amazement at a big muscle guy.

The players moved along several stations set around the square, while the crowd pressed and followed them, and my height advantage over the typical Peruvian meant I was able to see more than most. After Jesus breaks bread, after he sees all the local bigwigs and things get bloody, he finally picks up the cross and drags it out of the square accompanied by Roman guards on donkeys, with periodic floggings. We followed along, realizing that the ultimate destination for the final scene was up on the hillside above town. Climbing uphill, cutting through some fields, we came upon Judas hanging from a tree before arriving at Calvary. Here were lots and lots of people waiting, with vendors selling pastries and sweet peanuts and even cebiche in plastic cups. So many of us in the crowd were eating when the final crucifixion occurred.

We found Melvin and Oscar, the volunteers, and took them to lunch at a restaurant right on the square. Jennifer was halfway through her lunch when we realized she had completely forgotten about Good Friday and, in spite of lunching with 2 of the apostles, ordered steak. Perhaps that's why it was so tough and dry while my fish and crab soup was fantastic. Being there with the volunteers, I got a sense of what it must be like for them  living for 2 years in a small town. One man came up to Oscar to pay back a loan, while Melvin was a little uncomfortable because also in the restaurant was his original host-mother with whom things had ended badly. Later, Melvin took us for a short visit to his new host family, complete with a pet deer that was frisky like a dog, butting Carter in the chest.

Chan Chan
Back in Trujillo, we were up Saturday morning to join a tour out to the ruins of the immense and ancient adobe city of Chan Chan. Trujillo is known for it's republican, rebellious spirit (it was the first Peruvian city to declare independence from Spain), and this heritage may go back to the Chimú people, the builders of Chan Chan. The Chimú became important around 900 A.D. ruled a large swath of coast for many centuries until the sun-worshipping Inca came around 1460 A.D., conquering the moon-worshipping Chimú in a contest so bitter that the Chimú abandoned their 20 sq. km. metropolis. When the Spaniards showed up, Chan Chan was empty, but there were remnants of the Chimú more than happy to help turn the tables on the Inca.

The ruins themselves are visible halfway along the road to the beach, a maze of eroded adobe walls that must look like a waffle-iron from the air. There are several ruins of palaces, the size of several football fields, though, and these have walls up to 60ft tall which were smoothed and carved with intricate patterns and geometric pictographs. The palace we toured included a large area dug down to the water table, creating a lake within the walls. Each Chimú headman had his own palace with his own tomb ready…here, the tomb is surrounded by 40 smaller tombs where the headman's concubines were put after their sacrifice, so they could go into the afterworld with him.

There is a gruesome footnote to the history of Chan Chan. In the 1930s, continuing the local penchant for rebellion, Trujillo was a center of leftist resistance. Things flared into armed conflict in the city and, after the APRA (the rebel group) killed several military prisoners, the army took 2000–6000 "aprista" rebels out somewhere in the Chan Chan ruins and executed them, leaving the stench of corpses to waft into Trujillo for months.

I split off from Jen and Carter for a bit, finding myself trying crab cebiche before rejoining them for a trip to see Rio 2 at the mall. Carter is, afterall, an 8yr-old. He was a trooper, not complaining during the passion play and even getting interested in the ruins.

Easter
The Easter bunny, it turns out, did hide eggs for Carter. He hid them around the hotel pool courtyard, much to the confusion of the gardner who was out there Easter morning. So we had a nice hunt for eggs, a last lunch in Trujillo, then a leisurely flight back to Lima.

End of Summer

Overview 
It's autumn here, though what that really means is that it feels like spring. The days are not as hot, but the 6-months of endless fog have not yet rolled in, so the sun shines nicely. Less nice is the return to the crazy traffic that can make taking Carter to school (2 miles as the condor flies) take as long as 45 minutes. I think I may have to devote a whole blog post just on driving here.

We've squeezed couple of beach trips out of the end of the season. A night at a hotel at San Bartolo beach south of Lima cost us all of $40; this was not high-end, of course (there was a Britney Spears poster in the main hallway), but the room had a kitchenette and a terrace from which to enjoy a beer while watching the sun set. There are better strands, I suppose, but it was an easy overnight with great cebiche available beachside. Just recently, Carter and I went for a day to a different beach north of Lima with Marcela and her husband Beto. Ancon is similar to San Bartolo, except it is a fishing village so the cebiche was possibly even better and it was a 19th century destination for wealthy Limeños that has been largely forgotten, so a long walk to the bathroom is peppered with elegant, drooping buildings from the era, with wraparound balconies and ornate wood frills and pigeons living in the eaves.

In a stunning display of bad parenting, we helped Carter celebrate his birthday playing paintball. Despite having a couple boys who cried from the pelt of a paintball, it was a monumental success and we are legend among the 2nd grade. It was mostly boys but a couple girls came too and, let me tell you, the brute bravery displayed by the boys was no match for the cunning of those two girls.




The Sporting Life

Back in January, Peace Corps participated in a sporting competition hosted by the embassy marines with their team "Black-eyed Peace". Of course, the various athletic events were in line with the marine skill-set (strength and speed, not a lot of coordination of balance), so no medals for Peace Corps. Jen is training to do the Lima Marathon on her birthday again and I found the courage to go out twice a week to pickup soccer games at the embassy. Considering I am 45 and last played soccer 30 years ago, it's been going OK. After playing for a month or so, I finally made a goal. Not sure if it is coincidence that the same night I made a goal, for the first time a couple of the Peruvians came up and introduced themselves to me. Meanwhile, I'm an alternate on the team Peace Corps has fielded to compete at the embassy "Olympics". Carter too has started going out to a soccer club a couple times per week. Jumping in with some of the Peace Corps practice, Carter was told he has good technique...high praise coming from a Peruvian.

---

---

TRAVELS

Antigua, Guatemala (Jennifer)
Jennifer's annual work conference took place in Antigua, Guatemala. Back in the 16th century, this was one of the 3 Spanish capitals in the New World (along with Mexico City and Lima). Unlike the other two, Antigua's role diminished and it is now a picturesque town nestled against volcanoes, with plenty of tourists but not at the cost of its tranquility or soul. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the volcano's smoke wisping up from the peak on the left.

---

---

Bay Area & Seattle (me)
A profoundly sad, unexpected trip took me to the San Francisco Bay Area for the funeral of Tommy Phillips, the 28yr old little brother to our very good friend Leslie. I can't go into all the ways this was heartbreaking, nor all the ways that Leslie and her family were able to affirm love and life from the depth of their grief.

I was able to get a wonderful dose of life by jetting up to Seattle afterwards to meet my new nephew, Weston, and enjoy a bit of Seattle with his big sister and the family. Weston is a compulsive smiler; it's like he never tires of catching sight of somebody and saying by expression "Oh hey! It's you! Good to see you!"

On my return flight, I had 4 hours in Mexico City, so I took the opportunity and jumped into a taxi. I had enough time to walk around the bohemian neighborhood of Coyoacán, erstwhile home to the likes of Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky. A street vendor poured the water of a fresh coconut into a bag for me and I sipped it from straw as he scooped out the flesh and served it up with chili and lime. It's a neighborhood of pastel houses and tree-lined streets, definitely a pleasant layover. Back at the airport, I bought three excellent tacos and stuffed them in my carry-on to take back to Jen in Lima.

Weston



Coconut

---

---

Washington, D.C.
We are reaching the end of a 4-week stint during which Jen has been working back at the Peace Corps headquarters in DC. Carter and I had enough miles to go up and visit midway, taking a little sting out of the long time apart. The cold and wet was a bit of a shock (at least Jen got a nice snowfall early on), but that didn't stop us from taking some nice long walks. To our distress, we discovered it is almost as hard to find tacos in DC as in Lima, but we found a great little spot and had fun forcing Carter to go up and order for us in Spanish. One day we walked from our hotel in Georgetown along the Potomac, past the Watergate Towers to the Lincoln Memorial and along the Mall ending up a the very cool Air & Space Museum. The highlight might have actually been a merry-go-around on which Carter and I nearly puked going crazy on a spinning tea-cup.

A metaphor for our divided loyalties?
(at the WW2 Memorial)

---

---