Built on bones.

On Monday, a friend of Jennifer's from her days as a volunteer in the Dominican Republic came through Lima. She was coming directly from Iquitos where she had been out in the jungle at a temple that hosts spiritual experiences with a psychedelic concoction known as ayahuasca. Native people out there have developed a recipe that they brew out of native plants and shamans at this temple escort participants through the process. I am both skeptical of these kind of beliefs and frankly frightened by the process, perhaps even fundamentally frightened/unconvinced of the need for revelations. Jennifer's friend took the ayahuasca probably 5 or 6 days over the course of her 2 week visit, sitting in a circle of mattresses with a shaman singing in front of her, vomiting repeatedly, hallucinating. Sounds like hell to me, but she had the spiritual breakthrough she was seeking and was actually sorry to have left. A quick look on the internet and I can't find any negative testimonials, so who knows, there might actually be something to those jungle vines.

Jennifer's friend was happy to get some laundry done, though, and patiently answered all our queries. Yesterday we went with her to the colonial downtown of Lima and toured the Franciscan monastery. The catacombs beneath the church are chock full of bones, estimates put the number of people buried down there at 25,000. Most of them are still hidden behind walls and lost chambers, but some were excavated in the 40s, with archeologists arranging large piles of bones in geometric patterns. [Why put the bones in patterns?]

The church is nothing compared to some of the grand cathedrals in Europe, but still interesting in context. I particularly enjoyed a large painting in the dining hall, a 17th century version of the Last Supper. When you pay attention, it becomes clear that the well-known theme has variations that are particularly Peruvian. The table is round and welcoming and children run around. The central platter shows that the main course is cuy (guinea pig) and scattered on the table are 3 of the important Peruvian chilis.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner close to our house. This restaurant was started by a couple, a Peruvian chef and her Australian superstar chef fiancee. These two were killed along with 2 other star Peruvian chefs, back at the beginning of December in a mountain auto wreck, rocking the country's vibrant culinary community. At the end of our meal, the waiter brought out complimentary chocolates and alfajores (cookies) and a man introduced himself to us and asked about our meal. It was the father of the woman, putting a brave face on it and showing us a picture of the couple on his iPhone.

More About The Kids At The Hogar, + CB on a bike + a new kitty

Villa La Paz / Hogar San Francisco De Asis-Chaclacayo

Franzua, Segundo (El Primero), Jennifer, Carter

Over the last several weeks, we've gone out to the Hogar San Francisco, the medical halfway house, a couple more times, so we've gotten to know the kids a little better. I'm terrible with names, but even if that weren't the case, it's hard not to label the kids by their infirmity...you know, "Victor with clubfeet". Perhaps that just shows that we are still just getting to know each other. Certainly, to them we are only the latest in a long string of volunteers. But that doesn't change how much they crave individual attention.


I estimate about 40 kids there. The last two Saturdays, we went to the park with several of them. Jen, beautifully unhampered by second-guessing, initiated a wheelchair race. Those not wheelchair-bound helped push—even tri-peligic Viktor pushed, and it was a gonzo good time. On the whole the kids are lots of fun, but they need supervision like any others, and they have good and bad days too. Viktor will bite or head-butt other kids he is mad at (he head-butted me with his helmet at the park, but it was TOTALLY fair because we were playing soccer and I was using my hands to block him...so lacking hands, he used what was available to him). Jimene (with the burns) got impatient with another girl on the slide (who has a malformed leg with a 6-toed foot painfully and awkwardly terminating at around where the knee should be), and Jimene tweaked her bad foot. Mostly though, they are sweet and enjoy any one-on-one attention you can give them. "Amigo, amigo!"...push on the swings, play ball, etc. After the park outings, there is "Baby Hour" back at the house, when several of the infants are brought down for blanket time.

Jennifer and Carla finishing well at the wheelchair race.

There are less cute moments too. Tri-peligic Victor is 13 but of course needs help in the bathroom getting his pants down and having his butt wiped. "Oh," I told him wryly, "this is my favorite part of the day." He laughed. Getting Bryan onto the toilet was more serious...the bolts in his knees are very sensitive and he is constantly warning kids not to bump him, plus he needs to stay in the same position all the time: seated with legs straight out in front of him.

Jen and I can already see that it will be hard on us when our 2 months volunteering there ends. I think we will approach the doctor about maybe inviting one kid out at a time, to the movies, to lunch, whatever. Not sure if that is kosher, but we'd surely enjoy it.

Learning to Ride a Bike and All That Jazz

Out on the big street nearby, closed off Sundays for cycling, Carter finally learned to ride a bike. It just clicked. Best quote of the day: "I can't believe I am doing this!" Later he said, "And I learned right away!" As a dad, I rolled my eyes, for I guess it is typical that you run behind holding a kid's seat for months, you cajole him, you praise him...and then the kid forgets. Pop, Gary, thanks for teaching me to ride a bike.

Jen came back exhausted from one of her marathon training runs, but rallied in time to go to a late-afternoon jazz concert in the park. We met up with Julio and Maureen's family and spent a beautiful evening sitting on the blanket or, more likely, horsing around with the boys. The Peruvians all agreed how unusual it was, Limeños don't really have events in the park, but perhaps it will happen more and more as things improve for Peru.

Allison

After having lost a kitty named Hermie to a pathetic accident, we didn't go too long before being supplied with Hermie's smarter, more vivacious sister. Jen and I were bantering about good names when suddenly Carter interjected, apropos of nothing, "We could name her Allison." So of course, that's her name. And in our household, pets get never-ending nicknames, so she is Ally-cat, Muhammad Ali, Ali Baba and perhaps worst of all, "Allison" sung to the notes of the Elvis Costello song.

That's the end of this post.

Skip the stuff below, it is a list of the kids I have met at the Hogar, just to help me remember the individuals.

Bryan, who beat me at chess and loved building the Lego Star Wars kit
(immobilized below the waist with bolts in his knees)

Victor

Victor, who was disappointed my phone has no games, but loved the Rush Hour puzzle, got his casts off in May
(clubfeet)

Jimene, who is saucy and jumps right in for physical contact
(burns  from forehead down and lost a hand)

Jenny, complains that her family never visits, and laughed uproariously at lunch when she hid the mandarin orange from me, loves to be taken to the park
(largely immobilized by cerebral palsy)

Viktor, can eat/paint/play with the one limb he has left, has been at the hogar his whole life and travels with the Doctor the 2 months of the year that he goes to the US
(tri-peligic)

Percy, two years old and laughs happily
(botched operation for interrupted esophagus, needs feeding tube)

Segundo (Primero), bright and intuitive, uses his crutches to play soccer
(malformation of left leg)

Segundo (Segundo), always filthy, always smiling wanting to participate
(motor and cognitive cerebral palsy, can use his legs for a few yards)

Ana, sweet, sometimes sad, brave on the slide
(malformed leg with 6-toed foot terminating where the knee would be)

Chingay,  one of the preteen boys
(malformed ears)

Aracely, who likes to ride the big pink bike at the park, wears a head covering half the day
(burns)

Bresny, with the cockeye and the walker, except at the wheelchair races in the park
(cerebral palsy (?), with leg braces)

Tracy, who is almost all better and her mother visits frequently
(dislocated hips)

Carla, who enjoyed the wheelchair race
(wheelchair-bound with clubfeet)

Franzua, 4yrs old and really not that pleasant
(Tuberculosis of the spinal column)

Christian, who loved the stomp-rocket
(cerebral palsy)

Juan Lucio, helped me push Jenny at the wheelchair race
(fractured neck)

 Juan Pedro, 1yr old I played with at baby hour
(Apert’s syndrome, with fused hands and malformed head)

Easter etc.

Egg Hunt at the Ambassador's Residence

One week prior to Easter, I took Carter to an Easter egg hunt in the bushes of the U.S. Ambassador's residence. Carter ran into several of his buddies and loaded up on eggs. Him and his little crew got a bunch of candy but also had 4 or 5 popsicles before us adults could put a halt to the craziness. With all that sugar, it's no wonder that the egg and spoon race devolved into egg-juggling chaos, with Carter literally stomping an egg to smithereens. Jen was stuck at a baby-shower, so Carter and I eventually caught up with Farnaz and Paul and went to a favorite restaurant in Barranco they turned us on to, Punta Cana. No pretension, with keepsakes cramming the walls, and tasty earnest food. For instance, I had a tacu-tacu (typical bean-rice-pork combination) smothered in shrimp and aji sauce.

Closing Out The Month of March

When I came back from Patagonia almost 3 weeks ago, my work was piled up and waiting for me. My main client is treating me more like a full-time employee everyday, which is great and it's at my freelance rate, so woo hoo! But it is also challenging, interesting stuff; less pure design and much more a question of ideas and puzzle solving in the visual arena. Meanwhile, Claremont McKenna College sends me a job every 2 or 3 weeks and Marriott still wants an ad now and then. So by this last week, I was working long hours to meet all my obligations and regretting not being able to spend much time with Farnaz and Paul during their last week. Tuesday, after Jen had been off in the dunes training with colleagues for off-road driving, we all went to a farewell dinner and then I got up at 4:30a.m. to get them to the airport. In addition to all the other experiences of their trip, Farnaz left having logged over 250 new birds to her life-list. Later, home alone, I saw a totally new bird in our backyard…just a couple hours too late to make it onto her list. On Friday, after a night working until 4am, I finished just about everything that was critical just as Julio, Julito and Maureen showed up for an evening of tacos and Mexican Train dominoes.

They told a story about how near the holidays, the city police are more likely to pull people over for infractions, looking for bribes. They've decided to always accept the fine and never pay the bribe, so this week when they were pulled over they had a long conversation with the cop. He kept reminding them of the amount of the fine, about $200 while an $8 bribe would probably have gotten them off. They told the cop to go ahead and fine them, saying "That's the law. We respect the law." The cop just laughed. So then they mentioned Maureen's grandfather, a president of Peru known for his moral righteousness, and said the family just CAN'T pay bribes. So the cop let them go.

When you have had a little too much to drink, Lima insurance companies offer to have drivers come and drive you home in your own car. The service is a good idea anyway, but particularly for Julio having had a couple of cocktails and not wanting to give any other traffic cops on the ride across town an excuse to extort a payoff.

With Seguno and Franzua at Villa La Paz

Villa La Paz

http://www.villalapazfoundation.org

Saturday morning, after losing our way a little bit, we found our way to Villa La Paz out in Chaclayo, 45 minutes east up in the dusty Rimac River valley. Villa La Paz is a charitable medical halfway house for children who need long term medical care in Lima. Poor families, who can't afford the medical care, or perhaps even just the time away from their livelihoods in other parts of the country, send their kids. Their medications are paid for, they are housed and nursed, shuttled to doctor appointments and surgeries. For the next couple months, we will be volunteering there, mostly just hanging out with kids who just want for someone to interact with them. We walked in and were quickly adopted by the more vivacious of the kids; we talked and joked, sometimes literally just playing pattycake. At one point, we had to clear the terrace as several of the boys started an intense game of micro-soccer. The mostly grown burn victim had a definite advantage, but the club foot on crutches was pretty good at slinging that foot to boot the ball and even had the ability to use his crutches like hockey sticks. I'm sure I will do a longer post, describing the kids as individuals, but for now we were just getting introduced. That didn't stop one boy from asking for help with his pee bottle (which he seemed strangely bad with, pee got everywhere). Just before leaving, I helped bring a boy with braces drilled into his knees down for lunch, requiring two of us to carry and keep his semi-prone posture exactly unchanged. Next visit, I will try to remember that not all the kids can come down for soccer on the terrace and maybe a little visiting upstairs would be nice. Mostly, it was really fun, and I am not just saying that because it's the type of thing that "ought" to be fun. Even Carter enjoyed himself, and he wouldn't lie about that.

Easter

Sunday we had our little family Easter egg hunt, without a lot of fanfare. We didn't color eggs (the good eggs here are brown, the white ones all smell like the fish-feed the hens eat). I constructed a Peep from a couple of marshmallows and yellow food dye. Carter came home from school saying a friend told him that the Easter Bunny likes a glass of wine now and then, so a glass of merlot left out the night before will be consumed by morning. Jennifer appreciated the information and, sure enough, there was an upended, emptied wine glass next to the Easter basket in the morning. Meanwhile autumn is turning out to be my favorite season here, kind of like what Spring ought to be, with unclouded skies and warm breezes. There's still the dust and pollution, still…nice and sunny, perfect for Jen to take another marathon training jog and Carter and I to go down to the Parque de los Niños. 

The Sad Story of Hermie

A week prior to Easter, we were delivered an 8-week old kitten that we eventually named Hermie. He was skinny, dirty and a tad ugly, but we got him cleaned up. In no time he was sleeping as close to us as possible, napping in my lap as I worked. An endearing, helpless little guy. I even had to force feed him because he hadn't yet learned to do it himself. So it's heartbreaking that less than a week after getting him, a stupid household accident claimed him. Rest in peace, little Hermie.