Dear Tooth Fary, I Lost My Tooth And Swalod It

This last weekend marked the arrival of a new cohort of volunteers. Jen already met them at the airport a couple nights before, but we went out to Chaclacayo early on Saturday to be there and welcome them to the training center before they get doled out to their temporary host families. They show up with luggage, often a guitar or some such, and get off the bus still seeming like tourists. That will evaporate soon enough. In Jen's talk, she makes a point of flipping the welcome speech that the country director gave in which he thanked them for giving up so much to come to Peru for over 2 years. Jen told them "You are giving up nothing. You are getting so much, your life will be different forever."

Afterwards, we went over to the Hogar to see the kids. We brought a bunch of little alphabet beads and spent a lot time making bracelets. The kids there crave to have things that are all their own. Toys show up all the time, but are quickly destroyed. I have never seen any toy we have brought on any subsequent visit. Bringing each kid a cheap party favor makes more sense than a Lego set.

For dinner that night we found a great middle-eastern restaurant. I hadn't realized that I had been missing hummus and falafel, but I clearly had been! Meanwhile, Carter suddenly jumped up from his chicken-pita sandwich and exclaimed "My tooth! Where's my tooth?!" Later he would have to write a note to the tooth fairy certifying that he swallowed it.

The Peruvian national team, known colloquially as La Blanquiroja because of their traditional red and white uniforms, played a couple qualifying games. They beat Ecuador but lost to Colombia, so their chances are very slim at qualifying for the World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Let me tell you, if you want to get across Lima in record time, do it during a national team game.

Jen has started taking Spanish classes a couple times a week here in the house. Her Spanish is excellent, of course, but there are certain conjugations she just avoids. It's possible to get to a level in which you are good enough to avoid the parts of the language that are fearful to you. So as with so many things in her life, Jen is attacking her fear head on.

After doodling for this blog, I have found myself re-inspired to draw. By attaining some particular equipment, I am enjoying exploring the possibilities. I ordered some very nice drafting pens that make a huge difference; I also stumbled across a very cheap glass desk under which I have rigged a big bright light and –voila– I have a light table. Finally, I simply let myself go back to something that I found satisfying when I was 17...photo tracing. So here is my first poster-sized experiment with this equipment. Can tracing be considered art? I don't know, but I like the result. It's from a 1950 era photo of Los Angeles.

The Road to Chaclacayo

We can sometimes go for several days during which we forget that we are living in Peru. That's partly due to the fact that family routine is family routine no matter where you go, but it's also partly because we have been in our little privileged Lima environment long enough for days to go by unremarked. But then we drive out to Chaclacayo to visit the kids at the Hogar, cutting a cross-section through the outskirts of Lima. I feel like recording what the drive is like, to take a mental snapshot of the little details along the way. As I've mentioned before, this post probably means more to me as a diary and is a little long for anyone else.

(these 2 photos from Google, on the road to Chaclacayo)

This section of Peru's desert coast is made of dusty foothills that quickly rise eastwards to become the Andes. So Lima's terrain is defined by rivers that cut down to the ocean. Our route to Chaclacayo goes up the valley of the river Rimac, close to an hour of driving through the clang and clamor of the city's edges. From our well-to-do area of La Molina, we take a shortcut along a backroad that skirts the Estadio Monumental, a secondary soccer stadium that looks to be sagging in a few places but probably serves the very popular "U" team just fine. As we passed the stadium last weekend, crossing a rough stretch of road, a crusty self-starter was out there with a shovel filling in potholes and taking donations from cars passing by. This part of the road seems almost forgotten, but then just past one of the city's many under-explored archeological ruins, the road swings around and meets up with a main artery, the Carretera Central where we merge with the trucks and taxi-vans called combis. 

This road is pressed on both sides by crowded neighborhoods and small businesses. There is a haze that makes everything appear monochrome; we wonder if it is fog or smog or dust. The road bottle-necks and brings the slums climbing the steep hills into better view. Half-finished houses tilt over each other, apparently held together by nothing more than grime and clotheslines. For me, there is not a lot of time for rubber-necking because the trucks and buses and combis are squeezing through the narrowed lanes. Stop-and-go traffic in Lima is a game of inches and yesterday my side mirror was scraped for the umpteenth time. Jennifer and I joked that side mirrors are more like traffic feelers and work kind of like cat whiskers. Once through this area, we start to see more moto-conchos, the economical 3-wheeled motorcycle taxis that ferry people from the main thoroughfare up to the barrios on the hillsides. Intersections now begin to be served by vendors of plantain chips, dubious looking sodas, cel phone cases and snacks that are a still mystery to me. Unasked, a boy of Carter's age does a phenomenally bad job of wiping our windshield...but we give him a sol (40 cents) and a little fast-food giveaway toy. This is enough to draw an older boy over, looking for similar largesse, and then the two huddle together to inspect the toy.

At one point, we pass a large derelict (or never finished?) industrial building of which the first two floors are occupied by squatters: front walls tacked together out of random materials, laundry strung between columns, even a couple spots where someone has set up shop. The road loosens up, gets dustier and rangy dogs skitter around the fringes. A couple of 1-room homes have a large bull made out of paper and sticks...Mariza tells me they are toros mechón (bull with curly locks) but she doesn't know what they are for. *   Factory entrances look like prison gates, while a local brake mechanic has welded a giant robot by his garage, a man with a pressure-washer cleans filthy trucks, and suddenly a cadre of security force trainees run by on a training run. On our left lie train tracks that eventually become one of the highest rail lines in the world, but here the rails delineate a corridor of rubble and shacks. Eventually, as the valley narrows, things get a little nicer...not pastoral, but now some gates hide little vacation compounds for weekenders and the neighborhoods are less oppressively compressed. Chaclacayo is a little mini getaway for some Limeños, with slightly sunnier weather and quiet back streets. Just beyond the tidy little central square, we arrive at the Hogar.

This visit is unusual in that we join the doctor who runs the Hogar at his weekly Saturday coffee at a local bakery. He has been in Florida for his semi-annual trip home for a month, but on these trips he also takes tri-peligic Viktor for prosthesis adjustments at Shriners Hospital. In Florida, Viktor stays with wealthy host families, with a private room and sometimes his own TV...once, during the return flight, Viktor started to scream because he didn't want to go back to Peru. It is nice to see a calm, undistracted side to the doctor because in the Hogar he is sour and stern. He and a couple of other volunteers like to bring along 2yr-old Percy to the bakery. Percy has an interrupted esophagus and gets his nourishment through a tube. But that doesn't mean that Percy can't enjoy a nice dessert. So there Percy sat, happily eating crema volteada (flan), while anything he swallowed exited out the surgically-installed hole in his neck, oozing out and over his neck diaper and down onto his chest. This was somehow endearing, disgusting and hilarious all at once. In the next couple months, Percy will receive the $10,000 operation to correct his esophagus.

*  [edit: Jen finally discovered that the bulls are laced with fireworks and are used at celebrations. The bulls also advertise the sale of technically illegal fireworks. Over the last decades, the tidal wave of migration to Lima from the Andes is marked by the fact that villages often moved to the same slum and stick together. We hear that almost every weekend there is a different celebration for a different village's patron idol, so fireworks are in high demand. Taxis and combis are another sign of this migratory clumping...many have decals proclaiming their village allegiance "El Señor de Magimachi", or some such, in drippy letters.]

Memorial Weekend

Carter and his BFF Alex (who is Argentinian)

In Lima, much takes place behind 10ft walls, so it is often hard to judge one's surroundings. After months of driving by, suddenly you get a peek in and realize "Oh, there's a whole tennis club back in there!" or even "There's a whole neighborhood through that gate!" It is also common that the worlds inside and outside the walls can be very different. Take the zoo that Carter went to last week with his class. We have driven past the entrance many times, in a busy area where it is prudent to tuck your cel phone out of sight and street vendors sell cheap punch packaged in nothing more than little cellophane bags tied shut. But inside Carter enjoyed a very different scene with all the animals.

Our Saturday visit to the Hogar was typical. Bryan, the kid we had only known with metal bolts in his knees and unable to change position, was now in a wheelchair. Meanwhile two other boys had received corrective operations, Segundo (del Piso) having received the same kind of bolts and often wailing in pain. But Bryan was thrilled to be able to roll around at will and also happy because his mother was visiting with a friend (or sister or something). The two ladies sat mostly silent, with the expressions of people who have landed on a strange planet populated by smiling gringo aliens. Not much is asked of parents, but even so there are often huge practical and cultural gaps that make things difficult. Eloy's mom, pregnant with her ninth child, visited over the weekend and only had $3 in her pocket but needed $12 for the 24hr trip back to her town – in the back of a lorry most likely. Viktor (with club feet) is at the hogar because his family did not follow through on the physical therapy after an original operation. He is also the one who went to school without books for a couple months because they didn't send the money. Backstory like that is always present, but it is not what defines our visits there. More memorable: in the park, Carter and Jefferson playing ladrones (robbers) being chased by the policia played by myself, Christian and Bresny (shooting from his wheelchair). Or the family in the park who had a baby pet bunny with them...unasked, they came over and placed the bunny on Jenny's lap. Jenny has very limited movement but she was able to lean over and kiss and nuzzle the bunny.

The weekend was relatively unremarkable, though we did find a fabulous hole-in-the-wall taco place in Barranco on Sunday. Carter did not have Memorial Day off school, but Jen and I had had the day off and we seized the opportunity to spend a little quality time together without the boy. Our leisurely cebiche lunch in the autumn sun was a simply joy.