4th of July

July: Scene Change

The main change of scene is that July is Winter Break for Carter and the transition from 2nd to 3rd grade. Not only is he pleased with this, Jen and I are relieved to have a month of school vacation in which he takes a bus to morning camp, traffic is light and we get an extra hour sleep. The "llovizna" is back...the low mist that blankets Lima for much of the winter here. This is also the time of year when turnover happens at the embassy, a whole contingent picks up and moves on to new assignments. This means less to Jen and I than for others; still, friends of Carter's are going, people I play soccer with, etc.

Meanwhile, our 4th of July also reflected two very different scenes. The first happened the night before the 4th; we attended an open-air celebration at the ambassador's residence, a manor house in the middle of the city. It's was a formal affair, so after navigating the pitted back streets and traffic that I have become familiar with, we parked and went through security, with the metal detector seeming like a magic portal from the clamor outside to the manicured lawns and tea lights inside. This annual event is pretty much obligatory, we all arrive early enough to be there when all the various Peruvian VIPs show up, and the bar does not open until they arrive. For all that, it's very pleasant…a deluxe spread of sushi, servers circling with good beer and wine, and a Peruvian swing/jazz band doing really great renditions of the classics my grandmother used to dance to.

For the 4th itself, Jennifer and I headed out for a rare chance to see the kids at the Hogar on a weekday. These last 2 weeks have seen a couple of large groups of American teens visiting, learning, helping out where they can. We brought some apple pies, and the Hogar kids gathered outside on the patio for little lesson on the 4th of July and to wish us all a happy day. It was a fun day, though not without some sobering points. I was trying to fix some of the disintegrating bikes out back while Bruno, a 10yr old burn victim, had his physical therapy which means the therapist stretches his hand to keep the affected skin from healing up too tightly and crippling him. For Bruno it seems to mean he screams for 5 minutes straight, exiting afterwards for all the world trying to pretend he was tough. More profoundly sad are the test results that show Julia's leukemia is back with a vengeance, so much so that people seem to assume the worst. A pre-teen girl, as nice as can be, she seems to assume the worst too. At the playground, with all the kids, she sat alone on top of a play structure with peeling paint when I asked her what she was doing. "Just taking the sun," she said and, sure enough, there was a final lick of sunlight that she had found there. What could I do but join her up there for a bit, too stupid to say anything? Then some of the kids wanted to steer our car while on my lap, and Lisbeth peed her pants and Kiara threw a sulk-tantrum with Jennifer and we took them all back to the home.

But forget about that! What about the World Cup?!

I hear from folks back in the States that the World Cup is getting more attention than ever before. That's good, because Carter and I have caught World Cup fever. Perú did not qualify to go, but even so the streets are empty during games and TVs in supermarkets are like man-traps, snaring groups of men, transfixing them. Without their own team, most Peruvians have a detailed set of priorities to determine who they root for. For example, they want the Cup to stay in South America EXCEPT not in Chile (The Saltpetre War 1880). Not so much Ecuador (small wars and border disputes). And they tend to root for underdogs…so the U.S. got a lot of support, and when Costa Rica upset Chile…well, the cheer might have been heard in Brazil. For the record, this is the first time Carter has really felt the emotions of being a sports spectator. For better or worse, he's a fan now! A couple of other spouses like me, JoJo the Paraguayan and Aquiles the Ecuadorian, have been watching.


The pickup soccer games continue to be fun, though for a while there during the Cup no one was showing up hardly at all. I've improved somewhat, even scoring a couple of "real" goals (in which I actually did something, rather than just being in the right place at the right time to tap a ball into the goal). Of course, my age and sedentary proclivities mean my joints complain for 24hrs after every game. Worse, during one game a tendon in my knee actually made an audible POP and I have a distinct memory of the expression of horror on the opposing player's face when he heard the sound and I buckled to the ground. But I soldier on!

I've been taking Spanish classes almost every weekday for 3 months now, and it's finally starting to show. I am able to have more comfortable conversations with people now, and it's almost to the point where my Spanish is as good as JoJo's English and certainly better than Aquiles. I've been going to classes at the Agrarian University, right near our home, at a language center tucked among trees, rutted roads, and forestry classrooms. [trivia: just prior to winning the Presidency of Perú, Alberto Fujimori ran the Agraria. He's now in jail, convicted of crimes during the Shining Path years] Anyway, Rosario, my teacher, is very patient and the people at the language center are very nice, even gathering for my birthday to share cake and Inca Kola. Now, being Winter Vacation, Rosario is tutoring Carter 2hrs per day at home. We leave in a week for the Dominican Republic; I'm looking forward to being able to converse with the many in that family who speak no English. I've spent many evenings there drinking rum with the guys there, all in good fellowship, but not saying much.

Lake Titicaca

A Giant Lake, Very High Up
 Jen, Carter, Mariza and I spent the long weekend up at Lake Titicaca, the biggest lake in South America and certainly the highest BIG lake in the world. At 12,500ft, the simple act of climbing stairs was exhausting and Mariza was sick until back at sea level in Lima. Carter and I felt the altitude but managed it with ibuprofen and coca tea. The air is clear, the water is deeply blue and the sky reaches forever. Being so close to the sun, it is often t-shirt weather though within minutes of sundown, it gets very cold very fast. Within an hour, it is time to put on your parka, your gloves, your chuyo (Peruvian knit cap).

Cheese, quinoa, chuño

Puno
The trip started on a stressful note: we arrived at the Lima airport only to have Mariza realize she had forgotten her ID. At the last minute, we were informed that an emergency passport office existed in the airport and for a small "tip" the agent there printed out a copy of her ID and punched it with a very official stamp. An hour flight later, we landed on the bumpy runway in the airport town of Juliaca…the kind of dusty armpit of a place where fires burn inexplicably in the road and trash lines the river edge. Thankfully, we quickly got ourselves on the van for the 45min ride to the shores of Titicaca and the town of Puno, the jumping off point for much the region's tourism. Not a particularly quaint place, it nevertheless hums with an authentic spirit, populated by hearty outgoing people, reminding me for some reason of a frontier town in an old cowboy movie. A Peace Corps ex-volunteer lives there in a hostel, working at development through micro-loans, so we stayed the first night there with him and his very maternal landlady. Jen and I accompanied Alex to the 2nd story of a local bar for a nightcap before bed, though Alex says he does not go out a lot anymore because the intensity of how people drink there is too much for him. Indeed, people down high-proof pisco drinks by the pitcher, and the man I sat next to was swaying, spitting and pouring out the dregs of his glasses on the floor even though the bar below was clearly visible through the gaps in the slats. But all was convivial; I ordered a thoroughly pleasing hot drink, though I think it was just a steaming mug of pisco and Fanta. That, a fabulous garlic cheese bread, and the landlady's having warmed our beds with hot water bottles, put me to bed warm and content. In the morning, the landlady had coca tea ready for us, and proudly showed us some of the Andean ingredients in her kitchen: squeaky cheese, purple potatoes (from her own field outside of town), chuño (an Andean staple, potatoes freeze-dried in the permafrost and sun-blanched, with a shelf-life of many years), and flaked quinoa (eaten like oatmeal).

We set out in the morning to soak in a little of Puno's atmosphere and, luckily, it was market day. We walked towards the harbor, navigating busy streets alive with taxis and motorcycle taxis and pedaled taxis. For many blocks, the streets were filled with tarp-covered stalls and shoppers. The local ladies mostly wear bowlers with two little dingles that hang down, though some wear something more like a straw Easter hat. There are plenty of stalls selling cheap Chinese goods, so it's not quite the romanticized rural market one might imagine, but there are plenty of vendors who are selling piles of colorful potatoes, skinned goat heads and hooves (for the local hoof soup delicacy), fresh mountain herbs, and piles of quinoa and rice and corn. Then suddenly, we stumbled upon a crowd gathered around a true-to-life snake oil salesman. At his feet were several large boa snakes and a large turtle, apparently embalmed, cut open to show their viscera. The man spoke in the universal cadence of salesmen everywhere, like an infomercial, extolling the medical efficacy of his oil and the sad state of pill-popping modernity. He had a big tub at his feet, supposedly filled with the oil of the snakes, and he ladled it into little bottles, passing one around for people to rub on their hands. Sun-blasted locals clamored forward to get a sample on their skin; one, upon being asked, let Jen take a whiff and it smelled to her of menthol.

The Ride to the Other Side of the Lake
We realized we hadn't left ourselves very much time to get where we needed to be on the other side of the lake, so we got in a local taxi and surprised him by negotiating a fare all the way to the dock where we were to meet the boat to our hotel for the next two nights. Our destination was a good hour beyond the farthest point he'd ever been and he seemed excited and nervous, double-checking the tires and asking in every pueblo for directions. It was about 3 hours of rolling brown grasslands, taking us through flood plains with triangles of stacked wheat drying in the sun and cows anchored to pegs in the ground. Little cubist adobe houses dot the landscape, with little adobe ziggurats for storage, and many walls are painted with large election ads. Because much of the population can not read, the campaign signs are all marked with an identifying pictograph that will appear on the ballot: vote for the "orange", the "sandal", the "little house" or even the "coca leaf". We traversed a large marshy area populated by ducks and wading birds, and a forest of the reeds that are used in the famous floating reed villages out on the lake. [Which, by the way, we had heard were very touristy and skipped…we regret it now, touristy or no, a floating reed village has got to be something amazing] We drove on, getting farther off the beaten track, watching the lakeside hills crinkle up and rocks jut up looking like the spines of some giant buried stegosaurus. Villages sit in the creases, the adobe turns more red, and many of the houses are roofed with thatch instead of corrugate. I saw 3 separate pairs of caracaras, like large hawks but with striking black and white plumage and sharp red beaks. It all felt picturesque, though we got doses of clarity when a man was too drunk to give coherent directions or when we had to stop because some little hoodlums had blocked the road with a large branch and demanded a tip prior to moving it.

Then we unexpectedly came upon a local celebration and our driver asked if we wanted to stop. We walked into the colorful swirl of the fiesta, with multiple bands and several dance circles underway. We were clearly space aliens, yet were received with happy shouts and questions. A group of men, sitting and drinking, were hugely pleased when I called "Salud!" to them. Some proudly hollered "Perú!" and others yelled out "Estados Unidos" to make sure we felt welcome. A couple of suspicious boys let me take their picture; I love it not only because the one is wearing his celebration attire, but also they are holding toy guns, scowling, eating candy, and in the background you can see the stands where we ordered chicharones (deep fried nuggets, pork in this case) with Andean corn and purple potatoes.

There was a blue-coated brass band on one side of the grassy expanse, a red-coated brass band on the other side, and in the middle a elegantly black-suited band including traditional instruments like the huge standing Andean harp. The next thing we know, a gentleman in a black suit and hat dragged Jennifer out into the middle of the dance circle. Distracted, I did not see the old lady in full regalia until she had me, gripping my hands with surprising strength, and I had no choice but to dance my best approximation of the Andean huayno. It seems a simple, stomping kind of dance, yet there seems to include an arhythmic stomp and I'm afraid I was a big laughable gringo. Which, of course, made everyone very happy. I yelled out to the onlookers, did my best, and gave my partner a kiss on the cheek before Jen and I extracted ourselves. Our path back to the taxi was a gauntlet, people calling out for us to stay and drink until nightfall, us giving our regrets.

Isla Suasi

 
Isla Suasi
Finally, the taxi dropped us with our bags on the side of the road by a sign for our hotel, situated on a private island. We went downhill to the little pier and eventually a Zodiac motored up and took us to the island. A narrow strip, only about 3/4s of a mile long, patrolled by cormorants, Isla Suasi has the small eco-lodge on one end and a small promontory on the other that rises up to just over 13,000ft in altitude. The landlady of the island has made the place a natural showpiece to reflect local flora and fauna. We stayed there two nights and saw many birds (including the freakishly big Giant Hummingbird), vizcacha (looking for all the world like squirrel-rabbits or "squabbits") who could run up the face of a cliff, and cousins of the llama (the domesticated alpaca and the endangered wild vicuña).

Grilled alpaca. Jen is opening her trout.

Stargazing

Upon arrival, I enjoyed chilcano (pisco/ginger ale) but made with a pisco-infusion of muña, a pungent mint-oregeno relative that grows all over the island. Meals also highlighted local ingredients, with tasty grilled alpaca, grilled trout, or an amazing tartare salad of smoked trout, avocado and chili. Lunch there is particularly nice: dining outside in the sun, in a garden of flowers and passion fruit, looking out to a horizon filled with deep blue water and dotted with brown islands. We had gotten a good rate by way of Groupon and, when we asked, the lodge gave us it's matrimonial casita for very little extra. So we went to bed that night to the sound of waves lapping at our doorstep and woke up to the sound of coots in the reeds. The only downside was the steep stairway back up to the lodge…it's a pretty short stairway, but believe me when I say that at 12,500ft it's best to stop and rest halfway up. There were never more than 8 guests at the hotel, of which we comprised 50%, and only 4 or 5 employees full time. 

There's not a whole lot to do, yet somehow I never even opened the book I brought. Pretty much you can wander the island, you can take a canoe out, or you can stargaze. The stargazing was particularly amazing; it has been a long time since I've seen the Milky Way so clearly and I found myself strangely emotional to see the Southern Cross for the first time. My particular favorite, Scorpio, was high in the sky. At one point, Jupiter was low in the sky and yet somehow powerful enough to create a long rippling reflection in the lake. Jennifer and I took a flashlight and made our way up to the promontory on the second night as the breeze died off, allowing us to take off our gloves, stare into the starry abyss with binoculars, and reflect. Then Jen farted. That seems to be another side effect of altitude. Carter really liked one little spot, the Playa de Piedras (Beach of Stones) because, of course, there was ample opportunity to find the perfect skipping rock. He's good, but I was able to hold on to the record. Jen and Carter went out a couple of extra times in the canoe, discovering a beautiful local duck (puna teal) with bright blue beaks.

Finally, it was time to leave. We returned to the sobering ugliness of Juliaca for our flight, but we had a little trouble getting Mariza through security because this time it was me who had lost the "original" printout of the temporary ID. Luckily, they eventually let us through and this time without having to "tip" anybody.

vizcacha (squabbit)

Giant Hummingbird, biggest there is

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.