Tambogrande again

(The bridge from Tambogrande to the outlying caserio of Locutos. The bridge is made of sticks and packed dirt and they build it from scratch every year when the river goes down. When the river is high, in the summer, it sweeps the bridge away and the people cross over in rafts made of inflated tires and pulled by somebody swimming. At least this is what they tell me.)

I'm in Tambogrande once more. It's sunny and warm and beautiful!!! That 14-hour overnight bus ride seems like it took me from Lima winter to Bethany Beach in the summer, except less humid, more breezy, and deliciously cool at night. "Winter" in Tambogrande means you sleep with a light blanket, go around in your jeans and t-shirt in the morning and evening, and lie around doing nothing from 2 to 4 pm because it gets HOT. The last time I came here, in March, it was the end of summer and the HOT was all the time, barely even cooling off enough at night to let you sleep. It's not humid like it is in Maryland, but I'm sure it passes 100 degrees Farenheit every day (right now it might get up to 80 or 90), and you just feel like you're baking in a still hot oven.

The locals talk proudly about how those who aren't used to the calor fuerte of the North usually can't take it. They build their houses with high roofs, make them of brick or bamboo instead of wood, and some of the more rural ones don't even have doors and windows that close, just openings in the walls... and even the walls aren't all there; most houses have a few rooms in front and then a back room that opens straight out under a woven-bamboo roof onto a garden, with flowers, trees, chickens, etc. The gardens are not at all neat but profusely alive. This helps me understand a little why so many Peruvians who move to Lima and build houses in the pueblos jovenes don't put back walls on them. The house is not meant to seal you off from the outdoors. (What a concept!... and it works great here... just not in Lima.) In the heat I also see why the women, no matter what their age or what they look like, are much more comfortable than North American women with wearing stretchy skirts and midriff-baring tanks. It's less formal and more comfortable here in the rural North of Peru.

On Sunday we all went to Sister Marleney's final vows, a beautiful, happy celebration at a Mass in the countryside where Marleney teaches in a Fe y Alegría school. The school was in the middle of nowhere down these dirt roads that wind through a half-desert landscape. There are trees and the occasional stream and sometimes whole fields of vibrantly green rice plants, but the ground is sandy and dry. The Mass was under a white pavilion run with green ribbons and decorated with tons of sunflowers, the symbol of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. It was hot.

Before Marleney professed her vows, the priest gave her the microphone and asked her to talk to everyone about how she got to be here. Her testimony was really moving. She talked about the "human ties" that led her from one step to another in her journey toward becoming a Sister of Notre Dame; she said she didn't want to even hear about religious life at first, but little by little, sometimes fighting with God, she discovered that "this is my happiness." The priest asked her if she'd ever been in love and to talk about what love means to her. She said yes, of course; she's a woman, a complete person, and yes she had had a boyfriend years ago, and she is happy now that he is married with kids while she has found her happiness here. "Love, to me, is to give yourself completely and be left with nothing, but at the same time to receive everything. I know that for the rest of my life I will be thirsting for this God, and I am here to give myself over to Him completely, not 'until death do us part' but until death unites us."

I was sitting in the front row with the rest of the sisters and I'm sure everyone there thought I was a nun too. It was kind of awkward to be the only non-Peruvian without an ND cross around her neck, but I tried to make myself useful as a photographer. After the ceremony the whole crowd of at least 200 people wanted to hug Marleney, and while some waited in line the others ate the beans and rice and goat that quickly appeared in the hands of the caterers. There was folkloric dancing by the kids in the school and a neighbor of the sisters sang musica criolla for everybody to dance to.

To get back to Tambogrande, the sisters' truck went first with those who were leaving that night for Lima. Juana Jaqueline and I didn't want to wait for the second trip, so we hopped in with another family... in the back on the truck bed! I got to be one of those Latin Americans you see going by all crowded together in the back of a truck, standing up to fit more people, like a bunch of horses or something being transported home. So ghetto and so very typical around here. We even stopped to pick up more guests who'd started home on foot--the people on the truck bed started whacking the top of the vehicle to get it to stop, their friends hopped up, and they whacked again to say go ahead. It was great. The sisters later said they saw us flying by while they waited at the bus station, and they knew it was us because they picked out my hair right away.

And so I have now ridden in the back of a truck down dirt highways in rural Peru, in my nice clothes, squished between a nun and a cross-dressing Peruvian named Karen (he got out of the car before we took this picture.) This just about makes my year.