Living in Tupac = craziness

So as my tutoring is not really set up yet, I'm not spending as much time in the school as I would like to or as I feel I should be. BUT... I would hardly say that when I'm not in the school, I'm doing nothing. Tupac is different from Delicias in that respect: there are so many things that need energy and attention in the house itself, that I feel like I've hardly had a free minute all March.

The house is in the center of the town and literally connected to the church, a location that means NOISE. If it's not mototaxis blazing by or the cantinas on the next corner blaring their music all night on Fridays and Saturdays, or some event in the park broadcasting cumbia to the world--it's people knocking, knocking, knocking on the door to ask about anything and everything connected with the church. There's a sign outside our door listing the days and times when people can go to the library to sign their kids up for religious ed, but darned if anybody reads it. At least a couple times a week it's, Ring ring!--"Buenas noches, Sister! About signing up for catechesis...?" In the US people always read the sign before asking for help. Here it's the opposite. I want to tell them, READ THE FREAKING SIGN, people! Signs are for people to READ so they can have INFORMATION without having to bother the nuns! (or volunteers, or whatever. I've gotten completely used to being called Sister by this point, and I kind of enjoy it. It makes you feel nice, like people know you're there to help.)

I've learned many but not all of the key rings to open various doors and rooms and temples for the people who come to use the church (usually about five minutes after I sit down to eat dinner.) And I've adjusted to the little things like cleaning the bathrooms once a week (in Delicias we paid a friend of Iris's to do basic cleaning) and hauling water a longer distance from the wash area to flush the toilets with. In this house, there is water provided by the city, while in Delicias the community buys it from a company that sends a big tank truck every month; but it's still good to save water, because sometimes the water provided by the city cuts out. In that case, we are lucky enough to have a well from which we can pump water up to a tank on the roof, and from there it falls through the pipes to the house. Last week the area's water cut out for about two days, and people were standing outside their houses with big, not necessarily clean buckets to buy water from a tank truck that came driving by, with a guy on the back hopping down to make sure the hoses went into the buckets... not, as I realized I had half expected, nice plastic jugs being handed down one by one without any splashes or dirt.

buying water from the truck

Our community in this house is a new one and we're still trying to find our feet as a group. Magdalena has lived in this house for several years, but I'm new to the house, and Sister BJ is new to Peru: she's been here three months now and is dedicating herself to Spanish classes before she can take on any ministry in this country. For a few weeks there was Fransisca, Elena, and Rubén, but mostly now it's just Rubén, because Elena spends most of her time in the hospital attending to her mom (or being operated on herself for appendicitis... you know, whatever...) It's a huge responsibility having a kid in the house. We have to cook lunch by 12:00 every day so he can get to school by 1, make sure someone is always in the house when he's not in school, help him with his homework, tell him to turn off the TV and go to bed at 10:00, get him up at 8:30... and as far as his laundry, I don't even know if he does it himself or if Magdalena does it. He is a great kid, but he's a kid, something none of us is used to having to care for.

And from his point of view, I'm sure it must be hard for a twelve-year-old from the rural north of Peru to be suddenly plunked down in a convent with three foreign women trying to care for him while his mom's sick. It's difficult, too, for him and BJ to understand each other. He talks too fast for her, she puts in English words that he has no way to understand or makes mistakes that interfere with her meaning in Spanish, and he has no idea what she's saying, and then later she ends up feeling like he doesn't respect her when she reminds him it's bedtime or tells him to get ready for lunch. I can't entirely blame him for this, as it's hard to take seriously someone who talks in a strange, funny version of your language. Also, I've discovered that even Magdalena is often not good at speaking Spanish in a way BJ will understand--using simpler grammar or words she knows instead of resorting to English. Maybe it's my practice as an English teacher here that makes me more sensitive to the kind of Spanish that BJ needs to hear and practice, or the lapses in communication between her and Rubén...

If it were understood that I was supposed to be the translator and everyone knew that, it would be easier in a way. I'd just translate and people would understand each other. But in order to let BJ speak and understand on her own as much as possible, I try to fill in only the most gaping of the gaps in communication, helping get a few key words or ideas across--in other words, I spend a lot of time listening in silence to people's struggles to understand each other. Very difficult for me, "mediator"-type personality that I am. It stresses and upsets me when communication breaks down and there are misunderstandings.

Besides our immediate community, there's an eclectic collection of people who sort of hover around the house, appearing once or twice a day or maybe every other day, needing things from you. (Or rather from Magdalena, but from me or BJ if she's not there.) Most constantly present is Ana. Ana is a 40-year-old woman who used to live on the streets because she was abused in her house as a child. When she slept in the park, Magdalena says, she used to carry around metal bars to defend herself with at night, and once she was taken to the police for carrying around a knife and frightening people, yelling, etc. She has a child who is being raised by her extended family. But now--I don't know how these miracles were accomplished--Ana takes medicine to stabilize her mentally; lives in a little room that her siblings rent for her, two streets away; takes a shower in our back bathroom twice a week; does her laundry here; sweeps our sidewalks and takes out the trash and recycling every day, for which Magdalena pays her S/. 3.50 per day out of a donation she received for Ana; and is calm and pleasant in her interactions with us. If you talk to her about something she likes or compliment her on her looks, she gets a big smile on her face and will tell you where she got her new blouse, etc. Magda says that a doctor once told her, however you treat Ana, that's how she's going to respond. So Magdalena is all praise for Ana's work, her laundry-doing, her taking the recycling to sell--and Ana rings the doorbell around 7 am every morning and comes in with a comfortable "Buenos dias," as if we were expecting her. Which, it seems, we are.

Apparently it was Estela who originally brought Ana to the sisters, and for a long time she slept in the parish multipurpose room and wandered the park during the day, and one step at a time the improvements came--no doubt through the persistent work of Estela and Magdalena. Ana also loves to sit in the garden and look at the beautiful roses, white, red, pink, and yellow, that she helps to water.

the garden on our patio.

Oh... and Ana also brings fleas into our house. I've become more or less accustomed to the odd flea bite now and then. Magda fumigates the house every so often, and I have branches of eucalyptus leaves, a big bunch for 50 cents in the market, strewn under my bed... it does seem to keep them away. But poor BJ is way more allergic than anyone else to the bites, and suffers for weeks after being bitten, whereas for me a flea in my room means I get a couple of red dots on my stomach or ankles and itch a little for a few days. Change the sheets, sweep the floor, and bring in more eucalyptus, usually does the trick...

After Ana, there's Jorge, a young man who works in the parish library and has all sorts of family issues that he talks to Magdalena about. For a while he was sick and thought he might have tuberculosis, but he doesn't, thank goodness. His mom is absent from the house right now, so we usually feed him some dinner when he comes at 5:00 to do his work. Apparently there's also a Miguel who works in the library and suffers from depression, but is taking medicine now and starting to take more control of his life. There's Modesta, who always buys the flowers for the church and occasionally wants the money from Magda (who is in charge of handling most of the parish funds...)

And less often, there's Estela and her group of ladies who visit the sick and need help and support in attending to them. Today I went with Estela and ended up singing Happy Birthday (outside the house on the street with my guitar and everything) to a woman with an amputated leg and bed sores that she hasn't gone to the doctor for, because she has no money. The group decided to give her 50 soles for now to pay for a visit and medicine for her infection, and go from there.

All in all it seems like there's never a free minute. Thank God for my Mondays, which I have left free for myself as my day off, since Saturday and Sunday I teach a couple of English classes and am generally busy in the parish. Last Monday I escaped for a few hours to Barranco, the artsy, bohemian-backpacker-chic section of the city, where there are parks with trees and grass and beautiful views of the ocean. I do love living in a city built around a bay.