I don't believe how natural it feels now to live at Dr. Tony's in Chaclacayo. While last year I spent all my quiet moments here marvelling at the gray mountains, the flat-roofed houses, and the buses barrelling by on the highway, now this neighborhood feels like the Peruvian equivalent of my parents' neighborhood in Ellicott City. Quiet, beautiful, lots of green (comparatively speaking), and a VERY full house of kids to be with. Tony and Terri are still here, of course, the dad and the mom of the house respectively; the cooks, the teachers, the nurses, and about ten or so of the kids are still around from last year and doing exactly what they were doing back when I first got to Peru. Plus, my good friend John is back in Peru from Ireland, which is like having your big brother around again. So the Hogar even more than Lima feels like coming home.
There are about six or eight young kids who take up probably 50% of the volunteers' time. Two are in wheelchairs and three more can only walk with walkers, and they need help with tooth-brushing, going upstairs to the bathroom, putting on and taking off leg braces, opening the door to the patio, pulling other kids off them when they start fighting and end up squirming in a pile on the floor, etc. My favorite of these is Rocely, a nine-year-old mentally retarded girl who is in the house to receive therapy so she'll be able to walk. She gets this sneaky sort of grin when you look at her, and when I ask her, What?, she goes, What? back, and giggles, and I tickle her, and she laughs and laughs. My other favorite, who was around last year, is Mallco. His actual name is Juan Carlos Mallco, but last year there was a Juan Carlos Malchi, so they both went by their last names. Mallco came to the house last January as a tiny little five-year-old who scrambled around on the floor and jumped up on you like a puppy when he wanted attention--he has cerebral palsy, so he couldn't walk at all. He also didn't speak any Spanish, having come from a Quechua-speaking home in the mountains. His only way of communication at first, therefore, was to whine, and in a country where whining is an acceptable way for kids and adults to get what they want, this kid beat everything I have ever heard before or since. Now, however, he speaks great Spanish, has grown several inches and a little pot belly from eating the mamitas' abundant cooking twice a day, and is walking around the house with a walker and leg braces. He still whines, but not nearly as much.
Last Saturday my friends Sara and Celina from Lima came to visit and play with the kids, and at night we went out to Chosica to a karaoke bar. I had never been to a karaoke bar in my life and was expecting terrible suffering of the ears, but it was great! Those who couldn't really sing just did popular cumbia songs with their group of friends, and those who could hold a tune did so. My friend Ever kept ordering one jar of sangría after another, which may have accounted for my fearless renditions of Mariah Carey's Hero and Bette Middler's Wind Beneath My Wings.
During the week I usually have to go to Lima with the kids to their medical appointments, and the waiting is just as terrible as it was last year: there are no appointments beforehand, so you have to show up early, essentially take a number, and then wait for two to five hours for the kid to see the doctor. It's an utterly ridiculous system, there are huge crowds of people in the hospitals, and Tony's employees in charge of these trips usually have to push their way to the front of the line or get a friend who works there to give them special privileges ahead of the waiting crowds, in order to get the kids in. After one of these trips, which can last from six to eight hours there and back, I am utterly useless for the rest of the day and usually take a nap. It's amazing to me, given the extent to which the system doesn't work--the fact that the care the kids get is so often not what it could be--that Tony keeps running this whole operation day after day, dedicating his whole life to it, so that these kids can get even the insufficient medical care that's available. Because otherwise, they'd have no care at all. Dedicating your life to something that can never truly work as well as it should... is an act of faith.
But of course, don't get me wrong, there are many, many success stories from the house of kids who have gone home well to their families. And Tony says the doctors they see are good, it's just the logistics and resources that aren't there. And in the everyday reality of the house, you hardly think about the kids' treatment, you're thinking about the park and toothbrushes and finding Ronaldo's walker and getting out the guitars to play with the other volunteers... it sounds trite, but it's a whole house of people who are very far from their families and so become a family for each other.
And thanks to John, at least once a week we're down at the Chaclacayo park for drinks with the volunteers, for some badly needed relaxation after the kids go to bed.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Back in the 'hood
I feel like I've been going between waking and dreaming for the past year or more--but I can't figure out which of my worlds is the dream and which one is real.
The change from Maryland to Lima is so fast and so complete that it really is like waking up and going to sleep. After a few hours of dozing on an airplane, EVERYTHING changes: the weather-- it's in the 80's and sunny in Lima right now; the landscape, dry and sandy with palm trees, brown hills covered in brown-orange brick houses one or two stories tall; the look of the people, short and black-haired and brown-eyed with skin anywhere from dark brown to light almond; the market, the buses, the ramshackle look of a city built up by its residents instead of by building companies. The noise: yesterday I knew I was in Peru again when I heard a guy driving slowly down the street shouting something unintelligible through a megaphone out the window, announcing something he's buying or selling. Very, very different. I was just getting used to my quiet suburban street in Howard County, with those incredibly tall and slender trees looking brittle in the winter; fresh cold air and bright sunlight at once; quiet, privately owned cars shusshing by on smooth paved roads with sidewalks and finished curbs; shopping at the mall, where it really didn't take long for me to swollow my aversion to American materialism and buy myself lots of new clothes; having a credit card and making good use of it to enjoy the marvellous comforts of America with my friends (if you have not been to The Melting Pot, go there, and then try to reconcile the utter heavenliness with the fact that you're spending more money on a meal than some people make in a month.)
And then beyond the environment, the mindset, at least mine, is worlds apart in the two cultures. In the US I found myself looking ahead to possibe Master's degrees and/or career paths and stressing out because, never having been the kind of person who knows what she wants to do with her life, I have many ideas but no set plan. There I feel an urgency to establish myself as something--which of course means to find a well-regarded job--to "get somewhere" at least mildly impressive, and then stay there. Very constricting. Here, in Peru, anything, and I mean anything, can happen (for example, the first indication I had that I was in Latin American culture again was on the plane, where a young woman comes on carrying this enormous, furry, floppy stuffed dog over her shoulder. Only in Peru do you see people hauling random, unweildy items half their own size onto public transportation and not expecting anyone to blink) and I can do anything I like that contributes to the school or the parish community. So despite the separation pains of leaving my home once again, it feels liberating to be here, ready to start some more adventures.
But what a difference between arriving last year and arriving this year! I got to Tupac at 1 in the morning and felt like, Oh good, somehow in all that traveling I wound up somewhere familiar... now I can crash for a while. It felt very surreal the first day, like I had gone back in time to visit friends from a long-gone era, and the next day I would wake up back in the real world again... My friend Sara came over for lunch with me and the sisters, and we went to the market to get a few things I needed, and in the evening there was Ash Wednesday mass, where I saw more of my friends and started to realize that maybe I was really in Peru. Last year feels very distant, like perhaps all that was a dream too, except that now I remember everything I see around here and I have friends hugging me and welcoming me back. And I'm even mentally prepared for Carnevales!
I have a lot of plans for this year that don't include English groups in the school. Heheh. I'm going to keep going with my singers from last year and start with another group of fourth graders; keep tutoring the most dedicated of Catherine's and my students from last year in English; keep singing in the church choir and the group that went to the competition (by the way, THANK YOU to everyone who bought CD's from me in the US! $7 per CD goes a long way here and we're planning to use the money to record an album all our own!); plus I'm going to look into being a catechist in the Confirmation program, maybe teach in the adult GED program IRFA like I always wanted to, except it moved at the beginning of last year and only just returned, and--my big idea of the year--I'd love to start a group of high school girls that would watch a movie together once in a while and use the movie to talk about girls'/women's issues, like respect, equality, careers, relationships, anything. Who knows. For now I'm just working on getting adjusted again; classes and all that will start up in March after I get back from Tony's, where I'm going on Monday.
My friend Adrian told me last night at church that it was like I'd never left, but I said, nooo, it's very different. Last year I had left my home for a strange world and hadn't been back since; now, I've been here, I've been there, I know I'll be back there again, but I also know my way around Lima and can relax a little and enjoy this world for another year before going back to that other life. My great dilemma will be finding something I can do in the States that will give me the same sense of community and purpose that I have here--the sense of just surrendering your life to the crazy forces of Life in general and giving whatever you have to offer to the people you find yourself near. Somehow, without really meaning to, I've become something between a Peace Corps worker and a nun.
Cool.
The change from Maryland to Lima is so fast and so complete that it really is like waking up and going to sleep. After a few hours of dozing on an airplane, EVERYTHING changes: the weather-- it's in the 80's and sunny in Lima right now; the landscape, dry and sandy with palm trees, brown hills covered in brown-orange brick houses one or two stories tall; the look of the people, short and black-haired and brown-eyed with skin anywhere from dark brown to light almond; the market, the buses, the ramshackle look of a city built up by its residents instead of by building companies. The noise: yesterday I knew I was in Peru again when I heard a guy driving slowly down the street shouting something unintelligible through a megaphone out the window, announcing something he's buying or selling. Very, very different. I was just getting used to my quiet suburban street in Howard County, with those incredibly tall and slender trees looking brittle in the winter; fresh cold air and bright sunlight at once; quiet, privately owned cars shusshing by on smooth paved roads with sidewalks and finished curbs; shopping at the mall, where it really didn't take long for me to swollow my aversion to American materialism and buy myself lots of new clothes; having a credit card and making good use of it to enjoy the marvellous comforts of America with my friends (if you have not been to The Melting Pot, go there, and then try to reconcile the utter heavenliness with the fact that you're spending more money on a meal than some people make in a month.)
And then beyond the environment, the mindset, at least mine, is worlds apart in the two cultures. In the US I found myself looking ahead to possibe Master's degrees and/or career paths and stressing out because, never having been the kind of person who knows what she wants to do with her life, I have many ideas but no set plan. There I feel an urgency to establish myself as something--which of course means to find a well-regarded job--to "get somewhere" at least mildly impressive, and then stay there. Very constricting. Here, in Peru, anything, and I mean anything, can happen (for example, the first indication I had that I was in Latin American culture again was on the plane, where a young woman comes on carrying this enormous, furry, floppy stuffed dog over her shoulder. Only in Peru do you see people hauling random, unweildy items half their own size onto public transportation and not expecting anyone to blink) and I can do anything I like that contributes to the school or the parish community. So despite the separation pains of leaving my home once again, it feels liberating to be here, ready to start some more adventures.
But what a difference between arriving last year and arriving this year! I got to Tupac at 1 in the morning and felt like, Oh good, somehow in all that traveling I wound up somewhere familiar... now I can crash for a while. It felt very surreal the first day, like I had gone back in time to visit friends from a long-gone era, and the next day I would wake up back in the real world again... My friend Sara came over for lunch with me and the sisters, and we went to the market to get a few things I needed, and in the evening there was Ash Wednesday mass, where I saw more of my friends and started to realize that maybe I was really in Peru. Last year feels very distant, like perhaps all that was a dream too, except that now I remember everything I see around here and I have friends hugging me and welcoming me back. And I'm even mentally prepared for Carnevales!
I have a lot of plans for this year that don't include English groups in the school. Heheh. I'm going to keep going with my singers from last year and start with another group of fourth graders; keep tutoring the most dedicated of Catherine's and my students from last year in English; keep singing in the church choir and the group that went to the competition (by the way, THANK YOU to everyone who bought CD's from me in the US! $7 per CD goes a long way here and we're planning to use the money to record an album all our own!); plus I'm going to look into being a catechist in the Confirmation program, maybe teach in the adult GED program IRFA like I always wanted to, except it moved at the beginning of last year and only just returned, and--my big idea of the year--I'd love to start a group of high school girls that would watch a movie together once in a while and use the movie to talk about girls'/women's issues, like respect, equality, careers, relationships, anything. Who knows. For now I'm just working on getting adjusted again; classes and all that will start up in March after I get back from Tony's, where I'm going on Monday.
My friend Adrian told me last night at church that it was like I'd never left, but I said, nooo, it's very different. Last year I had left my home for a strange world and hadn't been back since; now, I've been here, I've been there, I know I'll be back there again, but I also know my way around Lima and can relax a little and enjoy this world for another year before going back to that other life. My great dilemma will be finding something I can do in the States that will give me the same sense of community and purpose that I have here--the sense of just surrendering your life to the crazy forces of Life in general and giving whatever you have to offer to the people you find yourself near. Somehow, without really meaning to, I've become something between a Peace Corps worker and a nun.
Cool.
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