The Selva

So, we left Iquitos by car, drove an hour and a half down to a little river-port town, got into a motor boat, and two to three hours later (I had no idea of the exact time during any of our time in the jungle) we were in canoes being paddled by our guides to the campsite. It was a few little houses on the riverside, one for guests with two mosquito-netted beds on the floor of each room, another for the guides who basically live there, and a dining room.

I never expected to go to the Amazon Rainforest and feel at home. But to my surprise, I got there... and felt totally comfortable, like I'd lived there for years! More than comfortable, I felt I belonged there. I guess it was just like going back to my childhood of tramping around the backyard woods in boots... except that this isn't just woods, it's SUPER MEGA AWESOME WOODS!! There were those giant trees you always see pictures of, and monkeys, and tarantulas, and river dolphins jumping, and tons of beautiful brilliant butterflies, and bright-colored birds. No jaguars or anacondas though. Just around eight million very determined mosquitoes. We lived slathered in DEET for two days.

Our activities included: seeing the river dolphins and swimming near their island (Rebecca tried to start personal-training me on this island, which meant I ran around and did jumping jacks and jump-squats (aka "torture") in my bathing suit on a stretch of sand in the middle of the Yarapa River.); going out by canoe at night to see animals and discovering a very very large river rat; walking around behind the guide, Lucho, who cut through the plants with a machete when necessary, to find the monkeys on "monkey island" and play with them (they're so used to tourists they will come down from the trees and climb you or, I got the feeling, fight you if necessary for the bits of banana and oranges you have in your hand); and going actually camping camping the second night.

YES THAT IS A REAL MONKEY I'M HOLDING! Ok, so he didn't like me, he liked the banana...

That second night was definitely interesting. The guides whacked vines off the trees with their machetes to string up each person's hammock, then strung mosquito netting around the hammocks and put a plastic tarp up over each one. Then it started pouring so hard that each person had to get in their little house, the dinner fire went out, and that was that until morning! Rebecca and I passed the time singing Disney songs from our neighboring mosquito nets until the rain got too loud to hear. And then there was nothing to do but sleep in our little coccoons, and wait for breakfast in the morning. I was a little concerned about being bitten on the butt by mosquitos when I went out to pee in the middle of the night... but luckily I wasn't. And apart from that I knew there was nothing to be afraid of in the woods.

The first night, in a way, was more incredible, because of the stars that seemed to be FIGHTING FOR SPACE in a sky crowded like a football stadium! Huge, brilliant stars that looked like they'd invaded the territory from another sky only that day... because clearly there were never that many of them every other time I've looked!...

I also got to take a shower in the river, on a bright sunny blue-sky day, and feel like a mermaid. :) And talk to the camp shaman, who told us about plant-medicinal cures for everything including cancer, who on the first night could be heard singing a low chant as part of an ayahuasca ceremony for one of the tourists who was feeling brave enough to try it. (Ayahuasca is a plant that makes you see visions... I was put off even considering it by the fact that it also makes you throw up.) And I got to talk to--ahem, I mean, I got to see--trees like this one.The food was plain but good: rice and fried sliced bananas at almost every meal, plus maybe some chicken, eggs, or else an ENTIRE FISH (gutted, but still, there was the head and tail so it counts as entire!!) battered, fried and put on your plate. Everything was fried and if not for all the walking, I'd have gained weight. As it was the backs of my legs got really sore from all the clambering around in boots, and my arms from rowing in the canoes.

I was sad to leave. But as I couldn't really have afforded another day, it was just as well that our plane back out of Iquitos was on Thursday night...

Tomorrow

is our AMAZON JUNGLE TOUR!! 3 days 2 nights in the jungle! I can't believe it, I never thought I'd be doing this since I didn't come prepared with camping gear, etc, but the professional guide company arranges all that. We spent all morning booking the tour, talking to different agents, negotiating prices. There's a guy from Texas here who runs a restaurant called The Yellow Rose of Texas, but he used to be the director of tourism for the city, so he gave us all the best names to go to and told us not to pay more than $35 or $40 per day. So after our Rose of Texas breakfast we got our Amazon tour worked out!! We're going with a young couple from Denmark and a Peruvian guide named Alex who is very cool.

The rest of the day we've spent wandering around Iquitos looking for things like a long-sleeved T-shirt for those jungle hikes--which involved me trying on a lot of men's t-shirts to the amusement of the Peruvians working in the stores; the women's ones are too tight for jungle hiking!--and the artesanía market, which involved a cool bus ride that let us see a lot of the city. We've seen the Amazon River, houses built on stilts, awesome cloud formations, rain and sun at the same time, a rainbow, and almost best of all, it smells like summer rain! AAAH! Plus Iquiteños using mototaxis and motorcycles like Americans use SUVs--constantly and recklessly!

These are all pictures from the city of Iquitos itself.

I'M IN IQUITOS!!

aka the AMAZON RAINFOREST!! Woo-hoo, so long gray chilly Lima, hello warm humid jungle!

The Tree of Life is found in Iquitos. Fyi.

Rebecca got in at 4:15 am on Saturday and I went with Carlos the taxista to get her at the airport. It was cool to see her reactions to seeing Lima for the first time--it reminded me of how I felt over a year and a half ago, coming out of the airport and driving down along the whole stretch of highway next to the ocean, from the north side of Lima to the south... the desert sand, palm trees, the sandy rocky cliffs towering on the side of the road. Yesterday we walked around Tupac a lot, went to the market (poor Rebecca the vegetarian, walking by the stands with chickens cut open and dangling by one foot with all their organs on display looking like little multicolored squishy balls! that and the entire pig hanging on a hook on the corner of the meat row...). She was tickled with the mototaxis but we didn't get to ride one just then.

We walked up to the house in Delicias and looked out from the roof over the recycling yard behind the house, which basically looks like a huge junkyard, with the family that owns it walking around in the junk and sorting things, kids running around in the yard throwing rocks at the random roosters strutting through the recycling... all the brown and dustiness and half-built houses... and about a mile downhill, the hazy blue-gray ocean on the horizon. Plus the randomness so Peruvian I couldn't ever have arranged for her to see these things: a guy getting off the back of a bus with a huge wheel, just this wheel that looked like the back half of a bicycle; a dog wandering around in church and scooting under the benches; a musical/dance show set up in the middle of the street for Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day holidays) that included dancing bears (not actual bears, people in bear costumes) and dancing girls...

Then Saturday afternoon we spent getting her a ticket to Cusco, because Machu Picchu is just worth seeing. This task took us to Jockey Plaza, the ritziest mall in Lima, which is exactly like an upscale American mall. A bit different from the mercado. By the time we got home we were so exhausted we went to bed at 9 pm.

I wasn't even going to go to church this morning, because I'm on vacation, and if I'm there (I thought) I'll get dragged into leading the music, with everyone asking me what number every song is as if I had it all in my head, while THEY are the ones holding the notebook that has such things written down. Grrr, so typically irresponsible...! But the thought of not going made me so sad, like something missing in you way deep down. What can I say? I'm hooked, a church junkie. I need my Jesus fix!! But I also needed to just go and sit and not be in charge of organizing music for once. So Rebecca was my excuse. We sat in the back together and I pointedly ignored the choir's not-too-subtle glances in my direction. The music really was kind of pathetic without guitar, but that wasn't MY fault (at least not exclusively). Other people could have been there to play. Padre Kevin, the totally awesome visiting English priest, even gave Rebecca a public welcome, much to her embarassment. She then had to get used to all my friends and lots of random people as well greeting her with the cheek-kiss.

And then this afternoon was the flight! And we got off the airport and it was WARM and HUMID, almost like this time of year in Washington DC! I haven't felt real warm summer weather for so long! The kind that just wraps you in humidity and soaks heat, instead of cold, into your bones! It's warm and there's no AC in our hostel (The Hobo Hideout!!! hehe), but I'm loving it after the Lima chill. Plus, check out the awesome jungle bungalow accomodations!

We took a mototaxi from the airport to the hostel, and wow, the driving here is just like Lima, except the vast majority of vehicles on the street are motorcycles or mototaxis. There are palm trees everywhere and it's hard to see anything else because, well, it's dark. Will check back in at some point after that changes. Also, odd but nice detail: I don't really feel hungry like I normally would in Lima after eating what I've eaten today. Not as cold = not as hungry.

Let my two weeks of backpacker-adventurer-being begin!!

Confi = :)

Our group acting out an imaginary trial of parents by their teenagers... just one of our fun, life-examining activities in Confi!

Yesterday I got a nice break from playing the guitar at Mass in the morning: we had the first of this year's jornadas, or workshop-type meetings, with the teenagers in the first year of the Confirmation program from all four sectors of our parish. Normally each sector meets separately every week to talk about that week's topic, but this was an opportunity for all the participants to meet each other, hang out, and... mostly just meet each other. At the preparation meeting with the catechists, I was all like, "What's the topic? Who's going to talk about what? How are we going to give them good, deep moments of reflection, etc?" Instead, the main focus of the day was dinamicas. Dinamicas are group games kind of like ice-breakers, but way more elaborate and usually silly. My fellow catechist Any is the queen of dinamicas. Some of her classics:

"Casa-Inquilino." Two people hold hands to form the house, and one person stands in the middle as the inquilino. (An inquilino, it seems from context, is either a renter, or a post that the house is constructed around. Living in another language makes life so much more interesting sometimes.) One person is left out. The person outside calls out either "Casa," "Inquilino," or "Earthquake." If they say Casa, the house, without letting go their hands, runs to find another inquilino. If the caller says Inquilino, the inquilino runs to find another house, and the caller ducks in too, leaving a new person out, a la musical chairs. If the caller says Earthquake, the houses break down and everybody scrambles to form new groups of three. (some Peruvian reality there too.) If you're left out three times, you have to dance La Bamba at the end, in front of everybody.

"The Postoururi Iceberg." This one has some environmental conscience to it. Each group of five or six people receives five or six pieces of newspaper, which they place together on the floor. When the caller says Postoururi Iceberg (a famous iceberg in Peru's Andes), everyone stands on top of the newspaper. This accomplished successfully, one of the sheets of newspaper is taken away, and everyone has to stand on the now much smaller iceberg. And so on until you're all hugging each other, balancing on tiptoe, picking people up, etc. to all fit onto one sheet of newspaper at the end. The group who touches ground with a foot first has to dance.

And my personal favorite, "The little kitten" (el gatito.) The person who's "it" chooses a victim from the circle. They go up to that person and start acting like a cat. Meeeeoooowww, pawing, rubbing up against their leg, etc. If the person laughs, they become "it" and have to go be a cat to someone else. This is hilariously embarassing and a truly wonderful icebreaker, in terms of actually breaking the awkwardness in a newly formed group. I highly recommend it for corporate meetings, if anyone out there is running such things.

Besides the dinamicas, we sang (translation: Kathleen spent an hour and a half frantically typing up a song sheet the day before); saw a depressing video about kids who work on the streets in Lima to survive; listened to a VERY brief talk on the dimensions of reality that we talk about in Confirmation: personal, family, social-political, and religious; and had no time to reflect on those dimensions in groups because we'd started too late and the coordinator wasn't there to move things along. (Remind me to complain later about the way group leaders in Peru tend to leave everything to everyone else, and then yell at everyone else for their incompentence, claiming that "my being late wasn't actually being late, it was to see if the catechists could live up to their responsibility and run the meeting themselves," a sort of putting the underlings to the test... and the underlings accept it, even blame themselves for not measuring up! This is not the first time this has happened to me and I strongly strongly disagree with this management style.)

The whole thing was kind of disorganized (SURPRISE), but it was really fun. At one point I also ended up doing a skit with a group of jovenes about roosters, and then changing the words of a popular song to present our group as The Roosters who wake up the world to live passionate, religious lives. I couldn't believe how enthusiastically all the groups made up dances to introduce themselves to the rest--really good dances, too! It looked like they were ALL members of a cheer team or dance squad. You'd never catch a group of American teenagers willingly dancing in front of their peers. But Peruvians just have rhythm, and for them it's natural, they're not ashamed of it. Some pictures of the group presentations:

This is me and my group, the Roosters (we were given that name... and had to find each other in the crown by going around making rooster noises, just like everyone else was making the noise of the animal on their little card...)In our weekly Confirmation meetings, there's always a good chunk of dinamicas time, as well as singing, a topic of discussion such as family, parents, finding God in our personal history, friends, etc. I'm really enjoying the group and glad that I can contribute with my guitar (as always!) and by leading the Bible reading section (usually). Even in Spanish, I feel more at home with the read-and-reflect than with the dinamicas or with spontaneously talking in front of the group.

Rebecca comes this Friday! and my kiddies are singing the national anthem at the Fiestas Patrias celebration in the school, and then-- My Vacation!

Survey question

Ok, so I've been reading this blog: http://www.onefunnunslife.blogspot.com/ and it is awesome. It's the adventures of a 20-something nun from Wisconsin, who makes religious life look freakin cool! If nothing else, check out the first minute of the video on the latest post. All I have to say is, JEDI NUN is precisely what I would love to be (maybe!).

I wonder if, maybe if I start blogging more like Sr. Katy, some of the coolness will rub off. :) So from now on, I hope, you're going to be reading less "ooh, THAT's a different and kind of weird thing about Peru!" and more, "this is what it's like to be Kathleen." Or Kata, as everyone around here calls me (short for Catalina).

1). Survey question: Should Kathleen consider somewhat seriously the possibility of becoming (gasp!) an SND?
...what I really mean by that, I think, is, How crazy would the majority of my world in the US consider me, if i did such a thing?
There is basically one thing I find supremely unattractive about the idea: the no-boys factor. (Surprise.) Second-most unattractive thing: Most of the sisters are one or two generations older than me, and being 24 and a fan of discotecas, the life I want is in many cases very different from what they have. But even being here in a somewhat difficult living situation, seeing the nitty-gritty daily life of the sisters firsthand... I still find myself wondering. I'll try to explain why.

Today I watched some of the men's Wimbledon final with the totally awesome visiting priest from England, Father Kevin, and at some point I started talking my crazy maybe-I'll-be-a-nun talk. Something he said in response resonated with me: There's this "radical tug God-ward" inside you, and you have to decide what to do with it, i.e. how it's going to translate into the life you choose to live. For some people, it's best translated into the life of a layperson, single or married. For others, the best outlet for following that radical pull is religious life. Father Kevin shared with me that he's essentially a priest because he wants the opportunity to tell people about God full-time and up-front, without having to make apologies or excuses or neglect other types of work or relationships. And he's very deeply happy doing it.

(Now THERE's a question... would I be a PRIEST if I could? Only one way to find out, hehe... revolutionize some church structures and then see where we're at. Will put that on my list of things to do. ...no really...you think I'm kidding...)

I'm not at all sure that nunhood is actually really truly what I want. But there IS that radical tug God-ward that needs responding to... more than that... it needs structuring one's life and awareness around.--Now, for me, just to get to the point of affirming this truth is huge, and I'm still working on accepting it as genuine reality. I've been so thoroughly formed and trained in the public-secular-intellectual American mindset, that the voice in my head saying, Um, HELLO, what are you, CRAZY? when I start talking about building my life around this God stuff is still very strong. Nonetheless, the happiness that I feel being here among the SNDs, working daily prayer into my life, and doing all my fun involvement-ministry things in the parish make me wonder if this could be for me.

So there you have it, folks: Kathleen is officially crazy. Feel free to use all the tools at your disposal to dissuade her from her insanity. Especially, but not limited to, introducing her to hot single guys when she gets back to the US.

2). Today for almost the first time this year, I missed home, and 6 months to go seemed like a long time. I think it's a lack of trees.--seriously, I'm missing my green. I miss walking in the woods, reading Tolkien, going to the Renaissance Fair in the fall, writing that fantasy novel that someday before I die I must finish and publish... all the things that sort of suffused my subconscious as rest and relaxation, when I was growing up. Where does this "new" reality of God leave all of those things?
Also, I'm sad now that Sister Miriam, Sister Juana Jaqueline, and Sister Iris are in California for their chapter meeting... three Peruvians who bring so much life to the community here, and two of them are among my best counsellor-confidantes here in Peru.

3) The good news... my friend Rebecca from high school is coming to visit me at the end of this month! and we're going to the AMAZON RAINFOREST, the city of Iquitos, largest city in the world unreachable by road. And then to the beach up north in Mancora! Must call for hotel reservations and bus tickets. The time isn't dragging anything like it was last year at this time, when I was crossing off days of July on my calendar until Mom and Marissa came at mid-year vacation; but the time off will still be VERY welcome. I really feel like I need a vacation.

Looking ahead

So... it's July!! About six months left for me in Peru. I can't believe how fast the time is flying.

I've come to realize what I want to do with myself after Peru. Which is good--last year I had no idea. I'm going to study for a Master's degree in theology. Call it the inspiration of living with nuns, that's made me want to combine my intellectual life and my faith, which up till now have been very separate for me. I'm signed up to take the GRE in Lima on September 29th, and I've had to build a few study hours per week into my schedule--I'm unbelievably busy here, and I still don't quite understand how, since my actual hours of teaching people things or accompanying them musically never add up to more than 30-odd hours per week. But there are so many more things to do here than at home: market, cooking, cleaning the house (the dust means that you really do have to clean at least once a week, and I'm in charge of the upstairs floor and the bathroom), and washing all the laundry by hand.

Plus all my things in the parish take place at night, and morning prayer takes place at 6:30 am... and on weekends, people around here like to party. Even sometimes on weekdays. My friend Victor had his birthday party last Wednesday, which we found out about after Mass at about 9 pm, decided to go, went and bought him a cake, wandered around his neighborhood trying to find his house, finally found him and the rest of the group as they were leaving his house, and ended up back in Tupac eating the cake at a Chinese restaurant and mixing the bottle of wine somebody brought with 7-up to make it go around. Got back home at 1 am and had to get to the school by 8 for the Teacher's Day performance, at which a good number of the kids proceeded to skip the choir number in favor of changing for their reggaeton dance number. Sigh. Nobody respects my art. (Lack of coordination rears its ugly head once more.) ...but anyway, it's amazing the way Victor, his birthday, and our friendship with him were valued over everyone's early-morning obligations on Thursday. Our culture could use some of that.

So, yes, I'm studying for the GRE (starting tomorrow!) and will be applying this year for MA programs beginning in September '09. Yale Divinity School has a four-year combined MA in theology and Master of Sacred Music, which would probably be fabulous for me... but my heart is set on the Graduate Theological Union at Berkeley, CA, a union of nine different theological schools from different denominations, plus a Center for Buddhist Studies, Center of Hindu Studies... everything. I have a feeling that most of my coordination/application work to get there is going to go towards getting financial aid. But presuming I can get the money worked out, that's where I'm headed. :)

A rainy day and a dentist

Last Thursday it rained way more than is usual in Lima. The normal winter precipitation here is a fine mist, but this was actually a real (light) rain. It began during the night and by 8 am, when I was supposed to be leaving for the school to work with Liliana, there was a whole confusion over a nearby school's religion class coming into our church to pray, because (1) Señora Sofía had not arrived to open the church for them, and (2) the church floor was covered with large puddles of rain dripping in through the roof and falling through the open windows. And the religion teacher was standing outside my door in a hoodless fleece jacket getting wet, because limeños aren't used to covering up in the rain (they don't usually have enough rain to be worth putting a raincoat on for.)

I got to the school and some of the students were sweeping water into the gutters on the second floor with brooms. (The "hallways" of this school aren't inside, only the classrooms are roofed over, and between the classrooms you're walking in the open air. Some of the houses around here are like this too--they'll have a second floor accessible only by an outdoor staircase, or no roof over the walkway between the living room and the bathroom, etc.)

In the Adelante class, Liliana couldn't concentrate because her tooth hurt. Sara the teacher did her concerned-frown-nod. "Yes, she's been like that since Monday! I've told her, she has to go to the dentist! See, Liliana? Liliana, if you don't go to the dentist it's going to keep hurting!" Liliana opened her mouth to show me which one hurt, and I saw a whole bunch of gray discoloring on various teeth. I'm no dentist, but the situation sure looked bad. She said she'd never been to a dentist. I thought, in all likelihood it's because she can't pay for it. So I went to talk to Estela, who in the mornings works as an auxiliar in the school. Estela said that the parish health committee could help with the cost of a dentist's visit. And the coordination began: i.e. Kathleen runs all over creation (well, all over Tupac) for the next two days trying to get Liliana into a dentist's chair.

Estela did most of the actual talking. Liliana, do you have insurance? Yes. (the government-sponsored seguro that anyone can enroll in.) Have your parents ever taken you to the doctor? Yes. Did they ever take you to a dentist? No. Does your tooth hurt right now? Yes. Is your mother at home right now? Yes. Estela goes to ask permission from Gaby to take Liliana home and talk to her mom--to "twist the mother's arm a little, to get her to take her in." Permission granted. But when I went up to get Liliana, she got up from her desk and burst out crying. She didn't want to leave. "If I don't go to school my dad gets mad!--But Liliana, you have permission to go, this is your health, etc!--No, no, don't go tell my mom, don't say anything! My mom'll hit me! Don't say anything!"

Estela sat down across from the crying girl, leaned back, crossed one leg over her knee, and looked at her. Liliana sits next to a mirror on her classroom wall, and in that mirror I saw Estela's face. Her frown was solemn, like a judge gazing down on a poor, powerless defendant; but behind the firm lines of her face there was an immeasurable sadness. The quiet little middle-aged sierran woman, poor as any of her neighbors here in Tupac, suddenly looked like a stern queen moved by compassion for the girl's suffering.
Your mom will hit you, said Estela.
Uh-huh! My mom's not good to me!
Who is good to you, Liliana?
Nobody!
Your dad?
He lives somewhere else!
... and so on. And in front of my eyes, Estela proceeded to calm Liliana down. Sometimes, Liliana, she said, we mothers get angry and hit and yell, but it's only because we're angry. In her heart your mother keeps loving you. You were her baby, you were in her tummy, when you were little she fed you, she gave you your clothes, she wrapped you up and carried you when you cried. She still loves you. Sometimes a mother's mouth can say, Get out of here, I don't love you any more!... but it's just our anger talking. In our hearts we keep loving our children. Don't worry, I'm not going to take you home right now. You stay in your class and study. Ok?

I thought, once again this woman has shown me what God is like. Reminded us where the love is in a broken place, rescued some compassion from suffering; done justice in listening, from her position of power, to the powerless. She has a surprising habit of doing that...

Estela and I went by ourselves to talk to the mom, who by now I was imagining as at least half ogre. We had to ask directions to her house because the family has no telephone to call; Estela asked in the corner shops for the family so-and-so, with a daughter who walks with a kind of limp (Liliana seems to have one leg a little longer than the other.) People said, aaaah ya, there's a girl like that on the next street, go ask around there... and I shook my head and followed, thinking of how I used to locate places in the US using things like addresses and street names and MapQuest. Finally we found the house. The mom opened the door, and far from being an ogre, she had a very nice face and a quiet if somewhat distant manner. Estela starts talking.--Oh, I've tried to take her to the dentist, says the mom. But she doesn't let the doctors treat her! She's nervous, and those male doctors in the seguro, they grab her mouth like this and it hurts, and she doesn't let them! The private clinic where my insurance is, they're women doctors, they're better, but that's 15 soles. (about 5 dollars.)

So the public seguro, 4 soles, has bad doctors, and anything else costs too much. I thought immediately of my dentist, Patricia, who all the sisters go to. She's young, friendly, sweet, smart, the gentlest dentist ever, and does excellent work... and just last week she charged me 135 soles to fill 4 tiny little pre-cavities. Wow. After leaving Liliana's house I said goodbye to Estela and went to talk to Sister Teresa, who said that yes, Pati might be willing to help out for cheap, plus there's been a donation to the school of $100 to be used for the children's health. So I called Pati and left a message that I'd like to talk to her.

Then I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning up water with brooms, dustpans, and buckets, first from the floor of the church, then from the roof of our house, where a puddle accumulated over the kitchen was dripping through and getting our cabinets all wet. I can't even imagine what the rain had done to the houses made of estera bamboo matting. I would have seen it firsthand if I'd gone with the parish ladies to visit Agusto, who they reported to be sleeping under a plastic tarp draped over his bed, because his bedroom was turning into a lake... but I half-purposely took too long cleaning the water off our roof to be able to go. I think I was a bit psychologically worn out by the whole dentist escapade in the morning, and by the stories Estela was telling me as we walked of her childhood living in poverty in the sierra.

The next day I went to see Patricia. She, being an angel, agreed cheerfully to treat Liliana at the cost of her materials only. So it was back to the school to tell Estela and back to the mom's house to tell the mom, and later in the afternoon I met the whole family when Liliana's mother brought her down with her three- and one-year-old brothers, and I showed them where the dentist's office is across from the park. The group of them came down from their house to the park on foot, about a 20-minute walk, with the baby slung across the mother's back in a brightly colored cloth, sierran-style, and the 3-year-old running all over the place and refusing to hold his mother's or his sister's hand.

The whole thing surprised me by being so difficult to coordinate--no telephone in Liliana's house, no car for the mom to drive them to the park in, just a lot of running around on foot and passing messages person to person. In the end Liliana had to go back several times and one tooth was taken out completely, but Pati was wonderful with her and reassured her when she started to cry (I was present for that first interview), and the mom was responsible in bringing her back again and again. And since then there hasn't been any real rain in Tupac.

Processions after church on Father's Day

Amazingly, on Father's Day we had SUN! Here's some pictures of the processions that three different groups put on for the celebration.

Some leaders of the group of devotees of the Lord of the Ascention. These devotee groups are usually people who have all moved to Lima from the same area in the sierra, and get together to honor their particular version of Christ ("Lord of such-and-such") or the Virgin Mary ("Virgin of this-or-that.")

Some of the teenage dancers in the procession put on by the Lord of Cachuy (?) group. This is a good view of the back of the anda, the decorated image they put up on these table-like things and carry around on their shoulders. They bring them to Mass and put them in the church aisles.

Sometimes an anda will arrive after Mass has started, with its accompanying brass band BWA-ing with all its might so you can hear them coming from several blocks away. Then they're quiet during the service, just standing there in their uniforms with the beautiful brightly colored banners, until the moment of the consecration: when the priest elevates the host, the brass band strikes up again from outside and plays a whole little triumphant ditty. I always forget they're going to do this and it makes me jump every time. Not exactly what I imagine as an appropriately solemn (or even beautiful, let alone subtle) acknowledgement of the central moment of the Mass... but you have to give them credit for enthusiasm.

When I asked the dancers to take a picture with me, they dressed me up!! :)

another anda and its carriers

I dare any American man to go outside in this outfit.

milling around waiting for the dancing to start (there was a lot of that)

dancing

These two guys with masks, robes, and what seems to be feathers, did a dance in which they went around in a circle whipping each other's legs. With whips. Your guess is as good as mine.

The anda and the band, finally marching. Another thing they do is set off firecrackers during these processions... except there's usually no light, just a freaking huge BANG that makes me think somebody is shooting at the anda from about ten feet away. I jump, the Peruvians laugh... These processions eventually end up at the devotional group's meeting place (someone's house?), where they take full advantage of modern sound technology, blasting the harps and violins of their traditional huayno music to the entire neighborhood for the next twelve hours. (My friend Celina's family runs a business renting sound equipment out for these events--they may be held in locales without running water or fully roofed-over rooms, but they've got their speakers, microphones, and subwoofers working just fine.)

Me, the guy with the whip, and his son (Mini-avenging archangel?). (the son did not take part in the whipping-dance.)

Gaby is my hero

Just a quick note about the 5th grade choir: it's now functioning again thanks to the vice-principal Gaby.

At the meeting we got everything worked out between me, her, and the teachers, and it functioned for one rehearsal. The second rehearsal, the kids came straggling in ten and fifteen minutes late, when their break started and not before. Clearly it is just too much to expect for these teachers to take the responsibility to build choir time into the kids's schedules. So I complained to Gaby and she said she'd see about things on Tuesday.

On Tuesday the kids got there between five and ten minutes late, which was not great but better, so I was less frustrated. But after the rehearsal Gaby told me she'd noticed they weren't there at 5:00, so she'd gone down to the classrooms to look for them. And there they were, painting, doing their art class as if to say, Choir? What choir? The teachers started giving excuses like, But if the kids don't want to go, do I have to make them? Gaby said, Yes, you do, this is a music class and they have to go. The kids said, I do want to go! And so thanks to Gaby they got there by 5:10.

If I'd gone there and seen this, there would no longer be a fifth grade choir. I'd have simply blown a fuse. But now, every time I come to rehearse, I go straight to Gaby and ask for my choir. And she gives them to me. :) And we get to sing!! This is the genius of rehearsing in the room adjacent to the principal's office: the vice principal hears your lovely little choir of children singing, decides it's a great thing to have happen, and steps in and protects it for you when necessary. Yessss.

Adrian the male quinceañera

So around here, a girl's fifteenth birthday is a huge deal. It's a coming-of-age ritual. Families go all out to throw a big party, at which the quinceañera comes out at midnight to the applause of family and friends, sometimes escorted down the stairs by her father, then dances with every male relative and friend there, there are speeches, cake, dancing, etc.

Or so I hear. I've never actually been to a quinceañera party. But two weekends ago was a similar thing for my friend Adrian, celebrating his 18th birthday, which is the comparable coming-of-age birthday for young men.

My guy friends got all dressed up in their suits and looked snazzy. Most of the girls including me went in jeans and semi-nice tops; I would have worn nicer pants if I'd known how formal a deal this actually was. We got there early at 11:00, and sat around embarassed for half an hour because Adrian's family was all dressed up in suits and dress clothes, etc. There was a DJ, a disco ball, a cake that looked like a wedding cake. Adrian came out at 12:00 midnight, announced by the DJ, everybody clapped, and then a cool thing happened. He danced with his mom, then his grandma, aunts, cousins, little sister, etc, with the DJ naming each person as she stepped up to dance with him. And when they finished the family, they started naming friends! There must have been a list because the DJ definitely did not know me, and yet I got called in turn too. It was special because it emphasized not only Adrian's coming-of-age birthday, but also his relationships with each and every one of the people surrounding him, family and friends alike. Each woman called by name to dance with him was a special part of his life worth recognition.

After all the dances and speeches by the mom, dad, aunt, grandmother, Adrian, etc, the living room turned into a discoteca! I left "early" at 3:00 am.