Saturday, April 17, 2010

out of the campo and back again

So I’ve learned that food can be a really good way of tracking travels, so I think to start off the description of Passover/Easter vacation, I’ll explain what we ate along the way. Two Sundays ago, I went to one of the primary school teachers’ house for lunch, where the main dish was guinea pig. The next night I was in Lima for the Seders, where I was served matzah ball soup and gefilte fish. Two nights later I was in the jungle in a town called Pozuzo where my friends ordered wienerschnizl (?). Sounds like a hell of a week right—especially cuz at this point I’m more accustomed to seeing a plate of guinea pig and potatoes than the chicken and roasted potatoes that was served to me the next night.
So here’s what happened. I was in Lima for the Seders. Lima, especially the nice parts, makes you forget you’re in a “third world” country. There are malls, American stores (adidas, apple etc). It felt real world, I thought maybe I was in Europe, except I have never traveled in Europe. I also got to visit my host family from training. They were as sweet as always and seemed genuinely happy that I had taken time out to come visit them. I felt really comfortable and at home with them, and it’s really nice for me to know that I have another “home” here and a family who will treat me as one of there own. Also, while I was resting I heard my host parents talking and they said, in Spanish, “Alex knows how to speak Spanish now” which gave me a bit of an ego boost.
The first night of Passover was pretty normal. My Peace Corps friend Lauren and I were invited to the conservative Rabbis house with about 12 other people. The Seder was pretty similar to how it would have been at home, except for the fact that the attendees were a mix of Peruvians, Israelis and Americans, which meant that English, Spanish and Hebrew were all flowing together. Now that I have some sort of proficiency in all three, my head was spinning. I’m pretty sure I got greeted at the door in Hebrew, processed that and responded in Spanish. I’m still not sure.
The next night was a bit of a disaster. I had signed us up for a Seder with Chabad, which is an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization. I thought it would be kinda laid back and fun, as that is the impression I got of them at Cornell. It wasn’t UNfun, but…well, it was an experience. It was about 30 people, separate tables for men and women, which separated me from my only friend. Also, throw Yiddish into the mix of languages, which made things even more confusing. But to explain the real challenge of this evening, I’ll give you all a background on Passover and the Seders for those of you who are unfamiliar. The holiday celebrates the Israelites exodus from Egypt by a retelling of the story (kind of, mostly it’s just rabbinical commentary and songs) and a big festive meal. This whole shebang is called a Seder. Now normally at a Seder, you go through the retelling, and talk about the exodus a bit, but you don’t drag cuz you want to get to the brisket. Well, at this Seder, we focused on the story. We sat down with our books at 7:30 (pm). The first course wasn’t served till 11:45. For those of you who have never been to a Seder that is not the way we normally do it. So anyway, we ate and gracefully bowed out after dinner, claiming (truthfully) that at our sites, we would have been asleep hours ago.
The next day we set out for the department of Junin, east of Lima, where we would be meeting a bunch of friends and traipsing around the jungle. We got there and I got to reunite with some good friends I haven’t seen in four months, which was really great. Now this trip took us to two towns in the jungle, Oxapampa and Pozuzo. These towns, both accessible only by narrow dirt road in vans, have German roots. How did that happen? Well here’s a brief history lesson, as told to us by a German speaking restaurant owner/historian of Pozuzo/descendant of the town founder: in the mid 19th century, Peru was looking for settlers, for this region of the central jungle. Poor Germans, who were not allowed to marry in Germany because of their poverty, took up the offer and you wind up with two towns with signs in German, German food and blue eyed Peruvians (we really thought they didn’t exist…).
Pozuzo was the real gem for us. You get there by three hour van ride from Oxapampa, and this is a harrowing ride (mom you can skip this part…). This is a one lane dirt/mud road, curvy and on the cliff edge overlooking a wide, muddy river. In a 20 year old van. In passing rain showers. With rivers/streams running over the road every 10 minutes or so (no joke we had to get out twice and water entered the van once). But after three hours or so, when you think you’re never gonna get there alive, the road suddenly turns into a paved, double wide road, with curbs and sidewalks on either side, garbage pails every block (separating organics and inorganics), and cute little cabin houses that you didn’t think existed in Peru. This is Pazuzo, possibly the strangest place in the entire world. We checked into our hostel, which was a big wooden château (almost) and sat out on the porch and decided we had accidently been time warped to a cabin somewhere in Appalachia. We felt that out of place. From there we explored the town and threw around a Frisbee and basically enjoyed vacation. We went on a beautiful hike to a waterfall, splashed around there for a while and went to a bird refuge to see the national bird of Peru. I took about twenty pictures of it, I’m still not sure why, I think mostly I was just surprised that it actually showed up. The next day we went to the town museum and headed back to Oxapampa, where we went to a sweet bat cave and explored a bunch. Then from there we bought some native coffee and made friends with some store owners before I had to get back on a bus and come back to my Peru.
It was really nice to come back to Yanamito. Life here is relaxed and I fell accepted in the town to the point where I’m really comfortable. Things in the school are going well. I have big plans for Earth day (April 22nd), including some garbage clean up and tree planting. This week I also wrote/finished my diagnostic, which turned out to be like 15 pages in Spanish. I hope it’s grammatically readable. So anyway because of that I’ve been thinking a lot about what I am going to be doing here over the next year and a half about (that first chunk flew by) and I think I can actually accomplish some things—I’m excited. And that’s life. Probably the funniest/dumbest thing of the last two weeks was my family trying to teach me to use a slingshot (a circle of rubber with a leather piece to hold the rock), which resulted in me smashing both my thumbs. Or my four year old buddy Jefferson asking me why legs were so hairy. And why my arms aren’t. In an hour I go read a book about the endangered Andean Puma to the first grade class, followed by them coloring for Earth day. Tomorrow I go to Huaraz to learn some more Quechua and have a regional meeting, and in a week I go to the Northern department of Lambayeque to have a training conference, see all my environment Peace Corps friends and hopefully get to the beach. Hope you’re all well and enjoying a beautiful spring in the US.