So for those of you who know my family you are pretty sure of one thing: we never really travel. Sure we head to the beach or the mountains for a getaway just like the rest of you. The only thing is…we never really go anywhere else. I’ve heard stories of my parents’ younger days; my dad’s backpacking trip through the Rockies and my mom’s trip to Europe to put that high school French to good use. But since then…we’ll the Schwartz’s have been rather, well, stationary. I’m not sure if it was intentional, the not going anywhere more than a few states away from North Carolina, or it was just the lack of incentive. Either way, when I chose to come here to Peru it was a pretty big step in the Schwartz family travel log. So when my parents and my brother decided that they wanted to come to Peru to visit me I was rather surprised. That’s a lot of travel to log for us.
We kept it simple. We could have shoved a trip to Cusco in the week long period that my parents were here. Or we could have tried to go and visit my site (but from the weather report I got today it’s probably for the best that we didn’t go that route). But since I’m a boring person and lacked the vision to figure out something close to Lima to do for the holidays we just explored Lima. I know I’ve said before how much I hate Lima, and that fact still stands; but I can honestly say that Lima is way better when you’re sleeping in a super sweet hotel that your parents are paying for and not the hostel that I usually frequent. Don’t get me wrong, I love my hostel-home away from home (away from home), but it’s not quite 4 star quality.
As my mom put it we basically ate our way though Lima. I got them to try all of my favorite dishes: Aji de Gallina, Lomo Saltado, and some good seafood dishes. They liked almost all of it. Although my brother might not be the biggest fan of Chifa (Peruvian Chinese food) seeing as how it wasn’t the biggest fan of him (eww GI issues). But the food seemed to go over well with them. There was Inca Kola drunk, campo-turkey eaten and Peruvian desserts inhaled.
We did do a few touristy things; we went to the national museum and they got a few history lessons on Peru, or at least some of Peru’s more famous exports--namely, the potato. Yep, all of those tubers are direct descendents of a Peruvian papa. We also went to go see some of the parks in Lima, the lovers park (featuring a huge statue of two people making out), Kennedy Park and Larco Mar (the both of which were full of plastic cows), and the water park. I think the water park was the highlight of my time in Lima. Now this isn’t the type of water park with big slides and splash mountains, nope, this one’s full of fountains. Sounds boring, but since seeing is way easier than writing, here are a few pictures:
To top off the cool water effects, there were laser light shows and on New Year’s Eve there were fireworks!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Sunday, December 27, 2009
Merry Christmas to All
Sweating in my room at 7:45 at night fighting the invasion of crickets, moths with rash-enduing dander, and the frogs determined to help remedy the situation it doesn’t feel much like Christmas time. The official countdown is 2 days on the American clock, 1 day on the Peruvian. Here we celebrate more the 24th. Well, to be more specific, we stay up until midnight, toast to Christmas with a “champagne” like substance, eat paneton (sweet bread with dried fruit inside, like a good fruitcake), drink hot chocolate, and devour a turkey. Yes, just as you are all thinking to yourself, no that’s not the most conducive to then going to bed and getting a good night’s sleep; so of course we then spend the next few hours drinking (for those who drink, I do not at site), talking, laughing, and all around remembering what a good year it had been.
While the signs of a Peruvian Christmas are starting to show up, here in the campo there’s none of that commercial crud to ruin Christmas. People have put up cardboard decorations on their doors. The most comical to me are the ones depicting a fir tree (we most defiantly don’t have anything even remotely resembling a fir growing near Nanchoc) and the Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. When I asked the family with our red nosed friend on their door if they knew who it was, their response, “a rare breed of deer that live in New York City,” oh yes, I’m not in Kansas anymore…not that I ever was. My family’s one up-ed the neighbors thanks to having kids living in Lima, we have a fir tree that LIGHTS up. Yes, it’s red and green with lights that flicker in different patterns. I thought it was just a little to tacky when it first showed up…then my Peruvian campo side came through and now thinks it’s the coolest thing in the whole town. I’ll let ya’ll decide on your own if my Peruvian campo goggles have tainted the coolness:
PICTURE
This Christmas is going to go by a lot faster than last Christmas for a few reasons. The main one of which is that the rainy season has been slowly starting, rather than dumping on us like last year. So this means I’ll more than likely (now watch me go and jinx it) have electricity this year to celebrate the big day! Also, I’m counting down to more than Christmas, the 28th of December my parents and my brother, yes the rest of the Schwartz family, is flying to Peru to see me!!! So while I’ll be spending my second Christmas away from home, I’ll have the good fortune to celebrate the New Year with my family in Lima--A New Year in a new country for them. I’ve almost forgotten how much I hate Lima (especially after how much time I’ve spent their recently) because I’m so excited for their arrival.
Now I just have to decide if I trick my brother into eating food that he’d not normally eat…
Graduation Day
Today marked a very special day in the lives of the kiddies I work with. It was a day of great importance, grand celebrations, and as with all childhood rituals, a healthy pinch (or rather heap) of embarrassment. Today the 6th grade class graduated. Now I had never been to or seen what a Peruvian graduation ceremony is like…so needless to say I had no idea as to what I was in for.
Peruvian Graduation Ceremonies can only be described as a combination of a Quiensienera (Mexican rite of passage for women on their 15th birthday) and the prom from Hades. All the girls were dressed in matching Barbie doll dresses (just wait for the photo) with their hair done by a Dolly Parton-inspired hairdresser who lives in my town. The boys were all dressed like boys should be dressed for a graduation, black pants, dress shirt and tie. Simple. Go figure that they’d make the girls look like bad Barbie dolls and the boys get to retain some sense of self respect. Then again, my point of view could be skewed by the fact that I hate anything pink and frilly. Some of the girls actually seemed to have liked the dress they were wearing.
All of the girls except Jenny that is(Second girl from the left). If you read the earlier blog then this should not be a surprise, but just in case I’ll fill ya’ll in: Jenny is a now graduate from the 6th grade who is basically the Peruvian version of me, a tomboy at its finest, anything but girly, and extremely awkward in a pair of heels. She is a girl after my own heart. So as you can imagine, she was less than happy to be the in the new “my sized Barbie” dress. She takes the credit for the quote of the night: “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, one of the plagues shows up.”
So what had happened was, about 30 minutes into the ceremony, right when we’re getting into the full swing of things, the crickets show up. Apparently every 4 rainy seasons or so we have a slight problem with our chirping friends, they appear in such amounts as to confuse them with rain. It started out as slightly bothersome. A cricket would land on a girl’s foot, she’d squeal and then it’d move on the bother the next guest until someone finally caught it and slammed it into the ground (the preferred Peruvian method for killing a cricket). But soon it because evident that there were far too many crickets to smash. I, as the resident photographer, had at least 5 climbing down my shirt while I was trying to take pictures of the poor girls in Barbie dresses posing with their families attempting to smile while screaming on the inside because there were 5 crickets crawling down their dresses. Next thing you know our little chirping friends are crawling in and around the snack food, the cakes, and getting trapped in the Pepsi bottles of the little ones causing both a ticked off 6 year old and an even more so ticked cricket. For those of you are thinking well “this sounds like when the party died down and everyone went home”…you’d be mistaken.
I was just waiting for when the guests would get tired of fighting the crickets. We fought the crickets through the ceremony. We fought the crickets through the picture taking. We fought the crickets through the required dancing (photographer not included in the dancing). We fought the crickets through the eating. And then this here gringa-photographer decided that she’d fought the crickets long enough and headed home to the safety of her room (cricket-less as of this moment…knock on wood). I figured everyone else would soon follow suit. You know how it goes, no one likes to be the first one to leave a party, but I figured maybe I’d have started a trend of surrendering to the cricket army and calling it a night. Well 2 hours after my departure they’re still blaring cumbia music, probably slamming crickets into the pavement with the beat in an exaggerated dance move. I may have been the only one who surrendered to the little chirping ones…but at least I still have my pride. I wasn’t in a pink frilly Barbie dress.
Peruvian Graduation Ceremonies can only be described as a combination of a Quiensienera (Mexican rite of passage for women on their 15th birthday) and the prom from Hades. All the girls were dressed in matching Barbie doll dresses (just wait for the photo) with their hair done by a Dolly Parton-inspired hairdresser who lives in my town. The boys were all dressed like boys should be dressed for a graduation, black pants, dress shirt and tie. Simple. Go figure that they’d make the girls look like bad Barbie dolls and the boys get to retain some sense of self respect. Then again, my point of view could be skewed by the fact that I hate anything pink and frilly. Some of the girls actually seemed to have liked the dress they were wearing.
All of the girls except Jenny that is(Second girl from the left). If you read the earlier blog then this should not be a surprise, but just in case I’ll fill ya’ll in: Jenny is a now graduate from the 6th grade who is basically the Peruvian version of me, a tomboy at its finest, anything but girly, and extremely awkward in a pair of heels. She is a girl after my own heart. So as you can imagine, she was less than happy to be the in the new “my sized Barbie” dress. She takes the credit for the quote of the night: “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, one of the plagues shows up.”
So what had happened was, about 30 minutes into the ceremony, right when we’re getting into the full swing of things, the crickets show up. Apparently every 4 rainy seasons or so we have a slight problem with our chirping friends, they appear in such amounts as to confuse them with rain. It started out as slightly bothersome. A cricket would land on a girl’s foot, she’d squeal and then it’d move on the bother the next guest until someone finally caught it and slammed it into the ground (the preferred Peruvian method for killing a cricket). But soon it because evident that there were far too many crickets to smash. I, as the resident photographer, had at least 5 climbing down my shirt while I was trying to take pictures of the poor girls in Barbie dresses posing with their families attempting to smile while screaming on the inside because there were 5 crickets crawling down their dresses. Next thing you know our little chirping friends are crawling in and around the snack food, the cakes, and getting trapped in the Pepsi bottles of the little ones causing both a ticked off 6 year old and an even more so ticked cricket. For those of you are thinking well “this sounds like when the party died down and everyone went home”…you’d be mistaken.
I was just waiting for when the guests would get tired of fighting the crickets. We fought the crickets through the ceremony. We fought the crickets through the picture taking. We fought the crickets through the required dancing (photographer not included in the dancing). We fought the crickets through the eating. And then this here gringa-photographer decided that she’d fought the crickets long enough and headed home to the safety of her room (cricket-less as of this moment…knock on wood). I figured everyone else would soon follow suit. You know how it goes, no one likes to be the first one to leave a party, but I figured maybe I’d have started a trend of surrendering to the cricket army and calling it a night. Well 2 hours after my departure they’re still blaring cumbia music, probably slamming crickets into the pavement with the beat in an exaggerated dance move. I may have been the only one who surrendered to the little chirping ones…but at least I still have my pride. I wasn’t in a pink frilly Barbie dress.
Monday, December 7, 2009
Home Sweet Home
December 1, 2008, 3ish pm I stumbled, quite literally off the bus from Chiclayo and landed in Nanchoc, Cajamarca. The bus dropped me off in front of the Health Post with my 2 bags each weighing way more than they should have (this is hindsight talking, at the time I thought I didn’t have enough) and left me in the dust. I was faced with the rather daunting task of hauling these bags the 10 yards to my front door all by myself. It was in that moment that I realized I was actually in the Peace Corps. That concept seemed to have evaded me during the 3 months of training suddenly smacked me square in the face. I managed to drag my bags to the front door to find the door locked and the house empty—damn. I then dragged my bags the 10 yards back to the Health Post all the while trying to remember at least ONE name of a Health Post employee or how to explain that I’m locked out of my house in Spanish. I walked into the waiting room and interrupted a training activity with all of the surrounding Health Posts. 15 pairs of eyes immediately turned on me and I resisted the urge to piss myself or run screaming for my mommy. I was saved by the OBGYN Dr. Emma who raised her arms over her head and belted “Look its Yennifer! How was your trip?” I then preceded to thank whatever higher power there might be for her giving the explanation of who I was and why I looked so lost to the 15 other health workers.
Looking back that seems so long ago. I now know almost all of those 15 eyes by name (a few left the area before I could learn their names), I better than to ever travel with that much crud, and I can talk my way out of almost any awkward situation. I consider myself lucky to actually feel at home in this place, I get homesick for Nanchoc when I’m doing a lot of Peace Corps traveling. Before my mother can breakdown crying let me state for the record that Durham, North Carolina is and forever will be my home and I miss it more than words can say. I know from talking to my fellow volunteers that actually feeling at home in your site is a rare commodity. I am fortunate enough to have real friends here and a host family that genuinely care for me. Aside from the baking heat and the pouring rain I couldn’t have asked for a better community to live in…ok well I could ask that they come to a few more meetings, but we can’t get to picky now can we?
I didn’t until recently realize how much I like this place. I went to Lima for medical checks and came out with a half cracked open tooth. Long story short I had a cavity that would put most bear’s winter house to shame and in the dentist’s efforts to excavate the cave-like hole he broke my tooth in half…without pain killers. So we can just sum that day up as an all around bad day. The day was then made worse by red-tape. We had to send x-rays and images to Washington to decide the next course of action, aka to fix the tooth or not to fix the tooth. I will admit I was distressed over my tooth-- I have a giant hole in my mouth currently being covered with a temporary paste that would freak out the most normal person. But I wasn’t getting all riled up over the in-limbo state of my tooth as much as I was about the possibility of missing my town’s 51st anniversary. The town’s anniversary is celebrated December 1-3rd, This wasn’t just the town’s party, I wanted to celebrate my 1 year in site milestone. This celebration was marking many a moment and I was in no mood to be in Lima in red-tape-limbo missing the soccer and parades.
We are lucky in Peace Corps Peru to have amazing doctors Suni and Jorge working for us who care about not only our health concerns but our personal dramas. I was all but expecting them to tell me that I was going to miss my town party and my 1 year mark in site and be stuck in Lima doped out on pain killers after a root canal. I was however surprised to find that Suni completely understood, we worked out a compromise: It was obvious that I need to have a root canal and a crown put on, even Washington agreed (thankfully!), but it was also equally as obvious to her that I couldn’t miss this moment in my site. So I was given an extra coat of the temporary cave-plugging paste and sent back to site to celebrate the 51st and the 1st anniversaries and will be returning to Lima in a week to enjoy more dental health adventures in Peru.
And as I write this I’m listening to the thumping of the base and the singing of a Cajamarca-Huano cover band at 11pm sunburned from a day of cheering on our horrible soccer team and watching the kids march in the parade. The day could have only been made better if my camera battery hadn’t died and I had it all on film…Oh well, we can’t have it all. But I can still cross my fingers that the band will go home by 1am so I can get some sleep…
Looking back that seems so long ago. I now know almost all of those 15 eyes by name (a few left the area before I could learn their names), I better than to ever travel with that much crud, and I can talk my way out of almost any awkward situation. I consider myself lucky to actually feel at home in this place, I get homesick for Nanchoc when I’m doing a lot of Peace Corps traveling. Before my mother can breakdown crying let me state for the record that Durham, North Carolina is and forever will be my home and I miss it more than words can say. I know from talking to my fellow volunteers that actually feeling at home in your site is a rare commodity. I am fortunate enough to have real friends here and a host family that genuinely care for me. Aside from the baking heat and the pouring rain I couldn’t have asked for a better community to live in…ok well I could ask that they come to a few more meetings, but we can’t get to picky now can we?
I didn’t until recently realize how much I like this place. I went to Lima for medical checks and came out with a half cracked open tooth. Long story short I had a cavity that would put most bear’s winter house to shame and in the dentist’s efforts to excavate the cave-like hole he broke my tooth in half…without pain killers. So we can just sum that day up as an all around bad day. The day was then made worse by red-tape. We had to send x-rays and images to Washington to decide the next course of action, aka to fix the tooth or not to fix the tooth. I will admit I was distressed over my tooth-- I have a giant hole in my mouth currently being covered with a temporary paste that would freak out the most normal person. But I wasn’t getting all riled up over the in-limbo state of my tooth as much as I was about the possibility of missing my town’s 51st anniversary. The town’s anniversary is celebrated December 1-3rd, This wasn’t just the town’s party, I wanted to celebrate my 1 year in site milestone. This celebration was marking many a moment and I was in no mood to be in Lima in red-tape-limbo missing the soccer and parades.
We are lucky in Peace Corps Peru to have amazing doctors Suni and Jorge working for us who care about not only our health concerns but our personal dramas. I was all but expecting them to tell me that I was going to miss my town party and my 1 year mark in site and be stuck in Lima doped out on pain killers after a root canal. I was however surprised to find that Suni completely understood, we worked out a compromise: It was obvious that I need to have a root canal and a crown put on, even Washington agreed (thankfully!), but it was also equally as obvious to her that I couldn’t miss this moment in my site. So I was given an extra coat of the temporary cave-plugging paste and sent back to site to celebrate the 51st and the 1st anniversaries and will be returning to Lima in a week to enjoy more dental health adventures in Peru.
And as I write this I’m listening to the thumping of the base and the singing of a Cajamarca-Huano cover band at 11pm sunburned from a day of cheering on our horrible soccer team and watching the kids march in the parade. The day could have only been made better if my camera battery hadn’t died and I had it all on film…Oh well, we can’t have it all. But I can still cross my fingers that the band will go home by 1am so I can get some sleep…
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A Rose by Any Other Name…
Shakespeare. I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of the old guy in tights since my senior year of High School when we were reading Romeo and Juliet. And even then the only thing I remember is a lot of funny talking and saying one thing and meaning another. I think it might have actually been during Mr. Lang’s class that I realized I would never, and I mean never, be any good at this literary thing. In math, when you say 2+2=4 that’s what you mean, it’s great no metaphors, no similes, none of this fancy stuff, just a problem waiting to be solved. But as much as I love my math, I’ve come to realize that, unfortunately, life’s got a whole lot more symbolism hiding around corners than equations. Damn you Shakespeare. So if you’re wondering where the heck I’m going with this, just hold your horses and give me a little while longer to set this up. Like I said, I ain’t no good (yes I did that intentionally) at this literary stuff.
Recently I got sick, very sick. And it wasn’t the usually Peace Corps gastrointestinal issues—though for the first time in my service I was actually hopping that it was. I had a fever, a really high fever. No coughing. No sneezing. No congestion. No rash. No GI distress. No nothing. Just a nice and high fever that occasionally would decide to turn into a lack of fever and leave me trembling and cold. I thought it had to be whatever was going around my town until I realized that everyone else who had a fever was also a human snot container. I took a deep breath in and then blew it all out through my nose…nope. Clean. It wasn’t the same cold that was going around. I gave it 2 days to go away on itself. I slept, a lot. The second day I actually slept for 18 hours that day. I had no appetite. I had to remind myself to eat, I’d start eating a sandwich and lose all interest in eating 2 bites in. While my dog loved this trend—more sandwiches for him-- that’s when I knew I had to be sicker than even I was letting on.
I decided to call out doctors. I somehow dragged myself out of bed to walk to the public phone. My head was throbbing, my arms felt as though they weighed 20lbs each, and according to everyone that I passed I was as “red as a cooked shrimp.” After talking to the doctors we were still clueless as to what I might have. The only plausible cause would have been my recent trip to Tumbes…and I didn’t like the sound of that. To fill in the people not associating Tumbes with Mosquitoes like us Peru-Peace Corps volunteers: Tumbes has a Ton of mosquitoes, and therefore dengue and malaria. So as I said, I didn’t like the sound of either of those. We decided to feel it out for another day, see if the fever went down with Tylenol, and go to Chiclayo if it got any worse. I was to call the doctors in the morning and let them know if I was better or worse.
I woke up the next day in a puddle of my own sweat, a fever of 103, and a throbbing headache. I did some math and realized that the phone doesn’t open until 9, the bus to Chiclayo leaves at 8…I had a decision to make without the doctor’s advice. If I waited to talk to them, I’d be stuck and sick in my site for 2 more days until the next bus out of town if I got worse. Then I thought a little more and realized I couldn’t really get much worse and still be moving…so I packed up some stuff and went to wait at the bus stop. I hadn’t reserved a seat, so I was just hoping that I looked as bad as I felt and that would get me out of Nanchoc and into Chiclayo.
It worked. The second the bus stopped the bus driver, usually a rather unobservant man (which his 2 accidents should attest too…and should make me weary to take his bus, but it’s the only option) said, “Wow gringa, you look horrible.” I wish I had some smart comeback for that, but the sheer act of moving was taking up all of my thinking power. I asked if there was room on the bus, and they gave me the front seat. Now, If I had know that all I needed to do to get the best seat on this bus, where we are usually packed in like sardines, was to be this sick…well I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be sick more often. Not only did I get the good seat, they KICKED someone out of said seat so I could have it. I would have been more impressed if I didn’t feel like poo.
The bus ride was horrible. It’s a hot bus ride even without the fever this time of year. I felt even worse on the bus than I did in my bed in Nanchoc. The whole trip went by in a blur, and the next thing I knew we were at the bus stop and I was sweating buckets in the seat. I got up to climb over the seat (yeah that’s how we get out of the front seat) and…yep, those of you who know me probably would have seen this coming… I fainted. I managed to play it off unbeknownst to me, no one saw me starting to get up, and so no one noticed me faint. The guy who works on the bus shook me awake and helped me off the bus. They got me a cab and I made it to my hotel. I was then sent to the Chiclayo doctor, a medical office located (thankfully) 3 blocks from my hotel. I gave tubes of blood, swabs, poo and pee samples, and waited for the results. They didn’t have the Dengue test, so we were just going to rule everything else out and see.
I felt worse the first day I was in Chiclayo, but then started feeling a little better the next day. I called to get my test results, and of course they didn’t have them. My doctor tried to speed up the process…but it was no use, I had to stay until I heard what I had. The next few days passed much like the days in site; I spent way too much time in bed and was hot flashing like a 50 year old woman. The only improvements: cable TV and internet. But with each day I started feeling better, so that was a good sign right?
Finally we got some results back, all my blood work seemed to be normal, and it just said I had a virus. We had figured so much while I was in site, I was a little mad that I had given that much blood and that’s the only information we got out of it…not cool. I waited around some more, and the rest of the tests came back normal, just a virus. So I was told that I “either have dengue or a virus that wants’ to be dengue when it grows up.” Not exactly the good news I was hoping for. Dengue has no treatment other than sleeping and resting, and the mystery virus has nothing better. So, my means of getting better were nothing but what I’ve been doing…fun?
I decided I can sleep with the best of them at site, so I got on the next bus to site and headed home. I slept a lot better in my own bed, and it was nice being with my friends at site again. It had gotten a little lonely sitting in the hotel room all day. When people asked me what I had, I just translated what the doctors had told me. Then for some reason, Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell just a sweet” line came up in my head. Except I heard “a virus by any other name will suck just as much."
Recently I got sick, very sick. And it wasn’t the usually Peace Corps gastrointestinal issues—though for the first time in my service I was actually hopping that it was. I had a fever, a really high fever. No coughing. No sneezing. No congestion. No rash. No GI distress. No nothing. Just a nice and high fever that occasionally would decide to turn into a lack of fever and leave me trembling and cold. I thought it had to be whatever was going around my town until I realized that everyone else who had a fever was also a human snot container. I took a deep breath in and then blew it all out through my nose…nope. Clean. It wasn’t the same cold that was going around. I gave it 2 days to go away on itself. I slept, a lot. The second day I actually slept for 18 hours that day. I had no appetite. I had to remind myself to eat, I’d start eating a sandwich and lose all interest in eating 2 bites in. While my dog loved this trend—more sandwiches for him-- that’s when I knew I had to be sicker than even I was letting on.
I decided to call out doctors. I somehow dragged myself out of bed to walk to the public phone. My head was throbbing, my arms felt as though they weighed 20lbs each, and according to everyone that I passed I was as “red as a cooked shrimp.” After talking to the doctors we were still clueless as to what I might have. The only plausible cause would have been my recent trip to Tumbes…and I didn’t like the sound of that. To fill in the people not associating Tumbes with Mosquitoes like us Peru-Peace Corps volunteers: Tumbes has a Ton of mosquitoes, and therefore dengue and malaria. So as I said, I didn’t like the sound of either of those. We decided to feel it out for another day, see if the fever went down with Tylenol, and go to Chiclayo if it got any worse. I was to call the doctors in the morning and let them know if I was better or worse.
I woke up the next day in a puddle of my own sweat, a fever of 103, and a throbbing headache. I did some math and realized that the phone doesn’t open until 9, the bus to Chiclayo leaves at 8…I had a decision to make without the doctor’s advice. If I waited to talk to them, I’d be stuck and sick in my site for 2 more days until the next bus out of town if I got worse. Then I thought a little more and realized I couldn’t really get much worse and still be moving…so I packed up some stuff and went to wait at the bus stop. I hadn’t reserved a seat, so I was just hoping that I looked as bad as I felt and that would get me out of Nanchoc and into Chiclayo.
It worked. The second the bus stopped the bus driver, usually a rather unobservant man (which his 2 accidents should attest too…and should make me weary to take his bus, but it’s the only option) said, “Wow gringa, you look horrible.” I wish I had some smart comeback for that, but the sheer act of moving was taking up all of my thinking power. I asked if there was room on the bus, and they gave me the front seat. Now, If I had know that all I needed to do to get the best seat on this bus, where we are usually packed in like sardines, was to be this sick…well I can’t honestly say I wouldn’t be sick more often. Not only did I get the good seat, they KICKED someone out of said seat so I could have it. I would have been more impressed if I didn’t feel like poo.
The bus ride was horrible. It’s a hot bus ride even without the fever this time of year. I felt even worse on the bus than I did in my bed in Nanchoc. The whole trip went by in a blur, and the next thing I knew we were at the bus stop and I was sweating buckets in the seat. I got up to climb over the seat (yeah that’s how we get out of the front seat) and…yep, those of you who know me probably would have seen this coming… I fainted. I managed to play it off unbeknownst to me, no one saw me starting to get up, and so no one noticed me faint. The guy who works on the bus shook me awake and helped me off the bus. They got me a cab and I made it to my hotel. I was then sent to the Chiclayo doctor, a medical office located (thankfully) 3 blocks from my hotel. I gave tubes of blood, swabs, poo and pee samples, and waited for the results. They didn’t have the Dengue test, so we were just going to rule everything else out and see.
I felt worse the first day I was in Chiclayo, but then started feeling a little better the next day. I called to get my test results, and of course they didn’t have them. My doctor tried to speed up the process…but it was no use, I had to stay until I heard what I had. The next few days passed much like the days in site; I spent way too much time in bed and was hot flashing like a 50 year old woman. The only improvements: cable TV and internet. But with each day I started feeling better, so that was a good sign right?
Finally we got some results back, all my blood work seemed to be normal, and it just said I had a virus. We had figured so much while I was in site, I was a little mad that I had given that much blood and that’s the only information we got out of it…not cool. I waited around some more, and the rest of the tests came back normal, just a virus. So I was told that I “either have dengue or a virus that wants’ to be dengue when it grows up.” Not exactly the good news I was hoping for. Dengue has no treatment other than sleeping and resting, and the mystery virus has nothing better. So, my means of getting better were nothing but what I’ve been doing…fun?
I decided I can sleep with the best of them at site, so I got on the next bus to site and headed home. I slept a lot better in my own bed, and it was nice being with my friends at site again. It had gotten a little lonely sitting in the hotel room all day. When people asked me what I had, I just translated what the doctors had told me. Then for some reason, Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell just a sweet” line came up in my head. Except I heard “a virus by any other name will suck just as much."
Random Collection of Stories too Short to be Their Own Blog
YAY I Won! …Now What?
I recently held a raffle for a blender. I was in dire need of raising money so that I could buy paint for a mural project. After running through the ideas of different fundraising ideas, the raffle seemed to require the least amount of work. Well turns out it was more work that I had originally expected. It’s harder than one might think to sell a S./1 raffle ticket during a town party, apparently S./1 can buy you a lot of candy for a whining kid. But after a long day I sold all 200 tickets, leaving me with a S./140 profit for paint! Score. We held the raffle and a woman who lives in a caserio without electricity won. Hmm, well yay she won…but now what’s she supposed to do? I think she only helped me out and bought a ticket because I’d be using the paint with her kids. She said not to worry, they’re supposed to be getting electricity by the end of the year (no matter that’s what they said last year as well…)
So a week and a half later I got a knock on my door. I was early in the morning, around 6am and Dona Julia wasn’t in town, so I wasn’t expecting any visitors. I opened the door and it was Jose, the son of the woman who won the raffle. “Good morning Yeni,” he said with a grin, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?” I couldn’t think of a reason why not so I asked what the favor was. He pulled the blender out of a bag along with 5 bananas and a can of milk. “Can I use your electricity to make our juice?” Oh it was just too cute so I said “of course” and brought him and his supplies into the kitchen. We blended up the bananas and milk and then realized a fatal flaw in his planning. He’d biked the 20 minutes to blend his juice and forgot a leak proof container. After thinking for a few minutes I let him borrow a Tupperware of mine and he left with a big smile and his goods in a bag. An hour later he was back at the door with my washed Tupperware and a thank you message from his mother. It was just too cute.
Copy Cat
There is a girl in the 5th grade of Primary school who thinks I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread…and believe me, sliced bread is still a pretty big deal here in Peru. Her name’s Jenny (go figure) and she lives in one of our caserios on the other side of the river. Since her parents are somewhat worthless and her older sisters have long since left the house (well, the town for that matter) she has very little options for a female role model. Now normally I would have hoped a teacher, a neighbor, or another kid in the neighborhood could take this role model position off my hands—but the teachers are only there to receive their pay checks and could care less about teaching, all of her female neighbors never finished primary school, and the older kids hate school. So I guess I’m better than those options right?
Jenny’s always been slightly different from the other girls according to the teachers, she’s “weird” because she likes to play soccer with the boys instead of volleyball with the girls and she actually seems to enjoy math and science portions of her class (however lacking they might be at this school). So basically she was a girl after my own heart before I even met her, soccer playing math geek sounded very familiar to me being the math major tomboy that I am. So I invited her to my math tutoring class on Tuesdays, it’s usually for the kids who are behind in their classes from 1st to 4th grades but I figured I could find something harder for her to do. She’s now finished with her 5th grade math text (a whole 3 months before the school year ends) and has moved on to the 6th grade text.
This past week she showed up at tutoring sporting a Camo Fox Racing hat. Now I will say that this hat is most defiantly of the black market variety, but still, this girl had to have put in some hard hours looking for a camo hat in Peru. I’ve only ever seen mine and one in the airport when the NCSU students came through town. She walked in the door with a grin, trying to hold back her excitement to tell me about her new purchase, but finally gave in and busted out a “Look what I found this weekend in Chiclayo!” while smiling ear to ear. She made a point to show me that they even were the same type of camo—Yes people she made sure she didn’t get the army camo, she got the woodland camo print because that’s what’s on my hat…now that’s hard core.
Needless to say, I’m impressed even if it doesn’t impress ya’ll.
I recently held a raffle for a blender. I was in dire need of raising money so that I could buy paint for a mural project. After running through the ideas of different fundraising ideas, the raffle seemed to require the least amount of work. Well turns out it was more work that I had originally expected. It’s harder than one might think to sell a S./1 raffle ticket during a town party, apparently S./1 can buy you a lot of candy for a whining kid. But after a long day I sold all 200 tickets, leaving me with a S./140 profit for paint! Score. We held the raffle and a woman who lives in a caserio without electricity won. Hmm, well yay she won…but now what’s she supposed to do? I think she only helped me out and bought a ticket because I’d be using the paint with her kids. She said not to worry, they’re supposed to be getting electricity by the end of the year (no matter that’s what they said last year as well…)
So a week and a half later I got a knock on my door. I was early in the morning, around 6am and Dona Julia wasn’t in town, so I wasn’t expecting any visitors. I opened the door and it was Jose, the son of the woman who won the raffle. “Good morning Yeni,” he said with a grin, “I was wondering if you could do me a favor?” I couldn’t think of a reason why not so I asked what the favor was. He pulled the blender out of a bag along with 5 bananas and a can of milk. “Can I use your electricity to make our juice?” Oh it was just too cute so I said “of course” and brought him and his supplies into the kitchen. We blended up the bananas and milk and then realized a fatal flaw in his planning. He’d biked the 20 minutes to blend his juice and forgot a leak proof container. After thinking for a few minutes I let him borrow a Tupperware of mine and he left with a big smile and his goods in a bag. An hour later he was back at the door with my washed Tupperware and a thank you message from his mother. It was just too cute.
Copy Cat
There is a girl in the 5th grade of Primary school who thinks I’m the coolest thing since sliced bread…and believe me, sliced bread is still a pretty big deal here in Peru. Her name’s Jenny (go figure) and she lives in one of our caserios on the other side of the river. Since her parents are somewhat worthless and her older sisters have long since left the house (well, the town for that matter) she has very little options for a female role model. Now normally I would have hoped a teacher, a neighbor, or another kid in the neighborhood could take this role model position off my hands—but the teachers are only there to receive their pay checks and could care less about teaching, all of her female neighbors never finished primary school, and the older kids hate school. So I guess I’m better than those options right?
Jenny’s always been slightly different from the other girls according to the teachers, she’s “weird” because she likes to play soccer with the boys instead of volleyball with the girls and she actually seems to enjoy math and science portions of her class (however lacking they might be at this school). So basically she was a girl after my own heart before I even met her, soccer playing math geek sounded very familiar to me being the math major tomboy that I am. So I invited her to my math tutoring class on Tuesdays, it’s usually for the kids who are behind in their classes from 1st to 4th grades but I figured I could find something harder for her to do. She’s now finished with her 5th grade math text (a whole 3 months before the school year ends) and has moved on to the 6th grade text.
This past week she showed up at tutoring sporting a Camo Fox Racing hat. Now I will say that this hat is most defiantly of the black market variety, but still, this girl had to have put in some hard hours looking for a camo hat in Peru. I’ve only ever seen mine and one in the airport when the NCSU students came through town. She walked in the door with a grin, trying to hold back her excitement to tell me about her new purchase, but finally gave in and busted out a “Look what I found this weekend in Chiclayo!” while smiling ear to ear. She made a point to show me that they even were the same type of camo—Yes people she made sure she didn’t get the army camo, she got the woodland camo print because that’s what’s on my hat…now that’s hard core.
Needless to say, I’m impressed even if it doesn’t impress ya’ll.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Ok, Stop Drooling Now
It’s a normal trip on the late bus Sunday night heading to Chiclayo. The bus is rather empty, I have an entire seat bench to myself. It’s amazing. My hiking bag full of clothes and work stuff for a meeting in Tumbes is perched on the bench beside me, I’m listening to my iPod and eating my baggie of dinner my host mom sent me with (a potato and tuna) just basking in the seat all to myself. It’s rare to have that much space on public transportation, let along transportation from my site…
I should have known it wouldn’t last. We pull into Oyotun, the city closest to Nanchoc, all of a 30 minute drive. We were met by the Peruvian National Police with very large weapons (They pack heat during parties), they checked our identifications and then we were on our way to the plaza to pick up more people. Next thing I know we’ve managed to squeeze at least 15 other passengers on this bus, putting the head count well above the maximum capacity (or so I thought) of 25. My bag has now been moved to my lap, there is a drunk guy who REEKES of bad Peruvian beer squishing me against the window. We are still trying to figure out how we’re going to fit all of these people on the bus. Kids are sitting on towels on the floor between the aisles, there are 4 grown men sitting 2 and 2 (2 in the laps of the other 2) in the front seat with the driver-- which has left the driver’s wife and 1 year 8 month old daughter seat less. Since my seat was the first one by the door, to accommodate the long gringa legs that I have, of course I was the most likely to be chosen to hold Angie (the baby). Not to mention that I’m the only one in the front of the bus within handing distance that Angie knows. So now I have the hiking bag in my lap, a baby against my chest, a drunk half asleep/squishing me into the window, and 3 drunks sitting in the doorway, one using my knee as an armrest. I shouldn’t have jinxed the empty bus by being happy.
So 1 hour later everyone that is touching me is now drooling…on me. Now I’m ok with a baby drooling on me, especially when it’s a cute baby, but the grown adults, not so cool. The cutest part of this story, other than Angie of course, is that everyone assumed that she was my child. Angie’s mother is very light skinned and has light hair, thusly the baby has a very gringa-like features—which lead to such confusion. So after a long while, long enough for me to completely loose all feeling in BOTH my arms, Angie begins to cry. Then all the women on the bus get really confused as to why I start looking around the bus. Then I explain that the baby that is in fact in my arms is not mine, and if they can see the driver’s wife behind the wall of drunks to get her attention (yeah it’s that loud on my bus that you can’t hear the baby cry). Next thing I know I’d trying to figure out how to lift Angie without dropping her, due to my arms being asleep. After a few seconds of contemplation, finally I manage to lift her over the wall of drooling drunks and into the safety of her mom’s arm and she stops crying.
Now if I could have only gotten the drunk off my shoulder and the other one off my shoe the bus trip would have almost returned to normal. But then 30 minutes later Angie is back in my arms as her mom is collecting money from all of the passengers. And I got a 50% discount for my babysitting duties. All and all, not too bad of a bus ride into town…I could do without the drunks if it happens again.
This is Angie:
I should have known it wouldn’t last. We pull into Oyotun, the city closest to Nanchoc, all of a 30 minute drive. We were met by the Peruvian National Police with very large weapons (They pack heat during parties), they checked our identifications and then we were on our way to the plaza to pick up more people. Next thing I know we’ve managed to squeeze at least 15 other passengers on this bus, putting the head count well above the maximum capacity (or so I thought) of 25. My bag has now been moved to my lap, there is a drunk guy who REEKES of bad Peruvian beer squishing me against the window. We are still trying to figure out how we’re going to fit all of these people on the bus. Kids are sitting on towels on the floor between the aisles, there are 4 grown men sitting 2 and 2 (2 in the laps of the other 2) in the front seat with the driver-- which has left the driver’s wife and 1 year 8 month old daughter seat less. Since my seat was the first one by the door, to accommodate the long gringa legs that I have, of course I was the most likely to be chosen to hold Angie (the baby). Not to mention that I’m the only one in the front of the bus within handing distance that Angie knows. So now I have the hiking bag in my lap, a baby against my chest, a drunk half asleep/squishing me into the window, and 3 drunks sitting in the doorway, one using my knee as an armrest. I shouldn’t have jinxed the empty bus by being happy.
So 1 hour later everyone that is touching me is now drooling…on me. Now I’m ok with a baby drooling on me, especially when it’s a cute baby, but the grown adults, not so cool. The cutest part of this story, other than Angie of course, is that everyone assumed that she was my child. Angie’s mother is very light skinned and has light hair, thusly the baby has a very gringa-like features—which lead to such confusion. So after a long while, long enough for me to completely loose all feeling in BOTH my arms, Angie begins to cry. Then all the women on the bus get really confused as to why I start looking around the bus. Then I explain that the baby that is in fact in my arms is not mine, and if they can see the driver’s wife behind the wall of drunks to get her attention (yeah it’s that loud on my bus that you can’t hear the baby cry). Next thing I know I’d trying to figure out how to lift Angie without dropping her, due to my arms being asleep. After a few seconds of contemplation, finally I manage to lift her over the wall of drooling drunks and into the safety of her mom’s arm and she stops crying.
Now if I could have only gotten the drunk off my shoulder and the other one off my shoe the bus trip would have almost returned to normal. But then 30 minutes later Angie is back in my arms as her mom is collecting money from all of the passengers. And I got a 50% discount for my babysitting duties. All and all, not too bad of a bus ride into town…I could do without the drunks if it happens again.
This is Angie:
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