Moviendo

Cuy is a specialty in the Andes, which the locals invest with a certain status.  Its a guinea pig, gutted and fried, its arms spread wide and its face wholly intact.  The fortunate diner picks around the fat and bones for the few morsels of meat clutching to the ribcage, jawbone, spinal column, etc.

I've been spending a lot of time on the hostel roof overlooking Huari.  The town got into my guts again this week, leaving me vomiting and bed ridden for most of Wednesday, but the visage of its buildings, lounging and crumbling in the mountain shade, and the echos of the school kids and buses and donkeys and brass bands sounding their presence put a real piece in me and I'm happy to have been there.  We're now back in Huarez, enjoying the semi cosmopolitan busyness and dining selection, awaiting our next deployment to Chavin, a town smaller than Huari but with tourist attractions that may lend it some Americanized comforts.  Where go the gringos, so go the coffee shops.

There are iconic paintings paired with large cartoony text announcing the contenders for upcoming regional elections in the area.  These works are everywhere, in every town, often coating a full wall or several full walls of a person's business or home.  I have noted two top contenders, a least judging by the proliferation of propaganda.  Anabal is represented by a stout figure in red and white stripes, and Manpe is represented by a condor in a barrette, clutching the stoic sun in its talons.  I'm told by Dhyana and Diego that South Americans have a conviction for regional politics that Americans can hardly understand.  Its not about moral issues or personal scandal.  Its about whose going to have the resources next year, to feed their families and expand their crops.  Its about bread and butter, life and death, material power over your life.  I asked if I could engage the kids about their political experiences, but was told that kids were left out of such matters, and even if they had some opinions the classroom is not the place for it.  A child could get beat up for their political affiliations and teachers may even ostracize them.

This weeks school had five students and a little girl who wasn't old enough for school but just liked to hang out.  She liked my camera and smiled like a greedy imp.  So cute.  The last day we attended none of the kids showed up because of the weekend festival and all the dancing and church services that were going on.  Twitchy folk moves to drums and flutes.  I chilled with the band dudes a bit this week but got turned off when all they could focus on were the gringas I was supposed to bring along for their charms to work on.  The festival parties go past midnight, the town grooving to harp, bass, and singer doing this melodic minor/pentatonic folk music that I'm really getting into.  I saw a more commercial version here in Huaraz yesterday, on a booming beer ad of a stage in a dusty field surrounded by old bricks and families.  I drank my beer for an hour or so, contemplating hybridity, and was invited to dance and converse with a rotund older woman who knew every word and mouthed them as she masde her little steps and spins, and this younger woman cut in and showed me some real moves and we all sat back down and the younger one was several sheets to the wind and grabby like she was looking for something in my chest.  Right now I'm in this gingo joint with Bob Dylan on the speakers, eating french toast and drinking the last cup of real coffee I'll have for a while.

            

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Un Semana con Las Mejores de los Andes

We're doing alright.  Health has returned and we've decided to fill our diet with mostly bread and fruit, though I have a large preference for cereal bars.  Anything not greasy, please.  

This weeks morning commute was more seldom and mostly on foot.  The first two days we didn't make it to the school because the teacher had meetings and the last day was a short one and we would not have made it to class in time to be of any use.  The trek began with the same mad taxi down and up the dirt roads and was followed by about an hour of panting straight up a mountain.  Wednesday morning found me not so happy about this, a lot more work than the first week for what I expected to be the same disappointment.  But once we got to the place I changed my mind.  Such a lovely little Andes village full of bulls and little irrigated streams of babbling water.

The school was new, fresh paint and educational posters on the wall.  The teacher was a pro, handling about ten kids in different grades, making games of multiplication and nutrition, and the kids were bright-eyed interested.  They called me Tio, meaning uncle but also the local slang for 'dude,'  and we played futbol during recess.  Bekka taught them volleyball moves and learned their names.  Lunch is made by a different local mama each day, and let me tell you, fresh homemade farm food sucks, but that's alright.  This one little booger decided to gun down the gringo with his plastic pistol, and he nailed me several times to everyones maniacal delight.  Savages.  The XO work was fruitful, drawing admiration from the kids and the teacher.  With only two days we couldn't do everything we might have liked, but I think they'll be using them more often for our being there.  I feel encouraged that this job could be worth something.

There was a parade on Thursday, a one year anniversary for a local grade school.  Bread box sized transparent plastic lanterns imitating flowers and airplanes and swans and cars and one glowing spiderman were swung about by their preteen creators.  They marched down the alleys and through the squares to the beat of a local brass band, much like that rooftop band from Juarez, and the players were sloppy and rocked.  The parade ended at the school, with the kids taking to the swing set and the parents commiserating and the musicians opening bottles with their teeth.  I joined the band and asked them about how and where they practice and if I could bring a mic and they fed me some beer and were entertained by my shameless spanish-inept whiteness.  

Bekka and I took our day off to do laundry in the local river.  I don't mind the work, but when you don't have a spot in the sun to hang your drenched threads, just a bed post and a tv antenna in a cold room, well it just don't do much good.  Last night my fellows finally joined me in getting a proper buzz on, very much thanks to Julio, one of the local bandsman, who passed around beer mixed with coka-cola and laid the flowery promises of wedlock thick on the ladies.  Good guy, though desperate and hung up on his moneyless life.  Relatable.

By the by, Billy Bragg & Wilco rules.  Ripped it from Tiffany and I'm listening to it constantly.  'Eisler on the Go' melts me.  Had it ringing in my head as we walked to a local waterfall yesterday.  It's a curtain of energy unfolding from the high rocks and I wanted to reach out and touch it.  We followed the path to where the rocks got slippery and sunk into the black wet dirt and felt the mist drench us as we stood above its crashing down.  You don't touch it, it touches you.

           

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Enferma en La Tierra de Dios

I remember when things were different.  When I knew what I went to work for and by working hard I could feel appreciated.  I remember when I could get a buzz on at the end of each day and not feel sick from it.  When I wasn't afraid of food.  When toilet paper was compulsory and my stool was solid.  That's not how things are right now.  

We've all been ill this last week, fatigued and sore, but worse is the difficulty of our work.  The schools that we go to have laptops but rarely use them.  It's our job to turn their interets on, but inspiring excitement for this technology is foolish when the teachers we're working with have little use for it.  For them, just getting through the day comes first.

In Huaytuna, mine and Bekka's first deployment, we mostly kept to the schools computer lab, an incredible resource considering the student population of 30+, where the laptops are taken out for us to use with different groups of kids.  Some take to it.  Others, mostly boys, see it as just another venue for aggression.  We play games and go through menial tasks, all fruitless as the laptops will not likely be used again for months after we leave.  There are glimmers of interests from teachers and students, when they enjoy sharing photos or singing together, but mostly we just hang out.  On our last day there, physical education day, the director ran the kids through some exercises.  Bekka found out from one of the kids that other weeks they just play with balls or whatever.  We can't really tell how much of the schools performance is just a show for our reports to the Ministry.  

Here's the real punch in the gut.  We were in a restaurant where a handful of local educators were having a meeting, and they figured out that we were involved with OLPC.  One of the educators came over to talk with us, asking if we could somehow get laptops to her school where computers are non-existant.  It turns out her school was overlooked because it's too close to a metropolitan center and the project had decided to focus on rural schools.  But the rural schools need more paper, books, and some kind of internet before they can make any use of the laptops.  Classic misalocation.  The Ministry never asked the schools what they wanted.  They just presumed to know what was good for everybody.  And the XOs end up collecting dust.

The highlights are stellar.  We get ourselves into the mountains to the hidden lakes and wish our eyes were bigger so we could take in more of it.  Peru is the kind of landscape that my mind finds difficult to believe.  And there are moments of revelry despite our sicknesses and weariness.  There was this music in Huaraz, a bangin' brass band, and I heard it like it was right next to me but I couldn't find it, so I look up and see a rooftop fiesta.  The Brit and I come back later and he talks his way into the building and we're up on the roof dancing and drinking with these old close-talking Peruvian assholes.  They pass around glasses of beer, sticky from many hands and mouths, and stutter over their curiosity at the gringos.  This one guy would not leave me alone.  Another man's adoration can be flattering, but have some class fellas.  The band was a 12 piece, clarinets and trumpets and sousaphones and trombones and a bass drum, all boracho.  Sorry I don't have any pics.  There had better be another chance.

So now we're back in Huari.  We were supposed to begin our second deployment but our guide never showed up to guide us, so we're back in bed.  I'll spend my afternoon doing homework for my online class on radio production and audio art - great stuff - and data entry for Fanatic, a NY record whose payroll I'd like to jump onto this Fall.  I want to pull some art out of my time here, but the illness and the language and the bureaucracy are dragging me down.  What can I do but toughen up and get back to work.                  

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Tres Pueblas en Tres Dias

The coolest thing I did on Sat was buy an XLR cable for my mic.  I got directions from Kiko at the Escuelab, and they took my through downtown Miraflores, a big city part of Lima where the multicolored poncho natives mingle with business suits.  Did I mention the traffic in Lima?  It's aggressive.  I got to a little electronics store front and asked the guy about mic cables and he hands my two ends of an XLR and about four feet of cable in a plastic bag.  I'm like "Que?  Yo Hago?"  and he's like "Claro" which comes up about every five sentences here.  So he puts the cable together in front of me - a real clean job, I learned a lot about soldering watching it done - and when I get home it works fine.  That ruled.

We gathered for our trip to Juarez at 9pm and taxied to the  bus station where a double-decker shuttle craft of a bus awaited us with cheap food and a cheesy "in-flight" movie to boot.  We dozed for the ride and pulled into Juarez around 6am on Sun, dumped our baggage at the hostel, and my fellows naped in a nearby hotel while the hostel preped our rooms and I took a ramble.  These poncho ladies have guinea pigs for sale, live ones, about 30 per sac, and the poor things are squirming over and around one another while the ladies are grinning yellow in the clean mountain air.

After breakfast - I can't recall what - we check out the town square just in time to catch the high school parade.  Horn band in front and uniformed grade schoolers marching in tow, under the perusal of the town and the guidance of nuns and suits.  Some local politicains made speeches to which no one - thankfully - paid much mind.  There's a majestic old church under reconstruction at one end of the square.  Later that day after a nap I returned to find the kids have filled the streets with flowers and sand in the images of doves and words of God and peace, and there's a Catholic service going on under the geometric stained glass of a modern church which neighbors the more majestic site.  Peruvians make Hallelujah their own.

Monday is another day of traveling but not like before.  The landscape is beyond me.  These mountains are giants, some snowcapped, some cracked by timeless water flow now replaced by lush groves.  And as we near a town the land is loosely squared for the cultivation of barely and wheat and corn, and the towns never last more than a couple of miles and they're all crumbling but it doesn't make the people look poor, just a part of the world that contains them.  There's an old philosophical word, sublime, which refers to the suggestion of everything outside ones perception, that being the bulk of creation, and the word has become passe but I find the referent thriving.  

Huari is my home for the next few weeks, along with my fellows Beka, Mark, and Tiffany.  We got trucked off in pairs this morning for what will become our daily routine.  So you wake up before the sun and stuff yourself in a sedan with some day workers and kids and go tumbling down one mountain, follow a river across the valley, and shoot up another mountain, at a pace surpassing your previous understanding of security, though barely noticed by the cattle whom share the morning commute, and this is the most normal thing in the world you stupid American.  I spent the rest of the day playing computer games with 5th graders and their patient teacher.  We sang and misunderstood a lot.  They love me.  Can't wait to see them tomorrow.  My fellows had less fun, caught between Ministry paranoia from teachers and lawlessness from the kids.  I hope my day is not a diamond in the rough.  I think its the best idea to introduce yourself with a song.  Works for me.      

       

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Dias Bastante Lleno

The days continue to be long, brimming with meetings and introductions and long commutes, but we are all learning a lot about the situation we're in.  Early on Thursday, while we were enjoying our beloved coffee break, a small demonstration of government employees marched to the gates of the Ministry shouting for higher wages or shorter hours or something.  Mi ignorancia del idioma me mantiene en la oscuridad.  We concluded our day's training with a detailed lecture on the makeup and import of the four or five weekly data collection forms that will be our burden, apparently.  No one was happy about it, being drafted as Ministry spies.  The role may substantially corrode the trust of the teachers on which our educational work depends.  They will already view us as outsiders.

Thursday evening pretty much rocked.  We taxied into the center of Lima to visit Escuelab, a forward thinking art and technology center full of artists, nerds, and hipsters.  The kind of place I can believe in.  Kiko, one of the head techies, showed my a dirt bike turned robot with an XO for a brain and explained how such a place comes together and the intensity of his work there.  A tall rockin' video student named Clara and I shared out work and bad attempts at each other's languages.  These two OLPC veterans from Finland gave us a run down of the hang-ups we're bound for in our deployment, very much confirming our suspicions of the Ministry and worry over interacting with teachers.  It seems Peruvian schools are fraught with corruption, procrastination, and a somewhat deserved hierarchical distrust, at least from these Europeans' perception.  Dyhanna was very much distressed by one of the slides presenting Peruvian culture as deceitful.  The Finlander - his name's Sabastian, a swell guy - admitted his mistake.  To me deception is far more human than Peruvian, and shouldn't be any surprise.     

Friday was a new day.  We woke up before the sunrise for a long bus ride into the mountains surrounding Lima where a rural school is incorporating XOs into their curriculum.  The whole drive smelt of exhaust like I don't understand.  The Brit and I stayed awake and got to see some urban street life, the kind that reminds me of how strange America cities can be for not crumbling.  We're such space invaders here.

The mountain school, nested among lush peaks and a blue sky, was preparing for a dance competition and all day the same snare beat dominated the courtyard while the dancers worked out their steps.  From what I could tell the kids love the XOs so long as they can just play, and play isn't a trivial thing.  Dhyanna, Tiffany, and I followed some 4th graders around the vegetation and ruins around their school as they took pictures of local greenery on their laptops.  This one little booger, who kept following me around, asking for my thumb drive, which didn't have any use for him anyway, was the most adventurous, jumping down the hill to get closer to the cactus.  When we got inside we saw some problems.  The laptops were a major distraction, frustrating the teachers attempt to move the lesson forward.  The kids just want to play games, especially that little booger.  Some of my fellows later explained that this is just how schools work here.  Nothing much gets done, and such a beautiful place to do it.         

Now to the other end of the spectrum.  There's this magnet school outside Lima where the best students  come to prepare for college.  We were shown around by a sharp and enthused administrator in lavender.  I like the picture of her below, but it doesn't reflect the place.  The students live on campus, which features recreation, pool tables, technology, and even Korean style martial arts.  One of the classes asked us to come in so they could gander at the tall foreigners.  Adam was most noteworthy for his height and pronounced Britishness.  We sat down with a few dozen kids from the region of Ancash where our work awaits us.  They told stories of their music and parties and hopes and food; gato frito, aka fried cat, seriously, I can't wait.  These kids are so happy and grateful, even when they miss their home.  They want to lift their country up and they got the brass to do it.  But there's all that power outside threatening sameness and they're going to need a lot of help from somewhere.  Maybe providence.  I'm rooting for them anyway.  

More bus ride and then cock tails in the bosom of yuppiedom.  The main boss man of education technology in Peru had us over to his place, a suburban castle in a gated community with a dog kept behind the fence and a turtle left to wander.  Some hired help cooked up potatoes and cows heart - que rico - with these syrupy donuts for dinner.  I'm always grateful for a good meal, but the day had worn me thin and I was ready to get a buzz on a pass out.  And then there's all the poverty we've been watching out our passing windows and this luxurious backyard, while of course amicable, got me gritting my teeth.  Most of my fellows went out for dancing that night but I was not in the swing of it.  I think my characteristic social ineptitude is beginning to weird them out.  They are not the first.  They're bound to read this sooner or later, so let me say I'm sorry, it's my nature, and you ain't no dish of peaches and cream yourself.  Nothing but love.   

We've caught a lot of perspectives on our work.  It's going to be hard and everyone has an opinion on it.  And it's already Sunday as I'm writing this.  More soon.  

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