A different way of thinking.

As I was on my way home from Cambio Puente the other day, exhausted and dusty, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the rearview mirror. I realized that I needed to shave. 

I also realized that the driver was not using the rearview mirror, it being pointed directly at me.

 ¨Well, ¨ I thought, ¨at least he has his side mir-¨ my train of thought ending abruptly as I saw the empty space of air where the side mirror should have been.

Naturally, my gaze shifted from the missing mirror to the speedometer.

50. 

Okay...50 mph. Not too crazy.

But as I looked at the blurring landscape outside my window I remembered that I was in Peru. 

Where they use the metric system. 

I couldn’t remember how to convert miles per hour into kilometers per hour or if his speedometer would be in mph or kph.

Never in my life have I regretted falling asleep in math class more than I did at that moment. I buckled my seatbelt, and used the ¨passenger courtesy mirror¨ to look at my coworkers in the back. They sat quietly, completely unconcerned and seatbelt-less. 

 Lately, I´ve been noticing a similar pattern in the way many of the people here think. There seems to be no regard for long-term (and sometimes even short-term) consequences.

For example, in Cambio Puente there is a 6-year-old boy named Jesus with Cerebral Palsy. One of our Community Agents named Monica found out about him because his little sister is in Sembrando Infancia. Since Jesus is 6 he is a year too old to qualify for the program. 

One day, Monica saw Jesus’ grandpa dragging him down the street by the arm, cussing at him, kicking him and telling him to walk faster. Since Jesus has decreased motor function on his entire left side, the ability to ¨walk faster¨ isn’t a luxury he’s afforded. Monica got him help via the nurses with Sembrando who had a group of volunteer physical therapists visiting from Regis University examine Jesus.

Essentially, because of his illness, his joints and muscles are hardening, and might eventually calcify completely (his joints apparently turn into solid bone) if untreated. They prescribed him with a set of exercises to do to help prevent this. If done every day, he may gain some mobility. Three times a week he will maintain the mobility he has now. No times a week and he will begin to lose his ability to use his left side.  

Okay, easy. Just make sure he does the exercises every day, right.

           Wrong.

           Just like homeboy ¨doesn’t-need-to-know-what´s-going-on-behind-him¨ there seems to be little value in the long-term benefits of something like physical therapy.

The team from Regis showed the exercises to his grandmother who is the primary caretaker for Jesus and his sister during the day while his mom works in the fields. She does not do the exercises with Jesus and hasn’t shown them to his mom. Cathleen showed me how to perform the exercises and I have been trying visit him at least three times a week. We’ve become pretty good friends and even though things seemed tense between me and his grandma, and especially between me and his grandpa whenever he’s there (the first time I met him he shut the door in my face and basically said, ¨No. Whatever it is you’re here for, no.¨) things are getting better.

It’s just really hard to know how much could be done for him if his family really became advocates for him and his health. Jesus would have already had an extremely hard life even if he wasn’t disabled. Without treatment he will become an even greater burden on his family.

I hear my mom’s voice in my head whenever our time together is coming to an end - ¨I just want to pick him up and take him home with me.¨  

I really do. As he´s limping away from me, towards his baby sister playing with handfuls of dirt near their chicken coop, I imagine all the help I could give him if I could only get him out of that environment.

-and therein lies the rub. Yeah, maybe I would be able to help Jesus…but then, what about his sister? What about his mom? and the rest of his family? What about his neighbors who are living in bamboo and thatch houses as well? And the other people in Cambio Puente?

Sometimes I feel like one of those national geographic reporters who, after watching and meticulously recording the first 8 months of the life of a baby gazelle, also has to watch as it is caught and eaten by a hungry lion or cheetah or whatever eats baby gazelles.  

But unlike those reporters, I can do something to help. While I may not be able to kidnap Jesus, I can do everything in my power to help him become more independent and help to advocate for his health.     

            Now that I realize that the people here really do think differently than I do, I feel more empowered and in a better position to do something about it.

 

It’s happening.

I knew it was going to happen.

They told me it was going to happen. And that it’s natural. It’s normal.

But man...I didn’t want it to.

I’m missing home.

I just woke up from a dream about going to South Padre Island with my family and my Aunt Brenda.

I’ve had a dream about driving somewhere with my older brother Michael, getting lost and arguing like we would in real life.  

Before that was a dream about going home and finding out that my family had moved into a new house. The house was nice, except for the fact that there weren’t enough bedrooms for me to have one. I guess a nightmare.

It’s hard not to be homesick when your subconscious is doing it for you. 

The language barrier isnt helping any either, and my TexMex definitely does nothing for me. Who knew "chingy" was not an actual word. 

There’s a priest in our parish here that looks just like my family’ schnauzer Silver. There is a community agent named Monica who I work with, whose name makes me think of my cousin.

There is a file on my desktop named “Aunt Carmen’s” from when I helped her type up some labels for my Uncle Andy’s Un-Retirement party where I saw almost all of my cousins in one place, which is rare. It also makes me really miss my family in Tennessee, Ohio, Chicago and Indiana.

The book I use when I pray the rosary has the name Priscilla Johnson on the inside of the cover. So that reminds me of the rosary group. (Also, sorry about the longterm borrow Mrs. Johnson).

Every day I drive by an event center called El Flamingo on my way to work. It has a giant faded metal flamingo over its gate which is the mascot of my fraternity in college—which begins my 7 minute long daily daydream about memories with my boys and my friends and my cousin Marrah at St. Mary’s and imagining what they’re all doing now.

It’s not that I’m having a bad time here either! I’m loving it. The other day, I was walking down the street, trash and dust blowing past me, the sun setting over the mountain with the cross on top of it, kids yelling in the street, parents yelling at the kids yelling in the street, and I felt strange. A smile slowly crept onto my face.

“What is this that I’m feeling?”

I pictured that scene in the How the Grinch Stole Christmas where the Grinch’s heart is growing and he’s freaking out.

I felt really truly happy. Probably the happiest I’ve been in a while. I started to laugh to myself, then saw an old man sitting cross-armed on his stoop shaking his head at the weirdo gringo. So, everything is great.

But I mean…there’s no peanut butter here.

Most people don’t even know what it is.

Little things like that make me miss home. Remind me of my family, my friends, my culture.

Memories can attack at any moment. The sound of grease sizzling in a pan for instance, took me back to thoughts of being little, waking up to the smell of chorizo and egg tacos and cooking potatoes, Tejano music coming from the Johnny Canales show on T.V., all the windows being open to let in the breeze from a cold front. 

Katie and I tried making our own tortillas. They came out alright, but they just weren’t the same. And most definitely were not round.

Memories like these give me strength and also take it away. I think, “These are all the people, all the reasons I’m doing this.” And simultaneously, “I wish I was with them, I wish I could be there.” 

My Aunt Ofie told me, right before I left, to keep busy. If I stay busy, I wont feel homesick as often. Which has been some really good advice. But are times when I just want to be homesick you know? 

And it has only been a month. What am I going to do?

I’m going to try making peanut butter for starters. Then, Ill take my brothers advice and see about building a BBQ grill in the back yard because nothing says home like corn on the cob and a medium rare steak.

Can’t be that hard…right?

Mi casa es su casa.

I´ve finally gotten around to uploading pictures from my camera so now you guys can see the house that we´re living in.


This is my dryer. It definitely has the energy star rating.


The back of our house.

Our dining room.

The kitchen. We have to boil water for drinking and bathing.

Living room. Katie on the left and Kelli on the right. Fidea is in the background.

The room where we have guests over.

Fidea.

Obvious stairs.

Our central air conditioning on the second floor.

My room.

The view outside my room.

The space between my wall and the roof, or My ventillation duct.

Katie´s room. (I asked her permission)

The backyard.

Our hammock.

Working. Finally.

     Man, weeks here feel like months. So much has happened over the past four days it’s hard to know where to start.

Katie and I started working this week which has been tough but also a real blessing. It feels good to be doing something finally. Trying to learn Spanish and work on building relationships here in Chimbote has been a job in itself but it’s nice to be earning my keep.

On Monday I shadowed Katie at her job with Hospice which is a program that takes care of terminally sick patients. She’s working with the part of the organization that does home health visits for people who are homebound. Essentially, wound care.

            Now, I just want to say for the record, I didn’t think I was a squeamish person when it comes to bodily functions. Blood? Guts? Bodily fluids? No prob.

           

Yeah right.

            Apparently in the U.S. a person who is bed-bound needs to be turned and attended to every couple of ours. Here, where many people can’t afford fulltime care, and also can’t do it themselves, the patients are left lying in the same position for hours, sometimes days. This causes a decrease in circulation in some places which eventually causes the skin to die.

            So there I was, standing next to Katie and her partner Maria, peering over the bed of a screaming elderly woman with a sore so deep I could see her thigh bone. It was interesting, but also really painful to watch. I heard the snap of Katie’s latex gloves as she grabbed a piece of iodine soaked gauze and went to town. She was definitely in her element.

            To all those in the medical profession: much respect.

           

            On Tuesday I started my job (which luckily doesn’t require me to wipe or suction anything). I’m down here in Peru representing Women’s Global Connection, but before I can move forward with that, I’ll need to get to know the people of Cambio Puente better. Working with the nutrition project has given me a huge jumpstart in that regard. I don’t know how I would be trying to meet people if I hadn’t been given the opportunity to work with Sembrando Infancil. 

           

            As it turns out, I was wrong about a few things. Cambio Puente actually has around 5,000 people, not 1,500. Of those 5,000, 10% are children. For the entire CP community, guess how many clinics there are?

            One.

            One clinic with a team of about 10 or 12 people.

            Also, what Sister Juanita translated as fruit Chupetas (fruit-pops) actually turned out to be “Chispitas” or sprinkles. A lot of the kids of CP are anemic, which means they don’t get enough iron. There’s not a lot of red meat here, and there also isn’t a lot of consumption of vegetables that are high in iron, like spinach and broccoli.

            So “Chispitas” is the brand name for a little packet of iron supplement that we mix with a mashed piece of banana and give to the kids.

         

       There are about 300 kids participating in the project. CP is therefore divided into about 8 sectors, and each sector has one or two Community Agents (members of the community that have dedicated there time and there homes to the project.) They are all leaders in the community and I believe that in the future they will be a strong group for a WGC type project. 

            In the morning we go to a C.A.’s house and the kids from their sector come to take their “Chispitas” or a liquid dose of Phosphorus Sulfate(?) for kids who have a more extreme case of anemia. 

            Once a month we will do a height and weight measurement to check their progress. If they are having weight problems that could mean that they were either sick or are suffering from short-term malnourishment. If there is a problem with the height-to-age ration, it means that they are underdeveloped and suffering from a more long term form of malnourishment.

            So there are three categories: Healthy, At Risk, and Chronic Malnourishment. Obviously the goal is to get all the kids to Healthy status, but that requires a lot of time, education and a lot of undoing of established societal thought patterns.

            Sembrando is just beginning its second year, and before they came many women hadn’t heard of the food pyramid before. Many had no idea that things like carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals existed.

Ideas we take for granted and that have a real impact on our health. For them, good nutrition meant having enough to eat. The concept of an obese child being malnourished, for example, is something that is difficult for them to understand. A balanced meal to them would be white rice, potatoes and chicken. Thinking about it, I’m sure this is a problem in the U.S. as well.

            Overall, this week has been really good. I met a lot of new people and at the end of the day I have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve accomplished something.

            A volunteer named Cathleen who is working for Catholic Medical Mission Board has helped me out a lot over that past week in terms of translating, showing me the ropes and sharing what she knows about the population in CP. This was her last week at work though because her year of service is up which is bummer. I’m really going to be on my on now. I’m going back out to CP Saturday afternoon with the program, the first time without Cathleen. So, we’ll see how that goes.

In other words, we’ll see much I can mangle the Spanish language.

Cambio Puente

I visited Cambio Puente yesterday, the city I’ll be spending the next two years working in. It was strange going from Lima with a population in the millions, to Chimbote with about half a million people to Cambio Puente with a population of about 1,500. Sister Juanita, one of the Incarnate Word sisters stationed in Chimbote who is in charge of the hospice center – where Katie will be working – met with Katie and I after the 7:30 am mass in order to take us there and show us around. First we had breakfast at the sisters’ house, a tamale with a boiled egg inside (weird huh.) and then walked downtown to catch a collectivo which is kind of like a taxi except that it won’t leave until every seat is filled. Once two young girls jumped in, we made our way out to the village.

Whereas Lima smells like smog, and Chimbote smells like fish, Cambio Puente smells like campfire. In Cambio Puente most homes don’t have propane so they have to burn cornstalks or wood in order to cook or boil water for drinking.

As the haze from all the breakfast fires filled the air, Sister Juanita told us some of the things she knew about Cambio Puente.

Cambio Puente has the largest prison system in the area which serves the Ancash region, and since Cambio Puente is so small, the prison is pretty hard to miss. Walking by it, we heard the shouts from what sounded like some guys playing sports, probably football (soccer), and some screaming that sounded a little more sinister. Most of the employees of the large complex come from Chimbote, as most of the people who live in Cambio Puente work as granjeros, or farmers.

Most of the men and women therefore have to leave in the early mornings to work in the fields and are forced to leave their children at home by themselves, sometimes entrusting their two- and three-year-olds with their five-year-old. Some kids rode by us on their bicycles in the park at the town center, the Plaza de Armas, and Sister Juanita explained that there has been a movement to start little head-start programs for the kids who are left home alone during the day. This may even be an area where Women’s Global Connection, the organization I am working for, can help.

There are seven even smaller communities surrounding the Cambio Puente area. So from my understanding, Chimbote is like a Mother city, then Cambio Puente is a much smaller offshoot which has its own associated smaller communities.

Tomorrow I will be going out with a medical team of two nurses who are running a nutrition program for infants and small children. They administer vitamins and fruit chupetes, some kind of fresh fruit that is mashed into a paste and frozen to make a popsicle. By attaching myself to the med. team for a while, I’ll be able to get to know the neighborhood and work on my Spanish. Hopefully this will help my entry into the community so by the time I am ready to help WGC develop their relationship with the women here, I’ll already have some connections made. That’s the plan anyway.

From Conquest to Reconciliation

     Since losing all my books in San Antonio airport, I’ve had to pick some from the little library we have here in the house. First I read Paulo Coelho’s book The Witch of Portobello. I remember liking his other book, The Alchemist so much I read it straight through, so I was excited to read another one of his books. It was pretty good, but I’m not sure if I completely agreed with the message of the book which seemed to be, “Be yourself and do what you think you need to do, no matter what the consequences are.” Yes, I agree you should be yourself. Yes, I agree you should fight for the things you want. But to deny the implications of your actions, all for the sake of self-fulfillment, goes a little too far for me. 

That mode of thinking is evident in the second book I’m into now called The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie. It’s really interesting so far, and has given me a lot of insight into the history of Peru. It’s also a historical fiction so it’s like reading a novel instead of a history book.

 So far, the Spanish conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro, have discovered a small kingdom on the outskirts of the Incan empire, called Tumbez, returned to Spain in order to seek more funding and to claim sole authority over the future conquest of Peru.  

While Pizarro was gone, the Incan emperor Huyan Capac died of small pox brought by the Spaniards, although not from Pizarro and his crew, but from Hernan Cortez and his men who had recently overtaken the Aztec empire in Mexico.

His sudden death led to a bloody civil war between two of his sons Atahualpa and Huascar. Eventually Atahualpa Inca prevailed and was poised to take the throne, just as Pizarro returned from Spain.

 They rendezvoused in the city of Cajamarca and Atahualpa was immediately impressed by the Spanish horses and he decided that he and his army would either kill or take the roughly 150 Spaniards prisoner, and then breed the horses for his kingdom’s own use. 

Sadly, for Atahualpa, he had no fear of the underdog, and thousands of his troops (including most of his imperial forces) were quickly defeated by the Spanish cavalry in a bloody massacre, and Atahualpa was taken prisoner.

Captured Atahualpa, noticing the Spaniards obsession with Incan gold, then drew a line, well above his head, on the wall of a large room, saying that he’d have it filled up to the line with gold for the Spaniards. He hoped that in turn he’d receive his life and the marauding Spaniards would return to the unknown land they came from, and leave him to rule his newly inherited kingdom.

Needless to say, things didn’t quite turn out they way Atahualpa wanted. Just as Pizarro’s men melted and distributed the last of his temple treasures into gold ingots, Pizarro’s reinforcements arrived. As soon as Atahualpa realized that the Spaniards had no intention of ever leaving his land, he is quoted as saying “I shall die,” and then wept openly at his misfortune.

And he was right.

Soon after, one fateful evening, a friar held a small breviary, or prayer book, up to Atahualpa, who had been chained to a wooden stake and would soon be burned alive.

The friar asked Atahualpa Inca if he repented for his barbarian sins, and would accept the Christian God into his heart. Atahualpa, not understanding the friar, but clearly understanding his predicament, began to sob, begging Pizarro to take his two young sons and care for them as his own.

Once the friar assured him that his children would be cared for, Atahualpa agreed to convert to the Christian faith.

So instead of being burned at the stake, he was strangulated.

As the sun set over the Incan empire, Atahualpa Inca’s citizens wept, throwing themselves at the feet of their deceased god-king.

I know. Sometimes, our past is hard to swallow. Were the Incans these purely good-natured, peaceful, loving people? No, they were pretty harsh themselves. Their empire was built through blood, sweat and tears. Does it justify the way the Spanish treated them? Not at all. It’s hard to say what should have happened. Pizarro was born, poor, in a very rough area of Spain, and was determined to make something of himself. No matter the cost. No matter the amount of carnage he loosed upon the world.

And he did make something of himself. He became ridiculously rich. And in his mind, he even gained his wealth in an honorable way. To him, he was helping enlarge the Christian empire.

My problem is the attitude that an individual knows what’s best for his or herself, without taking into consideration what effects their desires may have in the larger scheme of things.

“I’m going to get what I want. That’s all there is to it.”

Doesn’t sound very Christian at all, does it?

I know that I’m only one person. And I know that over the next two years, I’ll only have added a small contribution to betterment of Chimbote, and Cambio Puente. But after reading about the violent conquests in the name of Spain and in the name of Jesus Christ, in some way, I feel like I’m here to repair some of the damage done by my forefathers. To seek some kind of reconciliation for the actions of past “missionaries” done in the name of my religion.

How am I going to do that?

First, I’m going to get in the habit of thinking out what it really means to be a Christian. How can Christ’s message, his beatitudes, impact the way I live my life. I figure that’s a good start. After that…hopefully, the next step will fall into place.

Little by Little

 

Today I’ll have been in Chimbote for two weeks. What do I have to show for my time?

For starters, I survived my first earthquake.

Alright, so they called it a “tremor.” I’m still adding it to my résumé.   

Katie and I were cooking lunch (Chicken soup, which was an adventure in itself since the chicken we were trying to figure out what to do with had been alive little more than a few hours before) when I felt a little rumble. 

"Did you feel that?" I asked Katie.

"Feel what?"

"It felt like a dumb truck just drove by..."

"Oh. No."

And almost as soon as she said that, it seemed like the entire Earth began to rock back and forth. The water in the pots sloshed around, and the trees in the back yard started swaying.   

Katie grabbed my arm and asked me wide eyed, "What do we dooo?"

Bravely, I said, "...I dont know."

Emily, yelled from the living room, "Guys, I think we should go out to the street!"

"Why didnt I think of that..." 

By the time we made it to the street, the ordeal was over. Was I scared? 

No

Would I want it to happen again.

Definitely not.

I’ve learned some Spanish.

What phrases have I used besides “Donde esta el bano?”

Some of my favorites:

                        Lo siento – I’m sorry.

                        Perdona mi – Pardon me.

                        Desculpa me – Forgive me.

(Noticing a trend here?)

Some other classics include:

                        No entiendo – I don’t understand.

                        and

                        No entiendes? – You don’t understand?

Luckily, the people here are pretty patient and helpful. A lot of people even see it as an opportunity to bust out some English they’ve been practicing. Mostly: “Ello, ow are ju?”

Besides learning Spanish, I’ve cooked twice without killing anybody. So that’s good.

I’ve made a lot of new friends, including a mute guy named John who owns the gym I’ve been working out at behind my new parish. So, actually I’m also learning a form of sign language – better known as Charades. He was in a bad car accident a while ago and now he can’t talk. But in a sense, at this point, neither can I, so we get along juuust fine. He’s also taught me another phrase that I’ve come to like a lot: “Poco a poco.” Little by little.

He first mouthed the words and made the universal slow down motion when I looked at him in disbelief as he handed me two 5lb dumbbells. 

“Seriously?” I asked.

            “Poco a poco.”

I successfully washed my clothes. By hand. Talk about a real chore. My blue jeans are so stiff I actually thought about standing them up against the wall instead of folding them up. But the rest of my clothes came out smelling pretty good at least, and besides everything coming out a little baggier, I think I did an alright job. From now on though, I’ll definitely think twice before tossing that “passably clean” shirt into the dirty clothes pile.

Looking back, I feel like I’ve learned a lot already. Besides the language, and learning the outlay of the city, I’ve learned a few, more subtle, lessons. 

For instance, here, mealtimes are special. You don’t just eat and run. You eat, drink some tea. And sit. And talk. And just…kind of…hang out. I had gotten so used to shoveling down my food so fast I hardly even tasted it before rushing off to run some errand. At school I sometimes even ate while running errands.

So, at first, I can only describe the experience as being almost painful. I would sit, slouched back in my chair, impatiently waiting for the girls to finish eating so we could clean up the table and move on to something else. But they just sat there, staring at each other. Talking.

It was weird.

I mean, I’m used to the whole family dinner around the table thing, for sure. But we’re talking about a whole hour here people!

Even at restaurants, after the waitress delivers the last plate, she assumes that she’s done waiting on you, and won’t “bother” you until you flag her down in order to pay. When I waited tables back home, a sure way to tell people they’d overstayed their welcome was “ready for the check?” Here, there’s no such concept as staying too long.

But now that I’ve gotten over the initial shock, it’s actually pretty cool, definitely a movement I can get behind. Everything, therefore, becomes more about living in the moment. Just wanting to be with the people you’re with. I can dig that.

And that pretty much sums up the pace around here. Everything just moves a little slower. People also take siesta time very seriously. Essentially, it boils down to publicly enforced (because everything closes) required naptime. It’s practically sacred. Lunch, conversation, lay down for a little nap, then go back to work.

It’s still hard for me to totally switch over to this new lifestyle, but I’m getting there. Poco a poco.