if i could teach the world to sing...
if i could teach the world to sing in perfect harmony...a nice song, and even nicer idea, but far from possible in a world such as ours; driven by greed. but if i COULD teach the world to sing a song, it would be the one that plays repeatedly here in Peru. Not picturesque, postcard Lima, with its lavish hotels and tourist attractions. But real Peru. In the slums; the ghettos; where most Peruvians live. places like Pariarchi in Huaycan-Vitarte (the borough of Lima where i am dwelling).
Some would call it squallor. But to me it is beautiful. I have leared more from this seemingly simple family than an unlimited amount of years wasted away at any university could ateempt to teach me. Raul works very hard - ten hours a day, at the end of which he receives seven dollars. A lazy Canadian student could earn that much in one hour of pretending to stock shelves. Its rediculous how backwards our societies are.
today was Raul´s birthday. we had a big fiesta for him. his parents came and two families that they are friends with. it was so amazing. so much music and celebration. everyone was captivated by my presence. question after question: how do you say this in english? what is canada like? is it cold? is there lots of snow? your parents, are they tall? your brothers? how much does this cost in canada? after my Q&A period i think i got more practice than a weeks worth of spanish-100 seminars. but the adults all had a lot of questions about my operations. like one big family, they are all concerned with Esmeraldita´s condition and the possibility of proper medical attention in canada. they are amazed at the functionality of my right foot (formarely clubbed).
they were also very amazed at my camera. the children especially. they love getting their photo taken, and even more making little videos.
i wish i could photography everything. they think its funny how much i like photography. but there is simply too much here to capture with a photograph. so much life, teeming from each person. my favourite subject so far is Fiorella. she is so full of life; every photo of her is so captivating. you can feel her youthful enthusiam for even the smallest things start to rub off on you when you are in her presence.
today, before we sat down for birthday lunch, Raul said ¨Jessica no Jessica Sachse pero Jessica Pirca¨. we all laughed but it really sunk in how much this family cared for me. they call me family after 3 days in their house. they have offered up all that they have to ensure my happiness in their home. they always thank me for coming. but i always have to insist that it is i that should be thankful to them. i love it here and i wish i could stay forever.
Raul gave me a present today - a traditional Peruvian necklace. on his birthday, he gave me a present. it is plain but i love it. i can only hope that wearing it back home will allow me to take a piece of this experience with me.
ñp
a la playa
One day and a bit has past since my last entry and already so much has happened. Yesterday (en español es ´viernes´) we went to the beach. i must take a moment to describe the experience of crossing the highway as one would a crossway. its like being in the video game Frogger on the highest traffic setting. the cars and busses go zooming by, as we hold tightly to our human chain and try to cross. and i try not to wet myself. the process takes, on average, 7 minutes. and i thought jaywalking in toronto took skill. Lima is level 57.
it was on this journey that i saw my first white people. turns out that they all hang out in Lima proper, with their botiques and casinos. I seem to be the only one interested in the real Lima. it figures.
sidetrack. at the beach, one of the possible touristy activities is hang gliding. they all wanted me to try it, and admittedly i was excited to do so. so up i went. it was breath taking. the whole of Lima below my feet. my instructor kept calling me Gringo girl. its as good as calling me whitey.
after that we ventured down to the water. not only was the water freezing, but the waves are crazy strong. i was knocked over on more than one occasion.
when we got home, we watched Shrek 2 in spanish, which was fun because i know the english version so well. all the children and i sat on the bed laughing, esmeraldita on my lap. for a moment i became lost in it all. this is it, i thought. this is what life is. beauty amidst such struggle and poverty; family. staring into esmeralditas beautiful brown eyes is like holding a younger version of myself. she looks so much like i did as a child. i wish i could hold on forever as to let her know that she is never really alone in this world. a part of me is so scared for her...for what is in store for her. a life of struggling with her disability, her identity.
but i have to stop myself, because she has all she will ever need in her wonderful, loving parents, her caring and protective older brother Franco, and her vivacious and animated sister Fiorella. with them, she needs little else.
I hope i can come back someday when she´s older and able to speak. i wonder what she might say to me...
ñp
dia uno....y media
surreal. pretty much the only word that comes to my mind right now.
flying is exciting. exhilerating even. but i found myself so caught up in the act of going to visit my Peruvian family that it wasn´t until mid-travel that reality hit. what did i think i was doing? i barely know all the spanish vocabulary i need to know for my 100-level class. how was i expecting to be able to communicate with a family that speaks only a few phrases in English?!? call it arrogence or call it stupidity...the closer we got to Lima, the stinkier the pile of poop i had put myself in became.
after escaping the baggage claim mosh pit with both bags as well as my digity, i proceeded, quite nervioso, towards the sea of clamouring Peruvian faces, all waiting for their safely landed friends and family. i was only left dreading the thousands of ¨what if´s for a split second before i heard my name and saw Angela running towards me. Í´ll never really know, i suppose, how long we actually stood there hugging, because it felt as though it could have been infinity. how long had we known eachother? 4 months? and over the internet! but that hug was too beautiful for words. it was like expeiencing a new kind of love surging thoroughout my body, like electricity.
but, as is life, such moments of sheer wonder must be followed by doubt. lots and lots of doubt. in about 5 minutes, Angela and her husband ushered me to a taxi, which her brother was driving. and in five minutes they both realized how poor my spanish actually was. the internet is a cheat. you can take your time and use aids (a dictionary, translation sites) to comprehend. but you can´t bs anything in person.
well...it really hasn´t been as bad as all that. sure...i say ¨no entiendo¨ a lot...but i´m getting better. i think.
language aside, this experience has been more visual than anything. I knew before i came that Lima is really poor. but yet i still didn´t quite grasp the reality. their house is very modest. which means, cement floor, an incomplete roof, few possessions, and little food. the neighbourhood too is quite hard on the eyes. imagine looking at hiroshema the day after it was bombed. desolate. baran. wasteland. yet home to thousands.
but no one is sad. in fact quite opposite; particulaly this family. they have so little and yet i have yet to see them sad or upset about anything. i have only been here one day and they treat me like a member of the family. its beautiful.
today felt like three days in one. i spent the morning being given an extensive tour of the neighbourhood, the marketplace, and the parks. i woke up this morning to a rooste, whom i saw grazing during my tour. wild sheep; wild dogs; wild cats; wild children; the whole area was teaming with life. the kids had fun posing for pictures. they love getting their photo taken!
part two: they take me to the zoo. now that was a good time. i never thought i would end up travelling to Peru to see penguins in a zoo in Lima! our frequetly used method of transportation is ¨lös taxichollos¨. try imagining, if you can, a golf cart, with a hood, on three wheels. yep. un taxichollo.
another thing interesting about Peruvian transportation is that it doesn´t matter how full a bus, van, or taxichollo is, you can always fit more people on it. there must have been 20 of us in a 10 seat van. and later, 7 in a taxichollo...which comforably sits two adults....and sat three adults and 4 children. you greedy north americans and your ¨have to sit two seats away on the bus because i don´t know you¨ attitude! get a grip!
part three: la fiesta. it must be said that in Peru, they know how to party. i went to the craziest party of my life; a 7 year old Peruvian boy´s birthday party. i have never really been in the racial minority position before, but man, it was like i was an alpaca in the company of a beautiful herd of mustangs. i tried to blend in, speaking the best spanish i could, but i could not have possibly looked and felt any whiter.
however, it seemed as though it was purely parnoia. the wamth of the company of these people was luminous. we sang (ok i prenteded to sing) these crazy spanish songs, play silly games that i had to figure out as they went since the instructions no en ingles....which was easy for hot potato, but not so much for this crazy slapping game i still don´t understand :P
the funniest moment was when all the childen started yelling ¨PINYATA!¨ and were all simultaneously throwing punches and high kicks at this enormous balloon hanging from the centre of the room. yes. misguided kicks. punches awry. a battlefield of screams of excitement and ultimate pain. finally, we heard a loud BANG! and the bodies all hit the ground in one wave, as the children forgot their previous pains and were now frantically scooping candy off the ground.
i love the people here. it seems just when i am having my doubts about humanity, i am thrown into perhaps one of few remaining places not yet ruined by capitalism, where people freely and simply love each other. they enjoy expressing it. they enjoy talking about it. and they enjoy feeling it.
as do i.
ñp
left and leaving
tomorrow.
Tomorrow is just the day for leaving myself behind. I travel without purpose or pretention. Without preconception or pride. Without any pompus p-word vocabulary of any kind. Save, of course, my destination: Peru.
It seems a mystery at times how things in my life have unfolded as they have. Sometimes I ask so many questions that I find myself unable to manage mere statements anymore. For what is really all that conclusive?
And here is where you find me. Asking questions when I should simply be recounting the details of my recent turning of events. In the spirit of questioning, I will start by reference one age-old. Many question the existence of God, claiming that the idea is simply inconceivable. The logical thinkers, or maybe just those of little faith in anything; if I can't see it, it can't exist. But then such events occur, as the one am to tell, that leave no other conclusion in my mind than the work of a master's hands.
It was just four short months ago that I first met Angela. Two weeks into the fall semester, I received a bizarre e-mail from an address I didn’t recognize. A woman by the name of Angela wrote me a concise, three-line e-mail stating that she lives in Peru, has a daughter, and would like to talk to me. I almost dismissed the e-mail as spam, but the title "mama (fss)" caught my attention. FSS stands for Freeman Sheldon Syndrome - the rare condition I was born with. Only about 40-50 people in the world have it and the chances of being born with it are about 1 in 150 million. Suffice it to say I have never met anyone else affected by the condition—at least not face to face...yet.
I recollected registering on a disability network service several years ago and figured that this woman must have gotten my e-mail address from there. So there I sat, staring at the reply screen, wondering what on earth to write back when Angela signed in on my MSN all of the sudden. I didn’t remember adding her, but figured it would be easier to just ask her in MSN what questions she had about FSS.
What I didn’t realize was that she spoke only five words in English. Admittedly, I only knew one sentence in Spanish at that point, being only 2 weeks into my Spanish 100 class, so I greeted her and asked her how she was doing, as I quickly rummaged my bag for my Spanish-English dictionary and textbook. Two hours of somewhat frustratingly slow translation skills on my part, I learned that Angela had a 8 month old baby girl named Esmeraldita who also has FSS. Her and her three children live in Lima, Peru where none of the doctors have seen FSS before and subsequently feel unable to provide Esmeraldita with adequate medical care. Both her feet are clubbed and need surgery—one which I endured on my right foot when under a year old.
Like any mother, Angela was worried about her baby. When the doctors couldn’t provide her with sufficient information, she searched the internet for any help she could find. But seeing as how most information is in English, and all of the registered people on that particular website (less than ten) live in English-speaking countries, her search was quite in the dark. But since that fateful day, we have weekly conversations in MSN with our webcams. I have met her other children, Franco and Fiorella, and of course little Esmeraldita. I have done my best to answer the questions that have been plaguing Angela from day one. And I am helping her pursue treatment for Esmeraldita at a Canadian hospital. Angela recognizes the disadvantage her daughter has living in Peru and only dreams that her daughter will be able to enjoy life as much as possible with the love she provides to make up for lack of substantial financial support. Her dream is to one day see her daughter walk and lead as close to a normal life as possible in South America.
It’s funny how much we take life for granted. I don’t often throw myself pity-parties, but I would be lying if I said that I never wished for a normal body. But before this experience it had never occurred to me how much having access to Canadian health care has affected the person I have become. I can walk, I can skip, I can run—things that I may otherwise not have been able to do without the several difficult operations I received in my early years. But I never expected to learn so much from an 8 month old little girl. For me to wish away my condition is selfish. Without it, I would have never gained five new wonderful people in my life/family.
And so, tomorrow. Tomorrow brings answers to questions of my own.
blogging
It seems that the wave of modernity has swept away leather-bound journalling only to replace scribing with these infamous web blogs, which I have yet to make a commitment to.
But my dislike for this trend is defeated by my enjoyment of writing - any writing. So this blog shall exist. If only for my own pleasure, than so be it. Hopefully...in due time, I may write something of some significance to others. For now I will keep it simple. This is a communal blog: mine to write, yours to enjoy...hopefully :)
Hopefully. Hoping not to write in vain. And hoping that posting such a 'blog about blogging' has not bored too many. There will be more lively discussions to come, of that I assure you. I am a ruthless wielder of words.
~np
